Scopes trial participants

Please follow the instructions we emailed you in order to finish subscribing. Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry , dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. View Cart. Refuting Common Evolutionist Claims. Share: Email Using: Gmail Yahoo! Outlook Other. Trial transcript, Trial transcript, —, At our school, we very much feel the message of kindness, support, and acceptance is central to our school community. We will be teaching our students about the flag so they understand its message.

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Lee play and film Inherit the Wind is not produced by a local school, or shown on television somewhere. Theatrical liberties were exercised in developing the plot, but occasional courtroom exchanges were taken word—for—word from the transcript of the Scopes trial. The trial pitted William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow in a classic confrontation over the teaching of evolution and creation in public schools. Unfortunately, the composite that resulted has become widely perceived as a historical account of the trial.

But the play is not a fair and accurate representation of the great battle of ideas and beliefs that was waged at the Rhea County Court House in Dayton, Tennessee. Curiously, Inherit the Wind unlike other documentary—dramas such as Gandhi and Patton does not use the actual names of the participants or the places it portrays.

Some characters, like the Reverend Jeremiah Brown and his persecuted daughter, Rachel, are fictitious. The rest of the principal characters of the play represent well-known participants in the Scopes trial. Hornbeck represents H. Bryan was a famous politician and orator, who unsuccessfully stood three times as the Democratic candidate for the USA Presidency. A great Populist leader, he was known as the Great Commoner. Darrow was a lawyer whose defence work in a number of dramatic trials made him nationally famous.

He was also a prominent public speaker and debater, and an outspoken agnostic. Mencken was a controversial satirical journalist and pungent critic of American life. He also became a scholar of American idioms, publishing many editions of his volume American Language. I have chosen to use the proper names of the principals in the trial to avoid confusion, since there has never been doubt whom the chief characters in the play represent.

In the observations that follow, segments from the play are preceded with the heading The Play. Analysis of the segments are preceded with the heading The Facts. The Play: Great effort is made to solicit sympathy for John Scopes, the much persecuted school teacher cast into jail for teaching evolution , and who risks losing his job and his girlfriend. The Facts: Scopes was never jailed, nor was he in danger of imprisonment.

Scopes was not a biology teacher; he filled in as a substitute for two weeks near the end of the school year for the biology teacher, who was ill. The ACLU placed a newspaper ad that read in part:. Digital Options. E-book Read online or offline with all the highlighting and notetaking tools you need to be successful in this course.

Table of Contents. Moran Jeffrey P. Related Titles. Available Demos. Select a demo to view:. Sample Achieve. Learn more about Achieve.

Instant access to Achieve and ship me a physical edition. Instant access to Achieve, no physical edition. Allen of Nashville was named to open the court session with prayer. Sue Hicks, B. McKenzie, Darrow, and Neal joined the heated discussion. Bryan then turned the tables on Darrow by using against him his argument in the Leopold and Loeb murder case.

Legal technicians Stewart and Hays finished out the day of stirring speeches by debating on principles of interpretation. Stewart pointed out that the intent of the legislature rather than individual words such as and in the Butler Bill was the rule in Tennessee for interpretation Trial Eastwood to pray before the sixth and shortest day of the trial, which was on Friday, July Judge John Raulston began by summarizing in clear and careful detail the arguments of the prosecution and the defense on the important matter of the admission of expert testimony presented the day before.

Then he sustained the motion of the attorney general to exclude expert testimony. After a lengthy discussion, Raulston agreed to allow the defense to include the expert testimony but in the absence of the jury , to read it into the record though the judge and the prosecution preferred that time be saved by simply submitting it in written affidavit form , to protect it from cross-examination though Bryan requested this privilege , and to give the defense a recess of the rest of the day to prepare documents that the defense lawyers could read into the record though the judge preferred direct dictation from the witnesses, and the prosecution was unhappy at losing so much time.

The evaluation of trial historian L. But without comment at a. Though there had been some dramatic and interesting spots, the trial proceedings up to this point had been long, technical, and uninteresting to the average layman. The worldwide audience coverage continued, but the audience in and about the courtroom began to thin out. On Saturday, July 18, the exodus began: H. Thompson headed to Florida, W. Bryan, Jr. Monday, July 20, the seventh day of the trial, began hot and was to get hotter both in weather conditions and word confrontations.

