Events soon took their own course. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, former Secretary of State, and leader of the antievolution movement, arrived early to lend his support to the prosecution. Clarence Darrow, the charismatic Chicago trial lawyer who had made his name championing unpopular causes, came a few days later, bringing with him a team of New York lawyers and a dozen scientists and theologians to give expert testimony for the defense. Drawn by the impending drama, some two hundred news reporters, led by such journalistic luminaries as H. L. Mencken and Joseph Wood Krutch, descended on the town, wiring home an estimated two million words to newspapers across America and Europe. WGN Radio broadcast the proceedings live from microphones in the courtroom along telephone wires specially strung to Chicago, the first event of its kind in the history of radio. While revival preachers, peddlers, and monkey acts performed in the town square, and Tennessee farmers fought to find seats in the overcrowded courtroom, the trial went on through twelve steaming days of mid-July summer. Moved outside because of the heat and for fear that the floor might collapse from the crowding, the trial reached its climactic moment under the trees on the courthouse lawn as Darrow called Bryan to the stand as an expert on the Bible, interrogating him on such issues as the date of Noah's flood and the size of Jonah's whale, and provoking a finger-pointing confrontation that made headlines around the world.

The following day, after Judge John T. Raulston struck Bryan's testimony from the records, the case was turned over to the jury, which took nine minutes to find Scopes guilty. Most of the news reporters had left already; spectators returned home, leaving the town only slightly better off economically than before; five days later the sixty-five-year-old Bryan died peacefully in his sleep in Dayton. Scopes appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which overturned his conviction on a technicality, while declaring the antievolution law to be constitutional. It remained law in Tennessee until 1967.

As we approach its seventy-fifth anniversary, the Scopes trial continues to fascinate us. In its own time, the trial at Dayton was captivating enough to command the gaze of the world for those twelve days in 1925. Afterward, it became even more compelling, as in the hands of historians, playwrights, and movie producers the story has been told and retold, with memory giving way to myth along the way. The peak of the myth making came with Inherit the Wind, Stanley Kramer's 1960 Hollywood movie version of Lawrence and Lee's powerful Broadway play, in which Darrow, Bryan, and Mencken were brought to life in brilliant performances by Spencer Tracy, Frederic March, and Gene Kelly. In the movie, complex characters and subtle situations were simplified and stereotyped, as Bryan became a pious reactionary, Scopes took on the trappings of a persecuted martyr, and the citizens of Dayton—uniformly described by trial visitors as warm and welcoming—were transformed into a bigoted and violent mob. (The influence of the film cannot be underestimated; when commenting in conversation that I have been at work on a study of the Scopes trial, I've been startled on several occasions by the same enthusiastic response: "Oh, I saw that movie!") Even today, as scholars continue to sort out the facts of the case in articles and books, as community theaters produce popular revivals of the play, and as students in science and social studies classes debate the merits of the movie, the trial continues to captivate us, shaping our sense of twentieth-century American history, confirming our stereotypes about the South, and providing for us a context to debate our views of science, religion, and progress.

For a political scientist, the trial offers a rare opportunity to observe some of the most important ingredients of twentieth-century politics. It provides insights into the operation of courts, legislatures, and interest groups such as the ACLU and the World's Christian Fundamentals Association. It demonstrates the dynamics of political movements like the antievolution crusade of the 1920s. It illustrates the ability of the modern media to influence public opinion. The trial raises important theoretical questions as well: about majority rule and individual rights, about who decides what is to be taught in the public schools, and about the role of science and scientific experts in society. It highlights the importance of ideas, as basic beliefs about science and religion came to be contested in the case. It suggests the power of stereotypes about region, race, religion, and gender. And it brings all of these elements together, providing a classic case study of the politics of our time.

Yet the Scopes trial also offers an even rarer opportunity to examine some of the most fundamental principles of politics. At first glance, these principles may appear to be self-evident or unexceptional. But on reflection, I have come to consider them some of the most important lessons I have learned from this complex case, confirming my conviction that the study of politics must always be a humanistic science. In essence, they consist of the following: that political actions are at times ambiguous or artificial; that political personalities can be complex and even impenetrable; that political situations are sometimes illusory, with their meaning being produced and reproduced by the media; and that political outcomes are often unpredictable and occasionally ironic. Let me elaborate on each of these points.

To study the Scopes trial is to be aware from the beginning that in the political world things are not always as they seem. Consider Scopes himself: John T. Scopes was a defendant who had committed no crime. An agreeable young man, he was happy to lend his name to the local business boosters who saw an ACLU test case as an inexpensive way to point out the economic potential of their town. The truth was that Scopes was not even sure if he had taught evolution at all; as a teacher of math and physics and the part-time football coach, he had only substituted for a few days in the high school biology class where Hunter's Civic Biology, with its offending explanation of evolution, was the required text. Not that it mattered; earnest and eager to please, Scopes saw from the start that the case was not about him.

The courtroom, Bryan standing. The blurry object in the foreground is a microphone from WGN radio, Chicago. (Photo by Underwood and Underwood; courtesy of the Tennessee State Library and Archives.)

Or consider William Jennings Bryan, who took the stand to defend a fundamentalist version of creation he certainly did not believe. As an advocate of the day-age theory of creation, Bryan assumed that the Bible's seven days could have easily consisted of seven geological eras. In order to make the strongest case in court, however, he chose to assert the simplest and most straightforward account of biblical creation, thereby leaving himself at the mercy of Darrow's humiliating interrogation.

Then there was Darrow himself, the most famous defense lawyer of his day, who went out of his way to lose the Scopes case, asking in the end that the judge instruct the jury to find the defendant guilty in order to be able to appeal to higher courts where he felt certain that the defense could construct a winning case on constitutional grounds.

At every turn, we find ambiguity and artifice. Garry Wills has called the Scopes case a nontrial over a nonlaw, with a nondefendant backed by nonsupporters, its most famous moment consisting of nontestimony by a nonexpert, which was followed by a nondefeat. The trial reminds us that appearances can be deceiving.

Almost as evident, and even more important to our understanding of politics, is the fact that individual people are instrumental. We take it for granted that extraordinary leaders can bring about changes. But what is striking in this story is the influence of otherwise ordinary politicians and citizens who acted on their commitments and chose to make a difference. Take John W. Butler, the state legislator from the hills of east Tennessee who proposed the antievolution law in the first place. A farmer and Sunday School teacher, Butler was honestly surprised to learn that there were those who were actually opposed to such a sensible law. Or take Lew D. Hill of Sparta, Speaker of the Tennessee Senate and an elder in the Church of Christ, who stepped down from the chair at a critical moment to throw his support behind the Senate's version of the antievolution bill. Dayton's George Rappleyea, a native New Yorker and a manager at the local mine, was troubled enough by the new antievolution law that, after reading in the Chattanooga Times that the ACLU was seeking Tennessee teachers to challenge the law, he proceeded to Robinson's drugstore, newspaper in hand, to rally support and recruit Scopes. And then, too, there was Scopes: affable, unaffected, at one point ducking away from the courtroom drama to take a swim in the Tennessee River, he was nonetheless convinced that the antievolution law was wrong and was willing to face being fired to prove it. Without any of these perfectly ordinary people the trial could never have happened. By contrast, there were others who chose not to exert their influence: Governor Austin Peay, who acquiesced in the passage of the Butler bill, believing that it would never be enforced; President Harcourt Morgan of the University of Tennessee, who swallowed his opposition while the legislature considered expanding state support for his university; and the members of the Tennessee Academy of Sciences, who sat back complacently and said nothing until

(Continued, to part 2 of 2)

it was too late.

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