How a Tennessee Student Overturned the Scopes Trial Verdict

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER:

While the Scopes Trial wasn’t overturned for 30 years, a special individual helped over turn it.
The town of Dayton, TN where the trial took place was no accidient.
For one of the attorney, this was almost their last act on earth. 

EPISODE SUMMARY

Today’s story is a tale of evolution. It is the evolution of a plan from a small hamlet to a large town with a renowned university. It is part of the evolution of the United States and it is the evolution and life cycle of a law. 

Our story begins with the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the important detail being that Great Britain ceded all its claims to the Ohio Valley to the United States to which we renamed it the Northwest Territory. And then in 1803, Thomas Jefferson signed into law the boundaries and Constitution of a new state, Ohio. 

Ohio Builds a Railroad

Ohio was a wonderful addition to the country, but it wasn’t easy to get to. The Appalachians in the East created a transportation hurdle. The state did have access to Lake Erie in the north, and the Ohio River in the south, but that was a long way to go for most farmers.

So in 1825, the state elected to build a canal, Lake Erie to the Ohio River called the Miami and Erie Canal, directly through the cornfields from Toledo to Cincinnati to facilitate trade, which was a major force in forging relationships with St. Louis and New Orleans.

By 1860, however, much of the nation’s shipping started to shift from boat to rail, and without a true rail hub, Cincinnati’s major growth began to slow. Cities like St. Louis and Chicago, cities that were connected to a railway system, started to boom, and that made Cincinnati nervous it would be left behind.

While a railway had been built connecting Cincinnati to the north, it stopped, making Cincinnati the end of the line instead of a passageway to other places. So in 1869, the city realized it needed to connect itself to the agricultural and mining heavy south.

But laws prevented it from helping private companies. The City of Cincinnati couldn’t just find a train company. It had to own it. So they elected to build their own railway, all the way to Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Cincinnati-Southern Railway.

One of the stops the train would make would be at a little mining town called Smiths Crossroads. Coal and iron deposits characterized this place between the Richmond Creek and the Highawassa River. It had a post office but was a place, more than a town.

Now with an official train station, the town decided to rename itself. In honor of this great railway from Ohio, they chose the name Dayton. Dayton, Tennessee.

But Dayton wasn’t invisible.

Dayton Tennessee Rises from the Ashes

It already had an international investor. Across the pond in England, a textile manufacturer, Sir Titus Salt, had financed two entrepreneurs who had heard about the great coal and iron deposits in Smith’s crossroads.

But by 1877 those two were bankrupt, leaving Sir Titus Salt, 30,000 acres of land, 4,026 miles away. After having visited it and saw that it was connected to a railroad and realizing the pure opportunity there, the Salt Family created the Dayton Coal and Iron Company.

In England, the Salts already owned and operated the textile mill, around which they had built a small town to support it. They decided to replicate those efforts with the goal being iron and coal extraction instead of textiles.

By 1884, they had laid 30 miles of railroad tracks, built foundations for four blast furnaces, had 200 coke ovens, built 200 homes, a company store, bridges, coal tippers, a schoolhouse, and started digging mines. Mining was in full swing in Dayton, Tennessee.

163 miles southeast of Titus Salt’s town of Saltair, England was Christ’s College in Cambridge.

Charles Darwin Shakes up the World

In 1828, a young Charles Darwin had failed medical school and transferred there to pursue a degree in ministry. As simple as this may sound, Darwin’s cousin, who was also attending Christ’s College, impressed him with his butterfly collection. Darwin had enjoyed his natural history classes during medical school and had enjoyed learning the classification of plants. This butterfly collection renewed his interest in etymology as well. 

As part of the Plinian Society at medical school, he had actually taken an interest in marine invertebrates. After having discovered that black spores found on oyster shells were actually leech eggs, he’d given a well-received presentation on it.

His love of natural history was unbridled, but it was ministry work that introduced him to the ideas of William Paley’s book, Evidence of Christianity. Paley believed adaptations in nature were divinely inspired. Adaptations were God working through the laws of nature.

After graduating with a degree in ministry, Darwin and some friends took a trip to the Canary Islands to study natural history, and that led him to a five-year study on the HMS Beagle exploring natural history around the world: Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Mauritius, and the Galapagos Islands among many others.

He surveyed coasts, collects specimens, studied marine invertebrates, insects, fossils, and animals with other naturalists. And when he returned to England, he spent the next 15 years having experts analyze his collection and results.

