The Scopes Trial and Rural America

Summary

History As It Happens: The Scopes Trial and Rural America
Hosted by Martin Di Caro
Release Date: July 18, 2025

---

Introduction

In the episode titled "The Scopes Trial and Rural America," host Martin Di Caro delves into the centennial reflection of the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, drawing parallels between the cultural and political landscapes of 1925 and today. Featuring historian Michael Kazin from Georgetown University, the discussion navigates the enduring urban-rural divide and examines the Democratic Party's shifting influence in rural America.

Historical Background of the Scopes Trial

The Scopes Trial, officially known as State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, took place in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. John Scopes, a 24-year-old biology teacher, was charged with violating the Butler Act, a state law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools. The trial attracted national attention, symbolizing the clash between modern science and traditional Christian beliefs.

Historian Michael Kazin provides context, highlighting that the trial was less about John Scopes himself and more about the broader cultural conflict. As Kazin states, “[The Scopes trial was a] momentous clash between modern science and traditional Christianity” (03:35).

William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow: Central Figures

The trial featured two towering figures: William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate and staunch Christian fundamentalist, who prosecuted Scopes; and Clarence Darrow, a renowned defense attorney and advocate for civil liberties, who defended Scopes.

Kazin notes, “Bryan was very much on the left in American politics” (11:46), emphasizing his progressive stances on labor unions and taxation. In contrast, Darrow was known as “the attorney for the damned” for his defense of socially marginalized individuals.

Media and Cultural Impact of the Trial

The Scopes Trial was a groundbreaking media event, being one of the first trials broadcast on the radio. This unprecedented exposure transformed it into a national spectacle. Kazin remarks, “The trial drew over a hundred reporters, a national radio audience, and became the touchstone for a debate that continues to rage” (05:11).

The trial also inspired Stanley Kramer's 1960 film Inherit the Wind, which dramatizes the events and highlights the performative aspects of the courtroom battles. Di Caro reflects on the film’s portrayal, stating, “No one questioned the guilt of John Scopes… Rather, for eight days at the trial, the two sides battled over the future of the country” (03:35).

Urban-Rural Divide and Political Shifts

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the decline of Democratic support in rural areas. Michael Kazin outlines the trend, noting, “In 1992, Democrats won 51% of the rural vote. By 2016, that number was just 35%” (01:14). This shift is further illustrated by President Biden winning less than 200 rural counties in 2020, approximately 10% of all rural counties.

Kazin attributes this decline to a mismatch in messaging and cultural disconnect. He explains, “There’s a messaging disconnect in Democratic politics with how to talk to rural voters” (01:27), highlighting the party's focus on cosmopolitan issues that may not resonate with rural constituents.

Parallels Between 1925 and Today’s Political Landscape

Drawing parallels between the Scopes Trial era and contemporary politics, Kazin emphasizes that cultural and economic divides have long influenced American political dynamics. He states, “The rural urban split, cultural split, and of course economic split has been with America for a long time” (10:30). This enduring division is evident in the Democratic Party's struggle to regain rural support, much like Bryan’s challenges against urban modernism in 1925.

Diar Coaro adds, “This is not about being an activist. It's about being a pragmatist” (40:51), underscoring the need for the Democratic Party to adopt pragmatic strategies to bridge the cultural gap.

Challenges for the Democratic Party in Connecting with Rural Voters

Kazin discusses the complexities the Democratic Party faces in reconnecting with rural America. He points out that modern cultural issues, such as LGBTQ rights and the teaching of evolution, continue to create friction. “[Democrats] have to figure out a way to respect cultural differences of the voters who they've lost” (37:01).

He further elaborates on the significance of local control over education in the United States, noting, “The American tradition… is for local control, local school boards or state school boards” (01:27). This decentralization makes it challenging for national policies to address diverse local values and beliefs.

Lessons from the Scopes Trial for Modern Politics

The centennial of the Scopes Trial serves as a reflection point for modern political strategists. Kazin suggests that understanding the historical context of cultural wars can inform current Democratic approaches: “Echoes from the trial of the century still resound in American culture and politics a full century later” (06:00).

By revisiting the strategies and outcomes of the Scopes Trial, the Democratic Party can better navigate the cultural divides that influence voter behavior today. As Kazin emphasizes, building a coalition that respects cultural differences while promoting economic and social welfare remains crucial for regaining rural support.

Notable Quotes

• William Jennings Bryan
  “Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.” (34:50)

• Michael Kazin
  “We have also educationally… it's not going to convince [evangelical Christian parents] to that.” (10:30)

• Martin De Caro
  “I love that line. Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.” (34:50)

• William Jennings Bryan
  “Gentlemen, I ask you, what do we care what a bunch of foreigners and city slickers think?” (22:59)

Conclusion

"The Scopes Trial and Rural America" provides a compelling examination of how historical cultural conflicts mirror today's political challenges. By understanding the roots of the urban-rural divide and the evolution of party dynamics, listeners gain valuable insights into the complexities of modern American politics. The episode underscores the importance of bridging cultural gaps and adapting political strategies to resonate with diverse voter bases, ensuring that the lessons of the past inform the path forward.

