Authors: Edward J. Larson
Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (15 page)
BOOK: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion
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ACLU chair Harry F. Ward wanted to reach into the classroom. “The public mind is poisoned at its source when special interests take hold of educational institutions for their own propaganda,” Ward shot back in a memorandum. “Most conspicuous are the Lusk laws, recently repealed in New York State, the attempt to rewrite history from a nationalistic viewpoint, and the attacks of the American Legion and other organizations on both the teaching of pacifism and on pacifist students.” Although antievolution laws were not yet an express concern, Ward clearly identified “free speech in the class-room” as a potential ACLU priority. “The Union’s chief contribution in situations arising in public and private schools,” he added, “[is] with protests and with the organization of public opinion.” Formal inquiries could be left to professional associations, Ward suggested, but the ACLU should help by “giving the facts national publicity”—a strategy the ACLU would adopt in the Scopes trial.
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In mid-1924, the ACLU issued its first public statement on academic freedom. The statement essentially combined Linville’s Tentative Statement with Ward’s memorandum and identified both men as its co-authors. In it, the ACLU offered to defend the right of public school teachers to free speech both inside and outside the classroom, and explicitly adopted AAUP’s conception of academic freedom. Significantly, the new statement added antievolution laws as a “chief issue” of ACLU concern, lumping them together with “Lusk laws” and “history text-book laws” as “cases of propagandists’ efforts to distort education.” “Whenever any such issue arises in any school or college described in this memorandum, those interested should write or wire the American Civil Liberties Union,” the statement concluded. “Aid will be furnished at once either through local correspondents, consulting attorneys or direct from the New York headquarters. In important cases a representative will be sent to the scene of trouble.”
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To supervise this effort, the ACLU formed an elite Committee on Academic Freedom, which brought longtime ACLU activists Linville, Thomas, Holmes, and Felix Frankfurter together with such prominent educators as Stanford University president emeritus David Starr Jordan. An official release announced that the new committee “will deal with laws restricting teaching, such as those attempting to prohibit the teaching of evolution,” and committed the ACLU “to go into each situation promptly, to get the facts before the public, to organize effective protests and to bring to bear national publicity on every local invasion of what we regard as the rights of students and instructors.”
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The release rebroadcast the earlier open offer of free assistance, but the big breakthrough required a narrowly focused appeal from ACLU headquarters in New York.
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The release rebroadcast the earlier open offer of free assistance, but the big breakthrough required a narrowly focused appeal from ACLU headquarters in New York.
“I came across a dispatch in a Tennessee newspaper on my crowded desk which was to turn our office topsy-turvy in excitement. It was a three-inch item stating: ‘Tennessee Bars the Teaching of Evolution,’ ” longtime ACLU secretary Lucille Milner later recalled. “I hurriedly clipped the small article and sought Roger [Baldwin]’s advice. ‘Here’s something that ought to have our attention.... What should we do about it?’ He glanced over it and saw its import in a flash. ‘Take it to the [Executive] Board on Monday,’ he said laconically.”
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Baldwin remembered the episode somewhat differently. Milner, whose job included clipping newspapers for reports of civil liberties violations, noticed an article about a proposed Tennessee law. “When we read press reports of what seemed to us a fantastic proposal pending in the Tennessee legislature to make the teaching of evolution a crime, we kept our eye on it,” Baldwin wrote. “When the governor signed the bill we at once proffered a press release for Tennessee papers, offering to defend any teacher prosecuted under it. That was the origin of probably the most widely reported trial on a public issue ever to have taken place in the United States.”
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Baldwin remembered the episode somewhat differently. Milner, whose job included clipping newspapers for reports of civil liberties violations, noticed an article about a proposed Tennessee law. “When we read press reports of what seemed to us a fantastic proposal pending in the Tennessee legislature to make the teaching of evolution a crime, we kept our eye on it,” Baldwin wrote. “When the governor signed the bill we at once proffered a press release for Tennessee papers, offering to defend any teacher prosecuted under it. That was the origin of probably the most widely reported trial on a public issue ever to have taken place in the United States.”
