Evolution on Trial | Live and Let Live | 4

The Scopes ""Monkey"" Trial was set against the backdrop of the roaring twenties, a time of both cultural upheaval and deep social tensions. While ostensibly about science versus religion, the trial became a proxy for larger conflicts over academic freedom, individual rights, and the very nature of American democracy. And the trial's impact extended far beyond its verdict, influencing debates about education, faith, and freedom that continue to resonate today. In this episode, Lindsay is joined by Brenda Wineapple, author of the national bestseller Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, And The Trial That Riveted A Nation. Together, they explore how the trial, sometimes called a ""victorious defeat"", remains relevant 100 years later. Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletter Listen to American History Tellers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season. Unlock exclusive early access by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today by visiting wondery.com/links/american-history-tellers/ http://wondery.com/links/american-history-tellers/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:00Lindsay Graham?

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• 0:21Lindsay Graham?

  Imagine it's April 1926 in Oxford, Mississippi. The scent of stale pipe smoke greets you as you sit down in a small wood-paneled office. You're a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, and you've traveled south in search of a high school teacher willing to participate in a test case to challenge a new Mississippi law that bans the teaching of evolution in public schools. The man you're here to meet, the Lafayette County School Superintendent, sits across from you behind his desk, a bemused expression on his face. Well, I am surprised. I didn't expect you to come all the way down here in person. Well, I had to. No one would respond to my letters and telegrams. The superintendent shrugs. Well, you'd be hard-pressed to find a teacher looking to be the new John Scopes.

• 1:06Lindsay Graham?

  It's only been, what, nine months? Folks hadn't forgotten what happened in Dayton last summer. That was a circus. Well, that might be understandable, but you don't mean to say that you support a law that criminalizes the teaching of evolution here in Mississippi, do you? No, of course not. I'm a learned man, same as you, but it's not worth getting worked up about. They'll never enforce it. No, it's not about that. This is about a higher principle. We're trying to defend academic freedom and the individual liberties of teachers and students. Is that right, a higher principle? I thought it was about mocking the Bible and every man, woman, and child who believes in the Scripture. No, that was never our intention, I assure you. The ACLU is dedicated to protecting freedom of religion. And yet, your organization hired that atheist Clarence Darrow. He sure put on a show, sneering and scoffing.

• 1:51Lindsay Graham?

  He made it his mission to humiliate William Jennings Bryan. He practically killed the poor fellow. No, I wouldn't say that. And besides, you lost last year, didn't you? Scopes was convicted. Who's to say Mississippi would be any different? Well, we planned about a new legal strategy, and you needn't worry, Darrow won't be involved this time. We really believe this is our chance to win a ruling on the law's constitutionality, to stop this movement before it does any more damage. I just need to find another teacher willing to help us. The superintendent shakes his head, running a hand through his slicked-back hair. "You want a teacher who's willing to earn the hostility of his neighbors and the scorn of every pulpit in the state? That's a mighty big ask. And you're willing to let this law stand? Even though it silences teachers, denies scientific fact?

• 2:35Lindsay Graham?

  Our teachers and taxpayers are not interested in becoming the laughingstock of northern newspapers. You can travel to every county in the state, and they'll tell you the same thing. I believe you're wasting your time."

• 2:48Lindsay Graham?

  With a curt nod, you stand and walk out of the superintendent's office. You hadn't expected an easy fight in Mississippi, but you did hope to find some sliver of resistance to these anti-evolution laws. Now, though, you fear that after last year's events in Dayton, your efforts to protect academic freedom in the South are doomed.

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• 4:17Lindsay Graham?

  From Wondery, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American History Tellers: Our History, Your Story.

• 4:39Lindsay Graham?

  In March 1926, the Mississippi State Legislature passed a law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. Less than a year after the trial John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, the American Civil Liberties Union tried to sponsor another test case to challenge this law in court. But this time, they were unable to find a teacher willing to serve as the defendant. In the aftermath of the Scopes trial, anti-evolution efforts failed in the North but gathered widespread support in the South, highlighting a growing regional divide in attitudes towards science and religion. Here with me now to discuss the significance of the Scopes trial 100 years later is Brenda Wineapple, author of the bestselling book Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the

• 5:20Lindsay Graham?