---

For more in-depth analysis and exclusive content, subscribe to Martin Di Caro’s weekly newsletter @historyasithappens.com or visit his Substack page. Follow "History As It Happens" on Facebook for updates and discussions.

Transcript

[GoDaddy Advertiser]

I say this every election cycle and I'll say it again. The 2024 political field was intense. So don't get left behind in 2025. If you're running for office, the first thing on your to do list should be securing your name on the web with the your name vote domain from GoDaddy.com you'll stand out and make your mark. Don't wait. Get yours today.

[Martin DeCaro]

History as it happens Jul 18, 2020 Five scopes in rural America Biology teacher.

[John Scopes]

John Scopes spiraled to fame in the legal battle that became known as the Monkey Trial.

[William Jennings Bryan]

The trial was held in a circus atmosphere because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.

[Martin DeCaro]

The Monkey Trial, Tennessee vs John Scopes the trial of the century took place 100 years ago and it still fascinates as we grapple with a 20 century urban rural divide and the Democratic Party's irrelevance in much of the country. What can that old battle over teaching evolution teach us about American politics today? That's next with Michael Kazin as we report history as it Happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[Michael Kazin]

In 1992, Democrats won 51% of the rural vote. By 2016, that number was just 35%.

[Martin DeCaro]

2020 President Biden won less than 200 rural counties.

[Michael Kazin]

That's only about 10% of all the.

[Martin DeCaro]

Rural counties in the There's a messaging.

[Michael Kazin]

Disconnect in Democratic politics with how to talk to rural voters. Bill Clinton was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Montana in 1992. Analysis also shows a party that has lost touch with swing voters who will ultimately decide national election.

[Martin DeCaro]

Donald Trump won about two thirds of rural voters. We won with young, we won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated.

[Michael Kazin]

I love the poorly educated look. We're always going to have cultural differences in this country. We have also educated educationally. The American tradition, very different from the tradition in many other countries, is for local control, local school boards or state school boards. There's not a national curriculum the way they have, say, in France or other countries. And the doing away with the Education Department, which is happening as we speak, will make sure that there's hardly any national overview of education. So we're not going to convince evangelical Christian parents that it's fine for their kids to read about LGBTQ couples in a positive way in their schools. It's not going to happen. You know, it's not going to convince them to that. And for even some to teach evolution, though, that is less of an issue now than it was 100 years ago.

[Martin DeCaro]

In July 1925, John Scopes faced a jury in a stifling courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee. A 24 year old teacher, he stood accused of violating the Butler Act, a recently enacted state law that forbade teaching the theory of evolution because it contradicted the Bible. He was convicted, fined $100, and basked in the renown of the case for the rest of his life. That is historian Michael Kazin, writing a guest essay in the New York Times. The trial of the century is a hundred. Its lessons could save the Democrats, says the headline. Silent film footage immortalizes a famous Democrat at that trial. One hundred years ago, William Jennings Bryan, who feared teaching evolution would destroy Christianity in America. This is a pathe newsreel from 1960. Looking back on the trial.

[John Scopes]

In 1925, biology teacher John Scopes spiraled to fame in the legal battle that became known as the Monkey Trial. Whether a man was descended from the monkey or just making a monkey out of man was fought in a courtroom that challenged the truth of the Darwin theory of evolution. The existence of man in the prehistoric.

[Martin DeCaro]

World was that same year, 1960. Moviegoers saw a dramatized, fictionalized portrayal of the Scopes trial, a film I first saw in my high school biology class in the early 1990s. Stanley Kramer's Inherit the Wind with this famous scene. Spencer Tracy playing Scopes, defense attorney. In real life, it was Clarence Darrow grilling Brian, played by Frederick March, on the witness stand.

[William Jennings Bryan]

If what you say actually happened, if Joshua stopped the sun in the sky, the earth stopped spinning on its axis, continents toppled over one another, mountains flew into space, and the earth shriveled to a cinder, crashed into the sun. Now, how come they missed that little tidbit of news? They missed it because it didn't happen. But it had to happen. It must have happened according to natural law. Or don't you believe in natural law? Mr. Brady? Would you ban Copernicus from the classroom along with Charles Darwin? Would you pass a law throwing out all scientific knowledge since Joshua Revelations, period? Natural law was born in the mind of the Heavenly Father. He can change it, cancel it, use it as he pleases. It constantly amazes me that you apostles of science, for all your supposed wisdom, failed to grasp this simple fact.

