In a sweltering Dayton, Tennessee courtroom, the trial of John T. Scopes opened on July 10, 1925, pitting the theory of evolution against Tennessee's Butler Act, which banned teaching it in public schools. The case, argued by Clarence Darrow for the defense and William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution, became a national spectacle broadcast live on radio.
Dayton, Tennessee, a small town desperate for attention and commerce, essentially volunteered for the controversy. Local boosters recruited John Scopes, a young science teacher and football coach, to be charged with violating the recently passed Butler Act, which made it illegal to teach any theory denying the biblical account of human creation in state-funded schools.
The trial that opened on July 10 quickly became a circus and a national referendum on science, religion, and modernity. Clarence Darrow, the country's most famous defense attorney and an avowed agnostic, faced off against William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate and fundamentalist champion, in what reporters dubbed the Trial of the Century. H.L. Mencken covered it with characteristic venom, mocking Dayton's citizens as rubes even as he recognized the case's genuine stakes.
Scopes was ultimately convicted and fined $100, a verdict later overturned on a technicality, but the trial's real drama came from Darrow's blistering cross-examination of Bryan about biblical literalism, delivered from the courthouse lawn after the judge moved proceedings outdoors to escape the heat. The Butler Act remained on Tennessee's books until 1967, but the trial permanently reshaped America's cultural battle lines over science education.