This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee. (It lasted from July 10-21). John Scopes, a substitute teacher, was accused (with his cooperation) of teaching human evolution in high school, thus violating the state’s Butler Act, which forbade the teaching of human evolution (note: teaching nonhuman evolution was okay). He was convicted, as he surely had violated the law, but his conviction was overturned because the judge rather than the jury levied the $100 fine (judges couldn’t levy fines above $50). Scopes’s conviction was thus set aside, and the verdict could not then be appealed to a higher court.
The Butler act was repealed only in 1967: 42 years later! But nobody was convicted during that period, and today no court in the land dares convict anybody or any school board for teaching evolution, while it’s illegal almost everywhere to teach creationism or its gussied-up cousin Intelligent Design.
But I digress; I just discovered that there’s some video footage of the trial. It lacks sound, of course, since “talkies” didn’t arise until 1927, but it’s great to see the principals and the scene. So watch this 2½ minute video to see Dayton during the trial:
Wow
Southern courtroom drama is itself almost its own genre of cinema…
Powerful stuff!
Radio technician: “Do you want to broadcast? We got a direct wire to WGN Chicago. As soon as the jury returns, we’ll broadcast the verdict.”
Drummond: “Radio. God, that’s gonna break down a lot of walls.”
Radio technician: “You’re not supposed to say ‘God’.”
Drummond: “Why the hell not?”
Radio technician: “You’re not supposed to say ‘hell’.”
Drummond: “This is going to be a barren source of amusement.”
“William Jennings Bryan, old and full of oratory . . . .”
Ah, again the last bias (or so I’ve heard), ageism, here in the Land of Amuricun Exceptionalism.
What if Bryan had been YOUNG and full of oratory? Would the narrator have troubled himself to fatuously reflect on Bryan’s age? At what critical passing second did Bryan become “old”?
Regardless of age, the courtroom was obviously full of oratorical bloviation/bloviating oratory.
A.C. Grayling, quoting a Hungarian (IIRC) parliamentarian, ” Everything has been said but not everyone has said it.” Here in the Age of the Internet, theoretically everyone has the opportunity to hear everything that has been said.
Re the narrator’s closing comment that the encounter “had solved the basic problem of thinking and education in the modern-day world”: maybe so, but definitely not in the postmodern-day world.
PBS American Experience has two documentaries, one called Clarence Darrow and one called The Monkey Trial. We can’t find either one on any streaming service. Does anyone know how to access them? If so, very many thanks!!