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- [00:00]
Lindsey Graham
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- [00:28]
Brenda Winapple
Foreign.
- [00:33]
Lindsey Graham
Imagine it's April 1926 in Oxford, Mississippi. The scent of stale pipe smoke greets you as you sit down in a small wood paneled office. You're a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and you've traveled south in search of a high school teacher willing to participate in a test case to challenge a new Mississippi law that bans the teaching of evolution in public schools. The man you're here to meet, the Lafayette County School superintendent, sits across from you behind his desk, a bemused expression on his face. Well, I. I am surprised. I. I didn't expect you to come all the way down here in person. Well, I. I had to. No one would respond to my letters and telegrams. The superintendent shrugs. Well, you'd be hard pressed to find a teacher looking to be the new John Scopes. It's only been, what, nine months? Folks? Hadn't forgotten what happened in Dayton last summer. That was a circus. Well, that might be understandable. But you don't mean to say you support a law that criminalizes the teaching of evolution here in Mississippi, do you? No, of course not. I'm a learned man, same as you. But it's not worth getting worked up about. They'll never enforce it. No, it's not about that. This is about a higher principle. We're trying to defend academic freedom and the individual liberties of teachers and students. Is that right? A higher principle? I thought it was about mocking the Bible and every man, woman and child who believes in the Scripture. No, that was never our intention, I assure you. The ACLU is dedicated to protecting freedom of religion. And yet your organization hired that atheist, Clarence Darrow. You sure put on a show sneering and scoffing. He made it his mission to humiliate William Jennings Bryan. He practically killed the poor fellow. Now, I wouldn't say that. And besides, you lost last year, didn't you? Scopes was convicted. Who's to say Mississippi would be any different? Well, we planned about a new legal strategy. And you needn't worry. Darrow won't be involved this time. We really believe this is our chance to win a ruling on the law's constitutionality to stop this movement before it does any more damage. I just need to find another teacher willing to help us. The superintendent shakes his head, running a hand through his slick back hair. You want a teacher who's willing to earn the hostility of his neighbors and the scorn of every pulpit in the state? That's a mighty big ask. And you're willing to let this law stand even though it silences teachers, denies scientific fact? Our teachers and taxpayers are not interested in becoming the laughing stock of northern newspapers. You can travel to every county in the state. They'll tell you the same thing. I believe you're wasting your time. With a curt nod, you stand and walk out of the superintendent's office. You hadn't expected an easy fight in Mississippi, but but you did hope to find some sliver of resistance to these anti evolution laws. Now, though, you fear that after last year's events in Dayton, your efforts to protect academic freedom in the south are doomed. American Historytellers is sponsored by the Easy Money podcast In 1920, a broke immigrant in Boston became one of America's richest, most infamous men. Practically overnight. He swindled the modern equivalent of a quarter billion dollars and etched his name into history as the mastermin behind one of the most notorious scams ever, the Ponzi Scheme. Hosted by Maya Lau and featuring award winning comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco, this is Easy Money. The Charles Ponzi Story, an Apple Original Podcast produced by ilmedia. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts. American Historytellers is sponsored by Dell Technologies. Upgrade your learning experience during Dell Technologies Back to school event with AI PCs like the Dell 14 plus featuring an Intel Core Ultra processor starting at $749.99. Supercharge your STU studies with features like real time notes, transcription, AI accelerated hardware to run multiple apps without slowing down, extended battery Life, and more. That's the power of new AI PCs with Intel inside. Discover a smarter way to learn@dell.com deals that's Dell.com deals from Wondery I'm Lindsey Graham and this is American Historytellers. Our history your story in March 1926, the Mississippi State legislature passed a law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. Less than a year after the trial of John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, the American Civil Liberties Union tried to sponsor another test case to challenge this law in court, but this time they were unable to find a teacher willing to serve as the defendant. In the aftermath of the Scopes trial, anti evolution efforts failed in the north but gathered widespread support in the south, highlighting a growing Regional divide in attitudes toward science and religion. Here with me now to discuss the significance of the Scopes Trial a hundred years later is Brenda Winapple, author of the bestselling book, Keeping the God, Democracy and the Trial that Riveted a Nation. Brenda Winapple, welcome to American Historytellers.
