ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial, formally known as the State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes. Scopes was a teacher accused of breaking a Tennessee law that prohibited lessons on human evolution. And the entire nation was riveted. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports on why this famous trial still resonates today.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: The Scopes Trial was fictionalized in the play "Inherit The Wind," which became a classic movie in 1960. It opens with somber town leaders, including a badge-wearing lawman, marching into a school.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "INHERIT THE WIND")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) For our science lesson for today, we will continue our discussion of Darwin's theory of the descent of man.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: There, in front of the students, the teacher was arrested.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "INHERIT THE WIND")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) You're charged with violation of Public Act 31428, volume 37, statute...
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The reality was nothing like that. The Scopes Trial was a completely contrived event dreamed up by civic leaders in Dayton, Tennessee, who were chatting at a drugstore soda fountain. They'd read in the newspaper that the American Civil Liberties Union was looking for a test case to challenge the new state law, and they figured, why not get our town some publicity? So the head of the school board sent for a 24-year-old substitute teacher, John Scopes, and asked him, will you let us use you for this?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOHN SCOPES: And I said, well, OK.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Scopes recalled that moment in an interview with radio legend Studs Terkel. In the archival tape, Scopes said within 30 minutes of his agreeing to the plan...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOPES: It was on the wires out of Chattanooga...
STUDS TERKEL: That you were arrested.
SCOPES: ...That I was arrested.
TERKEL: But had you taught at the school?
SCOPES: Well, I had taught a class in biology for about three or four weeks.
EDWARD LARSON: Scopes had never taught evolution, and nobody thought he did.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: That's Edward Larson, a historian with Pepperdine University. He says what was called a trial was really more of a staged public debate. Famed attorney Clarence Darrow volunteered to defend Scopes. The role of prosecutor went to the well-known populist William Jennings Bryan.
LARSON: You had two magnificent orators in Bryan and Darrow making their arguments, backed up by a legion of supporters, who are also articulate, on both sides.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This was the first trial ever broadcast on radio. Thousands of newspapers followed the story. It's become part of American folklore. Larson says a lot of people today think that Scopes won.
LARSON: (Laughter) That's the biggest misconception.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: In fact, the jury deliberated for less than 10 minutes and found him guilty. Both sides claimed a moral victory, but Larson says if you read newspaper editorials from 1925, they mostly just marveled at how the country was divided and how it seemed like this divide would persist. To Ken Ham, this division is the inevitable result of fundamentally different world views. He's the founder of Answers in Genesis, the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter in Kentucky. He once debated evolution with science educator Bill Nye. Ham believes that creationism versus evolution is really about who we are, where we came from, the purpose and meaning of life.
KEN HAM: If there is a god who created us, and it is the God of the Bible, then he determines right and wrong and good and evil, and we have an absolute authority. But if you are just the result of natural processes, and there is no God, who determines right and wrong? Who determines good and evil?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Many Americans, however, see no conflict between their religious beliefs and human evolution. Kenneth Miller is a biologist and a practicing Catholic who cowrote a widely used biology textbook. Its emphasis on evolution got it embroiled in a couple of court cases. He sees real progress in getting evolution taught and accepted.
KENNETH MILLER: After many years of the American public being 50/50 on evolution, we now have a substantial majority saying they accept evolution in terms of the evolution of the human species.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Still, in a Pew Research Center survey released earlier this year, 17% of Americans said that they believed, quote, "humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time." And Miller says he continues to see efforts to stop or influence the teaching of human origins as well as other contentious science subjects like climate change and vaccines.
MILLER: Last year, West Virginia passed a law that allows the introduction of so-called alternative theories with respect to controversial topics in science classes.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Some say this law was intended to open the door to classroom discussions of creationism, but unlike the law at the center of the Scopes Trial, Miller says it hasn't been tested in court. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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