  Trial That Ribbeted a Nation. Brenda Wineapple, welcome to American History Tellers.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Thanks for inviting me.

• 5:30Lindsay Graham?

  So the Scopes trial took place in 1925, exactly 100 years ago. Why don't you put us in that era, this time in US history? What were some of the big changes happening at the moment?

• 5:40Speaker 03

  The 1920s are usually thought of as the roaring twenties or the Jazz Age, and that seems a time of hilarity, good times for everyone. But not everyone was having a very good time. And not only were there assassinations, labor stoppages, economic disparity, not only did women get the vote, was there prohibition, but there was also a fear in the country, fear of otherness, fear of immigrants, fear of too much unemployment, fear of Bolsheviks, which we would know as communists. There was a massive rise in violence against black people.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  The Ku Klux Klan was enormously powerful at this particular time. So that's a very complicated time, as well as an exciting one. And the reason I say exciting is in 1925 alone, you have The New Yorker founded. The Great Gatsby published. This is the time of the Harlem Renaissance. There's a lot that's going on. The cities are crowded. And as a result, people think that things are happening much too quickly. I should also mention that it was the end of a brutal slaughter known as World War I.

• 7:02Lindsay Graham?

  And this decade, the 1920s, pretty much began with the Red Summer of 1919. Certainly a fearful time. Explain what that was and how it might have influenced the context of the Scopes Trial.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  Well, sure. In 1919 alone, there were bomb scares and actually bombs that were exploded. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, who is famous, comes down to us as the head of the so-called Palmer Raids. This was the time of the Red Scare, and people were afraid of Reds, namely Communists. And as a result, there were numbers of Socialists and Communists and even Pacifists who were rounded up and deported. That's something that's going on in the background of the Scopes Trial. And in a sense, the Scopes Trial is a funnel for all the fear, all the anxiety, all the

• 7:55Speaker 03

  changes, all, in a sense, the kind of frenetic hilarity of the decade.

• 8:00Lindsay Graham?

  The Scopes Trial centered around a new act of legislation, the Butler Act, but it also centered around a new organization, the American Civil Liberties Union. Tell us a little about Roger Baldwin, one of its co-founders.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. Roger Baldwin, very interesting man. He was Harvard-educated, Boston-bred. He had worked in social work. He was also a Pacifist, who helped Pacifists in World War I. He was actually arrested and jailed for his Pacifism. He didn't want the United States to partake in the European War. And so what happened was that he helped form something called the National Civil Liberties Bureau, and that morphed or turned into the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, in 1920. And that union then, as now, offered to help anyone who believed constitutional rights had been threatened or violated.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  So it was only five years old at the time of the Scopes Trial.

• 9:00Lindsay Graham?

  And what was the ACLU's goal in challenging the Butler Act?

• 9:05Speaker 03

  The ACLU at this particular time was looking for what they called test cases. And what a test case was, was a way to advertise their existence and also let people know that they would help protect civil liberties, whether it was free speech, freedom of the press and assembly, any First Amendment rights. And so they wanted to educate people and they also wanted to protect people whose rights had been violated. And as I said, quite a number of people since the Red Summer, since 1919 and before the war, had been enduring violations of civil rights.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  So when a secretary saw the Butler Act, saw what was going on in Tennessee, she alerted Roger Baldwin and said, this would probably make a very good test case.

• 9:56Lindsay Graham?

  So let's turn our attention then to the Butler Act first. What was it about the Butler Act that the ACLU objected to? And what was going on in Tennessee that made the legislature there pass it in the first place?

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Well, in the simplest sense, the Butler Act, which prevents any public school, whether it's a high school, elementary school, college, that's supported by the state, any of those schools that teach evolution, which denies creation as taught in the Bible, that would be prohibited. When the ACLU saw this, they wanted the test case because in Tennessee, this legislation had passed in 1925, partly to placate evangelical members of the legislature. It was known as the Butler Act because someone named John Washington Butler, who was a farmer,

• 10:47Speaker 03

  he ran for office on this single issue of evolution or anti-evolution. The governor, a man named P. A., I think that's how you pronounce it, signed the act. But no one really thought that it would be enforced.