- [05:48]
Brenda Winapple
Thanks for inviting me.
- [05:50]
Lindsey Graham
So the Scopes Trial took place in 1925, exactly 100 years ago. Why don't you put us in that era, this time in US History? What were some of the big changes happening at the moment?
- [06:00]
Brenda Winapple
The 1920s are usually thought of as the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age. And that seems the time of hilarity. Good times for everyone. But not everyone was having a very good time. And not only were there assassinations, labor stoppages, economic disparity. Not only did women get the vote, was there Prohibition, but there was also a fear in the country, fear of otherness, fear of immigrants, fear of too much unemployment, fear of Bolsheviks, which we would know as Communists. There was a massive rise in violence against black people. The Ku Klux Klan was enormously powerful at this particular time. So that's a very complicated time as well as an exciting one. And the reason I say exciting is in 1925 alone you have the New Yorker, founded, the Great Gatsby, published. This is the time of the Harlem Renaissance. There's a lot that's going on. The cities are crowded and as a result, people think that things are happening much too quickly. I should also mention that it was the end of a brutal slaughter known as World War I.
- [07:22]
Lindsey Graham
And this decade, the 1920s, pretty much began with the Red Summer of 1919, certainly a fearful time. Explain what that was and how it might have influenced the context of the Scopes trial.
- [07:33]
Brenda Winapple
Well, sure, in 1919 alone, there were bomb scares and actually bombs that were exploded. Attorney General M. Palmer, who is famous, comes down to us as the head of the so called Palmer Raids. This was the time of the Red Scare, and people were afraid of Reds, namely Communists. And as a result, there were numbers of socialists and communists and even pacifists who were rounded up and deported. That's something that's going on in the background of the Scopes trial. And in a sense, the Scopes trial is a funnel for all the fear, all the anxiety, the changes, all in a sense, the kind of frenetic hilarity of the decade.
- [08:20]
Lindsey Graham
The Scopes trial centered around a new act of legislation, the Butler act, but it also centered around a new organization, the American Civil Liberties Union. Tell us a little about Roger Baldwin, One of Its co founders.
- [08:32]
Brenda Winapple
Yeah, Roger Baldwin, very interesting man. He was Harvard educated, Boston bred. He had worked in social work. He was also a pacifist who helped pacifists in World War I. He was actually arrested and jailed for his pacifism. He didn't want the United States to partake in the European war. And so what happened was that he helped form something called the National Civil Liberties Bureau. And that morphed or turned into the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, in 1920. And that union then, as now, offered to help anyone who believed constitutional rights had been threatened or violated. So it was only five years old at the time of the Scopes trial.
- [09:20]
Lindsey Graham
And what was the ACLU's goal in challenging the Butler Act?
- [09:24]
Brenda Winapple
The ACLU at this particular time was looking for what they called test cases. And what a test case was was a way to advertise their existence and also let people know that they would help protect civil liberties, whether it was free speech, freedom of the press and assembly, any First Amendment rights. And so they wanted to educate people and they wanted to protect people whose rights had been violated. And as I said, quite a number of people since the red summer, since 1919 and before the war had been enduring violations of civil rights. So when a secretary saw the Butler act, saw what was going on in Tennessee, she alerted Roger Baldwin and said this would probably make a very good test case.
- [10:16]
Lindsey Graham
So let's turn our attention then to the Butler Act. First, what was it about the Butler act that the ACLU objected to, and what was going on in Tennessee that made the legislature there pass it in the first place?
- [10:26]
Brenda Winapple
Well, in the simplest sense, the Butler act, which prevents any public school, whether it's a high school, elementary school, college that's supported by the state, any of those schools that teach evolution, which denies creation as taught in the Bible, that would be prohibited. When the ACLU saw this, they wanted to the test case. Because in Tennessee, this legislation had passed in 1925 partly to placate evangelical members of the legislature. It was known as the Butler act because someone named John Washington Butler, who was a farmer, he ran for office on this single issue of evolution or anti evolution. The governor, a man named Pei, I think that's how you pronounce it, signed the act. But no, no one really thought that it would be enforced.
- [11:22]
Lindsey Graham
So then, as you see it, what was the trial really about then? Was it purely secularism versus religion?
