The Trial of the Twentieth Century – And its relevance for tensions in modern America

The Scopes Trial was very possibly the most important of the twentieth century in the US – and has many considerations for today. Here, Edward J. Vinski returns and shares his reflections on Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter in present-day America in the context of the Scopes Trial. You can find out more on the Scopes Trial in Edward’s previous articles over three parts here, here and here.

The Anti-Evolution League at the Scopes Trial. Source: Mike Licht, available here.

I write this on July 10, 2016, ninety-one years to the day since the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial began. This court case has fascinated me for well over a decade.  I read every book and article I can find about it. I have seen several documentaries. I have watched the dramatization "Inherit the Wind" so often I can almost recite it verbatim. I have thought about it and written about it. I follow new attempts at removing the theory of evolution from the public school classrooms with great interest. Nevertheless, it is only today that I came to a momentous conclusion: We, all of us in the United States of America, may have been wrong about William Jennings Bryan.

Not from a scientific perspective, mind you, because Bryan was no scientist and he often showed his ignorance. He valued scientific achievement for its benefits to humankind, but he had very little understanding of scientific principles. In some instances, his ignorance was nothing short of laughable as in this section from his famous "Prince of Peace" address:

I was eating a piece of watermelon some months ago and was struck with its beauty. I took some of the seeds and dried them and weighed them, and found that it would require some five thousand seeds to weigh a pound; and then I applied mathematics to that forty-pound melon. One of these seeds, put into the ground, when warmed by the sun and moistened by the rain, takes off its coat and goes to work; it gathers from somewhere two hundred thousand times its own weight, and forcing this raw material through a tiny stem, constructs a watermelon...[u]ntil you can explain a watermelon, do not be too sure that you can set limits to the power of the Almighty and say just what He would do or how He would do it. I cannot explain the watermelon, but I eat it and enjoy it (Bryan, 1909).

The argument appears to be, in essence, that science is faulty and God exists because William Jennings Bryan did not know where watermelons come from.

Bryan’s ignorance

Nowhere was his ignorance more evident than in the Scopes Trial itself. In an astonishing development, defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, called Bryan to the witness stand to answer questions about the Bible. Darrow, however, chose his questions carefully from biblical events that pressed up against the boundaries of science. Thus, Bryan stumbled badly when asked questions about such things as the age of the earth, the length of the days in the Genesis account of creation and how these stories contradicted accepted scientific facts. At best, he did nothing to help his cause. At worst, he played directly into the defense's hands.

Bryan was clearly wrong about evolutionary theory. How, then, have we misunderstood him?

Present events

You see, I am also writing this in the wake of a tense week for America. The shooting deaths of black men by police officers in Louisiana and Minnesota were followed a few days later by the shooting deaths of five police officers in Texas. Social media is currently undulating between prayers for the victims, sadness, outrage and anger. In addition, the all too familiar battle lines are once again drawn between Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter.

The names of these movements, however, give a hint of something that Bryan foresaw over nine decades ago: Dehumanization. When we see only the dark skin and the blue uniform, we cannot help but lose sight of what inhabits both - an individual human being. One of Bryan’s greatest arguments for the banning of evolution had nothing to do with science per se. Rather, it was that while science clearly had produced the mechanical marvels of the twentieth century, it had produced no code of morality to keep these marvels in check. Bryan feared that the "survival of the fittest" interpretation of Darwin would lead to eugenics, sterilization, euthanasia and wars of aggression.

For evidence of this, we need look no farther than the textbook under scrutiny at the Scopes Trial, George William Hunter's "A Civic Biology". In a lengthy passage, Hunter describes precisely what Bryan feared most:

Hundreds of families [...] exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites.

If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country (Hunter, 1914).

It is noteworthy that Hunter's book was published in 1914, the very year in which a Great War broke out that would eventually see some smaller, weaker nations swallowed up by larger, stronger ones.

War without a moral code?

Bryan worried that the proliferation of evolutionary theory without a proper moral balance would lead humanity to make judgments about those who are fit for life and procreation and those who are not. Those in positions of power could use evolutionary theory as a justification to eliminate those deemed parasitic, troublemakers, or just unpleasant. Had not such philosophies already affected the way we conduct our wars?  Science, Bryan wrote:

Has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plan-the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above (Scopes Trial Transcript).

No less an authority than the secular evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould seemed to think that Bryan was on to something, writing, "when [Bryan] said that Darwinism had been widely portrayed as a defense of war, domination, and domestic exploitation, he was right" (p. 163). Within a few years of the Trial, Adolf Hitler would show, just how right Bryan was.