• 11:02Lindsay Graham?

  So then, as you see it, what was the trial really about then? Was it purely secularism versus religion?

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Well, yes and no. John Washington Butler didn't really understand what evolution was. And I would argue, and I think I'm right about this, that most people didn't understand what evolution was. They had some notion that it was as bad for children. But in that sense, evolution becomes a proxy for other issues that we just talked about that are upsetting to people. The church itself was divided, really, about whether evolution was compatible with the Bible. Certainly, there were a liberal clergy in the church, as well as fundamentalist clergy.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  So the issue really isn't secularism versus religion, per se, because nobody understood what evolution was, and religion really wasn't being attacked.

• 12:05Lindsay Graham?

  I wonder if you could expand on how evolution, a scientific theory presumably based on evidence and facts, could become a proxy for social issues?

• 12:14Speaker 03

  There was so much going on in the 1920s that evolution becomes a kind of lens through which other issues are discussed and debated in a court of law. And as we mentioned, constitutional issues having to do with academic freedom. Who's going to teach the children? Is it going to be experts? Is it going to be religious figures? Who decides what goes on in the classroom? Who decides what goes on to textbooks? And in that particular sense, the issue of religion or evolution becomes a wider

• 12:54Speaker 03

  contest about control, just as prohibition was a wider contest about control. How are you going to legislate what people think, feel, do, who they love, what they read? So you can see that the issues around freedom, censorship, school, the rights of the individual, all become wrapped up in a discussion about science and expertise.

• 13:28Lindsay Graham?

  Now, the epicenter of the Scopes trial was Dayton, Tennessee, and hundreds and hundreds of people descended on this town. The prosecution, defense teams, evangelicals and scientists, the press, merchants, even selling bibles and monkey-themed souvenirs. It was an absolute circus. But I wonder, is this what Dayton wanted?

• 13:46Speaker 03

  Well, in a way, it is what Dayton wanted. They didn't want a circus, per se, but they were really glad to have so much controversy coming to their city because, in a sense, it sells. This is America, after all, and this is an opportunity for the Chamber of Commerce to bring attention to Dayton, Tennessee. It had previously, or it was, the strawberry capital of the world, a very small town. And the presiding judge of the trial said that he would be happy to have the trial in a stadium. So the people of Dayton, Tennessee, were happy to have all of this commotion. It got a little excessive. And in terms of the way the press handled it,

• 14:31Speaker 03

  the press handled the hubbub or excitement in Tennessee as if it were a carnival and as if it were a freak show, really, in many ways. But the people themselves said that they were excited. There were two great orators coming to town, two well-known figures, superstars, and they also thought that they would get an education for nothing.

• 14:57Lindsay Graham?

  Leaping ahead, I'm curious about the long-lasting effects of this trial on Dayton. Certainly, it's not a very ordinary way of promoting a small town.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  No, it really isn't an ordinary way of promoting a small town. But I'm not sure that there were lasting effects. Once the trial was over, the trial barely lasted a week. Everybody left. So in some sense, Dayton comes down to us as the center of a kind of circus. I'm not sure that that did the town much good. But on the other hand, it didn't really matter because things went back to the way they had always been.

• 15:39Speaker 04

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• 15:40Speaker 05

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• 16:26Lindsay Graham?

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• 17:11Lindsay Graham?

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• 17:34Lindsay Graham?

  Let's turn to William Jennings Bryan, lead prosecutor in the trial and a famous politician in order. He was a Democrat, a progressive, a populist, but he was also a fundamentalist who believed in the literal word of the Bible. What else was he?

• 17:48Speaker 03

  William Jennings Bryan was a three-time presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket. He was part of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He, in fact, served in Woodrow Wilson's cabinet when Wilson was president. And when Wilson was president and World War I began, Jennings Bryan resigned from the cabinet because he felt that Wilson wasn't acting neutral enough. At the same time, he was an ardent prohibitionist. He believed that government could and should legislate morality. He felt that he knew what was right.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  He was a populist, in the sense that we understand populism today. He was a newspaper man. He had a newspaper called The Commoner. He was called The Commoner because he seemed to speak for the people. And as you said, he was definitely a fundamentalist. And when I say fundamentalist, the simplest way of understanding that is that he understood that the Bible was the word of God, that the Bible was to be read literally. So whatever the Bible said was absolutely true. And that's very important.

