welcome back for our c-span viewing audience is history. 134 spies, assassins, martyrs, witches, famous trials in american. this is jenna.

big questions course. and we have a room full of largely non history majors from the sciences and business and other places who are taking a history course and the we are covering today is a trial that will be dubbed in the 20th century. the trial of the century the scopes trial and want to start our discussion by introducing you to this man. this is john washington butler and he was a tennessee tobacco farmer who gets to the state legislature 1922. and as he it he was home at his baptist church and his preacher told story that he found very disturbing and it was the story of a local young woman who attended the university of tennessee and then was exposed

to darwin's teachings on evolution in a biology course. and she had been raised in a culture of faith and belief in the bible and, the preacher said she came home from college, an atheist and butler had three young boys who were growing up, and he knew that evolution was also included in the curriculum of the local schools and did not want to see the same thing happen to his children. so he authored a bill that will pass the tennessee legislature that will be known as the butler act and it will be an act that prohibited the of evolution in any schools that receive state funding under the argument, parents should have a say as to what's taught in the schools

they're writing the checks they should have a say. and darwin's teachings certainly seem to to contradict the story of the creation of, the universe and the earth in the book genesis the adam and eve story and darwin telling a very different tale of the origins of man. and the tennessee don't this down, just get the idea here. it's not going to say that you had to teach the book of genesis in school all it said is this that it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the universities, normals, dorms, our to taught teachers how to teach and all other public schools of the state which are supported in whole or part by the school funds of the state to teach any theory that denies the

story of divine creation of as taught in the bible and to teach instead that has descended from a lower order of animals so you could teach evolution about other species but just not anything conflicted with the book of genesis. you have to teach the book of genesis. you just had to teach anything that conflicted with it, which would be darwin's theories on the origins of man the butler act. and it's going to pass. there's going to be some opposition when it's the tennessee senate, there's some vanderbilt up in the rafters, heckling, but nevertheless it's going to pass a lot of enthusiasm and be signed into law by governor austin peay. now it's going to be tricky because the state men dated biology textbook hunters, civic biology, he did include significant discussions of

darwin's theories of evolution, chapter 14 and particular so the state science teachers now will have to carefully use the school's textbook so as not to run afoul of the law. and law, which was part of kind of a growing anti evolution movement in a number of portions of the country caught the eye of an organized founded in 1920 called the american civil union. many of you have heard of them before. they're still around. and the aclu you was an organization formed around world war one during what is known to historians as the red scare when lots of people with beliefs sympathetic to socialism and

communism are were arrested for the things that they were saying and and the aclu created by folks on the american left to defend the first amendment rights of those people. but it had started to kind of broaden its position and as many of you know, the aclu over the course of the 20th century will become first amendment defendants of a lot of different types of speech. they're going to defend the rights of nazis to speak and klansman to speak in the westboro baptist church, speak under the idea that that's what free speech all about. the best place to to expel is to ideas, to the marketplace of ideas and then let bad ideas be defeated. and the aclu saw this law as an infringement of free speech and now will start to put articles

into papers in tennessee saying we need a teacher who wants to challenge this law. and in the chattanooga times in 1925, don't copy this down. i'll show this article ran and it says a legal test of the tennessee prohibiting the teaching of evolution in schools and colleges is being sought by the american civil liberties union. and then down here we are looking for a tennessee who is willing to accept our services and testing this law in our courts, in the courts our lawyers think a friendly test case can be arranged without costing the teacher his her job. now let's move our focus to a small town population 2200 between knoxville and chattanooga known as dayton, which is going to become quite famous for the events here that

unfold. and. we're going to move to the local drugstore in town a drugstore owned by frank robinson, a member of the rag county board, where also sold hunter civic biology for students to buy for use in school and where there regularly was meetings over coffee and conversation of some of the town's leaders the local city attorney. some of the managers of the local coal mine and frank robinson himself a and they were discussing law and some of them thought it was a silly or wrong law it including a man named george rapley, who was a new yorker who had a ph.d. in chemical and was a manager at