- [11:29]
Brenda Winapple
Well, yes and no. John Washington Butler didn't really understand what evolution was. And I would argue, and I think I'm Right about this, that most people didn't understand what evolution was. They had some notion that it was bad for children. But in that sense, evolution becomes a proxy for other issues that we just talked about that are upsetting to people. The church itself was divided really about whether evolution was compatible with the Bible. Certainly there were liberal clergy in the church as well as fundamentalist clergy. So the issue really isn't secularism versus religion per se, because nobody understood what evolution was and religion really wasn't being attacked.
- [12:25]
Lindsey Graham
I wonder if you could expand on how evolution, a scientific theory presumably based on evidence and facts, could become a proxy for social issues.
- [12:34]
Brenda Winapple
There was so much going on in the 1920s that evolution becomes a kind of lens through which other issues are discussed and debated in a court of law. And as we mentioned, constitutional issues having to do with academic freedom. Who's going to teach the children? Is it going to be experts? Is it going to be religious figures? Who decides what goes on in the classroom? Who decides what goes into textbooks? And in that particular sense, the issue of religion or evolution becomes a wider contest about control, just as prohibition was a wider contest about control. How are you going to legislate what people think, feel, do, who they love, what they read? So you can see that the issues around freedom, censorship, school, the rights of the individual, all become wrapped up in a discussion about science and expertise.
- [13:48]
Lindsey Graham
Now, the epicenter of the Scopes trial was Dayton, Tennessee. And hundreds and hundreds of people descended on this town. The prosecution, defense teams, evangelicals and scientists, the press merchants even selling bibles and monkey themed souvenirs. It was an absolute circus. But I wonder, is this what Dayton wanted?
- [14:06]
Brenda Winapple
Well, in a way, it is what Dayton wanted. They didn't want a circus per se, but they were really glad to have so much controversy coming to their city because in a sense, it sells. This is America after all. And this is an opportunity for the chamber of commerce to bring attention to Dayton, Tennessee. It had previously or was the strawberry capital of the world. Very small town. And the presiding judge of the trial said that he would be happy to have the trial in a stadium. So the people of Dayton, Tennessee were happy to have all of this commotion. It got a little excessive. And in terms of the way the press handled it, the press handled the hubbub or excitement in Tennessee as if it were a carnival and as if it were a freak show, really, in many way. But the people themselves said that they were excited. There were two great orators coming to town, two well known figures, superstars. And they also thought that they would get an education for nothing.
- [15:17]
Lindsey Graham
Leaping ahead I'm curious about the long lasting effects of this trial on Dayton. Certainly it's not a very ordinary way of promoting a small town.
- [15:24]
Brenda Winapple
No, it really isn't an ordinary way of promoting a small town. But I'm not sure that there were lasting effects once the trial was over. The trial barely lasted a week. Everybody left. So in some sense Dayton comes down to us as the center of a kind of circus. I'm not sure that that did the town much good, but on the other hand, it didn't really matter because things went back to the way they had always been.
- [15:58]
C
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- [16:16]
Lindsey Graham
More at applecard.com American Historytellers is sponsored by Mint Mobile. You know what does not belong in your epic summer plan? Getting burned by your old wireless bill. While you're planning beach trips, barbecues and three day weekends, your wireless bill should be the last thing holding you back. With Mint, you can get the coverage and speed you're used to, but for way less money. And for a limited time, Mint mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for $15 a month. So while your friends are sweating over data, overages and surprise charges, you'll be chilling. Literally and financially. I discovered Mint Mobile was perfect for resurrecting an old phone for my daughter because man, kids are expensive enough. So this year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get this new customer offer and your 3 month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com historytellers that's mintmobile.com historytellers upfront payment of $45 required equivalent to $15 a month limited new time customer offer for first 3 months only. Speeds may slow above 35gb on unlimited plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for detail. Let's turn to William Jennings Bryan, lead prosecutor in the trial and a famous politician and orator. He was a Democrat, a progressive, a populist, but he was also a fundamentalist who believed in the literal word of the Bible. What else was he?
