John Scopes arrested for teaching evolution, May 5, 1925

On this day in 1925, Tennessee authorities arrested John Scopes, a substitute high school teacher, for teaching evolution. They charged him with having violated a newly enacted law that criminalized the teaching of human evolution in the state’s public schools.

The ensuing Scopes Monkey Trial, as it was commonly known, drew national publicity to Dayton, Tennessee, where the trial was held. William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and a former senator and U.S. secretary of state, argued the case for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, a famed defense attorney, represented Scopes.


The trial soon degenerated into a media circus. On its seventh day, Judge John Raulston moved the proceedings outdoors under a tent because of the unbearable heat in the courtroom and for fear that the weight of the spectators and reporters might cause the floor to buckle.

When Raulston subsequently disallowed using the courtroom as a forum on the merits of Charles Darwin’s well-established theory of evolution, the trial swiftly drew to a close.

H.L. Mencken, who covered the trial for The Baltimore Sun and The American Mercury, wrote: “All that remains of the great cause of the State of Tennessee against the infidel Scopes is the formal business of bumping off the defendant. There may be some [more] legal jousting … but the main battle is over, with Genesis completely triumphant. Judge Raulston finished the benign business yesterday morning by leaping with soft judicial hosannas into the arms of the prosecution.”

The jury took nine minutes to return a guilty verdict. Scopes was fined $100. The Tennessee State Supreme Court, however, acquitted him on a technicality while upholding the constitutionality of the state law.

In 1967, Tennessee lawmakers overturned the statute, thereby legalizing discussions of evolutionary concepts in the state’s public schools.

SOURCE: U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS