John Scopes is indicted in Tennessee for teaching evolution
On this day · 25 May 1925
On May 25, 1925, a grand jury indicted a Tennessee teacher for teaching evolution, setting up the staged courtroom showdown known as the Monkey Trial.
On May 25, 1925, a grand jury in Dayton, Tennessee indicted John T. Scopes, a 24-year-old high-school teacher, for violating the Butler Act — a law passed that March banning the teaching of human evolution in public schools.
The charge was no accident of conscience. Dayton’s civic boosters, hoping to put their fading town on the map, had recruited Scopes after the ACLU offered to defend anyone willing to challenge the statute. The Tennessee Virtual Archive notes the case was meant “to challenge the Butler Act” and “to draw commercial attention to the small town of Dayton.”
The gambit worked spectacularly. When the trial opened on July 10, pitting orator William Jennings Bryan against defense attorney Clarence Darrow, journalists from around the world descended on Rhea County. Scopes was convicted and fined $100, though the verdict was later overturned on a technicality. The clash over science and faith still echoes a century on.
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