• 19:08Lindsay Graham?

  How was that important for Bryan and his view of Darwinism?

• 19:12Speaker 03

  Well, the interesting thing about Bryan with his very storied career, by 1925, he's in his 60s. He probably isn't going to run for president again, although with Bryan, you could never tell. And Bryan understood Darwinism as social Darwinism. And really, that was a gross misunderstanding. He really thought social Darwinism was responsible in many ways for all the ills that... The country was facing at the time. And most specifically, he held it responsible for the slaughter in World War I. He felt Darwinism, or what he understood as social Darwinism,

• 19:56Speaker 03

  had allowed people, because of their views of technology or their use of technology, had allowed them to create basically such terrible weapons as mustard gas, as aerial bombing. And he also believed that Darwinism, which was really social Darwinism for him, was at the base of a kind of laissez-faire capitalism and therefore immorality. Because to him, social Darwinism, and to many people, meant only the survival of the fittest. And the survival of the fittest was a point of view that said, only the best, only the most knowledgeable,

• 20:40Speaker 03

  only the creme de la creme should be in power. And as the commoner, as a man of the people, Bryan thought this was deeply offensive. So in that sense, that is why he went around the country and was adamant about getting Darwinism or the theory of evolution out of the schools.

• 21:04Lindsay Graham?

  Now, evolution and Darwinism also was contentious within the church, of course, especially the Presbyterian church. Tell us about the split in the Presbyterian church and how did Bryan position himself in this fight?

• 21:15Speaker 03

  To Bryan, the liberal clergy, men like Henry Emerson Fosdick in New York City and many others, the liberal clergy, who said there was no incompatibility, no difficulty in reconciling science and religion. To Bryan, these kinds of clergy were actually heretics. And they threatened the fabric of morality and the nation even more than so-called atheist, which he Didn't like either, but liberal clergy themselves felt Bryan didn't understand what science was, that a theory, perhaps even the theory of gravity, is not guesswork

• 21:56Speaker 03

  or fiction, but it's a hypothesis that exists in science, backed up, as you mentioned before, by careful facts and experimentation, and, in the case of evolution, had been around already for almost 75 years and had not been proved wrong. But Bryan felt that not only was social Darwinism, i.e. Darwin, terrible, but people in the liberal clergy were also risking the church. When he went to Dayton, for example, he said that he was fighting a duel to the death on behalf of Christianity. So he really felt that he was a crusader.

• 22:38Lindsay Graham?

  Do you think that Bryan was ideologically pure in this, or was he also a political opportunist?

• 22:44Speaker 03

  It was both. One can be both, actually, and that's what's so interesting about Bryan. He was definitely a political opportunist. Preaching against evolution was definitely a way to garner votes. He had moved from the Midwest to the South. He was in Florida. He was pandering to the segregationists and white supremacists of Florida as a way to retaining his significant power and perhaps get back into the Senate. He was adamant about saying the white race was more advanced than African Americans,

• 23:26Speaker 03

  that he was glad to be a Caucasian, it was the best of all possible worlds. And in this particular sense, he was also comfortable with the Ku Klux Klan. He was never a member, which is important to point out, but when the Klan had a kind of hold... On the Democratic Party and Southern Democrats in particular, Bryan actually defended them at the Democratic National Convention 1924. When people wanted to censor and denounce the Klan, and this became a political issue right then, he said, no, no, you don't want to give them more credibility. They're just misguided, which is kind of astonishing in 1924.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  It's as astonishing then as it is now.

• 24:14Lindsay Graham?

  So what did he think was at stake in the Scopes trial? In summary, I guess.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Well, Bryan came to Dayton, Tennessee. He had been asked to prosecute Scopes by the World Christian Fundamentalist Association. For him, there was no doubt that the issues at stake were God and faith. He felt that the universities, the schools, were grooming children to become atheists. Atheism was going to destroy America. And he was there to prevent the corruption of young minds, almost in the same way he wanted to prevent the sale and distribution of alcohol.