the local coal mine, which had been struggling a bit. he was a modernist methodist. and we'll discuss shortly what that means to be a modernist. but he the law was silly, but he was also someone who wanted to get some publicity for dayton. a lot of people didn't know dating and they wanted to do something that would put dayton, as he put it, on the map map. there's the drugstore. and as he said to frank robinson, we're always looking for something that will get a little publicity. have you seen the morning paper and convinces his fellow guys down there to try that maybe this is the place where we do the test case against this law, maybe can recruit one of our local schoolteachers to be the one, to challenge this law. and he gets the other folks say, all right, maybe let's do this.

and he's going to contact the aclu and say do you mean what you say? will you provide lawyers? they say absolutely. there they are again. and they're convinced that this is not only going to bring publicity to dayton, that it's going to bring crowds that people will want to see this trial. it will be good for business. and going to speak some of the schoolteachers and they're going find one they think is perfect. he doesn't have a lot of ties to the community. he doesn't a family. so if he somehow lost job over this, which they're hoping he wouldn't wouldn't, he wouldn't you know, he didn't he'd be okay. and he was the 24 year old general science instructor and the football coach who accepted the theory of evolution.

but he was no expert. he had taught three weeks as the substitute who's in the biology class that spring, and he had taught out of hundreds civic biology. and he will say, yes, i probably taught evolution, although he couldn't remember exactly. but he agrees to participate to be the case to challenge this law. and scopes was the son of agnostics agnostics as many you know, are people who do say there is no god. but they also say, i know if there is all we can tell about the world is what we see in the material phenomenon on earth. so i'm not going to rule it out, but i'm not. and scopes he also claimed to be an agnostic although he attended

david's methodist church largely for social reasons in a small town, it was a good place to meet people and feel to be part a community, but he's now going to attach his name to a famous case challenging the butler act. now this class watched as an introduction. this the fictionalized account of these events inherit the wind, where they this dramatic story of scopes being in front of the classroom. that's what's happening here. this is a creative test case there he is. and amongst the folks at, frank robinson's drugstore was the local city attorney, sue hicks, and he agrees to be part of it. he agrees to prosecute scopes. he has admitted to having taught evolution in violation of the butler act out of civic biology and.

he goes down to a local justice of the peace and has them swear out a for scopes arrest and scopes is arrested. the editor the baltimore sun, a supporter of the teaching of evolution is going to be intertwined with the aclu on and he'll pay scopes his bail and scopes goes off to play tennis. in the movie version, he's sitting bars. that's not true. goes off to play tennis now. i love these guys. and fred robinson said frank robinson's drugstore. and i'll tell why this class for our c-span viewers is a class that on trials that were well known at the time sensational at the time and still have a hold on the american imagination today, but that have no precedential value.

i teach a course in constitutional history where we do landmark cases. marbury, madison and brown re board, etc. but scopes is a trial that's not going to set a lot of precedent. but still, everybody knows and everybody at the time people in europe knew the scopes trial and those guys at the drugstore knew they were at a moment. they knew this case over the teaching of evolution and would bring people to town would be a sensation and. they're right. it's kind of the heart of this course. did they know? and part of what they knew was the cultural context of the 1920s. now when you folks think of the 1920s, what do you think about from high school classes, from any other general knowledge you have the roaring twenties. what do you know? oh, wait, we've got to get a over here. go ahead. go ahead. yeah, yeah. what do you know? the great gatsby? the great gatsby.

