Scopes trial facts for kids

The teacher at the center of proceedings, John Thomas Scopes

The Scopes trial is formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. It is also referred to as the Scopes monkey trial.

It was a famous American legal case in 1925. A substitute high school teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act. This Act made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held.

Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he purposely incriminated himself so that the case could have a defendant.

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity. National reporters came to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes.

The trial publicized the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy. This set "Modernists", who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen as both a theological contest and a trial on whether modern evolutionary biology should be taught in schools.

The Tennessee law was not repealed until 1967.

Images for kids

• 

  Clarence Darrow in 1925, during the trial

• 

  H. L. Mencken in 1928

• 

  William Jennings Bryan in 1925

• 

  Darrow (left) and Bryan (right) during the trial

• 

  The Rhea County Courthouse is a National Historic Landmark.

• 

  Cartoonist Rollin Kirby depicts fundamentalist education in Tennessee taken to an extreme

• 

  Spencer Tracy (left) as Darrow surrogate Henry Drummond, and Fredric March (right) as Bryan surrogate Matthew Harrison Brady in the trailer for the film Inherit the Wind; Harry Morgan (in the background) plays the judge.

See also

In Spanish: Juicio de Scopes para niños