Understanding others

We see this same Dehumanization in our day when we look at the tragedies of Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas. Depending on which side we find ourselves supporting, we see either black skin or a blue uniform, but not the person inhabiting them. Even the reasonable-sounding All Lives Matter perspective, while certainly true in the broadest sense, dehumanizes as it removes all traces of personal identity from the equation and ignores the reality faced by individuals of color and of law enforcement on any given day. For all of our advancements as a society, we have never been able to understand the world clearly from the perspective of another. There are those who cannot see how the actions of a white police officer against a black person could possibly be viewed as racist. There are those, on the other hand, who cannot see how such actions could be anything but. I may be able to sympathize with someone else, celebrate with them in triumph and commiserate with them in sorrow, but I can never truly see how they operate in the world and how the world reacts to them. If I cannot do this among my most intimate of friends, how then, can I ever hope to do so with those I know only through the broadest of generalities, which, by their very definition, dehumanize even further? The "you" and "me" of intimacy become the "them" and "us" of separation. Rodney King, the subject of another period of racial tension a generation ago once asked, "can we all get along?" Until we are able to view the world from the perspective of others, to understand them as individual human beings bound up in a history that is both of their own making and also beyond their control, the answer to that question is likely to remain a sad and resounding "no".

William Jennings Bryan did not understand evolutionary theory. His grasp on the scientific method was sketchy at best. He understood people, however. This skill enabled him to become a three-time candidate for President of the United States and one of the most popular public speakers of the twentieth century. His performance at the Trial led to his being labeled a villain, a bully, a buffoon. Maybe his insight went further than we thought, however. Maybe he knew what we would do to each other given only the slightest provocation and with only the slightest scientific justification. Maybe, just maybe, he was more right than we knew.

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References

• Bryan, W.J. (1909). The Prince of Peace. New York: Fleming H. Revel Company.
• Gould, S.J. (1999). Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books.
• Hunter, G. W. (1914). A Civic Biology Presented in Problems. New York: American Book Company.
•  Scopes Trial Transcript, 1925

The truths and untruths about one of the trials of the century…

Three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan was involved in one of the most important trials of the twentieth century. The Scopes Trial took place in 1925 and involved the age old debate between religion and science. Edward Vinski follows up on his first article on the trial (available here) and considers what William Jennings Bryan believed and when he believed it.

On the surface, William Jennings Bryan’s involvement in the famous State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes court case seems inconsistent with his earlier public life. Although he was long a supporter of progressive causes, Bryan’s prosecution of Scopes, a high school teacher who violated Tennessee’s statute against the teaching of non-Biblical Human Evolution, appears to represent an about-face: a harsh, conservative punctuation to the life of a man who famously backed women’s suffrage, prohibition and regulation of the railroads. Indeed, for those whose knowledge of Bryan comes only from the film or stage versions of Inherit the Wind, dramatizations that use the trial as a metaphor for McCarthyism, he appears to be an arch-conservative purveyor of hostility and fear. What is the truth about Bryan’s anti-evolution position? Were they long-held beliefs or did they reflect a growing conservatism in Bryan’s social ideas?

Who Was William Jennings Bryan?

Born in 1860, Bryan became one of America’s most influential political and social figures. His famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention secured him that party’s presidential nomination. Despite his loss to William McKinley in the general election, Bryan would receive the Democratic nod two more times, losing to McKinley again in 1900 and to William Howard Taft in 1908. In spite of his pacifist leanings, he volunteered for duty in the Spanish American War, and although he never saw combat, he achieved the rank of Colonel in the Nebraska State Militia. Bryan was selected as President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, but resigned in 1915 over a disagreement with Wilson’s position following the Lusitania sinking. Still, he campaigned for Wilson’s re-election in 1916, and offered his services to the President following the United States’ entry into World War I. In the years following his work for Wilson, he was, among other things, a frequent speaker on the Chautauqua circuit, and a supporter of the progressive movements mentioned above. 

A campaign poster for William Jennings Bryan in the 1900 presidential election.