the great gatsby. you know, lavish parties of the rich and the kind of a the that those moments. how about over here. prohibition and a lot of like gangs in new york like al capone that's chicago. but yes prohibition and the idea that although alcohol was banned, people were still drinking and there speakeasies in the cities people are all this stuff is going on which you know today there's all these bars that build themselves in speakeasies because in retrospect seems kind of cool. but you think of the twenties as this moment of wealth and parties and speech eases and jazz and dance crazy and that's all partially true. but there is also a what going on in a deeply divided country

in the 1920s, huge cultural rifts and the folks in frank robinson's drugstore knew that this trial is going to land right on one of those fault lines lines. let's talk about those this is what we do with all our trials and use them as a window, a wider world. in 1920, the states census announced that for the first time, more americans lived in cities than rural areas and all of american history. until that time the country if you needed to win an election, you to get right with the farmers. but as farms became more productive, the mccormick, reaper and other things, we didn't need as many farmers. farmers are moving into the cities and there's this sense among some people in rural areas

that they who were considered kind of the heart of the american story, thomas jefferson's chosen children of god were being supply entered by an urban story story and, a place where living in the city seemed like an increasingly sophisticated thing to do. and farmers who once had been seen as the backbone of america are portrayed by some in the cities as kind rubes. and there is a growing urban rural divide divide. and it's going to play out in a lot of ways ways. cities in the late 19th century, people went there because there were jobs, immigrants went there because that's where they landed. but they were tough.

the number of people arriving completely, the infrastructure pollution, sewage problems, horse manure everywhere. it was not pretty. but as a result of a movement known, as the progressive movement, at the turn the 19th into the 20th century, cities had been cleaned up. improvements in housing and sewer and parks and playgrounds and sanitary ocean and changes in the form of government to make them more efficient. and germ being applied to clean up cities. you can see the difference down here on east huston street in new york before and after the progressives and in addition in the 1920s cities were although one in ten farm families in the twenties had electricity in the cities, almost everyone did.

and it's going to spur demand this is part of what's going to make the twenties economy roar for whole host of new labor saving devices that if were lived in the cities you could use because you had electricity, electric toasters and refrigerator heaters and vacuum cleaners and record players and it just seemed like a very kind of exciting place to live because there was all these things labor saving? you could buy and entertain devices none more than the radio. today, you think of radios, old technology, but the idea the twenties that you could turn on a box your living room and hear the news from europe and sporting events and live events, one of which will be the first trial in american history, broadcast the radio the scopes trial was intoxicate intoxicate.

and the cities increase and we seem sexy times square someone walking into times square exciting the electrify ii ads of times square square. adding to cultural sophistication will be a move that explodes the 1920s as the result of the first wave of great african-american and migration of the south and into northern cities. more than a million african-americans moved north during and after world one, whereas most 90% of african-americans had lived in the south in 1900. that now starts to change. and with is going to come some

significant racial tension as african-americans move into neighborhoods that had been white neighborhoods but also a dramatic outpouring of arts and music. when you lived in the sharecropping south down long roads from your nearest neighbors, creative people didn't often find their people who shared their interests. but as african-american move into neighborhoods like harlem new street in d.c., there's this moment of explosion that is going to lead to the poetry of langston hughes and the music of billie holiday and duke ellington and cab calloway and the novels and of zora hurston, which are to kind of change the american literary and landscape.

known as the harlem renaissance, although it plays out in a lot of cities, detroit and chicago and other places, if you've been down to you street, d.c., that was kind of the harlem renaissance neighborhood around howard. and look at the look of the plaques on, the houses, and you're going to see here's where duke ellington lived, and then you'll see it. you street in twenties and part of this will be the rise of jazz born in new but it takes on an even a new different urban sophisticated feel in detroit and chicago and new york. and it will be music that is going to become america's music, particularly intoxicating to young people. young, white college students

love jazz is going to fill the music of the speakeasies and give the name through f scott fitzgerald to the whole period as the jazz age. and included in this urban world will be the rise of a new type of woman known as the flapper or and these hip young urban who wore their hair short and short skirts, who danced and who smoked? who drank despite prohibition and flouted sexual conformity. many of you have seen the flapper image before. some of you whose families resided in the united states in the twenties. back in your old photo albums there be a flapper in your family tree. and the flapper image is

