The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, more commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, is arguably one of the most notable trials in U.S history because it had such a significant impact on American culture. The origins of the trial sparked when Scopes violated the Tennessee’s Butler Act by teaching evolution in a school, leading to his first trial in Dayton, Tennessee, attracting a lot of press coverage and the attention of the famous Clarence Darrow, who would later become the defendant that epitomized urban society. The prosecutor, William Jennings Bryan had the conviction to actively dispute and dismiss Darwin’s theory of evolution from schools in America, making him the optimal prosecutor to defend the rural values of the Christian …show more content…
Americans who followed the Scopes Monkey Trial either supported either evolution or the bible. Because Christianity had a great deal of influence over the lives of many Americans, many conflicts arose between these two conflicting ideologies as science progressed. Supporters of the bible were perceived to be the majority group, and evolutionism was not as widely supported at the time. That societal context shows how controversial Scopes truly was when he challenged Christian doctrine. Furthermore, “fossils were being discovered that provided factual evidence for human evolution which threatened the reputation of the fundamentalists. Conservative Christians began to gather in order to defend their beliefs which sparked the fundamentalist movement.”4 Even research in the new social sciences, such as psychology and anthropology, undermined Christianity and the existence of God. Modernists believed that the fundamentalists were desperate, zealously trying to save Christianity from a continuous flow of new scientific discoveries. The Butler Act of 1925 made teaching creation outside of a biblical context in schools illegal. The American Civil Liberties Union, formed in 1920, hoped to challenge the Butler Act, and they found an opportunity by using John Scopes as a candidate to represent them in the Monkey Trial. The trial eventually …show more content…
The urban community has always perceived the rural communities as a backwards society, whereas the rural community perceives the urban community as a den of sin. H.L Mencken was a journalist who despised the South and rural culture, believing Southerners followed the stereotypes of being uneducated, religious hillbillies. Mencken’s decided to spend his first few days in Dayton Tennessee studying the how the townspeople were reacting to the Scopes trial in which Mencken states “I have been attending the permanent town meeting that goes on in Robinson's drug store, trying to find out what the town optimists have saved from the wreck. All I can find is a sort of mystical confidence that God will somehow come to the rescue to reward His old and faithful partisans as they deserve--that good will flow eventually out of what now seems to be heavily evil.”2 “Mencken saw the Scopes Trial as his golden opportunity to utilize his flamboyant wit as a writer to criticize the people in Tennessee and rural society as a whole.” 2 The aftermath of the trial led to the urbanization of not only the South, but all of America because many rural inhabitants began to reject the morality of the bible and think more logically, which led them to move into the more urban parts of the country. “The National Defense
Bertram Cates - the defendant, who is a teacher. He taught his students about Charles Darwin's Origins of the Species in spite of the fact that it was against the laws of his state.
He was a mysterious unknown figure in the shadows; a slithering serpent in the courtroom. The defense attorney for the Scopes Monkey Trial was a cunning man. Clarence Darrow had difficulty defending his client, John T. Scopes, against his opponent, William Jennings Bryan. To everyone’s surprise however, he proved that he could prevail, even if he was under pressure from the world around him. Though Scopes was found guilty under Darrow, he surprisingly only had to pay a fine of one hundred dollars.
Appealing to both people of the North and South, Reed accurately describes many traits and qualities of Southerners in his opening paragraph, “You’re in the American South now, a proud region with distinctive history and culture” (17). He effectively employs pathos throughout his introduction and captures the reader’s attention from the beginning by saying, “Where churches preach against, ‘cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild women’ and American football is a religion” (17), thus immediately appealing to peoples traditional values. While cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild women have values in the Southern culture, not all churches in th...
The Scottsboro Trials, Brown v. Mississippi, and trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Small towns, quaint and charming, ideally picturesque for a small family to grow up in with a white picket fence paired up with the mother, father and the 2.5 children. What happens when that serene local town, exuberantly bustling with business, progressively loses the aspects that kept it alive? The youth, boisterous and effervescent, grew up surrounded by the local businesses, schools and practices, but as the years wear on, living in that small town years down the road slowly grew to be less appealing. In The Heartland and the Rural Youth Exodus by Patrick J. Carr and Maria Kefalas equally argue that “small towns play an unwitting part in their own decline (Carr and Kefalas 33) when they forget to remember the “untapped resource of the
Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
Dochuk, Darren. From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print.
New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84. The 'Secondary' of the 'S “Trial by Jury.” Time 3 Oct. 1955: 18-19. “The Place, the Acquittal.”
The notion Grossman sculpts in her article is part Frederick Remington, part Sea of Galilee. Indeed, “[f]undamentally, it’s an attitude, whether you ride a bronc or a computer keyboard“ (Grossman 1D). The cowboy church movement seems to cut in on a growing herd of believers in America who seem to think that the values of the church as it should be are undermined by the very urbanity, the very sophistication that has come to characterize modern life and popular culture. They seek their solace in The West, in a picture - however mythological it may be - of a simpler way of life. This is a phenomenon, after all, that exists simultaneously with ranchers who hang cell phones where their six-shooter used to be, who use multi-tools to mend fences and all-terrain vehicles to run down stray livestock.