The opening prayer was delivered by the Reverend Standefer. After lengthy discussion taking up ten pages of the court record and similar to that on day six, Arthur Garfield Hays was finally permitted to summarize and read verbatim into the record twelve written testimonials of the scientific and Biblical experts the defense had congregated. The reading took the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon.

In order of presentation, statements from the following were inserted in the record but not as an official part of the trial as far as the jury and cross-examination were concerned but as indications of what the defense proof would have been, should the case go to a higher court in the appeal process:.

The documents ranged from one to eighteen pages. Charles H. In between the statements by Dr. Curtis and Dr. Rosenwasser, the court recessed for lunch. Judge Raulston inspected cracks in the first-floor ceiling caused by the weight of the crowd upstairs. Stewart conferred with the defense and arranged for Darrow to apologize to the court. After the recess, Darrow apologized grudgingly but sufficiently to satisfy the big-hearted judge, who quoted Scripture and forgave Darrow. Because of the building stress, the heat, and the crowd, Judge Raulston reconvened the court on a platform in the courtyard below.

The heat, the boredom of the expert testimonials being read by Hays, and the dim prospects of anything important or exciting happening from this point on tempted all but a half dozen of the more than one hundred reporters either to go back home or seek cooler, more inviting surroundings that afternoon.

As a result they missed not only the cooler court setup of being out under the trees but also one of the hottest exchanges of the entire trial.

Because so few reporters were present when Bryan took the stand to be interrogated by Darrow, Scopes was conscripted to write covering news stories for the delinquent newsmen Scopes Much of the Scopes Trial news coverage in and ever since leaves a great deal to be desired. On the lowest level there was character assassination. On a level not much higher was the one-sided, biased reporting which presented the remarks of Darrow, Malone, and Hays as virtually flawless but described the utterances of Bryan as vividly faulty.

In addition to the inexcusable bias, the press also did a poor job on the level of the trial issues. Also largely ignored was the fact that Bryan was not against the teaching of evolution — if it were taught as a theory rather than as a true fact — and if equal time were given to other major options, such as creationism.

Another overlooked point was that Bryan did not ask that religion be taught in the public schools. What he objected to was religion being attacked in the public schools Smith ; Levine , , Bryan as a witness. The highly irregular procedure of calling an opposition lawyer as a witness was objected to by Attorney General Stewart but permitted by Judge Raulston and agreed to by Bryan — with the understanding that he would be allowed to put Darrow, Malone, and Hays on the stand Trial , , ; de Camp , Reactions by reporters and subsequently by historians ranged the gamut.

A few were positive. The above-mentioned conflicting evaluations necessitate an examination of the trial transcript. And so it went for almost two hours, ranging over some fifty topics with several related questions each. Bryan was careful to define terms, adhere to known facts, distinguish between literal and figurative language, and frankly admit when he did not know the answer. From time to time Stewart questioned the legality of the proceedings, especially when Darrow cross-examined his own witness.

And they disclosed that Bryan was flexible enough to allow for the days of creation being longer than twenty-four hours each and perhaps as long as millions of years.

The eighth and final day of the trial, Tuesday, July 21, was opened in prayer by the Reverend Dr. Camper of Chattanooga. Rainy weather moved the trial back into the courtroom. Another reason for this move may have been a secret visit by Sheriff Harris and other officials to the judge, urging him to bring the trial to a conclusion as soon as possible in order to avoid injury, for emotions were running high, and both Darrow and Bryan had received threats de Camp ; Harris.

This move prepared the way for an appeal to a higher court, spared Darrow from having to be questioned by Bryan, and circumvented the summation arguments and the threat posed by the concluding address that Bryan had been working on Scopes Since there were indications that some of the jury were getting feisty over being excluded from so much of the trial, and others were showing sympathy for Scopes, there was reason to suspect that the jury might find Scopes innocent.

Stewart, Raulston, and Darrow consulted together. After Raulston gave a lengthy charge to the jury, Darrow was permitted to explain to the jury that they should not worry about their verdict, for it could enable the defense to take the matter to a higher court. Neal, asked Scopes if he had anything to say de Camp ; Trial I will continue in the future, as I have in the past, to oppose this law in any way I can.