- [17:43]
Brenda Winapple
William Jennings Bryan was a three time presidential nominee on the Democratic ticket. He was part of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, fact served in Woodrow Wilson's cabinet when Wilson was President and when Wilson was President and World War I began. Jennings Bryan resigned from the Cabinet because he felt that Wilson wasn't acting neutral enough. At the same time, he was an ardent prohibitionist. He believed that government could and should legislate morality. He felt that he knew what was right. He was a populist in the sense that we understand populism today. He was a newspaper man. He had a newspaper called the Commoner. He was called the Commoner because he seemed to speak for the people. And as you said, he was definitely a fundamentalist. And when I say fundamentalist, the simplest way of understanding that is that he understood that the Bible was the word of God, that the Bible was to be read literally. So whatever the Bible said was absolutely true. And that's very important.
- [19:04]
Lindsey Graham
How was that important for Bryan and his view of Darwinism?
- [19:07]
Brenda Winapple
Well, the interesting thing about Bryan, with his very storied career by 1925, he's in his 60s. He probably isn't going to run for president again, although with Bryan you could never tell. And Bryan understood Darwinism as Social Darwinism and really that was a gross misunderstanding. He really thought Social Darwinism was responsible in many ways for all the ills that the country was facing at the time. And most specifically, he held it responsible for the slaughter in World War I. He felt Darwinism, or what he understood as Social Darwinism, had allowed people, because of their views of technology or their use of technology, had allowed them to create basically such terrible weapons as mustard gas as aerial bombing. And he also believed that Darwinism, which was really social Darwinism for him, was at the base of a kind of laissez faire capitalism and therefore immorality. Because to him, social Darwinism and to many people meant only the survival of the fittest. And the survival of the fittest was a point of view that said only the best, only the most knowledgeable, only the creme de la creme, should be in power. And as the commoner, as a man of the people, Bryan thought this was deeply offensive. So in that sense, that is why he went around the country and was adamant about getting Darwinism or the theory of evolution out of the schools.
- [20:59]
Lindsey Graham
Now, evolution and Darwinism also was contentious within the church, of course, especially the Presbyterian Church. Tell us about the split in the Presbyterian Church and how did Bryan position himself in this fight?
- [21:10]
Brenda Winapple
To Bryan, the liberal clergy, men like Henry Emerson Fosdick in New York City and many others, the liberal clerg who said there was no incompatibility, no difficulty in reconciling science and religion. To Bryan, these kinds of clergy were actually heretics and they threatened the fabric of morality and the nation even more than so called atheists, which he didn't like either. But liberal clergy themselves felt Brian didn't understand what science was. That a theory, perhaps even the theory of gravity, is not guesswork or fiction, but it's a hypothesis that exists in science, backed up, as you mentioned before, by careful facts and experimentation. And in the case of evolution, had been around already for almost 75 years and had not been proved wrong. But Brian felt that not only was social Darwinism, that is Darwin, terrible, but people in the liberal clergy were also risking the church. When he went to Dayton, for example, he said that he was fighting a duel to the death on behalf of Christianity. So he really felt that he was a crusader.
- [22:34]
Lindsey Graham
Do you think that Bryan was ideologically pure in this or was he also a political opportunist?
- [22:40]
Brenda Winapple
It was both. One can be both, actually. And that's what's so interesting about Bryan. He was definitely a political opportunist. Preaching against evolution was definitely a way to garner votes. He had moved from the Midwest to the South. He was in Florida. He was pandering to the segregationists and white supremacists of Florida as a way to retaining his significant power and perhaps get back into the Senate. He was adamant about saying the white race was more advanced than African Americans, that he was glad to be a caucus. It was the best of all possible worlds. And in this particular sense, he was also comfortable with the Ku Klux Klan. He was never a member, which is important to point out. But when the Klan had a kind of hold on the Democratic Party and Southern Democrats in particular, Bryan actually defended them at the Democratic National Convention, 1924, when people wanted to censure and denounce the Klan. And this became a political issue right then he said, no, no, you don't want to give them more credibility. They're just misguided. Which is kind of astonishing in 1924. It's as astonishing then as it is now.
- [24:10]
Lindsey Graham
So what did he think was at stake in the Scopes trial? In summary, I guess.
- [24:14]
Brenda Winapple
Well, Bryan came to Dayton, Tennessee. He had been asked to prosecute Scopes by the World Christian Fundamentalist Association. For him, no doubt that the issues at stake were God and faith. He felt that the universities, the schools were grooming children to become atheists. Atheism was going to destroy America. And he was there to prevent the corruption of young minds. Almost in the same way he wanted to prevent the sale and distribution of alcohol.