[Martin DeCaro]

Now, wait a second. The defense attorneys call the prosecutor as a witness. Yes, that actually happened. It is not an invention in the movie. And I'll share a link to the trial transcripts in my weekly newsletter. You can sign [e-mail] it was a show trial. A performance featuring two giants in American society, one arguing for the truth of evolution, the other defending biblical tradition. No one questioned the guilt of John Scopes. He taught evolution in a public school, violating a Tennessee law. Rather, for eight days at the trial, the two sides battled over the future of the country. Really, as Kazin wrote in his 2006 biography of William Jennings Bryan, a godly hero. The trial drew over a hundred reporters, a national radio audience, and became the touchstone for a debate that continues to rage. As Bryan commented at the end of the eight day event, here has been fought out a little case of little consequence as a case, but the world is interested because it raises an issue and that issue will someday be settled right, whether it is settled on our side or the other side. Was Brian right? Has that issue been settled? Or was the teaching of evolution part of a larger cultural war that is still raging today about different issues, controversial topics that might be brought up in a public school classroom? More recently in that Times op ed, Kazin says echoes from the trial of the century still resound in American culture and politics a full century later. The Scopes trial was a momentous clash between modern science and traditional Christianity. Broadcast on the radio, it exposed the horror many urban liberals felt toward people they deemed dogmatic and uneducated. H.L. mencken, an eloquent if arrogant critic of unrefined America, attended the trial and hissed to his many readers that Bryan was deluded by a childish theology full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning and was a peasant come home to the barnyard a hundred years on, says Kazin, many voters in rural areas still feel the cosmopolitan politicians and advisors who run the Democratic Party look down on them because those voters have an outsized influence on the makeup of the Senate. Democrats will have to reckon with that perception, accurate or not, if they hope to dominate American politics again. Michael Kazin is a distinguished historian at Georgetown University, an expert on American political and social movements, the author of the aforementioned A Godly the Life of William Jennings Bryan and, more recently, what It Took to Win A History of the Democratic Party. Our conversation next History is defined by.

[GoDaddy Advertiser]

The names that stand the test of time. Names that inspire, unite, and lead. Now it's your turn to create a lasting legacy with a dot vote domain. Whether you're running for office, driving change, or rallying support, a dot Vote domain ensures your name is as memorable as those in the history books. Visit GoDaddy.com, type in your name, dot vote and secure a Web address that stands out. Claim Your place in history with Dot.

[Michael Kazin]

Vote.

[Martin DeCaro]

Michael Kazin. Welcome back.

[Michael Kazin]

Great to be here. Martin.

[Martin DeCaro]

Are you ready for some of that old time religion?

[Michael Kazin]

Feel free to keep singing. That's fine.

[William Jennings Bryan]

Yeah.

[Martin DeCaro]

No, no. I talk for a living. I do not.

[Michael Kazin]

It's good enough for me.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yes. If it's good enough for Kazin, it's good enough for. You know, that song is stuck in my head because I watched the movie last night to help prepare for this conversation. Inherit the wind, 1960. Stanley Kramer had a great cast. That's one of my reference points for this historical conversation. A movie, a fictional representation of the trial. Although I think the movie was pretty good. We'll get to that in a moment. What was going on in the Southern United States circa 1925? We're talking 100 years since the Scopes Monkey trial. Why was there this wave of Christian revivalism in this part of the country?

[Michael Kazin]

Well, Christian revivalism was hardly just a southern thing. Americans had had what were called Great awakenings in the 18th century, before the Revolution in the 1820s and 1830s. Those Great Awakenings often had actually spurred more reform minded politics. A lot of abolitionists had been to Great Awakenings and believe God was commanding them to do away with the curse of slavery. But 1920s, there was a culture war between urban cosmopolitan Americans who opposed Prohibition, supported the teaching of evolution, which was the Scopes trial was about, and also generally who looked down on people from rural areas as hicks, as uneducated, and people in those rural areas who were still close to majority of Americans at the time were really, I should say mistrustful of people in the big cities, people who'd been to college, people who believed the world, people believed were contemptuous of those who did the real work of society, the farmers, the craftsmen in small towns. So as often happened, the culture war. The culture war was also to a degree, a class war, at least between middle and upper class people in the cities, more educated people in the cities and more working class people and small farmers in the rural areas.

[Martin DeCaro]

So you were just saying that urban cosmopolitans looking down on rural folk in 1925, or did you mean 2020?

[Michael Kazin]

Works in both. In both areas. In both areas. And the rural urban split, cultural split, and of course economic split has been with America for a long time and other countries have it too. So it's not unusual. What was interesting about the 1920s was it was a many sided culture clash. And evolution, the teaching of evolution became an important flashpoint in that clash. But it wasn't the only one I mean, Prohibition was a law of the land and most rural Protestants were all in favor of it. Most urban people, especially urban Catholics and Jews, are very much opposed to it.

[Martin DeCaro]

You wrote this excellent piece for the New York Times, an op ed, or they call it a guest essay now about the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey trial and the problem that Democrats today have with rural Americans. You do not overdraw the parallels. Something that's interesting about revisiting politics from past eras is that it throws our entire sense of right, left, Democrat, Republican up in the air. Right, because the politics was so much different then. William Jennings Bryan, who is the prosecutor in the Scopes trial, he had run for president three times as a Democrat. He was a Christian fundamentalist, but he also was a progressive too. Right? I mean, our modern day definitions don't really fit these characters from a century ago.

