Scopes Trial In American History

The Scopes Trial is one of the most known trials in American history. It is one of the most known because it is the perfect example of the conflict between science and religion. In the summer of 1925, a high school biology teacher named John Scopes was on trial in Dayton, Tennessee for violating the law against the teaching of evolution. The prosecutor was a very famous attorney named William Jennings Bryan, who was a three-time Democratic presidential nominee. Clarence Darrow, who was agnostic, represented the defense. The American Civil Liberties Union had newspaper advertisements offering to defend anyone who violated the law. George Rappelyea, a Dayton booster, realized that the town would get an enormous amount of attention if a teacher
On July 10, 1925, nearly one thousand people jammed the Rhea County Courthouse for the first day of trial. Judge Raulston, a conservative Christian who wanted publicity, was flanked by two police officers waving huge fans at him to keep air circulating. The proceedings opened to a prayer, over Darrow’s objections. A jury of twelve men was quickly selected, including ten farmers and eleven regular church-goers. Bryan opposed the teaching of evolution in public schools because he thought the people should have local control over school curriculum. As early as 1904, Bryan had regarded social Darwinism as "the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak." Bryan also opposed Darwinism as justification for war and imperialism. Bryan was unhappy with Darwin's assumption that the evolutionary process was without purpose and not the product of a larger design. Bryan was aware of serious scientific difficulties with Darwinism, but Bryan mistook the lack of consensus about the way that Darwin explained the evolutionary process for a lack of scientific support for the concept of evolution