- [24:58]
Lindsey Graham
Now, in addition to William Jennings Bryan. There were other very charismatic and influential evangelical speakers, especially on the national scene at the time. People like Amy Semple McPherson and Billy Sunday, who each reached huge numbers of people. Give us an overview of who these people were and how their views aligned with Brian's or perhaps didn't.
- [25:16]
Brenda Winapple
Well, there were two very famous, besides Brian, fundamentalist preachers in the 1920s. Amy Semple McPherson was a very unusual woman. She had a church in Los Angeles. She was self made evangelical healer. She got a car that she called a gospel car. And she went coast to coast. She spoke to audiences of thousands. And she was very well suited to early radio. She actually had her own radio station. She put on remarkable shows. She would have spectacles almost as if they were operatic. She was not a supremacist. She welcomed everyone into the church. But she was adamantly against evolution. She definitely backed William Jennings Bryan. And she had her entire congregation, she said, pray for the outcome of the Scopes trial. That he would be victorious, as she felt he should be.
- [26:22]
Lindsey Graham
And what about Billy?
- [26:24]
Brenda Winapple
Billy Sunday was very different from Imi Semple McPherson. He'd been a pro baseball player, but he became an evangelist. People flocked to hear his fire and brimstone sermons. Where he would get up on stage and he would actually have a fist fight with the devil. So he was another showman. He despised evolution. I'm not sure he understood it either, but it sold tickets. He called it a godforsaken hellboy bastard theory. And Darwin, a rotten old infidel. He spoke in the kind of down home slang. People absolutely loved him. So he was another very unusual person. He actually tried to run for president in 1920. There was no way that was going to happen. But you get a sort of lay of the evangelical land with Amy Semple McPherson, Billy Sunday. And then of course, you have William Jennings Bryan.
- [27:23]
Lindsey Graham
So that gives us a sense of the evangelical star power aligned with William Jennings Bryan against the teaching of evolution. Now, on the defense team in the Scopes trial was another famous lawyer, but an agnostic, Clarence Darrow. He agreed to defend John Scopes. Tell us more about him and what got him to Dayton.
- [27:40]
Brenda Winapple
Clarence Darrow is another very unusual figure. And just the fact of Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan showing up in Dayton is part of the reason that you had almost 200 journalists and camera people and spectators come to Dayton. Because people just wanted to see these two men duke it out. They were both so enormously famous. And Darrow was also controversially famous. He had been a labor lawyer for Many, many years. And he had defended bomb throwers. Actually, he defended pacifists. And Most recently in 1924, he defended too young. Young men. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Who in Chicago, just for the thrill of it, killed teenager Bobby Franks. In a trial itself that riveted the nation. Because they themselves, Leopold and Loeb. Admitted to what they had done. And had no remorse about it. As far as Darrow was concerned, though he knew they were guilty. He thought they were pathological specimens. But he so hated capital punishment. That he took on the case not to acquit them. But to make sure that they didn't get the death penalty. Which they didn't. Which is rather remarkable. He was often characterized as an atheist. But as you say, he was an agnostic. Which meant he was happy that people believed in God. He would believe in God if he could. Or if evidence showed him that there was something. He was called by the journalist Lincoln Stephens, an attorney for the damned. Because he was always fighting for the underdog, for civil rights, for human liberty. One of the things I like about Darrow is he would come to the courtroom every day. And on his lapel he wore a very interesting pin. It said, LL L. He was asked, what does that mean? And he looked up and he said, live and let live.
- [29:45]
Lindsey Graham
Well, as Clarence Darrow saw it, what was the Scopes trial about?
- [29:48]
Brenda Winapple
For him? It was not about religion. It was about democracy. It was about the Constitution. It was about freedom. It was about academic freedom. It was about the freedom to worship. The freedom not to worship. He wanted to take on this trial, which he felt was enormously important. For the sake of American democracy. And because he thought Bryan was a fanatic. And fanaticism in America, he thought was enormously dangerous.