It was his collection of birds from the Galapagos Islands that really amazed him. What he thought were different birds from different islands turned out to be different species of finches. That led him to interviewing scientists, farmers, dog breeders, and naturalists on their theories of the adaptions and species changes.

It caught his attention that farmers regularly, but accidentally, created new species of plants by choosing to replant only the most vibrant and healthy. He noted that this would lead to the elimination of under-performed plants and began to wonder if this happened naturally.

Being quite famous in the scientific community at this point, for all his notes and discoveries, he had ample opportunity to discuss his ideas with other scientists. The idea of natural selection was becoming a mainstream thought in the scientific community.

When he heard a fellow scientist was going to publish a similar theory, he was encouraged to hurry up and finish his sixth book, so he could be first to the publish. That book, The Origin of Species, was published in 1859. It immediately sold out and became the prevailing scientific conclusion to how species involved.

While the book didn’t discuss the origin of man, critics started poking fun that man must have evolved from apes if his theories were true. By 1864, at least five other scientists published books with other empirical data proving the idea of natural selection among species. While various other theories were written about, none could be proven.

After a long sickness, in 1882, Darwin passed away.

The Religious Movement Begins

Back in the United States, a religious, cultural and education movement began to take hold. Two Methodist pastors, John Hale Vincent and Lewis Miller, had rented the site of a church camp, set up a tent and created a school for Sunday school teachers, but quickly broadened it to include all kinds of education for adults. It was sort of an early TEDx event they called Chautauqua.

Its popularity surged and Chautauqua‘s would set up everywhere. For three, four, and five days, Chautauqua events would draw crowds from miles away to hear the nation’s most prolific speakers, watch dancers, listen to music, and hear the word of God.

Major international figures spoke at Chautauquas, like Henry Ford, Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Earhart, and William Jennings Bryan. Theodore Roosevelt called it “the most American thing in America.

Lyman Stewart, a businessman in Pennsylvania, was moved by the Chautauqua he attended. He had been a civil war soldier and an oil man in Pennsylvania, but the Chautauqua peaked his interest in other areas.

So when John D. Rockefeller inquired about buying his oil wells, he sold them and moved to California. There he found even more success in the oil business. His new company, Hardison and Stewart Oil, was responsible for 15% of the oil production in California. So in 1890 they changed the name to Union Oil of California, or Unacal.

His success gave him time for pursuit closer to his heart. In 1891 he started the Union Rescue Mission in LA and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. And then in 1910 he put together a book featuring essays of the world’s most prolific Christians. The book highlighted the fundamental truths of the Bible, and thus he named it “The Fundamentals”, effectively encapsulating the fundamentalist movement in America.

One of these self-proclaimed fundamentalists was three-time presidential candidate and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan.

William Jennings Bryan – Fundamentalist

Born at the beginning of the Civil War in Abraham Lincoln’s state of Illinois, Bryan graduated from Illinois University, went to law school at Northwestern in Chicago, and then left Illinois for bigger opportunities in the fastest growing state of Nebraska.

Bryan’s mastery of public speaking immediately drew him to politics, where he helped campaign for Grover Cleveland. His passion led to a seat in Congress and to become an editor of the Omaha World Herald.

In 1896 he was nominated to run for president, and so he and his wife did the one thing they knew he did well. They embarked upon a 600 speech, 27 state railroad tour, getting in front of 5 million people.

While he did lose the election to William McKinley, he created a solid base of support in the US South. He ran again in 1900 with the same result. After the election, Brian returned to journalism and oratory. He became a regular on the Chautauqua circuit and started a periodical called “The Commoner”.

In 1903, Bryan, like Darwin did, took a trip around the world, where he had opportunity to meet with influential people everywhere, including an admirer in Russia, Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy was a huge proponent for the common man, as well as a Christian. For the remainder of his life, Brian kept a portrait of Tolstoy in his house.

Upon his return, his popularity had grown immensely, and demand for his speaking skyrocketed. One of those who invited him to speak was fellow fundamentalist William Bell Riley, of the first Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

William had written a number of texts on Christianity and was editor of the magazine, “The Christian Fundamentalist”. And he founded the World Christian Fundamental Association in 1919. Much of his membership was in the American South, however, not in Minnesota.

The Origin of the Bible Belt

John Washington Butler lived his entire life on a farm in Tennessee. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather grew up there. John also taught school, and every Sunday he went to church. 

One Sunday, an itinerant preacher who came once a month, mentioned a young woman from the community had gone away to university. She returned, believing in the theory of evolution, not in the existence of God.

