Smith, James W. Riley, John W. Dagley, and John Bowman. In a sense, both sides won. The jury sided with Bryan, but Darrow managed to bring widespread attention to the theory of evolution.
Fascination with the trial and its central issue continued unabated for decades. Inherit the Wind , a drama based on the trial, premiered on Broadway in It brought new life to the controversy. The film version, starring Spencer Tracy and Frederic March, opened to movie audiences in Four decades after the Scopes Trial, the Tennessee General Assembly repealed the Butler Act, allowing teachers to introduce evolution as legitimate science theory.
Dayton, in Rhea County, quietly returned to normal life once the bible salesmen, protesters, souvenir hawkers, and reporters left. Tourists and curiosity seekers still visit the town in East Tennessee that was the site of a national debate nearly 80 years ago.
The stress of the trial, the excessive heat, and a history of diabetes probably contributed to his death.
Bryan College, a Christian liberal arts school in Dayton, is named in his honor. Clarence Darrow appealed the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court but largely withdrew from public life after the Scopes Trial. He published his autobiography in and died six years later at the age of Scopes, never comfortable in the limelight, left teaching altogether.
He lived to see the Butler Act repealed and died in Joe Mendi, the chimpanzee, disappeared from the record. It is likely that he would have denied relationship to any of the humans involved in the Scopes Monkey Trial.
United States Supreme Court strikes down all remaining state anti- evolution laws as being in violation of the Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights. June 19 — In the case Edwards v. Aguillard, the United States Supreme Court bars the inclusion of creation science in public school curricula as a violation of the Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights. October 22 — Pope John Paul II confirms a previous papal encyclical, Humani generic , stating that the theory of evolution can be compatible with Roman Catholic doctrine, as evolution accounts for physical changes but does not account for the presence of an immortal soul in each human being.
October — A school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, mandates that district science teachers read a statement about intelligent design before beginning any instruction on evolutionary theory. Dover Area School District et. November 7 — The Kansas state board of education issues a statement encouraging public school teachers to challenge the theory of evolution and offer students optional self-study on intelligent design. November 8 — All eight members of the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board that supported the adoption of a policy mandating the reading of a statement about Intelligent Design in high school biology classes lose their seats in school board elections; they are replaced by a slate of candidates who ran on an anti-ID platform.
The plan was for John Scopes, a local high school teacher, to admit to teaching evolution in his classroom.
It worked. Scopes was promptly arrested and put on trial for violating the Butler Act. Bryan, for his part, was both a political and religious figure who was a staunch anti-evolution activist. He eagerly volunteered to prosecute Scopes. In many ways, the trial became a public spectacle as Darrow and Bryan openly criticized each other, Bryan gave speeches about his anti-evolution crusade, and crowds showed up at the courthouse to listen to the trial.
Even though the defense lost the case, the Scopes Trial marked an important moment in the fight for the separation of religion and government. In the next few years following the trial, 22 other states attempted to prohibit the teaching of evolution, but ultimately were blocked in their efforts.
Darrow responded with an unusual trial maneuver that paid off. He called opposing counsel, Bryan, as an expert witness on the Bible and proceeded to publicly humiliate him over the course of days by questioning him on his literal interpretation of the Bible.
Bryan fell into every trap and further undermined his credibility by stating, "I do not think about things I do not think about. The trial lasted only eight days with the jury returning a verdict of guilty in less than nine minutes. The ACLU hoped to use the opportunity as a chance to take the issue all the way to the Supreme Court, but the verdict was reversed by state supreme court on a technicality.
Nonetheless, the ultimate result of the trial was pronounced and far-reaching: the Butler Act was never again enforced and over the next two years, laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution were defeated in 22 states. Americans, for the most part, viewed the religious fundamentalist cause as the loser in the trial and became more cognizant of the need to legally separate the teaching of theology from scientific education; anti-evolution laws became the laughingstock of the country.
The ACLU remained watchful, waiting for a chance to make their case before the Supreme Court with another test of anti-evolution laws.
An opportunity finally arose, more than four decades later, when the ACLU filed an amicus brief on behalf of Susan Epperson, a Zoology teacher in Arkansas, who challenged a state ban on teaching "that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals.
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