[Michael Kazin]

No, it's true. It's just as a lot of abolitionists were evangelical Protestants 100 years before. So in 1825, Bryan was very much on the left in American politics. He was in favor of labor unions, which were under attack in the 1920s. He was in favor of a more progressive income tax. He was in favor of strong antitrust prosecutions against big corporations that were monopolies in some ways. He was also said this has had a modern wing. He was opposed to private contributions, political campaigns. He wanted the taxpayers to pay the cost of political campaigns to get the money out of politics. And so he was a figure who had, from the 1890s onward, defended what he saw as the interests of working people and especially of agrarian people who he thought were not just looked down upon by people in the big cities, but also were exploited economically by the big corporations, by the commodities markets, by the big banks.

[Martin DeCaro]

He said he was pro union. He was not a socialist. The populists in this country, the People's Party, were not socialists, but they talked a lot about the producing class. You mentioned it before. The people who are doing the real work versus well today they would be called the Wall Street Barons that actually don't produce anything except enormous amounts of wealth for themselves, right through all their financial instrumentation, et cetera. There was an entire political platform that's really not around anymore today. Silver coins, things like that.

[Michael Kazin]

Yeah, the populists were a radical party in many ways. They wanted to supplant one of the two major parties. They thought they had a chance to in the 1890et. In the end, they got absorbed, most of them within the Democratic Party. In 96, Brian Republic President the first time and the People's Party supported him. It was a fusion between this third party and the Democrats. But the populace went beyond what the Democrats wanted to do. They just thought they didn't want to hand the election to the Republicans by running a separate ticket in that year. But they were for things like nationalization of the railroads, which has never happened in this country, even though, you know, Amtrak is semi nationalized, I guess. And also they were very much in favor of doing away with the control of financiers over the economy. So they were a really important group. And many populists voted for Brian because they saw him as better than the Republicans. It was sort of a lesser evil situation. And by absorbing the populace into the Democratic Party, the Democrats basically did away with the populist threat.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right.

[Michael Kazin]

The populace hung around till 1908, but they basically were. After 1896 they were no longer a factor in state or national politics.

[Martin DeCaro]

Bryan was a capital D Democrat. You mentioned the fusion ticket with the populists or the People's Party in 1896. So he ran for president three times as a Democrat. 1896, 1900, lost to McKinley twice. McKinley was assassinated shortly after winning his second term. And then he returns to run for President duz Bryan in 1908 where he loses to Taft. So by 1925 he's 65 years old and he's past his prime, but he's still a well known figure. And he shows up in Dayton, Tennessee, which had a population of 1800, as part of the prosecution team against a fellow by the name of John Scopes who was arrested for teaching evolution in a public school classroom, undoubtedly a segregated school. I tried to find what the black population was in Dayton, Tennessee in, in 1925.

[Michael Kazin]

Very small. I think it was about 100.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. And in the movie Inherit the Wind, you don't see a single black face? I don't think so. There's no reference at all to segregation or Jim Crow or anything like that in the film. So why was Scopes arrested? The movie doesn't really get into this other than that he was teaching evolution. And these stern faced police officers and mayors or whoever it was, comes into the classroom and they haul him off. Right. This was actually a setup of a kind of as a test case. And also some businessmen wanted to bring attention to Dayton, Tennessee.

[Michael Kazin]

Yeah, well, the movie, it's a fine movie, entertaining. And you know Spencer Tracy, great actor.

[William Jennings Bryan]

Now tell me, Mr. Sellers, while your wife has been taking care of the religion for the family, have you ever heard of a fellow called Charles Darwin? Oh, not till recent. Well, tell me something. From what you've heard of this fellow Darwin, you think he's the kind of a man you might invite up for Sunday dinner? Your Honor, my worthy opponent from Chicago is cluttering up the issue with hypothetical questions. I have already established that Mr. Sillers is not working very hard at religion. Now, for your sake, I'm trying to establish that he is not working at evolution. Oh, I'm just working at the feed store.

[Michael Kazin]

But it's not a documentary. Not meant to be. A lot of problems with it made in 1960. In many ways it was. Kramer and other people who made it were trying to make an allegory with McCarthy era, opposing those who wanted to squelch free speech, which, of course, the arrest of a teacher for teaching science was a form of squelching free speech. But what happened in 1825? First of all, there was a law passed in the Tennessee legislature a year before, put up by a guy named John Butler, who was a rural assemblyman, who was a Democrat, big supporter of Bryan, which said that you could not teach any theory, which said that human beings were evolved from a lower species. And Scopes, who was actually hired more to coach the high school football team in Dayton than he was to teach biology, did teach the theory of evolution on a given day. Everyone knew that because this was a controversial law in the Butler act, that some town in Tennessee would be the scene of a test case for this law. And Dayton was suffering hard times economically. They had some mines nearby which had not made a profit. There was fairly high unemployment in the town. So the city fathers got together in a local drugstore one day and said, how are we going to get this trial here? It'll bring a lot of people. It'll fill the coffers of the merchants in the town. How are we going to do this? Well, the story goes, John Scopes was shopping in this drugstore that very day. And one of the town fathers looked over to John, who was well known in a small town, pretty much everyone knew everybody and said, john, you teach biology, right? And Scopes said, yeah, yeah, I do. I do. And so they asked him if he taught a textbook called the Civic Biology, which is a leading textbook of biology in the country at the time, which included the theory of evolution in it. And Scopes said, yeah, I did. I taught that book. And so there was a plan afoot which was successful to bring the trial to Dayton.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, so was Scopes. Scopes A man of principle, or he's just going along with this.