In the film version of Inherit the Wind, The Bryan character[1] speaks in opposition to “godless science” and “agnostic scientists”.  In fact, Frederick March, in his portrayal of the character goes so far as to pronounce “evolution” as “evil-ution” throughout the film. Bryan is portrayed as being a strict Biblical literalist who believed truly that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and in the accuracy of Bishop James Ussher’s estimates of the earth’s age. In fact, Bryan was excited by the potentialities of applied science. He went so far as to join the American Association for the Advancement of Science as a means of refuting the notion that he opposed scientific investigation. Bryan also accepted the possibility of non-human evolution, but he was worried that when science denied the supernatural, “every manner of immoral behavior” would be unleashed upon the world (Kazin, 2006, p. 273).    

Two questions now arise. First, did Bryan’s opposition to evolution reflect a long-standing belief or a change to more conservative opinions in his later years? Second, to what degree was his attack on science inconsistent with his progressivism? To answer these questions, we will turn our attention to three sources: Bryan’s oft-repeated speech “The Prince of Peace”, his argument against scientific testimony during the Scopes Trial and his never-delivered closing speech that was included as a postscript in the trial transcript.

The Prince of Peace

One of the first clues to Bryan’s position on evolution comes from his 1904 speech “The Prince of Peace” (published in book form in 1909). In it, he stated that:

I have the right to assume, and I prefer to assume, a designer back of the design-a creator back of the creation… no matter how long you draw out the process of creation, so long as God stands back of it you cannot shake my faith in Jehovah… I do not carry the doctrine of evolution as far as some do; I am not yet convinced that man is a lineal descendant of the lower animal. I do not mean to find fault with you if you want to accept the theory…you shall not connect me with your family tree without more evidence than has yet been produced” (Bryan, 1909, p.12-13).

Fine. He seems willing to say “to each his own”. Yet years later, he would be at the fore of the anti-evolution movement in the United States. Was this a change of heart? Well, a closer examination of “The Prince of Peace” demonstrates that there was not necessarily a substantial change, for there is one easily overlooked passage a mere three pages earlier that sheds light on his fears. In describing why a system of morality based upon reason alone would be deficient, he stated:

As it rests upon argument rather than authority, the young are not in a position to accept or reject. Our laws do not permit a young man to dispose of real estate until he is twenty one…because his reason is not mature (Bryan, 1909, p.9).

Bryan’s concern for the moral life of young people would, in part, drive his anti-evolution crusade decades later. He feared their blind acceptance of materialistic arguments without a solid foundation of faith behind them. Shortly after this statement, he described his own youthful skepticism before concluding that “I have been glad ever since that I became a member of the church before I left for college, for it helped me during those trying days” (p. 11). The young person “is just coming into possession of his powers, and feels stronger than he ever feels afterwards-and he thinks he knows more than he ever does know” (p. 11). Thus, young people can become easily confused.

The Argument Against Expert Testimony

The second source for understanding William Jennings Bryan’s ideas comes from the Scopes Trial Transcript. On Thursday July 16, 1925, the focus of the trial turned to whether or not the testimony of scientists would be admitted into evidence. The defense hoped that these scientists would demonstrate that the study of evolution did not necessarily contradict the Biblical account of creation. In speaking against such testimony, Bryan turned to the tried and true position that had made him a three-time presidential nominee: the right of the populace or their elected representatives to regulate what is taught in US public schools.

“The statute,” he said, “defines exactly what the people of Tennessee desired and intended and did declare unlawful and it needs no interpretation” (Scopes Trial Transcript). The statute contained two provisions. It was illegal first “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Devine Creation of man as taught in the Bible” and second “to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals” (Tennessee House Bill 185). Bryan acknowledged that the testimony of experts would be acceptable if the statute only contained the provision relating to Biblical contradiction. By adding the provision about descent from lower animals, however, the legislature removed that possibility.

This is not the place to try to prove that the law ought never to have been passed…the people of this state passed this law, the people of this state knew what they were doing when they passed the law, and they knew the dangers of the doctrine-that they did not want it taught to their children (Scopes Trial Transcript).

It is not for nothing that he was called “The Great Commoner”. Long a champion of the working class and opponent of corporate power, he fought to protect the weak and poor from exploitation. “The rule of majority opinion against imposing elites” (Gould, 1999,p. 156) was long one of William Jennings Bryan’s primary focuses, and it is that point he tried to drive home in his attempt to block expert testimony.

Bryan’s Final Speech

A final source of Bryan’s views come from his proposed address following the trial. On the final day, the defense led by Clarence Darrow waived its right to closing argument and recommended that the jury return a verdict of guilty upon Scopes. In so doing, they not only set the stage for an appeal, but also deprived Bryan of his own closing remarks. Bryan’s speech was, however, appended to the trial transcript.