everywhere. smoking flapper. you get the idea idea. yeah, and cross-racial flapper style for african-americans this is the howard football game in the twenties. and while most women not become flappers, advertise in which booms in the twenties. this the great age of madison avenue likes always likes edgy stuff. they know it appeals particularly to younger demographics and the flapper image is everywhere everywhere. and the twenties was the rise of hollywood and movies. and in the great movie of the

cities and even in those small towns got theaters because they sought the town, had electricity. there's a lot of movies that project this urban style and sophisticate fashion include. clara bow, who often played characters, some which some people found very you recall from our lecture on the lizzie borden case, the layers of clothing that counted for respectability in the victorian era, which is just 20 years before this, or even up to 1910, you remember this, and suddenly we have this. in the movie and the small theaters and some parents are going to see and they're not going to like it. all right. even the small some small towns

get, theaters and part of this cultural contest which the scopes trial is going to sit as you mentioned, was prohibition, which had been passed. folks like lizzie borden's women's christian temperance union and who believe that stamping out alcohol would end domestic violence and poor families squandering their wages and bring order to the city where a lot of these immigrants seem to be spending time in saloons and drinking, but also which, you know, is going to be in the cities. a titanic failure, instantly speaking, sees a rise. police are off winking and nodding and prohibition never works. warren harding's throwing liquor parties at the white house and to the shock of some, it's going to turn the folks who supplied the alcohol to the speakeasies like al capone and the mafia

into cult heroes heroes. and with all this cultural change, inevitably there'll be a backlash and a backlash from who got to the crowded, particularly if they had left rural areas, because the being kind of pushed out of farm found them deeply an alienating. and the 1920s is going to see a a rebirth of the ku klux klan. the klan, which had originally been created during reconstruct to fight reconstruction policy, but then had gone kind of into remission after 1877, when white supremacy, again begins to be

restored, is going to rise more and time its targets will just be african-americans and their republican. but it's to be immigrants, catholics loose women union members, --, flappers supporting prohibition and it's going to be everywhere. 4 million members from maine to oregon. chicago had 50,000 klan and 50,000 members klan on long island island. and part of what added to the clients for, cassidy, was that the twenties came at the end of the ellis island era of immigration, from which many of you in the room are descended from 90 to 1920.

18 million immigrants come in from places the streams of immigration hadn't come before. eastern europe. russia poland, 3 million --, 4 million italian catholics, etc. and part of the reaction was to this, to people who believed that these people would not be americans. and the klan is in colorado and portland. and the leaders were trying turn back the clock to a world where white protestant men ran the show and african -- and catholics either knew their place or were not around. and they paint catholics as

people who were bad for because pope would tell them how to vote. and -- as part of international conspiracy of. and the klan was trying to restore the small town of white protestant america in a new world of decadal and ethnically diverse cities. and startling scenes clans marching down rolling avenue in baltimore,. 1925 song that is still our last clean sheet and joined the ku klux klan a 50,000 person klan

march in the middle of washington. now also intertwined is this idea in the twenties known as nativism. now not all nativist were klansmen. all klansmen almost certainly were nativists, but nativists were people who believed it was time to cut off open immigration and. they opposed any further immigration. the united states of asians, italians, catholics eastern europeans and by the middle, the 1920s, they're going to find political success with passage of an act known as the johnson reed act that is, with a complicated formula that's going to cut off immigration from

asia. and for most of the world except for western europe. also known as the national origins act 1924. the johnson reed act. on a previous slide, i had a picture of one of the leading native as the day. somewhat shockingly, henry ford, whose assembly lines detroit transformed american factories and productivity. but he was also a vicious anti-semite and nativism who required all of his workers subscribe to his newspaper. the dearborn independent. which had headline that told favorable stories of the klan and things like jewish jazz more

on music becomes our national music. and as calvin coolidge, the president signed the johnson reed act into law he said america must be kept american. also dividing good portions of the country in the 1920s will be an intense religious debate that's going to play right into the heart of what will be the scopes trial. and on one side of that debate will religious modernists and religious modernists like rapley and frank robinson, drugstore were people who said, you could square the bible with modern science and note that the bible was written by humans and contain valid human of how god