[Michael Kazin]

And actually his parents were socialists. His father was a socialist, himself was an agnostic. But he was. He agreed to do this because it.

[Martin DeCaro]

Was good for the town, like a publicity stunt.

[Michael Kazin]

He knew it probably make him famous, which it did. He sort of didn't have to buy another meal in big cities for the rest of his life because the movie.

[Martin DeCaro]

Makes him out like a political prisoner of a sort.

[Michael Kazin]

He was never in jail, not for a minute. And the trial, actually the defense was funded almost entirely by the American Civil Liberties Union, which was then a fairly new organization, had just been founded in 1920. And Clarence Darrow, who we'll talk about, I'm sure, who was the main lawyer for the defense, was a very famous lawyer, as famous in his own right as William James Bryan was. And he agreed to serve for very little money actually, because he so believed in separating science from religion.

[Martin DeCaro]

This is so interesting.

[Michael Kazin]

The law did not do.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yes, it's so interesting because the movie is a dramatization, a fictional performance, right, that's based, you know, there's some truth in there, but yeah, they take a lot of liberties. But the trial itself was a performance when you think about it, right? He was guilty. He violated this state law. John Washington Butler, as you said, became a state representative in 1922. It was two years later after William Jennings Bryan visited Nashville he called the center of modernism in the South. He was there to denounce the theory of evolution before Butler and his colleagues. So Butler decides then to craft this legislation. Here's some of the language. It is unlawful for any teacher in state supported schools to teach any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals. Teachers who violated the law were subject to a maximum fine of 500 bucks. So the law is on the books. It's pretty open and shut case, but the trial lasts eight days. And Michael Kaysin, it does attract enormous amount of attention and visitors and these celebrity attorneys to Dayton. So in a sense it was a, you know, as the dawn of radio. In the movie you see a Chicago radio station setting up a microphone in the courtroom.

[Michael Kazin]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Harry Esterbrook speaking to you from the courthouse here in Hillsborough where the jury has just.

[John Scopes]

Returned to render its verdict in the.

[Michael Kazin]

Historic Hillsborough monkey trial case. The judge has taken the bench.

[Martin DeCaro]

This was a big deal, right? There was a lot of attention paid to this.

[Michael Kazin]

Oh yeah, it was front Page news throughout the trial in most newspapers around the country.

[Martin DeCaro]

Why is that? Because of that culture war.

[Michael Kazin]

First of all, because this was fundamentalist Christians. People who believe in the literal truth of the Bible felt themselves on the defensive. They felt that in high schools and of course, in colleges, the theory of evolution was being taught. They believed that children would lose their faith. They connected their faith to morality. They believed children would grow up to be brutes. Brian actually wrote a book of his sermons against evolution entitled Brother versus Brute Christianity. The religion of brotherhood, Darwinism, according to him, was the science of brutes, animals dominating other animals. And that was part of it also, as now, the celebrity status of the two leading lawyers, lawyers on both sides. Darrow was a famous lawyer. He defended the socialist Eugene debs in the 1890s. He defended leaders of the IWW, Industrial Workers of the World on trial for allegedly murdering a governor in 1906. He was a. A noted attorney for the damned. It was his nickname. Free radicals and non conformists of various kinds. And so he was a natural on that side also. The two of them were old friends actually in the 1890s when both of them were populist Democrats. Darrow actually had supported Brian and run for Congress on a sort of pro Brian ticket from Chicago. So they're old friends. And that was great for reporters, right, to write about these two men. And also, as you say, this was the first trial, I believe maybe I'm wrong, but the first trial, I believe that was actually broadcast on the radio. And radio was a very new medium at the time. The first political convention that was broadcast on the radio had just been a year before 1924. Democratic convention. This was also a novelty. Most Americans didn't have radios, but they knew that if it was on the radio, this new technology, this must be a big deal.

[Martin DeCaro]

The country was modernizing, so this has often been called a battle between traditionalists who feel their way of life is being mocked and phased out, or that they are losing control of what their kids are learning in school as echoes for today. And you touch on this in your op ed in the New York Times. I'll make sure I share a link to that op ed in my weekly newsletter for everybody who is listening. We're talking here about the attitudes of some Americans towards others. There's a line in the movie at the beginning when you know the trial is making headlines. Somebody says, what do I care if some cosmopolitan is mocking us? Down here in Hillsborough, the name of the town of the movie was Hillsboro, not Dayton.

[William Jennings Bryan]

Gentlemen, I ask you, what do we care what a bunch of foreigners and city slickers think? Frank, you ever had a Frenchman staying at your hotel?

[Martin DeCaro]

Now look, you're missing.

[William Jennings Bryan]

And how long since you sold a pound of grits to some smart aleck from New York?