- [30:26]
Lindsey Graham
But Darrow was not the only defense attorney working for Scopes. He had two others. Why do you think Arthur Garfield Hayes and Dudley Field Malone are all so interesting?
- [30:35]
Brenda Winapple
They're both very interesting in the sense that Darrow's team is composed of himself. An agnostic, Arthur Garfield Hayes, who is a secular Jew. He had been associated with the aclu. And he stayed associated with the ACLU for the rest of his life. He had assisted, as Darrow had, in the Sacco and Vincetti de Vense. Two Italian anarchist immigrants accused of robbery and murder, M.A. and he was very smart, very gifted and willing to take on these civil liberties cases. Some of them, he knew they were doomed. But as he would say, always when we lose, we win.
- [31:20]
Lindsey Graham
So what about Dudley Field Malone, the other attorney?
- [31:23]
Brenda Winapple
Dudley Field Malone, from New York also worked in the Wilson administration and he quit when he was he realized Wilson, who had promised to help pass legislation and the amendment giving women the vote, hadn't done it. He married a suffragette, Dora Stevens, who was arrested in front of the White House for picketing. And he was Catholic.
- [31:54]
Lindsey Graham
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- [32:54]
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- [34:00]
Lindsey Graham
So we have some amazing characters and an atmosphere that is designed to be circus like in service of Dayton's economy. What was your favorite part of the trial?
- [34:09]
Brenda Winapple
I think everyone's favorite part of the trial is the spectacular Last day, when Darrow, as a lawyer, does something lawyers do not do, and he puts the lead prosecuting attorney, William Jennings Bryan, on the stand. Not only that, they were outside by this time because there had been so many people in the courtroom that the floor was giving way and the judge was afraid that the whole floor would crash. So they all marched outside. They sat outside in the July heat, you know, in a makeshift witness box, brought. Brian was there and Darrow turned to him and said, do you really believe that God created the universe in six days? And Bryan, he had been hedging and then he said, well, by a day, it's not necessarily a day like we know it could be an era. And everybody hearing this was shocked, was stunned, because what he did when he said it could be an era, he undermined his own position of reading the Bible literally. So he'd been caught in a trap. It was really a trap of his own making.
- [35:22]
Lindsey Graham
So at the conclusion of the trial, how did people talk about who won and who lost?
- [35:27]
Brenda Winapple
Technically speaking, Brian. And the defense won, as everybody would have anticipated, because John Scopes, who taught evolution in his biology class, he had broken the law. The defense wanted to get the issue before the Supreme Court Court. And they tried definitely to do this. They were not able to ultimately. But even though the defense lost the case, Malone called it a victorious defeat. Because in many ways Darrow, who had tried the case in the court of public opinion, he really won public opinion. And Bryan had been, for better or worse, humiliated on the stand and his position made to seem absurd.
- [36:20]
Lindsey Graham
Now this humiliation might seem tragic because the trial ended on July 21 and Bryan died on July 26, only five days later. What impact did his death have so soon after the trial?
- [36:32]
Brenda Winapple
It's interesting and certainly it had a short term impact because burlesques and satirists and newspapers who were ready to lampoon and mock Bryan suddenly held the. They weren't going to do that. Bryan dying so close to the end of the trial. His death was seen by many people, especially the fundamentalists, as a martyrdom that he was felled in the defense just like the son of God. So he at that point was written about in very glowing terms as heroic and sacrificial. The Klan, the Ku Klux Klan of Ohio, actually sent a large cross of red roses to the funeral. But in that particular sense too, although Malone and Hayes and even Darrow said that they were very sorry, there was a black columnist for a well known newspaper who said Negroes have nothing to treasure out of the Life of William Jones Jennings Bryan. And people like Eugene Debs, who had spent many years in jail, jailed for being a pacifist, found the whole idea of Bryan now being glorified as hypocritical and offensive. So it's interesting, and in a way, there's a kind of pathos to the demise, the death of Brian. But I don't think it changed people's opinions, except in a small community all that much.
- [38:11]
Lindsey Graham
Now, as you mentioned, the defense lost this case, and Scopes was found guilty. And the case never made it to the Supreme Court, as the defense and the ACLU had hoped. So why was this case a big deal?
