The Context And Background Of The Scopes Monkey Trial

John Thomas Scopes was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925 for violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools. According to http://www.biography.com/people/john-scopes-17183774 he is most known as the teacher that broke the law of teaching evolution in his classroom. He didn’t want to change his ways and he got into trouble for it. That A high school science teacher, John Scopes found himself at the center of one of the 20th century's most famous court battles. He served as the defendant in a case meant to challenge a state law against teaching Charles Darwin's theories of evolution in public schools.

§§ 17:286.1-17:286.7 (West 1982), is facially invalid [p581] as violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. ”(Edwards v. Aguillard) The ruling helped many people by deciding several things at the same time. It helped solidify that the States cannot pass a law requiring the teaching of creationism or other religious text that the main purpose is to restrict the teachings of evolution. It also helped by using the lemon test, which wasn’t decided too long before this case, become a more accepted as a way to determine if a law was unconstitutional.

The last argument that made me not want to vote to convict John Scopes is the argument he made that religion has caused people to have different opinions. But some things should be between an individual , his maker or his God. Darrow says that the constitutional convention should leave the questions of religion between man and what he worships. Questions of religion shouldn’t be brought into the classrooms of

It was the roaring twenties! Money was being made and people were enjoying life. All was well in the United States, including Dayton, Tennessee. It was smooth sailing in the volunteer state until July 21, 1925 when John Scopes, a substitute teacher, was convicted of illegally teaching his high school students the idea of evolution. This sparked up a huge controversy between modern science and religious beliefs.

This really brought the trial to mainstream attention. ”A carnival atmosphere was about Dayton at the time of the trial” (Best of History Sites: Scopes Trial). Dayton saw the trial as a way to attract tourism and it worked outstandingly well for them. Eventually Scopes would lose the trial and be fined about 100 dollars, equivalent to about 1500 dollars in 2015, for teaching evolution. Scopes would later admit to not fully remembering if he even taught evolution, he just wanted to contribute to the attention.

The United States of America in the 1920s was a period of debate, of shifting values and changing social structures, and was, above anything else, a battleground of clashing ideologies that ultimately boiled down and exploded within the Scopes Trial of 1925. The Scopes Trial was not in any way, shape, or form primarily a conflict of simply one issue alone. Instead, the Scopes Trial was the height of the tensions that emerged within America during the infamous Roaring 20s, and it, unfortunately, pushed smaller, less-debated topics to the sidelines to make way for the main conflict. Issues which revolved around racial and gender tensions existed and were debated at length within society, but were completely ignored during the proceedings of the

Tennessee passed a fundamentalist law forbidding the teaching of anything but creationism, and the American Civil Liberties Union financed a test case to prove the unconstitutionality of the law through the famous “Monkey Trial”. The law was deemed constitutional, signifying the triumph of the religious fundamentalists over the science of the cities (Garraty

Many Primates go insane, rocking back and forth, pacing endlessly in the cages, and engaging in repetitive motions such as back-flipping. The primates also self harm themselves by tearing out their own hair or biting their own flesh. There was video footage taken inside Covance, the University of Utah, and the Oregon National Primate Research Center illustrates the extent of the insanity that can result when primates are completely deprived of meaningful sensory stimulation. The procedures they do to primates are Pharmaceutical tests which is a thick gavage tubes are forced up primates’ nostrils or down the animals’ throats so that experimental drugs can be pumped into their stomach, Vaccine tests is when chimpanzees and rhesus monkey are given

The debate on the “Scopes Trial” was another conflicting issues happened during the 1920’s. The “Scopes Trial” occurred on John Scopes who was a high school teacher of Dayton, Tennessee. John Scopes was charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. When the trial took place in 1925, William Jennings Bryan was among those who were against Scopes and wanted to ban the teaching of evolution throughout the nation. William Jennings Bryan, who was a Fundamentalist of old-time religion, believed God was powerful and the Bible should be taken literally.

Old practices became a thing of the past with the fast-paced city drawing people into a new life. This worried religious people, hoping that their attendees wouldn’t leave them. Many felt alienated from city life and modernization. This led to direct conflicts against the teaching of science and evolution in schools. This can be seen through the Scopes Trial fiasco of 1925, where fundamentalisms tried putting a teacher in Tennessee behind bars for teaching such things.

Darrow creates a lasting mental impression and invokes fear through his use of graphic imagery and word repetition. The transition from guilt to fear drills deeper into their emotions . During the Scopes Trial, where a man was condemned for teaching evolution, Darrow defends science over religion, as he states that: If today you can take...evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant against Protestant… (“Attorney for the Damned”187).

He believed this class was anti-American. A bill was passed, where the class had to be cancelled or the school would lose 10 percent of their funding. This class shows oppression, different teaching styles and can be related to other historical and more recent events.

The American Civil Liberties Union, along with the teacher, John Scopes (Bertram Cates), wanted to challenge the law in Tennessee that banned the teaching of evolution in public schools. The trial got the attention of the famous politician, William Jennings Bryan (Matthew Harrison Brady), and also got the attention of Clarence Darrow (Henry Drummond), who was considered to be the best criminal defense lawyer of his time. Brady and Darrow faced off in the “Monkey Trial”, also considered the “Trial of the Century”, in which the law was

Modern thinking was denied and when John Scopes brought up evolution no matter what his case was he had no chance, yet many places heard about the trial and tried to help by, one releasing an article exposing the true evil behind having church and school strangely mixed. In the article it says, “Religion and business had become strangely mixed.” (Doc D) New York Times, expressed that when rural school are blindly teaching kids one path then there will be no diversity in

The Scopes Monkey trial was one the biggest and most influential court cases of all time. John Scopes was a public high school teacher in dayton tennessee who was arrested and tried for breaking the butlers law. Passed in 1925 it made teaching evolution in any schools and colleges in the state of Tennessee illegal. This was because evolution challenges the idea of creationism which was the popular religion in the tennessee. this was a huge problem because it was written in the constitution that you must separate church and state.