• 25:03Lindsay Graham?

  Now, in addition to William Jennings Bryan, there were other very charismatic and influential evangelical speakers, especially on the national scene at the time. People like Amy Semple McPherson and Billy Sunday, who each reached huge numbers of people. Give us an overview of who these people were and how their views aligned with Bryan's, or perhaps didn't.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Well, there were two very famous, besides Bryan, fundamentalist preachers in the 1920s. Amy Semple McPherson was a very unusual woman. She had a church in Los Angeles. She was self-made evangelical healer. She got a car that she called the Gospel Car, and she went coast to coast. She spoke to audiences of thousands, and she was very well-suited to early radio. She actually had her own radio station. She put on remarkable shows. She would have spectacles, almost as if they were operatic. She was not a supremacist.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  She welcomed everyone into the church. But she was adamantly against evolution. She definitely backed William Jennings Bryan, and she had her entire congregation, she said, pray for the outcome of the Scopes trial, that he would be victorious, as she felt he should be.

• 26:27Lindsay Graham?

  And what about Billy Sunday?

• 26:29Speaker 03

  Billy Sunday was very different from Amy Semple McPherson. He'd been a pro-baseball player, but he became an evangelist. People flocked to hear his fire and brimstone sermons, where he would get up on stage and he would actually have a fistfight with the devil. So he was another showman. He despised evolution. I'm not sure he understood it either, but it sold tickets. He called it a God-forsaken, hell-born bastard theory and Darwin a rotten old infidel. He spoke in the kind of down-home slang. People absolutely loved him. So he was another very unusual person.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  He actually tried to run for president in 1920. There was no way that was going to happen. But you get a sort of lay of the evangelical land with Amy Semple McPherson, Billy Sunday, and then, of course, you have William Jennings Bryan.

• 27:28Lindsay Graham?

  So that gives us a sense of the evangelical star power aligned with William Jennings Bryan against the teaching of evolution. Now, on the defense team in the Scopes trial was another famous lawyer but an agnostic, Clarence Darrow. He agreed to defend John Scopes. Tell us more about him and what got him to Dayton.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Clarence Darrow is another very unusual figure. And just the fact of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan showing up in Dayton is part of the reason that you had almost 200 journalists and camera people and spectators come to Dayton because people just wanted to see these two men duke it out. They were both so enormously famous. And Darrow... Was also controversially famous. He had been a labor lawyer for many, many years, and he had defended bomb throws, actually. He defended pacifists. And most

• 28:21Speaker 03

  recently, in 1924, he defended two young men, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who in Chicago, just for the thrill of it, killed teenager Bobby Franks in a trial itself that riveted the nation, because they themselves, Leopold and Loeb, admitted to what they had done and had no remorse about it. As far as Darrow was concerned, though, he knew they were guilty. He thought they were pathological specimens, but he so hated capital punishment that he took on the case not to acquit them, but to make sure that they didn't get the

• 29:04Speaker 03

  death penalty, which they didn't, which is rather remarkable. He was often characterized as an atheist, but as you say, he was an agnostic, which meant he was happy that people believed in God. He would believe in God if he could, or if evidence showed him that there was such a thing. He was called by the journalist Lincoln Stephens, an attorney for the damned, because he was always fighting for the underdog, for civil rights, for human liberty. One of the things I like about Darrow is he would come to the courtroom every day, and on his lapel, he wore a very interesting pin. It said "L L L." He was asked, "What does that mean?" And he looked up and he said, "Live and let live."

• 29:48Lindsay Graham?

  Well, as Clarence Darrow saw it, what was the Scopes trial about?

• 29:52Speaker 03

  For him, it was not about religion. It was about democracy. It was about the Constitution. It was about freedom. It was about academic freedom. It was about the freedom to worship, the freedom not to worship. He wanted to take on this trial, which he felt was enormously important for the sake of American democracy, and because...

• 30:23Speaker 03

  He thought Brian was a fanatic and fanaticism in America, he thought was enormously dangerous.

• 30:30Lindsay Graham?

  But Darrow was not the only defense attorney working for Scopes. He had two others. Why do you think Arthur Garfield Hayes and Dudley Field Malone are also interesting?