- [38:22]
Brenda Winapple
It was a watershed moment. For one thing, even though the Butler act stayed on the books, it was not enforced. That's the first thing. It wasn't actually repealed into the 1960s, which is a really long time. But legislation that had been pending that was very similar to the Butler Hitler act really went nowhere. So that was really important. The second thing is that, as I said, the fundamentalists lost in the court of public opinion. To think that they were going to then disappear is erroneous because from one point of view, you could argue that they went underground and organized politically.
- [38:59]
Lindsey Graham
And then, after all was said and done, what happened to John Scopes?
- [39:03]
Brenda Winapple
John Scopes. John Scopes never gets talked about. And in fact, that was his own desire. In the 1920s, he would have been a movie star. Someone came to Scopes and said they'd like to make a film about him or that he should write his life story. Scopes did not want the limelight. He wanted to pursue his career. And so that the seven scientists and others who'd come to Dayton to testify and were not allowed to testify, they pooled together funds that enabled Scopes to attend the University of Chicago graduate school. And when he got his degree, he went to work as a geologist in Venezuela for Gulf Oil. He didn't write his memoirs until sometime in the 60s. And he said something in those memoirs I think that's really important, and it gives you, I think, an insight into his position. All during the trial, quiet though he was, he said, liberty is always under threat, and it takes eternal vigilance to make.
- [40:10]
Lindsey Graham
So this year, 2025, is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes trial. What is the legacy of this event, and why should people consider it important today?
- [40:18]
Brenda Winapple
The legacy of this trial is complicated in a way. It was always dismissed, or often dismissed, as a kind of freak show carnival where the Chamber of Commerce in Dayton wanted to sell tickets. But there was much more at stake at the trial. And what's at stake is the nature and the of meaning, meaning of America and what it means to be in America and specifically to live in a democracy which enshrines in its constitution freedom to worship or not worship. That enshrines in its constitution the freedom to think, the freedom to write, the freedom to explore, the freedom to know, the freedom to read and to learn, because these freedoms are always something that must be protected. And I think in conclusion, Clarence Darrow, who was extremely eloquent, is certainly as eloquent as Brian said. You can only be free if I am free.
- [41:25]
Lindsey Graham
Brenda Winapple, thank you so much for talking with me today on American Historytellers.
- [41:29]
Brenda Winapple
Thank you. A pleasure.
- [41:31]
Lindsey Graham
That was my conversation with Brenda Weinapp, author of the bestselling book Keeping the God, Democracy and the Trial that riveted a nation. Available wherever you get your books from. Wondery this is the fourth and final episode of our series of evolution on Trial for American Historytellers. In our next season, we're bringing back a fan favorite, our series on the insurrection of Arabic Aaron Burr. In the wake of his infamous duel with Alexander Hamilton in 1804, Aaron Burr was a wanted man. With his political career in shambles, this disgraced vice president began hatching a plot that would return him to power by any means necessary. He would eventually become the highest ranking American official ever to be charged with treason, leading to a sensational trial that would reshape the political landscape of the young American republic. If you like American Historytellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondery.com survey American Historytellers is hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsey Granford Airship Sound design by Molly Bach Supervising sound designer, Matthew Filler Music by Thrum Additional writing by Ellie Stanton. This episode was produced by Polly Stryker and Aleda Ruzanski. Our senior interview producer is Peter A.R. cooney managing producer, Desi Blaylock. Senior managing producer is Callum Plews Senior producer Andy Herman. Executive producers are Jenny Lauer, Beckman, Marshall, Louie and Erin o'. Flaherty. For wondering.
- [43:25]
D
Hear that? That's the sound of cinnamon toast crunch telling us it's crunch time as we gear up for another year of cereal training camp. Last year, a dynamic brother duo competed and won the right to make their very own cereal. They named it the Kelsky Mix. This summer, the energy is being brought straight from the end zone to the breakfast aisle with three cereal loving wide receivers, Justin Jefferson, Amon R.A. st. Brown and Jamar Chase. You can find these football stars on limited edition cereal boxes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Lucky Charms, Honey Nut Cheerios and Reese's Puff Cereal starting in August. And don't miss out on Justin Jefferson's Jetta's Mix, a fruity fusion of Frosted Lemon Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch Strawberry. For a limited time only, be sure to score them all where every bite tastes like a touchdown.