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Baldwin’s account rings true. Enactment of the Tennessee antievolution law was a major news story—the first triumph of a four-year national crusade. Only the introduction or consideration of the Tennessee legislation would have been relegated to a small article, especially in a paper from that state. Furthermore, the ACLU closely followed the progress of antievolution legislation in various states throughout the country since the beginning of the crusade and placed them in the context of other restrictions on academic freedom. More than a week before issuing its public offer to assist any teacher in challenging the Tennessee law, the ACLU released a broad survey of restrictions on teaching in schools and colleges. Citing new statutes in seven states to “require daily Bible reading in the schools or forbid employment of radical or pacifist teachers” in addition to the Tennessee antievolution law, the survey concluded that “more restrictive laws had been enacted in the last six months than at any time in the history of the country.” In conjunction with releasing this survey, the ACLU announced, “Efforts to get court decisions on all these restrictive laws are being made through Civil Liberties Union attorneys.”
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The ACLU press release offering to challenge the Tennessee law appeared in its entirety on May 4 in the
Chattanooga Times,
which had opposed enactment of the antievolution statute. “We are looking for a Tennessee teacher who is willing to accept our services in testing this law in the courts,” the release stated. “Our lawyers think a friendly test case can be arranged without costing a teacher his or her job. Distinguished counsel have volunteered their services. All we need now is a willing client.” Pursuing the story, a
Chattanooga
Times reporter inquired whether city schools taught evolution. “That depends on what is meant by evolution. If you have reference to the Darwinian theory, which, I suppose, was aimed at in the law passed by the Tennessee legislature, it is not,” the city school superintendent assured the reporter. “It is recognized by all our teachers that this is a debatable theory and, as such, has no place in our curriculum.” Earlier, in making similar assurances regarding his schools, the Knoxville superintendent had noted, “Our teachers have a hard enough time teaching the children how to distinguish between plant and animal life.”
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These urban school officials clearly did not want to test the new law, but midway between these cities enterprising civic boosters in Dayton craved some attention for their struggling community, and accepted the ACLU offer. They got more than they bargained for. Powerful social forces converged on Dayton that summer: populist majoritarianism and traditional evangelical faith versus scientific secularism and modern concepts of individual liberty. America would never be the same again—or perhaps it had changed already from the country that had nurtured Bryan and Darrow in its heartland.
Chattanooga Times,
which had opposed enactment of the antievolution statute. “We are looking for a Tennessee teacher who is willing to accept our services in testing this law in the courts,” the release stated. “Our lawyers think a friendly test case can be arranged without costing a teacher his or her job. Distinguished counsel have volunteered their services. All we need now is a willing client.” Pursuing the story, a
Chattanooga
Times reporter inquired whether city schools taught evolution. “That depends on what is meant by evolution. If you have reference to the Darwinian theory, which, I suppose, was aimed at in the law passed by the Tennessee legislature, it is not,” the city school superintendent assured the reporter. “It is recognized by all our teachers that this is a debatable theory and, as such, has no place in our curriculum.” Earlier, in making similar assurances regarding his schools, the Knoxville superintendent had noted, “Our teachers have a hard enough time teaching the children how to distinguish between plant and animal life.”
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These urban school officials clearly did not want to test the new law, but midway between these cities enterprising civic boosters in Dayton craved some attention for their struggling community, and accepted the ACLU offer. They got more than they bargained for. Powerful social forces converged on Dayton that summer: populist majoritarianism and traditional evangelical faith versus scientific secularism and modern concepts of individual liberty. America would never be the same again—or perhaps it had changed already from the country that had nurtured Bryan and Darrow in its heartland.
PART II
... DURING ...
—CHAPTER FOUR—
CHOOSING SIDES
“
W
HY DAYTON, of all places?” a
St. Louis Post Dispatch
editorial asked in May 1925, “why Dayton?” Local civic boosters adopted this question as the title for a promotional booklet sold during the trial. “Of all places, why not Dayton?” the booklet asked back, “this bowl in the Cumberland holds ‘logically, fundamentally and evolutionarily’ the amphitheater for a world’s comedy or tragedy, whichever viewpoint the spectators may choose.”