In the address, Bryan rehashed several of the points we have covered. Citing recent precedent, he pointed out the right of the state to control the public schools and to “forbid the teaching of anything ‘manifestly inimical to the public welfare’” (Scopes Trial Transcript). In addition, he claimed that the law was in no way an attempt to force religious beliefs upon the populace, but rather the majority’s attempt to protect its religious heritage from attacks by “an insolent minority…to force irreligion upon the children” (Scopes Trial Transcript). The statute, according to Bryan, did not represent a devaluation of science, and in fact Christians welcome truth wherever it may be found. This, in turn, led to his second point: that evolution is not truth but rather “millions of guesses strung together” and that “there is no more reason to believe that man descended from some inferior animal than…to believe that a stately mansion has descended from a small cottage” (Scopes Trial Transcript).

Toward the end of the address, however, Bryan describes Darwin’s “barbarous sentiment”. “Darwin,” he wrote, “speaks with approval of the savage custom of eliminating the weak so that only the strong will survive” (Scopes Trial Transcript). It was the Social Darwinism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that William Jennings Bryan most feared. He feared that under it, eugenics, euthanasia and sterilization would flourish as persons and nations tried to create a perfect race based upon the doctrine of survival of the fittest. From those perfect “supermen” world-dominating superstates would surely emerge. “Science,” he continued, “is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine” (Scopes Trial Transcript). In Bryan’s mind, this was never more evident than in the First World War - not yet a decade in the past. “Science,” he wrote, “has made war more terrible than it ever was before. “The world needs a Savior more than it ever did before” and it is only “the meek and lowly Nazarene” who could save it (Scopes Trial Transcript). With that, Bryan returns full circle to “The Prince of Peace”.

Conclusion

It’s clear that Bryan’s involvement in the Scopes Trial did not represent a substantial deviation from his prior progressive tendencies. He was long concerned with the effect adults can have on the impressionable minds of the young, and he strove to protect the young from such influence. He championed the right of the people to determine their laws. Finally, he long believed that, left unchecked, science posed a great threat to humanity. 

With hindsight, it is hard to argue with Bryan’s claims. One can only image his outrage at Nazi concentration camps, at US internment camps, and at bombs so powerful that they could destroy the world as we know it several times over. Bryan may have been wrong on a number of levels, not least of which is that scientific facts are not bound by majority opinion. But if he was wrong, he might well have been wrong for the right reasons.    

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Edward J.Vinski, Ph.D is Associate Professor of Education at St. Joseph’s College, NY.

[1] Bryan’s name was changed to Matthew Harrison Brady for Inherit the Wind. 

References

Bryan, W.J. (1909). The Prince of Peace. New York: Fleming H. Revel Company.

Gould, S.J. (1999). Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books. 

Kazin, M. (2006). A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. New York: Anchor Books.

Scopes Trial Transcript, 1925 Tennessee House Bill, 185.

How Hollywood blurred the facts of one of the trials of the century

The trial of the century? In this article Edward Vinski looks at a famous 1925 trial between religion and science. And how later Hollywood and Broadway depictions blurred the truth of events.

Perhaps twentieth century America’s most famous clash between religion and science occurred in Dayton, Tennessee. Science teacher John T. Scopes stood trial for teaching the theory of human evolution by natural selection to a class of high school students. Over the course of eleven days in July 1925, news reporters from all around the United States crowded into the small town to cover what was called “the trial of the century”. Much of the interest in the case stemmed from the fact that Scopes was defended by Clarence Darrow, perhaps the country’s most famous trial attorney, while William Jennings Bryan, the former Secretary of State and three-time Presidential nominee, aided the prosecution. The trial peaked when Darrow put Bryan on the witness stand to answer questions about the Bible, and culminated with a guilty verdict that was ultimately and anti-climactically overturned on a technicality. That Bryan died in Dayton a few days after the trial ended only added to its drama.

John T. Scopes in 1925

FROM TENNESSEE TO BROADWAY

The story, however, did not end in Dayton. In 1955, Inherit the Wind, a play based on the events of the trial, opened on Broadway. Written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, the play used the trial as a metaphor for McCarthy-ism with the Scopes character representing those blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Five years later, the play was turned into a film starring Academy Award winners Spencer Tracey and Frederic March in the Darrow and Bryan roles respectively. Both the play and the film were well received and have been remade several times over the ensuing decades.