• 30:39Speaker 03

  They're both very interesting in the sense that Darrow's team is composed of himself and Agnostic, Arthur Garfield Hayes, who is a secular Jew. He had been associated with the ACLU and he stayed associated with the ACLU for the rest of his life. He had assisted, as Darrow had, in the Sacco and Vincetti events, two Italian anarchist immigrants accused of robbery and murder in Massachusetts. And he was very smart, very gifted, and willing to take on these civil liberties cases. Some of them, he knew they were doomed, but as

• 31:21Speaker 03

  he would say always, when we lose, we win.

• 31:25Lindsay Graham?

  So what about Dudley Field Malone, the other attorney?

• 31:27Speaker 03

  Dudley Field Malone, from New York, also worked in the Wilson administration, and he quit when he realized Wilson, who had promised to help pass legislation and the amendment giving women the vote, hadn't done it. He married a suffragette, Dora Stevens, who was arrested in front of the White House for picketing. And he was Catholic.

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• 33:36Lindsay Graham?

  So we have some amazing characters and an atmosphere that is designed to be circus-like in service of Dayton's economy. What was your favorite part of the trial?

• 33:44Speaker 03

  I think everyone's favorite part of the trial is the spectacular last day when Darrow, as a lawyer, does something lawyers do not do, and he puts the lead prosecuting attorney, William Jennings Bryan, on the stand. Not only that, they were outside by this time because there had been so many people in the courtroom that the floor was giving way, and the judge was afraid that the whole floor would crash, so they all marched outside. They sat outside in the July heat, you know, in a makeshift witness box. Bryan was there, and Darrow turned to him and said, "Do you really believe that God

• 34:27Speaker 03

  created the universe in six days?" And Bryan, he had been hedging, and then he said, "Well, by a day, it's not necessarily a day, like, we know it could be an era." And everybody hearing this was shocked, was stunned, because what he did when he said it could be an era, he undermined his own position of reading the Bible literally. So he'd been caught in a trap. It was really a trap of his own making.

• 34:57Lindsay Graham?

  So at the conclusion of the trial, how did people talk about who won and who lost?

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Technically speaking, Bryan and the defense won, as everybody would have anticipated because John Scopes, who taught evolution in his biology class, he had broken the law. The defense wanted to get the issue before the Supreme Court, and they tried definitely to do this. They were not able to ultimately. But even though the defense lost the case, Malone called it a victorious defeat because in many ways, Darrow, who had tried the case in the court of public opinion, he really won public opinion, and Bryan had been, for

• 35:46Speaker 03

  better or worse, humiliated on the stand, and his position made to seem absurd.

• 35:55Lindsay Graham?

  Now, this humiliation might seem tragic because the trial ended on July 21 and Bryan died on July 26, only five days later. What impact did his death have so soon after the trial?

• 36:07Speaker 03

  It's interesting, and certainly it had a short-term impact because burlesques and satirists and newspapers who were ready to lampoon and mock Bryan suddenly held the presses. They weren't going to do that. Bryan, dying so close to the end of the trial, his death was seen by many people, especially the fundamentalists, as a martyrdom, that he was felled in the defense, just like the son of God. So he, at that point, was written about, in very glowing terms, as heroic and sacrificial. The Klan, the Ku Klux Klan

• 36:52Speaker 03

  of Ohio, actually sent a large cross of red roses to the funeral. But in that particular sense, too, although Malone and Hayes and even Darrow said that they were very sorry, there was a black columnist for a well-known newspaper who said Negroes have nothing to trust. Treasure out of the life of William Jennings Bryan. And people like Eugene Debs, who had spent many years in jail, jailed for being a pacifist, found the whole idea of Bryan now being glorified as hypocritical and offensive. So it's interesting.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  And in a way, there's a kind of pathos to the demise, the death of Bryan. But I don't think it changed people's opinions, except in a small community, all that much.

• 37:46Lindsay Graham?

  Now, as you mentioned, the defense lost this case, and Scopes was found guilty, and the case never made it to the Supreme Court, as the defense and the ACLU had hoped. So why was this case a big deal?