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The booklet went on to note that major events happen in obscure places, giving the example of Christ’s crucifixion at Calvary, then got down to the serious business of promoting Dayton as a place to live and work, without explaining why “logically, fundamentally and evolutionarily” the trial arose in the town—or why any self-respecting civic leaders would want their community to host such an event. Yet those reasons existed and they helped to explain the entire episode.
W
HY DAYTON, of all places?” a
St. Louis Post Dispatch
editorial asked in May 1925, “why Dayton?” Local civic boosters adopted this question as the title for a promotional booklet sold during the trial. “Of all places, why not Dayton?” the booklet asked back, “this bowl in the Cumberland holds ‘logically, fundamentally and evolutionarily’ the amphitheater for a world’s comedy or tragedy, whichever viewpoint the spectators may choose.”
1
The booklet went on to note that major events happen in obscure places, giving the example of Christ’s crucifixion at Calvary, then got down to the serious business of promoting Dayton as a place to live and work, without explaining why “logically, fundamentally and evolutionarily” the trial arose in the town—or why any self-respecting civic leaders would want their community to host such an event. Yet those reasons existed and they helped to explain the entire episode.
Situated midway between Knoxville and Chattanooga in the valley carved by the Tennessee River in the rising foothills of East Tennessee, Dayton lacked both a sense of tradition and confidence in the future. Only a few farmhouses existed in the area at the time of the Civil War, which in 1925 remained a vivid memory for many Tennesseans. The town sprang up in the late 1800s with the coming of the railroads and became the commercial and governmental center for Rhea County. It was part of the so-called New South. Northern money financed laying the rail lines, digging nearby coal and iron mines, and building a blast furnace that attracted hundreds of Scottish immigrants and underemployed Southerners to the new town. Optimistic county officials erected a handsome, three-story courthouse on a spacious downtown square. By linking Dayton to northern markets, the rail lines facilitated the development of commercial farming in the surrounding valley, with Rhea County becoming a major center for strawberry production by the twenties; even though the berry crop flourished and mining continued, the blast furnace went cold. The opening of a hosiery mill early in the new century could not offset the loss of jobs at the furnace. New commercial construction slowed, leaving the downtown with three blocks of one- and two-story storefronts and two sides of the courthouse square undeveloped. Concerned civic leaders actively courted new industry as they watched their town’s population dwindle from a peak of about 3,000 during the Gay Nineties to fewer than 1,800 by the time of the Scopes trial.
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A New Yorker with some training in chemical engineering, George W. Rappleyea, managed the mines for their northern owners in 1925. Only 31 years old, Rappleyea was described in the
Chattanooga Times
as “a stranger to the south and southern ways.”
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He had drifted away from religion while in college and fully accepted the theory of human evolution. After moving to Dayton, however, he began attending a nearby Methodist church, whose young modernist minister persuaded him that an evolutionist could believe in Christianity. Rappleyea viewed Tennessee’s antievolution law with disdain and wrote an indignant letter about it to the
Chattanooga Times
asserting the common modernist line that “John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, ... advanced the theory of the evolution of man 100 years before Darwin.” Upon reading in that newspaper on May 4 about the ACLU offer to help any Tennessee schoolteacher challenge the new law in court, Rappleyea saw a chance to strike the statute—and he set about drawing other townspeople into his scheme.
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Chattanooga Times
as “a stranger to the south and southern ways.”
3
He had drifted away from religion while in college and fully accepted the theory of human evolution. After moving to Dayton, however, he began attending a nearby Methodist church, whose young modernist minister persuaded him that an evolutionist could believe in Christianity. Rappleyea viewed Tennessee’s antievolution law with disdain and wrote an indignant letter about it to the
Chattanooga Times
asserting the common modernist line that “John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, ... advanced the theory of the evolution of man 100 years before Darwin.” Upon reading in that newspaper on May 4 about the ACLU offer to help any Tennessee schoolteacher challenge the new law in court, Rappleyea saw a chance to strike the statute—and he set about drawing other townspeople into his scheme.
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Rappleyea hurried down to Frank E. Robinson’s drugstore with newspaper in hand, or at least that is how the most credible version of this legend goes. Robinson chaired the Rhea County school board, and the soda fountain at his downtown drugstore served as the watering hole for the town’s business and professional elite during those days of national Prohibition. “Mr. Robinson, you and [local attorney] John Godsey are always looking for something that will get Dayton a little publicity. I wonder if you have seen the morning paper?” Robinson later recalled Rappleyea asking.
