In the beginning: A brief history of creationism and its opposition to evolutionary theory
Dayton, Tenn., was a quiet, rural community and perhaps the least likely place in America for a revolution.
But in the summer 1925, when high school biology teacher John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution, Dayton became ground zero for a cultural upheaval, the impact of which continues to reverberate in courtrooms and classrooms across the country.
The Scopes “Monkey Trial,” as it became known was a media circus — complete with dancing chimpanzees on the courthouse lawn — that focused America’s attention on a dramatic, often absurd showdown between two legal titans.
Clarence Darrow, defending the biology teacher, and William Jennings Bryan, heading the prosecution, waged an epic debate over the rightful place of religion and science in public schools.
Originally passed in 1925, the Tennessee statute banned the teaching of evolution or “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
After eight days of testimony, the jury deliberated for only nine minutes. Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in violation of state law on July 21. As soon as the verdict was handed down, other states enacted similar laws.
Eventually, the Supreme Court of Tennessee set aside the conviction. In 1968, laws dating from the Scopes era that made teaching evolution illegal in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas were declared unconstitutional.