John Scopes and the Teaching of Evolution
John Scopes and the Teaching of Evolution In the mid-1920s, many young Americans flaunted long-established Victorian culture. Women were voting, illegal booze was flowing through speakeasies, and art had become abstract. Traditionalists in the South responded with a wave of religious revivalism. Journalists seized upon one particular court trial in Tennessee, for it exemplified this struggle between religious tradition and modernity. Who would win? In the summer of 1925, a high school biology teacher named John Scopes stood trial in Dayton, Tennessee. He was charged with violating the state’s “Butler law”, which forbade teaching the theory of evolution. Scopes’ personal...