[Martin DeCaro]

You know, I guess it was very disorienting for people in the age of the airplane and the Jazz Age and the radio. New forms of technology, new forms of communication and travel. So it could be very disorienting for people who have a more traditional way of life. I mean, am I oversimplifying things here?

[Michael Kazin]

No, no, that's certainly true. Americans are just beginning to get to buy automobiles, you know, in large numbers then, as well as having radios. And also, the US had just been in this war, the Great war, World War I world men had been over to France and fought, come back and talked about a world that, you know, most people they knew had not seen. Also remember that most Americans at the time were very deeply believing Christians. Not all of them were Protestants, a lot of them Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, other Christian faiths. They did tend to believe that, well, the Bible was there. It was the only book that many Protestants actually had in their houses. Working class people especially. So if the Bible isn't true, well, maybe everything else we're taught isn't true either. And so the Rock of Ages was. Was hard to dislodge in people's, in people's minds, you can pardon a mixed metaphor there. At the same time, Bryan had not won election, right? He lost all three times. He had always done badly in most big cities. And so he was the representative of a anti modernist group which was probably a minority in the country at this time because more and more people were moving to the cities. Most immigrants in the country, even if they were deeply believing Christians, were suspicious of groups of the Ku Klux Klan, which was in its heyday at the time too, not forget that. And the Klan, by the way, was a big supporter of Bryan's in the mid-1920s. Big supporter of the Butler act, big supporter of basically driving out of American life, out of American culture, anyone who didn't support fundamentalist reading of the Bible. So that's part of the mix as well.

[Martin DeCaro]

Now, evolution was not a new idea here. You mentioned the textbook before. So in the film, Spencer Tracy, whose fictitious name is Henry Drummond, not Clarence Darrow, he's got a copy of Darwin, holding it up in the courtroom as if this was the book that Scopes was teaching out of. It wasn't. You mentioned the textbook Actually had a chapter about eugenics. So, you know, it's very easy from our vantage today to just dismiss these people for their ignorance. You know, not believing in evolution, in my view, is a form of ignorance. The earth was not created in seven days by God. I apologize to any fundamentalist Christians who might be listening, but there was a moral aspect to this. You touched on it before. It's a dehumanizing idea. If people now no longer believe that everyone is a child of God's creation. Right. Then what are we gonna be capable of? And there was a eugenics angle to all of this.

[Michael Kazin]

The late, great scientist Stephen Jay Gould first wrote about this. I learned about it from him that the textbook from which Scopes was teaching that day was a book entitled A Civic Biology. It was the most widely used textbook in high schools. Biology textbook used in the country at that time, written by a high school teacher from New York City. If you don't mind, let me read you a little bit from my biography of Brian about the book. Sure. The civic in the title of the text was no accident. Hunter believed the same principles of breeding that produced healthier, stronger horses could and should improve what he called the future generations of men and women on the earth. He described two families that were plagued for generations by, quote, immorality and feeblemindedness. People like these, wrote Hunter, quote, are true parasites. If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. But all we can do with degenerate humans, he wrote, is to put them in asylums. They'll have no contact with the opposite sex. So Brian knew about this chapter. He didn't actually mention it in trial. He probably should have. He was aware that eugenics was a popular application of evolution of science by some scientists at the time. This is one of the reasons why, for him, Darwinism was actually social Darwinism. It was a way of improving the human species by weeding out those that elite scientists believed were not worthy of life because they weren't smart enough, they had diseases they would pass on to their children, and so forth. And Supreme Court actually ruled on a case like this around the same time of a woman who'd been sterilized because she had a very low IQ. And the great liberal justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Said in his argument for the sterilization, upholding the sterilization of this woman, he said, one generation of imbeciles is enough.

[Martin DeCaro]

I was going to bring up the term imbeciles.

[Michael Kazin]

So. So this was part of the indictment. The Moral indictment against the teaching of Darwinism that Bryan and his fellow attorneys in the Scopes trial felt they were prosecuting the idea that Darwinism, again, was an immoral philosophy. They were less interested in it as science, to be honest, than as a philosophy.

[Martin DeCaro]

And Brian was familiar with these ideas. In the film, he's played by Frederick March and his name is Matthew Harrison Brady, not William Jennings. Brya. I wonder why they use fictitious names in this 1960 movie.

[Michael Kazin]

But anyway, I think because they want to make clear this was not a documentary. They want to protect themselves. You know, people knew.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. The part of the screenplay is based on the trial transcripts. Not word for word, but close enough. I will actually share some links to the trial transcripts and different parts of the movie that you can find on YouTube so people can compare them in my weekly newsletter. William Jennings Bryan was no dummy. He is depicted as kind of a. A Bible beating bunko artist is how Gene Kelly, the actor, describes him at the end of the film.

[William Jennings Bryan]

You know what he was, that Bible beating bunco artist. A giant once lived in that body. But Matt Brady got lost because he looked for God too high up and too far away. You hypocrite, you.

[Martin DeCaro]

You fraud.

[William Jennings Bryan]

The atheist who believes in God, H.L.

