{"id":143262,"date":"2025-03-19T07:44:42","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T07:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-march-19-2025-scopesstudying-bryan-and-darrow\/"},"modified":"2025-03-19T07:44:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T07:44:42","slug":"americanstudies-march-19-2025-scopesstudying-bryan-and-darrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=143262","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: March 19, 2025: ScopesStudying: Bryan and Darrow"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[100 years
\nago this month, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the Butler
\nAct<\/a>, prohibiting public school teachers from teaching evolution. So
\nthis week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy that law and the famous
\ntrial<\/a> it produced, leading up to a weekend post on current attacks on
\neducators.]<\/p>\n

On two
\nways to contextualize the Scopes trial\u2019s (and one of America\u2019s) most famous
\ndebate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Prominent
\ntrials can frequently morph into something different from and more than their
\nexplicit legal focus, but I\u2019m not sure any trial in American history did so
\nmore clearly than did the Scopes trial (certainly the
\nOJ trial<\/a> is a contender for that title as well). Given that Scopes was recruited
\nto stand trial as I discussed in yesterday\u2019s post, perhaps the trial was always
\ndestined to become focused on much more than just this one teacher\u2019s case or
\neven the Butler Act specifically. But it truly evolved thanks to the involvement
\nof two of the nation\u2019s most famous legal and political figures, on the trial\u2019s
\ntwo respective sides: for the prosecution, \u201cThe
\nGreat Commoner<\/a>\u201d himself William
\nJennings Bryan<\/a>; and for the defense, without question the nation\u2019s most prominent
\nlawyer in the period<\/a>, just a year past his
\ncelebrated closing<\/a> in the trial of Leopold & Loeb, Clarence Darrow. The
\nbattle between the two men and their respective positions on evolution,
\nreligion, and society became the story of the trial, and culminated in Darrow\u2019s
\ntwo-hour questioning<\/a> of Bryan on the courthouse
\nlawn<\/a> (so a larger audience could hear it) on July 20, 1925. <\/span><\/p>\n

The
\nexcellent pieces at those last two hyperlinks tell the story of that debate, and
\nof the two men\u2019s overall involvement in the trial, at length, and I encourage
\nyou to read both of them to learn more about this famous, fraught, and fascinating
\nmoment in American legal and social history. Here I want to offer two different
\nbut interconnected ways to contextualize the Bryan-Darrow showdown. The more
\nobvious, and certainly not an inaccurate one, is that it exemplified a series
\nof ongoing cultural and national clashes in early 20th<\/sup> century
\nAmerica: between the 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> centuries, between a
\nmore traditional and more modern perspective, between rural and urban communities,
\nbetween (most obviously of all I suppose) conservatism and progressivism. The
\nbreakdown of those categories is nowhere near as straightforward or simple as they
\nmight suggest, not in 1925 and not at any other point\u201421st<\/sup> century
\nconservatives have pegged Woodrow
\nWilson as a progressive<\/a> icon, for example; let\u2019s just say I
\nwould strenuously disagree<\/a>\u2014but that doesn\u2019t mean that there aren\u2019t
\nparticularly striking moments of overt conflict between them, and the Bryan-Darrow
\ndebate definitely qualifies as such.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I
\nwould add that the debate also reflected another defining duality, one that is at
\nthe heart of my most
\nrecent book<\/a> and likewise of many of my analyses
\nof our current moment<\/a>: the conflict between mythic and critical
\npatriotisms. It might seem that it was the Bible on which that conflict between
\nthe two men was focused: Bryan had delivered a famous speech in Tennessee not
\nlong before the trial began entitled \u201cIs the Bible True<\/a>?\u201d;
\nand Darrow grilled him at length, and from the general consensus of the audience
\nto great success (as one
\ncommentator put it<\/a>, \u201cAs a man and as a legend, Bryan was destroyed by his
\ntestimony that day\u201d), on many Biblical stories that could not possibly be
\nliterally true. But I believe their respective perspectives also embody mythic
\nand critical patriotism as I\u2019ve tried to defined them over the last few years. At
\none point Bryan answered Darrow, \u201cI do not think about things I don\u2019t think about,\u201d
\nwhich sure captures mythic patriotism\u2019s narrow and exclusionary focus. Whereas
\nDarrow\u2019s probing and critical perspective, expressed throughout this debate and
\nthe trial as a whole, reflects his
\noverarching view<\/a> that \u201cTrue patriotism hates injustice in its own land more
\nthan anywhere else.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Next
\nScopes context tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think? <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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