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Of course Robinson had seen the morning paper but had not noted the ACLU offer. Rappleyea then related his scheme of staging a test case in Dayton and boasted of having connections to the ACLU in New York. Robinson slowly warmed to the idea, as did School Superintendent Walter White, a former Republican state senator who liked the antievolution law but loved publicity for his town even more. Godsey agreed to assist the defense. A few other Daytonians also may have participated at this stage—many later would claim a role—before Rappleyea was confident enough of local support to place his initial call to New York asking whether the ACLU would make good on its offer if Dayton indicted one of its own schoolteachers. Other key participants signed on the next day, when the ACLU accepted the arrangement.
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Of course Robinson had seen the morning paper but had not noted the ACLU offer. Rappleyea then related his scheme of staging a test case in Dayton and boasted of having connections to the ACLU in New York. Robinson slowly warmed to the idea, as did School Superintendent Walter White, a former Republican state senator who liked the antievolution law but loved publicity for his town even more. Godsey agreed to assist the defense. A few other Daytonians also may have participated at this stage—many later would claim a role—before Rappleyea was confident enough of local support to place his initial call to New York asking whether the ACLU would make good on its offer if Dayton indicted one of its own schoolteachers. Other key participants signed on the next day, when the ACLU accepted the arrangement.
First, Dayton’s two young city attorneys, Herbert E. Hicks and Sue K. Hicks, agreed to prosecute the case if a local teacher had taught evolution during the brief period between enactment of the law and the end of the school year. The Hicks brothers (Sue was named for his mother, who died at his birth) were the only persons involved in bringing the case other than Walter White who expressed any sincere concern about teaching evolution, but even they doubted the constitutionality of the antievolution statute. Wallace Haggard, a young Dayton attorney better known for his exploits on the gridiron for Vanderbilt than in the courtroom for clients, volunteered to assist them. The ACLU offered to pay their expenses, but all three declined.
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Second, the drugstore conspirators summoned the high school’s 24-year-old general science instructor and part-time football coach, John T. Scopes. “Robinson offered me a chair and the boy who worked as a soda jerk brought me a fountain drink,” Scopes later wrote. “‘John, we’ve been arguing,’ said Rappleyea, ‘and I said that nobody could teach biology without teaching evolution.’ ‘That’s right,’ I said, not sure what he was leading up to.” A chain-smoker, Scopes probably lit a cigarette at this point, if he had not already done so. He then pulled down a copy of Hunter’s
Civic Biology
from a sales shelf—the enterprising Robinson also sold public school textbooks—and opened it to the section on human evolution. This was the state-approved text, prescribed for use in all Tennessee high schools. ‘“You have been teaching ’em this book?’ Rappleyea said. ‘Yes,’ I said. I explained that I had got the book out of storage and had used it for review purposes while filling in for the principal during his illness. He was the regular biology teacher,” Scopes recalled. “‘Then you’ve been violating the law,’ Robinson said.” The school board official then told Scopes about the ACLU offer. Scopes remembered the fateful question: “‘John, would you be willing to stand for a test case?’ Robinson said. ‘Would you be willing to let your name be used?’ I realized that the best time to scotch the snake is when it starts to wiggle. The snake already had been wiggling a good long time.”
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Civic Biology
from a sales shelf—the enterprising Robinson also sold public school textbooks—and opened it to the section on human evolution. This was the state-approved text, prescribed for use in all Tennessee high schools. ‘“You have been teaching ’em this book?’ Rappleyea said. ‘Yes,’ I said. I explained that I had got the book out of storage and had used it for review purposes while filling in for the principal during his illness. He was the regular biology teacher,” Scopes recalled. “‘Then you’ve been violating the law,’ Robinson said.” The school board official then told Scopes about the ACLU offer. Scopes remembered the fateful question: “‘John, would you be willing to stand for a test case?’ Robinson said. ‘Would you be willing to let your name be used?’ I realized that the best time to scotch the snake is when it starts to wiggle. The snake already had been wiggling a good long time.”
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BOOK: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion
13.68Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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