The popularity of these fictionalized accounts has, though, produced an interesting by-product. Many people have come to believe that the film/stage versions are accurate depictions of what occurred in 1925. Easterbrook (N.D.) suggested that “many Americans know the Scopes trial not from history books but from ‘Inherit the Wind’.” Unfortunately, Inherit the Wind distorts the facts of the trial, and while I think most of us expect a certain amount of Hollywood-izing where ‘based on a true story’ films are concerned, we run into great dangers if we treat such fictionalized accounts as historical documents.

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

As we approach the 90th anniversary of the Scopes Trial, I would like to set some of the record straight. In doing so, I will avoid discussing minor instances of creative license, and keep my focus on the aspects of the 1960 film that can cause misunderstanding of the facts of the case.

We begin with the arrest and indictment of the defendant, John T. Scopes. The film opens with the Scopes character teaching his biology class when the lesson is interrupted by the authorities placing him under arrest. The truth was somewhat less dramatic. Following the passage of Tennessee’s anti-evolution law in May 1925, the ACLU offered to assist any schoolteacher who challenged the law. Upon hearing this, local business leaders, school board personnel and attorneys concocted a scheme in which a local teacher would be tried for violating the statute. The resulting trial would not only challenge the controversial law, but it would also serve as a publicity stunt for the town which had fallen on hard times (Moore, 1999). Scopes, 24-years-old at the time, was the local high school’s general science teacher and football coach. He was tracked down not in his classroom, but on a local tennis court and brought to a Dayton drug store where the conspirators were scheming over breakfast. Upon his arrival, he was asked whether he would be willing to let his name be used in the case. Scopes was opposed to the anti-evolution law although he knew very little about it, being primarily a physics and math teacher. In fact, there is some question as to whether or not he ever actually taught an evolution lesson while substituting for the regular biology teacher (Benen, 2000). His uncomplicated life also made the young, unmarried, childless Scopes an attractive candidate as he would have little to lose from this scheme. After some discussion, Scopes accepted (Larson, 2006).

A nearby justice of the peace swore out an arrest warrant, handed it to a police officer who promptly served the papers to Scopes. While the conspirators made phone calls to newspapers announcing the upcoming trial which would help put their town “on the map”, the accused left the drug store to resume playing tennis (Larson, 2006). Within days of the announcement, Bryan volunteered his services to the prosecution, Darrow agreed to aid the defense, and the trial of the century was set to begin.

MORE ERRORS

This, however, brings us to another point of comparison between Inherit the Wind and the actual trial: Scopes’ treatment while in custody. The film shows the Scopes character languishing alone in a jail cell, being taunted and threatened with lynching by his fellow townspeople, and intimidated by prosecutors who were out for blood. Again the truth tells a different story. As one might gather from Scopes’ post-‘arrest’ tennis match, he never spent one minute in jail. The crime was, in fact, a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine of “not less than One Hundred $(100.00) Dollars nor more than Five Hundred $(500.00 ) Dollars for each offense” (1925 Tennessee House Bill, 185).

In addition, far from being hated by the populace, Scopes was generally well liked by his fellow townspeople and this opinion seems to have been shared by members of the prosecution (Larson, 2006). In fact, during the noon recess on one particularly hot day, Scopes went swimming with two of the prosecuting attorneys, Wallace Haggard and William Jennings Bryan, Jr. They enjoyed themselves so much that they lost track of time and were late returning to the courthouse. Upon their arrival, they found that the trial had proceeded without them, and they had difficulty squeezing through the crowded courtroom to take their places.

We have begun to get a flavor for how Inherit the Wind helped to establish the Scopes Trial myth at the expense of its facts. One would expect that Scopes would be the central figure of his own trial. The personalities that dominated it, though, were such that the defendant became an afterthought.

Edward Vinski is Associate Professor of Education at St. Joseph's College in New York.

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References

Benen, S. (2000). Inherit the Myth: How the movie version of the Scopes trial monkeyed with the facts. Church and State, 53, 15-16.

Easterbrook, G. (N.D.). The Scopes trial vs. “Inherit the Wind”. Retrieved from http://www.beliefnet.com/News/1999/12/The-Scopes-Trial-Vs-Inherit-The-Wind.aspx

Larson, E. J. (2006). Summer for the gods: The scopes trial and America’s continuing debate over science and religion. New York: Basic Books.

Moore, R. (1999). Creationism in the United States: The lingering impact of Inherit the Wind. The American Biology Teacher, 61, 246-250.

1925 Tennessee House Bill, 185.