CDHS

Scopes Monkey Trial:

The Real Story

Professor Tim Madigan

This is the recap by Frank Robinson, of a talk given at the November 12th, 2006 CDHS monthly meeting.

Professor Tim Madigan teaches philosophy at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, and is a former Executive Editor of Free Inquiry Magazine. He has appeared before our group several times and has been honored as an "Outstanding Friend of CDHS." His latest talk, at our November meeting, was entitled The 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial: Its Continuing Relevance. Before proceeding, Tim reminded us that November 16 would be National Philosophy Day, and suggested that we "take a philosopher to lunch." Tim also paid tribute to our late former leader Dennis Bender.

Turning to the day's topic, Tim began by quoting the philosopher Lewis White Beck (1913-97) who at the age of twelve had been made an atheist by following coverage of the Scopes trial, seen as a vindication of the theory of evolution and a defeat for Biblical fundamentalism. But many of our notions about this historical episode are inaccurate, being shaped mainly by the 1955 dramatic work, Inherit the Wind, and its 1960 movie version, which took some liberties with the facts. (Tim noted that he recently attended a London performance of the play, wherein the British thespians attempted American accents, with less than total success.)

Much of Tim's historical discussion was drawn from Edward J. Larson's book, Summer for the Gods. To recapitulate, Tennessee had passed the "Butler Law" prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools, reflecting a growing concern that pupils were being taught things inconsistent with Biblical “truths.” Meantime, others worried over the right to freedom of thought, and resisted the idea that school curricula should be fashioned according to the democratic dictates of a popular majority. Accordingly, the ACLU determined upon a test case, and managed to enlist John Scopes as the guinea pig – he was a substitute high-school teacher who actually wasn't clear on what he had really been teaching his students, but anyhow he agreed to confess teaching evolution.

The town fathers themselves were also quite receptive to the idea of a test case; but the intentions of all sides went somewhat awry when the public attention generated by the case brought forth the famed lawyer and atheist proselytizer Clarence Darrow, and the former presidential candidate and Biblical defender William Jennings Bryan, both muscling their way into the proceedings on opposite sides. Tim spent some time talking about these two giant characters, both of whom were really somewhat more complex figures than their Inherit the Wind counterparts.

The climactic scene in this saga came when Darrow called to the stand, as an expert witness about the Bible, none other than Bryan himself, and Bryan's ego made him foolishly agree. Tim read excerpts from the cross-examination, from the play, which was based on the actual trial transcript. Darrow proceeded doing his usual schtick about the Bible's absurdities, using Bryan as a hapless foil. The final bit concerned the wife of Cain (son of Adam and Eve), and the question of how she had come into the picture; whether there had been some additional creation going on in the next county, so to speak. Bryan didn't seem bothered by such questions, and Darrow concluded by mocking his "driving curiosity." (At that, our audience burst into applause.)

While this section of the dramatization was fairly faithful to the facts, other elements departed from them, and this was something that prompted a good bit of discussion, both by the speaker and in the question-and-answer follow-up. Tim pointed out that the play's authors had explicitly disavowed historical verity, and accordingly changed the names of the protagonists; he quoted Aristotle that history has to deal with facts, but poetry deals with higher truths.

For the record, the jury convicted Scopes; but the Tennessee courts overturned it on a technicality, thwarting the ACLU's aim of carrying its test case through the appeals process to the Supreme Court. In subsequent decades, the issue was fought through various other states, and ultimately all laws prohibiting evolution's teaching were voided by the courts. And yet, as we know all too well, this battle is far from over, and we have seen a resurgence of combat over the teaching of evolution. This is why Tim sees the trial, and the play and movie based on it, as having continuing relevance.

At the play's end, the Clarence Darrow character tells the Scopes character, "You don't suppose this kind of thing is ever finished, do you? Tomorrow it'll be something else--and another fella will have to stand up." Tim noted that the authors of Inherit the Wind, writing in the 1950s, saw their play as a response to McCarthyism – little realizing that the "something" else, later to come down the road, would be a reprise of exactly the same battle they were using as a metaphor.

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