That got John thinking about his kids, he knew that evolution was taught at the schools in his county. He decided the only way to do something about it was to run for state legislature. He started asking people about it and found 99 out of 100 in his county agreed, the Bible said that God had created man in his image, so he could not have evolved from lower animals.

He used this platform and message to win the election.

The first bill he brought to the legislature would be known as the Butler Act. He had actually written it in his living room. It states, “An act prohibiting the teaching of evolution in all universities, normals, and all other public schools. It shall be unlawful for any teacher to teach any theory that denies the story of the divine creation as taught in the Bible.”

The bill made the news and riled up fundamentalists everywhere. William Bell Riley headed the charge and wrote letters to every legislator. William Jennings Bryan also wrote legislators and gave a speech called “Is the Bible Real in Nashville?”

And surprisingly, there was no opposition.

Not the universities, not the opposing party members, nobody. The bill passed as John Butler had penned it in his living room. And when it passed, it caught the attention of a brand new organization, the American Civil Liberty Union.

When the ACLU Steps In

The ACLU had started two years earlier as a response to Woodrow Wilson’s Selective Service Act. Since the Army hadn’t recruited enough soldiers, the government felt a draft was necessary. Crystal Eastman and Roger Nash Baldwin attorneys and conscientious objectors thought other conscientious objectors who had no way to fight should be representative.

Pretty quickly though, Crystal encountered health problems and had the step down, leaving Roger Nash Baldwin in charge. Roger then changed the name to the ACLU and brought more like-minded people on board to help start it, including Helen Keller.

They wanted the ACLU to represent more than conscientious objectors, and looked for every opportunity to step in when it seemed freedoms were being trampled. Having seen the Butler Act pass in Tennessee, they felt the rights of teachers were being trampled in the name of religion and wanted to challenge the law.

On May 4th 1925, the ACLU placed an ad in the Chattanooga Daily Times, the Tennessean, and the Knoxville New Sentinel, looking for a teacher who’d be willing to help challenge the law and hopefully overturn it.

Charles Darwin, William Jennings Bryan, William Bell Riley, the ACLU, and the town of Dayton, Tennessee set the stage for our story.

Dayton Eyes An Opportunity

George Rappleyea, a young metallurgical engineer, had been hired by the Iron and Coal Mine Company in Dayton to see if it could get life again. Since Sir Titus Salt had built the operation near thirty years earlier, the mining operation had suffered hard times between mining explosions, ownership changes, equipment growing old, and miners finding work elsewhere, there was little work in Dayton. 

The town needed help.

And while it wasn’t mine related, George was vested in the town’s success. On that fourth of May he saw the ACLU advertisement and knew it could be a great boon for the town.

He immediately took it to the head of schools. They and the town leaders then got together. Indeed it could be good for the town to accept the ACLU offer and host a trial and date. All they needed was a teacher who had taught evolution. They quickly found one. Part coach, part social studies teacher, John T. Scopes.

He had recently taught a biology class using a book that featured evolution. They contacted the ACLU, charged John T. Scopes with breaking the law, and set the wheels in motion.

The ACLU’s first call was to their attorney to tell him to report to Tennessee.

Clarence Darrow On the Scene

Clarence Darrow had grown up near Lake Erie in Northern Ohio. His parents were abolitionists and suffragists, leading Clarence thinking he could help people as an attorney. In 1878 after self-study, Clarence took and passed the Bar Exam and moved to Chicago where he worked for both the city of Chicago and Northwestern Rail Company.

His first taste of notoriety was representing Eugene V. Debs during the Pullman’s Strike of 1894. In 1911, the American Federation of Labor called and asked him to defend the McNamara brothers in the Los Angeles Times bombing. And then in 1918, Eugene V. Debs got in trouble again. This time for speaking out against the draft and protesting U.S. involvement in the war.

This is where Clarence got introduced to the ACLU as this was a case they wanted to be involved with. This was a case of the freedom of speech.

When William Bell Riley and the World Christian Fundamentals learned the new law was being challenged, and the ACLU had Clarence Darrow as their lead counsel, they knew they needed a big name. But they didn’t think a religious man would help. They needed someone outside the clergy, and thought William Jennings Bryan was the right choice.

The Scopes Trial of the Century

Thus in July of 1925 in the sweltering heat of Tennessee, in the town built by miners and connected to the world by rail, a trial took place, putting the Christian fundamentalists against the science of Darwin.