• 37:56Speaker 03

  It was a watershed moment. For one thing, even though the Butler Act stayed on the books, it was not enforced. That's the first thing. It wasn't actually repealed until the 1960s, which is a really long time. But legislation that had been pending, that was very similar to the Butler Act, really went nowhere. So that was really important. The second thing is then, as I said, the fundamentalists lost in the court of public opinion. To think that they were going to then disappear is erroneous, because from one point of view, you could argue that they went underground and organized politically.

• 38:33Lindsay Graham?

  And then, after all was said and done, what happened to John Scopes?

• 38:37Speaker 03

  John Scopes. John Scopes never gets talked about. And in fact, that was his own desire. In the 1920s, he would have been a movie star. Someone came to Scopes and said they'd like to make a film about him, or that he should write his life story. Scopes did not want the limelight. He wanted to pursue his career. And so that the seven scientists and others who'd come to Dayton to testify, and were not allowed to testify, they pooled together funds that enabled Scopes to attend the University of Chicago Graduate School. And when he got his degree, he went to work as a geologist in Venezuela for Gulf Oil.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  He didn't write his memoirs until sometime in the 60s. And he said something in those memoirs, I think, that's really important. And it gives you, I think, an insight into his position during the trial. Quiet though he was, he said, liberty is always under threat and it takes eternal vigilance to maintain it.

• 39:44Lindsay Graham?

  So this year, 2025, is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Trial. What is the legacy of this event? And why should people consider it important today?

• 39:53Speaker 03

  The legacy of this trial is complicated in a way. It was always dismissed, or often dismissed, as a kind of freak show carnival where the Chamber of Commerce in Dayton wanted to sell tickets. But there was much more at stake at the trial. And what's at stake is the nature and the meaning of America and what it means to be in America and specifically to live in a democracy which enshrines in its constitution freedom to worship or not worship, that enshrines in its constitution the freedom to think,

• 40:32Speaker 03

  the freedom to write, the freedom to explore, the freedom to know, the freedom to read and to learn. Because these freedoms are always something that must be protected. And I think in conclusion, Clarence Darrow, who was extremely eloquent, certainly as eloquent as Bryan, said, you can only be free if I am free.

• 41:00Lindsay Graham?

  Brenda Wineapple, thank you so much for talking with me today on American History Tellers.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Thank you. A pleasure.

• 41:07Lindsay Graham?

  That was my conversation with Brenda Wineapple, author of the bestselling book, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, available wherever you get your books.

• 41:19Lindsay Graham?

  From Wondery, this is the fourth and final episode of our series of Evolution on Trial for American History Tellers. In our next season, we're bringing back a fan favorite, our series on the insurrection of Aaron Burr. In the wake of his infamous duel with Alexander Hamilton in 1804, Aaron Burr was a wanted man. With his political career in shambles, this disgraced vice president began hatching a plot that would return him to power by any means necessary. He would eventually become the highest-ranking American official ever to be charged with treason, leading to a sensational trial that would reshape the political landscape of the young American republic.

• 41:59Lindsay Graham?

  American History Tellers is only possible because of listeners like you, so thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure to follow American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts, my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all sorts of other things, go to historyishuman.com. That's historyishuman.com.

• 42:35Lindsay Graham?

  American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham, for Airship. Sound design by Molly Baugh. Supervising sound designer Matthew Filler. Music by Thrum. Additional writing by Ellie Stanton. This episode was produced by Polly Stryker and Alita Rosansky. Our senior interview producer is Peter Arcuni. Managing producer Desi Blalock. Senior managing producer is Callum Pluse. Senior producer Andy Herman. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman, Marshall Louis, and Aaron O'Flaherty for Wondery.

• 43:12Speaker 08

  Hey, I'm Cassie DePecce, the host of Against the Odds from Audible Originals. In each episode, we share thrilling true stories of survival, putting you in the shoes of the people who lived to tell the tale. In our latest series, we track the story of Hugh Glass, the real-life revenant that inspired the 2015 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. In 1823, Glass was brutally mauled by a grizzly bear in present-day South Dakota and left for dead. His survival depended on trekking through 350 miles of wilderness alone with grave injuries. But he was driven by his thirst for revenge. Follow Against the Odds wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Against the Odds early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.