State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (1925): The Scopes Monkey Trial

Case at a Glance

What Was the Scopes Monkey Trial About?

The Scopes Trial - officially State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes - was a 1925 American legal case testing the constitutionality of the Butler Act, a Tennessee law that made it unlawful for teachers in public schools to teach 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. It was a direct prohibition on the teaching of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

The trial was also a deliberate performance. Both sides knew the real contest was not about one teacher's $100 fine but about the relationship between religious authority and scientific teaching in American public education. The case brought together 2 of the greatest orators of their age and attracted more than 200 journalists from across the country and the world.

The Butler Act and Why It Was Passed

The Butler Act passed the Tennessee legislature in March 1925 by a large margin. It reflected the political power of Protestant Christian fundamentalism in the American South in the 1920s - a movement deeply suspicious of modern scientific and intellectual trends that seemed to challenge literal readings of the Bible, particularly Darwin's theory of natural selection and common ancestry.

The anti-evolution movement was also partly a reaction against social Darwinism and eugenics, which had misappropriated evolutionary theory to justify racial hierarchies and state-sponsored programs of forced sterilization. William Jennings Bryan, the most prominent anti-evolution voice of the era, was motivated in part by a genuine concern that evolution as popularly understood was being used to justify the idea that some human beings were naturally superior to others.

How the Trial Was Staged

The Scopes Trial was not an accidental prosecution. It was engineered. When the ACLU published newspaper advertisements in April 1925 offering to finance a test case against the Butler Act, a group of businessmen in Dayton, Tennessee, read the notice and saw an opportunity to attract tourists and publicity to their economically struggling town. They convened a meeting at Robinson's Drug Store on Main Street and recruited John Scopes, a local science teacher and football coach, to serve as the test defendant.

Scopes himself later admitted he was not certain he had ever actually taught evolution. He had only substituted briefly for the regular biology teacher, who was ill. Nevertheless, he agreed to incriminate himself and was duly arrested. He later told journalists he had a vague idea that I had gone over evolution in explaining Mendel's law of inheritance, and that was enough.

The Legal Teams

Clarence Darrow for the Defence

Clarence Darrow was 68 years old when he agreed to represent John Scopes pro bono (the Scopes Trial was the only case Darrow ever handled without a fee). He was America's most famous criminal defence lawyer, known for his brilliant closing arguments and his passionate opposition to the death penalty. He was an agnostic who made no secret of his scepticism about organised religion. His goal in Dayton was not merely to defend John Scopes but to expose what he considered the intellectual bankruptcy of biblical literalism and its incompatibility with scientific education.

William Jennings Bryan for the Prosecution

William Jennings Bryan was 65 years old and had been one of the most famous men in America for more than 30 years. He had run for president 3 times as the Democratic nominee (1896, 1900, 1908), had served as Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, and was the most prominent voice of populist, fundamentalist Christianity in the country. He volunteered to join the prosecution because he saw the case as a chance to defend biblical truth against secular science. His presence on the prosecution team ensured the trial would become a national spectacle.

The Trial: July 10-21, 1925

The trial opened on July 10 with more than 1,000 people jamming the Rhea County Courthouse. Judge Raulston opened court proceedings each day with a prayer, over Darrow's objections. A carnival atmosphere prevailed outside: tents, vendors selling Bibles and lemonade, an exhibit featuring live chimpanzees including the celebrated Joe Mendi (dressed in a suit and fedora), and preachers conducting revival meetings.

Judge Raulston severely limited the defence's strategy by ruling that expert scientific testimony on evolution was inadmissible. His reasoning: it was Scopes who was on trial for teaching evolution, not the validity of evolution itself. The jury had only to decide whether Scopes had taught it, which Scopes had already admitted. The exclusion of scientific experts left the defence without its primary planned witnesses.

Darrow Calls Bryan as a Witness

On the trial's seventh day, July 20, 1925, Darrow pulled off one of the most audacious legal moves in American trial history. In a move that stunned the prosecution, he called William Jennings Bryan himself to testify as an expert witness on the Bible. Over the prosecution's objections, Bryan agreed - declaring that he would defend the word of God against the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States.

Because of the stifling July heat, Judge Raulston had already moved the trial outdoors to the courthouse lawn, fearing the floor might collapse under the weight of the crowd. More than 5,000 spectators gathered around the makeshift outdoor courtroom as Darrow began his examination.

For 2 hours, Darrow questioned Bryan on whether he believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Bryan said he did. Darrow pressed: did Bryan believe the whale literally swallowed Jonah? Yes. Did Bryan believe the earth was literally created in 6 days? He was less certain - perhaps days could mean longer periods. Darrow pressed harder: if the sun stood still for Joshua, didn't that mean the earth would have had to stop rotating? Bryan said God could handle it. Did Bryan know the age of the earth? He had never tried to determine it.

The spectators, initially sympathetic to Bryan, grew quieter and then more restless as Bryan's answers became increasingly defensive and inconsistent. At one point Bryan accused Darrow of trying to make a slur at the Bible. Darrow replied: I am examining you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes. Judge Raulston adjourned the session.

The following morning, Raulston ruled that Bryan's testimony had shed no light on any issues that will be pending before higher courts and ordered it stricken from the record.

The Verdict and Appeal

On July 21, 1925, Darrow asked the jury to return a guilty verdict so the case could be appealed. The jury deliberated for 9 minutes and found Scopes guilty. Judge Raulston fined him $100 - approximately $1,850 in 2025 dollars. Scopes addressed the court: Your Honor, I feel that I have been convicted of violating an unjust statute.

In 1926, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the guilty verdict on a technicality. Under Tennessee law, fines over $50 had to be set by the jury, not the judge. Raulston had imposed the $100 fine himself, making it technically unlawful. The Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed the case rather than remand it for a new trial, commenting famously that nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case. The Butler Act was upheld as constitutional by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

What Happened to William Jennings Bryan?

William Jennings Bryan never left Dayton. 6 days after the trial ended, Bryan ate an enormous Sunday dinner, lay down for an afternoon nap, and died in his sleep on July 26, 1925. He was 65. The immediate cause of death was listed as ruptured blood vessel in the brain, though his diabetes and exhaustion likely contributed. Clarence Darrow, informed while hiking in the Smoky Mountains, was asked if Bryan had died of a broken heart. Darrow replied: Broken heart nothing; he died of a busted belly. In a gentler public statement, he added: His death is a great loss to the American people.

The Legacy of the Scopes Trial

The Scopes Trial settled nothing legally. Evolution was still banned from Tennessee schools. The Butler Act remained law until 1967. But in terms of public opinion and cultural narrative, the trial is widely credited with accelerating the marginalization of anti-evolution teaching in mainstream American education and cementing the association of biblical literalism with intellectual backwardness, largely through H.L. Mencken's savage dispatches from Dayton and through the subsequent play and film Inherit the Wind.

The true constitutional resolution came in 1968 when the Supreme Court of the United States struck down an Arkansas anti-evolution law in Epperson v. Arkansas, holding that a law banning the teaching of evolution was an unconstitutional establishment of religion under the First Amendment, because it was designed to protect a particular religious viewpoint rather than serve a secular educational purpose.

Timeline

The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 was simultaneously a legal non-event - conviction overturned on a technicality, constitutional question unresolved - and one of the most culturally consequential courtroom confrontations in American history, a battle over the authority of science versus religion that has never fully concluded.