acted. but didn't have to be precisely historical or scientific typically that the bible's ethical and religious teachings were beyond the realm of facts that you take the lessons of the bible without saying the miracles of the bible were absolute be true religious, modernist. it's so for the adam and eve story, you could say that while there might not have been a garden of eden, there might be a moment in evolution where we have what would be first humans that could stand in for that story. bible be interpreted in the light of modern scientific scholarship, but it reacted to

this with ferocity would be people who saw modernism as a sign that the country was going to hell in a handbasket and all the disorder and cultural change in the cities was a result of a country losing its faith. and they'll be known as religious fundamentalists and they feared that modernism was just another of america's moral decline and had it infected the schools and the pulpits and now dug in and said, nope, the bible should be interpreted literally. this is the famous traveling evangelist aimee semple mcpherson, who with her enthusiastic and fiery sermons, has inspired a lot of people.

also the traveling evangelist, to draw tens of thousands to his sermons, the reverend sunday who showed up in tennessee when they were passing the butler to support the butler act and said education is chained to the devil's throne. and he cheered, tennessee, for taking action against god forsaken gang of evolutionary cutthroats. and the fundamentalists drew. their name from a series of books written in 1915 by religious experts known as the fundamentals testimony to truth and prophecy. the theologians who would outline the tenets of the promised in faith, and they're going to up books, are going to provide the name for the

movement and, include it in those tenets will be the absolute accuracy and inspiration of scripture the virgin birth of christ salvation through christ, sacrifice the resurrection story and the authenticity of biblical miracles. all which ran headlong into the teachings of darwin. some fundamentalists would accept as truth. a 17th. the calculations of a 17th century protestant bishop james usher, who calculated that the world had begun in 4004 b.c. so that's. 6000 years earlier, rather than the millions that some of the of the day were saying was the timeframe of creation.

so we're going to have a struggle here between the theories of charles darwin as outlined in the origin, the species in 1859 and the descent of man. in 1871 and a religious, determined to keep the country from slouching into gomorrah. and the butler act will just be one becomes the most famous of 41 anti-evolution bills in 21 states. and politicians run on anti

platforms. which brings us to a central figure in the story probably the most leader of the anti evolution and schools movement will be a man who had cast a shadow across. american history. william jennings bryan from your ap us history. he gave the famous cross of gold, an advocate for farmers, working people, a populist democrat, three time presidential, had served as secretary of war under woodrow wilson. fired, resigned opposing world war one. he was probably right that's a war we shouldn't have been. he will become a key advocate of women's suffrage and helped push that through. but he is going to become a leading figure in the campaign to drive teaching of evolution from the public schools.

william jennings bryan. huge. everyone would knew. william jennings bryan. there. there's made by his statue in the rotunda. remind me never to do that again. and he did not like darwin and reasonable some of the reasons he didn't like darwin is he particularly didn't like the way he did teaching had been used. he actually really believed that part of the german militarism that to world war one came from the germans coming to believe that darwin's principles were part would play into human society and that the global would be a struggle of survival for the fittest and helped cause a war that would cause 16 million deaths.

and he didn't like that. darwin initially never. the term survival of the fittest is coined by a british associate ologist herbert spencer. but darwin will come to use it and they applied it to human life people are going to misuse it. brian hated the fact the great commoner william jennings bryan that the great wealth of the gilded age this is the biltmore mansion, the vanderbilts mansion made to look like versailles and asheville that the folks who had that concentrated the wealth had come to say well, this is just survival of the fittest. this is what darwin said would happen. the most fit will get the most rewards. and brian was appalled that. and he was certainly appalled by a movement that was seeing its heyday in 1920s.