In 1920, for the first time, the United States census revealed that more Americans lived in cities than in rural areas. This fact speaks to a dramatic cultural shift that had taken place. The older ethnically homogenous white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture, characterized by their traditional religion and farm life fell into decline. Overtaking its influence was a new, secular, urban mass culture rooted among diverse ethnic groups. It was a culture that provided more opportunity for equal participation to women and minorities than did the older traditional culture. Like all periods of change, however, the Twenties were accompanied by a reaction against these changes, as the older culture tried to reassert itself as the dominant group. The result was a decade marked by striking cultural conflict. Those who considered themselves traditional Americans, committed to traditional ways of life, launched a cultural war against those who presented a threat to it. There were many common themes that connected the three essays, “Sacco and Vanzetti”, “The Scopes Trial and the American Character”, and “Rural-Urban Conflict in the 1920’s”. Together they present an accurate interpretation of the Roaring Twenties.
His relentless barrage of attacks, which emerges from his bigotry, towards to those who supports Darwin demonstrates only his hate towards evolutionism. An example of this is when Brady is conducting his speech in the court. He says: “I say that these Bible-haters, these “Evilutionists”, are brewers of poison.” (63). Brady hurls many similar insults to the evolutionists during the trial. Another example of this is when Brady refers a Zoologist a “zoo-oligical hogwash that slobbered around the school rooms” (73). Because of these verbal attacks, originated from his intolerance of anything theory of creation other than by god, Brady offers no reason to prove that the Butler Act, which bans any theories other than the creation of man in The Bible in public schools, is just; this is in contrast to Drummond, who explains that banning other books that contradicts The Bible is unjust as it limits thinking. For this reason, as the trial proceeds onwards, the crowd starts to slowly side with Drummond; they realise that Drummond has a point, Brady has nothing. Brady’s bigotry repels his supporters as his insults add nothing but hate towards evolutionists. In the end, it loses Brady the crowd’s respect, and the
In 1925, a teacher named John T Scopes was arrested for teaching the Theory of Evolution as this contradicted religion and their beliefs that God created the world.
Stanley Kramer's film, Inherit the Wind, examines a trial based on the 1925 Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee. Often referred to as "The Trial of the Century" (Scopes Trial Web Page), the Scopes trial illuminated the controversy between the Christian theory of creation and the more scientific theory of evolution. John Scopes, a high school biology teacher, was arrested for illegally teaching evolutionism to his class. "The meaning of the trial emerged because it was seen as a conflict of social and intellectual values" (Scopes Trial Web Page). Kramer's film dramatizes this conflict between the Christian believers and the evolutionists in "Hillsboro, heavenly Hillsboro, the buckle on the Bible belt" (Inherit the Wind). Prosecutor Matthew Brady represents the values of fundamental Christianity while defense attorney Henry Drummond is the voice of reason and science. Although the two men have been good friends and partners in the past, the case in Hillsboro illuminates the difference in their values. Through the scene on the porch with Matthew Brady and Henry Drummond, director Stanley Kramer illustrates the incessant tug-of-war between religion and science. More specifically, camera angle and Drummond's metaphor of the "Golden Dancer" help deliver Kramer's belief in evolutionism.
Imagine having to choose to reside in one place for the rest of your life. Which would you opt for? Some people would argue that the hyperactive lifestyle that a big city has to offer has more benefits than living in the country. However, others would contend that the calm and peaceful environment of the countryside is much more rewarding. Several people move from the city to a farm to get away from the hustle and bustle. Likewise, some farmers have traded in their tractors and animals to live a fast paced city life. Of course, not all large cities are the same nor are all of the places in the country identical. Realizing this, ten years ago, I decided to hang up the city life in Indiana to pursue a more laid back approach to life in rural Tennessee. Certainly, city life and life in the country have their benefits, but they also have distinguishable differences.
The disruption of traditional values and ways of life that accompanied the modernization of the U.S. seems to be a common theme throughout the “Country” section of Faulkner’s Collected Stories. In “Barn Burning” Abner Snopes seems to feel that the world is against him: “Don’t you know all they wanted was a chance to get at me…” (8). He sees fire as “the one weapon for the preservation of integrity” (8), and it is apparent that he feels the disparity in standard of living between farm owners such as Major de Spain, and workers like himself to be an injustice and an injury to him (but then again, maybe he’s just plain evil, as Faulkner’s characterization of him as stiff, cold, and always in dark clothing intimates). In “Shingles for the Lord,” the “modern ideas about work” imparted to Solon Quick from his experience with the WPA are presented as ridiculous—labor put toward repairing a church calculated out precisely into “work units” (29-30). Could Faulkner be presenting the idea that so-called “progress” and the introduction of capitalism and government intervention has corrupted people—become the new church at which they worship?