The trial was broadcast around the world by radio and followed by every major newspaper. Baltimore reporter H. L. Menken, who covered the trial, dubbed it the “Monkey Trial.”

WGN radio was going to broadcast it live. It was owned by the Chicago Tribune who had bought the station just a year before and renamed it WGN, meaning “World’s Greatest Newspaper”.

Their first major live broadcast was Carl Fisher’s 1924 in the Annapolis 500. When they heard about the Scopes trial, they rented cables all the way from Chicago to Dayton, from AT&T, for almost $1,000 a day, and Radio DJ Quinn Ryan, narrated the trial.

Radio was still so new and exciting, the mayor of Dayton invited Quinn to stay at his house, and the courtroom was allowed to be a rearranged to accommodate WGN’s four live microphones.

The trial lasted eight days, most newspapers giving a day by a day account.

For most people, the highlight was the last day, when Clarence Darrow put a William Jennings Bryan on the stand to defend the veracity of the Bible.

In the end, the judge ruled John T. Scopes violated the law, instead of ruling the law was wrong, which gave the ACLU the chance to appeal.

But George Rappleyea was right.

The trial bought thousands of people to Dayton, Tennessee. Hotels, vendors and businesses thrived the week of the trial. Dayton was the bustling hub of activity, Sir Titus Salt hoped it would become.

Death Comes to Dayton

The day after the trial, William Jennings Bryan gave his last speech in Chattanooga, Tennessee, then returned to his quarters in Dayton and took his final nap.

The world mourned the loss of this great Titan of speech. His body was taken by train to DC, where at least 20,000 people showed up to pay their respects at each train stop.

The only real thing that changed were the textbooks. Knowing other states would follow suit and enact anti-evolution laws, just about every textbook company, removed all discussion of Darwin and evolution.

And in Tennessee, teachers started teaching Creationism from the Christian viewpoint. For one student in Memphis, Tennessee, Abe Fortis of Jewish descent, he felt it was wrong that Christianity was being forced on him, stirring in him a calling to be an attorney.

The year after the Scopes trial in 1926, Fortis graduated second in his class and received the full scholarship to Yale to study the law. Without their leader, the religious fundamentalist movement began to dissipate.

In 1926, Sinclair Lewis published a satire on the religious fundamentalists called Elmer Gantry. Despite the City of Boston banning it and clerics everywhere denouncing it, Elmer Gantry was the number one fiction bestseller for the year. He dedicated the book to his friend, H. L. Menken, the Baltimore Sun reporter, who dubbed it the “Monkey Trial”.

In his Baltimore Sun article after the trial, Menken summarized what actually happened and why the fundamentalist South was wrong. He said that while everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, no one has the right to force that upon others, and was clear in saying something else needs to be done to strike down this law. The Scope’s trial team had no luck appealing the case, being struck down at both the appellate and state Supreme Court level.

But it couldn’t end there.

Six more states banned evolution in the next couple years, including Alabama in 1928. There wouldn’t be a serious attempt to overturn the anti-evolution laws for 30 more years, and that was all because of the Russians. They had launched a satellite in the space called Sputnik. The US government was worried America wasn’t producing the scientists it needed to compete, so in 1958 the National Defense Education Act set new textbook standards, including learning evolution.

The Forgotten Susan Epperson

Then, in a few years later, in 1965, Little Rock Arkansas School System adopted a new textbook, which included his section on evolution, despite their 1988 anti-evolution law. The ACLU felt they had another chance. This time, teaming up with the National Education Association, they just needed another John T. Scopes.

They chose a young biology teacher, who’d grown up in Arkansas, was an active church goer and is far from rebellious as possible. Susan Epperson, 24 years old, fit the bill and she agreed. The case lasted one day and the court struck down our antiquated law. But it was appealed and the appellate record overturned the decision.

So a request to hear the case was sent to the US Supreme Court. And who was sitting on the bench? Abe Fortis, the Memphis High School student who didn’t like having to learn creationism after the Scopes trial.

After Yale, Abe led a storied career all the way to Supreme Court justice. And when he saw the request from Arkansas, he convinced the other justices to take the case. In a nine to zero decision, the Supreme Court struck down all laws banning the teaching of evolution, as it violated the establishment clause separating church and state.

In tracing the path from the beginning of this evolution debate to the end, every piece from Cincinnati’s railroad to WGN’s live broadcast played a part of the puzzle. Just like the butterfly effect, everything we do is part of a much bigger picture.

You’ve been listening to Tracing the Path with Dan R. Morris