the eugenics movement and eugenics movement was led by well-meaning scientific people, famous names margaret sanger, who said, you know what? we see the story of natural selection and how the fittest species survive. the fittest variations survived, and maybe we could improve speed that process up by ensure that the most fit had children and the less fit did not. and they are going to campaign for this is this light flashes every seconds. a person is born in the united. but every 17 and a half men it's a high quality. a person is born. some people born to be a burden

on the and eugenicists in 30 states are going to pass laws influenced by darwin's teachings that that allowed for sterilization of people with disabilities. apple hep-c deafness blindness drug addiction or those who committed certain crimes because it was believed that criminal behavior could inherited and at least 60,000 forth forced sterilization in the twenties 8000 in virginia alone. under the idea of improving the race. and these are this is not rural people reacting to the cities this is scientists.

here's iowa's eugenics law, 1911. it allowed sterilization of, quote, idiots, feeble minded drunkards, drug fiends, epileptics, syphilitic moral and sexual perverts. and it made mandatory as the who have been twice convicted of a felony forced sterilization. and. this is two years after the scopes case. but i just want to give you a sense of how mainstream this came. 1927, the supreme court hears a case of a woman whose mother had been institutionalized. she was put in a foster home while there got pregnant when the foster home's nephew raped her. but she was then put a foster home and because the mother she was then put into an institution and they said that she's showing

same traits as their mother. they required that she be forcibly sterilized before, she could be released. the case went to the united states supreme and there one of our greatest jurists, oliver holmes, great papa proponent of the first amendment and other things. well, finish opinion upholding virginia's eugenics law, saying it is better all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for a crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society they can prevent those who are manifestly from continuing their kind the principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. three generations of imbeciles is enough. decision held step toward a super race. what historical event makes you

somewhat uncomfortable about attempts to create a super race? i think we all can guess guess. or sterilize nation and william jennings bryan would say darwin's dreadful law of hate is replacing the bible's divine law of love, which treated all souls as sacred, whether you have epilepsy or not. and he says, will lead this drive to prohibit teaching of darwin's theories in public schools. and he, like butler, will defend, is democratic. the people who write the page who write the checks should decide what the schools teach. and if you think this is a remote question this we're in the middle of that right now there's all kinds of people on parents rights to say what's taught in schools.

this is a continuing story in american life. but what about non fundamentalists who want to learn darwin's teachings? he says protestants and -- share creationist. and if atheists want teach atheism, they can build private schools. and again, he says we're not demanding the teachers teach christianity, we simply insist they shall not under the guise of either science or philosophy, teach as facts. and would add and would quote thomas jefferson, who said to compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieve and applause is. says teachers can still teach about evolution of other

species, but when it comes to man god's miracles is trump science. god makes the laws of science and he can change them when he wants to. all right. critics say he's children access to the tree of knowledge. and. the scopes trial is going to be land in the middle of all this. may 25th, 1925, grand jury. remember from our previous discussions, you have to have a grand jury to indict someone. they hold a grand jury seven of scopes students who had been in the biology class. he briefly taught previous spring are going to testify that he taught and scopes is actually going to coach them how to

testify i want to be indicted here and he is. and they set the evolution in dayton for july 10th and they wanted to get publicity here. so the organizers actually invited to serve on the defense team, the british evolutionist and science fiction writer h.g. wells war of the worlds. but he declines. but they're going to get a gold mine. when william jennings hearing that this is happening, a former lawyer who had practiced law in 30 years, says, i want to be a part of this first grade test case on anti evolution laws and volunteers to lead the prosecution now they've got a famous name in dayton and this thing is going explode. there's brian arriving in dayton

and in particular because nemesis of william jennings bryan clarence darrow, the nation's most famous attends defense attorney who had defended gangsters and others had just one saved to murderers in the city. the electric chair. in a famous case leopold and loeb, which you could google and a fame diagnostic will offer his services for free to the defense team. now the aclu, who is running the defense didn't want darrow because they knew darrow was going to go after. they want this to be a first amendment case, a free speech case, but scopes says, i want darrow, and now you've got the nation's famous defense attorney and this three time candidate for president, william bryan,

squaring off in dayton and trial, which they thought was going to be big, will be bigger than they could ever imagine, both at the moment and in its historical legacy. and we will pick up that story on thursday.