[Martin DeCaro]

Mencken. Brian understood these ideas. He believed they contravene Christian ethics. He was familiar with Darwin in the film. He says he had never read, what was it? The Descent of Man or whatever. Darwin. Here I am embarrassing myself not knowing the name of Darwin's Origin of the Species. Origins of the Species. Yeah. Not the Descent of Man.

[Michael Kazin]

He wrote that too. He wrote that too.

[Martin DeCaro]

Okay, there I wasn't completely wrong. All right, so the trial itself, this took on like a. Theatrical speeches and everything, right.

[Michael Kazin]

Everyone knew this was a show trial. That Scopes would almost surely be found guilty because he had broken the law. The point, of course, on both sides was to make this a trial about the ideas. The trial about the ideas of evolution on one side and about the ideas of Christians defending morality on the other side. Not to go into great detail about it, but Darrow set up a whole bunch of scientists who would have given lectures to the jury and of course on the radio and to reporters about. About evolution. But the judge only allowed one of those. And it was not part of the official trial record, at least originally. So it was frustrating for Darrow and it was frustrating for Brian too. So the most dramatic thing that happened in the trial, and I think this is dramatized pretty well, I think in the movie, as I remember Darrow Decided he wanted to cross examine Brian, the prosecutor, one lawyer in the trial, the lead attorney for the defense, to cross examine the lead prosecutor in the case. But both of them were game because, again, they were public figures. They were there to defend a point of view, a philosophy about science and about religion, about the teaching which you could teach in public schools. One of the last days of the trial, there was a cross examination by Darrow of Bryan. This took place, by the way, outside, because it was so hot in Dayton in July 1925 as it's, I'm sure, just as hot today, 100 years later. So many people wanted to hear it. They built an actual stand and jury place for the jury to sit and take place for the judge to sit outside with a bunch of chairs outside on the lawn of the courthouse. There was a. A long cross examination by Darrow o', Brien, which is very embarrassing. O', Brien, let me just read you just a couple of the questions. Yeah.

[Martin DeCaro]

He tries to. Tries to make William Jennings Bryan look, well, dopey or trying to undermine the authority of the Bible. Was Clarence Darrow some of these fables?

[Michael Kazin]

Yes. And he began this way. You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Brian, says Darrow. Yes, sir, I have tried to. So for two hours, Darrow kept Brian on edge with a lot of short questions which Brian clearly hadn't thought about as seriously as he should have. For example, Darrow asked him, do you believe a whale swallowed Jonah? Do you believe Joshua made the sun stand still? Do you take the story of the flood to be a literal interpretation? Do you think the Earth was made in six days? Well, Brian knew that explaining all this was very difficult. So he said, well, maybe the whale was actually a large fish, not actually a whale. He knew enough science. He knew that stopping the rotation of the earth might be very difficult. And he actually believed that the seven days was probably. Each day was really an eon of time, several thousand years of time, not just an actual day as people knew it on earth. But in other words, he sputtered, did Brian. He didn't seem like the powerful order that he'd been throughout his political career. In the end, they started shouting at each other, and Brian stepped down from the stand. So it was an embarrassment for Brian. It was an embarrassment for the fundamentalist movement as well, because their great champion had looked foolish, as if he wasn't as educated about the Bible and about science as he said that he was.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. And the point being, this is what you want to teach the next generation of children. They'll grow up to be ignorant. People say that. Yeah. The earth is. Was made in seven days, well before the sun was created. How long was a day? Was it 24 hours? Or could it be 24 million years?

[William Jennings Bryan]

That first day, what do you think it was? 24 hours long? Bible says it was a day. Well, it was no sun. How do you know how long it was? The Bible says it was a day. What was it? A normal day, a literal day, 24 hour day? I don't know. What do you think? I do not think about things I do not think about. Do you ever think about things that you do think about? Isn't it possible that it could have been 25 hours? There's no way to measure it, no way to tell. Could it have been 25 hours? It is possible. Then you interpret that the first day as recorded in the book of Genesis, could have been a day of indeterminate length. I mean, to state that it is not necessarily a 24 hour day. It could have been 30 hours, could have been a week, could have been a month, could have been a year, could have been a hundred years, or it could have been 10 million years. I protest. This is not only irrelevant, immaterial, it is illegal.

[Martin DeCaro]

I do not think about things I don't think about.

[Michael Kazin]

And that's an actual, actual quotation from the, from the transcript.

[Martin DeCaro]

And then Clarence Darrow, do you ever.

[William Jennings Bryan]

Think about things that you do think about?

[Martin DeCaro]

You came up here saying you're an expert on the Bible and you can't answer any of these questions.

[Michael Kazin]

Brian says sometimes.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, sometimes. I actually want to play you a clip of my favorite scene. This is very much about McCarthyism, as you mentioned early, early in our conversation. Here it is.

[William Jennings Bryan]

Can't you understand that if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools. And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers and then you may turn Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding.

