Nearly 100 years ago, the nation’s attention— and much of the world’s— was focused on Dayton, Tennessee, as Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan traded legal arguments in what would become known as the Scope Monkey Trial.
High school teacher John Scopes was charged with violating Tennessee law by teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. For more than a week, an emerging modern world took shape. Some of the top reporters in the country descended on the small town. Cameras and microphones were positioned in the courtroom, which was a novelty at that time.
The trial is detailed in Ed Larson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion”. He’ll be this year’s Palmer Hotz Lecturer and speak on the University of Arkansas campus on Thursday, March 6, at 5:15 p.m. in Gearhart Hall. Larson spoke with Ozarks at Large's Kyle Kellams ahead of the talk and said that while the Scopes trial isn’t the most important court decision in America in the last century, it could be the most famous one.