[Martin DeCaro]

I love that line. Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding. This is a good time to transition and start wrapping up to the point you wanted to make in your New York Times op ed about the scopes trial at 100 and the problems Democrats as a party, a national party, are having today, connecting with rural people who are squarely in the Republican corner. Michael Kazin, William Jennings Bryan had written a speech that he wanted to deliver at the trial and he was never able to do it. I have it here. This has echoes to an issue we're dealing with today, and that is the right of the state, in this case Tennessee, to control public schools, or the right of the people to control what their kids are being taught in public schools. So the speech was published later and actually William Jennings Bryan died shortly after the trial.

[Michael Kazin]

Five days later.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. Five days later he dies in the movie, in the courtroom, a very dramatic scene. Yeah, that never happened. But he says here, here's the speech was published. The right of the state to control the public schools is affirmed in the recent decision in the Oregon case, which declares the state can direct what shall be taught and also forbid the teaching of anything manifestly inimical to the public welfare. The above decision goes even farther and declares that the parent not only has the right to guard the religious welfare of the child, but is in duty bound to guard it. That decision fits this case exactly. The state had a right to pass this law, meaning the law outlawing the teaching of evolution. And the law represents the determination of the parents to guard the religious welfare of their children. So here's my question. Finally, Michael Kazin, about the conundrum the Democrats are facing today. In my view, parents, of course, should have a say in their children's education, but they shouldn't be dictating curriculum. Which parents are we talking about? They're not professional educators. They're not mathematicians, they're not scientists. Right. That's why we have schools. We teach evolution because evolution is true. But at the same time, I think the point you're making is Democrats have to figure out a way to respect cultural differences of the voters who they've lost.

[Michael Kazin]

Yes, that's my point. To respect those cultural differences and to appeal to those voters in ways that most Democrats agree with, which are primarily economic, social welfare programs which create jobs and make sure people will have their Medicare, Medicaid, which the Republican Congress is. The big beautiful bill it recently passed is trying to trim away for a lot of people. Look, we'll go. Is going to have cultural differences in this country. We have also educationally, the American tradition, very different from the tradition in many other countries, is for local control, local school boards or state school boards. There's not a national curriculum the way they have, say in France or other countries. And the doing Away with the Education Department, which is happening as we speak, will make sure that there's hardly any national overview of education. So we're not going to convince evangelical Christian parents that it's fine for their kids to read about LGBTQ couples in a positive way in their schools? It's not going to happen. You know, it's not going to convince them to that. And for even some to teach evolution, though, that is less of an issue now than it was 100 years ago.

[Martin DeCaro]

The issues are different today, but it's the same principle, I guess.

[Michael Kazin]

Yeah, but I think Brian did, as I mentioned before, he was a progressive populist. He denounced corporate power, he denounced big financiers, he supported the interest of small farmers and workers, and was in favor of higher taxation on the rich. Polls show those are very popular issues among a lot of rural Americans, including a lot of people who vote for Trump as well as among Democrats. So it's not going to be easy, as I mentioned in this piece in the Times, to bridge that culture gap between cosmopolitan Democrats who control the party and rural people who've been voting Republican in large numbers for several years now. It doesn't mean you can't win back their votes. 1930s, as I mentioned, the New Deal was a coalition between many of the people voted for Brian. Many people believe literal truth of the Bible and cosmopolitan liberals, and it dominated American politics for several decades.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, I was going to ask you, what has changed? I know it's a huge question, but Democrats used to be a big tent party.

[Michael Kazin]

Well, they still try to be. It's not as if Democrats want to write off rural people, but there's a difference between how Democrats come across, the perception, and how they would like to come across. In part because, you know, movements which many ways took off in the 1960s, early 1970s, which I was a part of when I was a college student, movements against the Vietnam War for rights of black people and Hispanics, feminism for gay rights, for transgender rights. You know, these movements have. Have made certain gains, I think. But clearly a lot of conservative people in rural areas and elsewhere as well, are unhappy with at least how those movements have changed American culture.

[Martin DeCaro]

Maybe there's been some leftist overreach that rubs.

[Michael Kazin]

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, look, a social movement is not a party. And if the party is associated with social movements too much, which are pushing demands which only minority people support, that party will probably lose its dominant position in politics. Look, Republicans might be facing the same problem, you know, if they are controlled by by the MAGA movement, which believes Jeffrey Epstein is the center of all of all evil in American society. They could be seen to be rather kooky by a lot of Americans as well. So the Republicans have an analogous problem, I think, with aspects of the MAGA movement that the Democrats have with aspects of, let's say, the transgender rights movement, partially environmental movement, which of course want to do away with fossil fuels altogether when most Americans obviously get their energy from fossil fuels still. So Democratic Party exists, any political party exists in Democratic society to win elections. If you want to win elections, then you have to figure out how to build a coalition of people who don't agree on everything, but agree on enough fundamental proposals and policies and ideas that they can coalesce enough to get majority votes.

[Martin DeCaro]

This is not about being an activist. It's about being a pragmatist. And you say this as a liberal Democrat. Capital D and lowercase D. Make sure you say your prayers. Actually, make sure you sign up for my newsletter@history as it happens.com or just go to Substack and search for History As It Happens. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. My newsletter free every Friday. And we're on Facebook now. History as it Happens.

[Michael Kazin]

Sam Sat.