This 1960 movie was based on the play of the same name by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Even though the story is based on fact, the authors claim that Inherit the Wind is not history. Only a few phrases have been taken from the actual transcript of the trial. To quote the authors, "So Inherit the Wind does not pretend to be journalism. It is theatre. It is not 1925. The stage directions set the time as 'Not too long ago'. It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow."
The historical facts have been put down in many writings since the famous trial. In 1925, school teacher John T. Scopes was arrested in Dayton, Tennessee for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution, which was against state law. The law forbade the teaching of any doctrine denying the divine creation of man as taught by the bible. The Scopes Trial took place from July 21st to July 25th, 1925. The trial promised a confrontation between fundamentalist literal belief of the bible and people who believed the bible was allegory or myth. The attorney for the defense was the famed trial lawyer Clarence Darrow and the prosecutor was the orator and statesman William Jennings Bryan.
During the trial, no test of the constitutionality of the law was allowed by the trial judge, nor was any statement allowed that tested the validity of Darwin's theory. The trial was limited to questions on whether or not John T. Scopes had taught evolution--a fact which he'd admitted to. He was found guilty and ordered to pay a fine of one hundred dollars. Later, on appeal, the state supreme court upheld the constitutionality of the law but acquitted Scopes on the technicality that he'd been fined excessively. The law was finally repealed in 1967. William Jennings Bryan died five days after the initial trial.
The character in the movie, E. K. Hornbeck, was based on the legendary journalist H. L. Mencken who had a sharp wit and a biting tongue. He attacked with words such things as organized religion, business, and the middle class. He worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun. He is quoted as saying about Americans: "the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers who ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages." Sadly, he was right and that statement is probably more true today than it was back then.
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.
Imagine being wrongfully trialled for the murders of your father and stepmother. Well, this was Lizzie Borden’s reality in the notorious 19th century case. In August, 1892, the gruesome murders of Andrew and Abby Borden took place in a small town named Fall River. Because Lizzie Borden was believed to have a lot to gain with the murders of her parents, she was the only one accused of being the murder. With this case, I believe the council was right for pleading Lizzie as innocent. The public and police tried to use theories against her in court to prove she was guilty. With the whole public against her, Lizzie still stood strong and was proven innocent for the murders.
John Scopes, a substitute biology teacher was arrested and charged with violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee law which prohibited teachers from teaching the Darwin Theory of Evolution in a science-related course. The American Civil Liberties Union created a plan to find a teacher willing to teach evolution in order to test the Butler Act, which forbade the essence that anyone teaching any theory that shunned the Biblical story of creationism. Scopes agreed to be arrested and have the case be taken to court. However, Scopes had simply reviewed the textbook chapter on evolution. The traditionalists would see this as a threat to their interests and the issue hit the country stronger than a tornado. Everyone was glued to their radios—it was the first broadcasted radio trial--except the campers and hundreds of reporters near the Dayton, Tennessee courthouse. Traditionalists would be outraged by the appearance of speakeasies, flappers, illegal boozing, popular activities of the Roaring Twenties and especially the Darwinian Theory. Their strong Christian beliefs from the Holy Bible stated how God created the world and man and woman. A traditionalist’s beliefs would not accept the idea of evolution because the Bible said that Man did not evolve but was created by God—the Divine Creation in one day.
Gordon, Ann D. “The Trial of Susan B. Anthony”. Federal Judicial Center, Federal Judicial History Office, 2005.
The 1920’s were a time of change. New ideas were becoming more readily experimented with and even accepted by large portions of the population. Some of these included jazz music and the fight against the alcoholic prohibition. The radical idea I will focus on in this paper, however, is Evolution. It is a theory that had been around for over half a century before the 20’s but had only more recently caught on in the US. It contradicted the Christian theory of Divine Creation as described in the Bible. This caused many religious fundamentalists to fight against it. They took their battle to the law books, and they were challenged by pro-evolution modernists in the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925.
Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “The Path of the Law” assessment consists of the prediction theory, the “Bad Man” account of the law, and being against legal formalism. First, Holmes’ “prediction theory” of law is based on knowing what chances one has in court to have things go their way. This theory deals with (1) making judicial decision-making too easy, and (2) it is unclear how a judge could be wrong about the given law especially if they have a correct understanding of it (Lane, 2007). This also relates to how an attorney practices and how they interpret the law. In this specific case, the decision is not easy because it not only brings into question the First Amendment as it relates to freedom of speech, Fourteenth Amendment as it deals with abortion, and also a past case ruling that it was acceptable for individuals protesting, educating, or distributing literature to be eight feet away fro...
Minersville provides a very interesting backdrop to subsequent cases with graver overtones of censorship. The Minersville case was brought by the father of Lillian and William Gobitis, on their behalf, against the public schools of Minersville, Pennsylvania. The Gobitis children, Jehovah's Witnesses, were brought up to believe that scripture forbade saluting a flag. They refused to observe the Pledge of Allegiance and were expelled from the public school system, forcing their father to enroll them in private schools (23-25).
The Kite Runner focuses on the relationship between two Afghan boys Amir and Hassan. Amir is a Pashtun and Sunni Muslim, while Hassan is a Hazara and a Shi’a. Despite their ethnic and religious differences, Amir and Hassan grow to be friends, although Amir is troubled by Hassan, and his relationship with his companion, one year his junior, is complex. Amir and Hassan seem to have a "best friend" type relationship. The two boys, Hassan and Amir, are main characters in the book titled, The Kite Runner. The two boys have a relationship that is significantly different compared to most. There are many different facets that distinguish the relationship the boys possess. The boys do write their names in a pomegranate tree as the "sultans of Kabul" (Kite Runner 27) but, their friendship is not strong and it is one sided. Hassan has love for Amir. He loves him like a brother. Hassan is exceedingly loyal to Amir. The relationship between the two boys is emotionally wearing and rather gloomy for the most part. The main reason for their complicated relationship is the fact that Amir is Pashtun, and Hassan is Hazara. The Afghan society places Hassan lower than Amir. Hassan is Amir's servant. The placement of Hassan in the Afghan society disenables Amir from becoming Hassan's true friend. Amir sees Hassan as lower than human. Amir ruins the chance for friendship between himself and Hassan because he is jealous of Hassan, he thinks of Hassan as a lower human, and because Amir possesses such extreme guilt for what he has done to Hassan. Amir is an unforgivable person overall.
The “Monkey Trial” in 1925 was one of the most famous clashes in history between the Bible and evolution. The concept of the play was based on the Scopes Trial, but characters, actions, and words were altered. During the trial, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow went to court to try John Scopes for illegally teaching evolution, causing major complications in Dayton, Tennessee. In the play Inherit the Wind, the character, Henry Drummond, parallels his real-life counterpart, Clarence Darrow, through ¬his appearance, beliefs, and actions.
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.
evidence and the right of a condemned man to ask for testing.("A.B. Butler").He was exonerated by
Certain criminal proceedings have had an enormous impact in the ideal American character. One example was the 1925 Monkey Scopes Trial in which John Scopes was being prosecuted for teaching Evolution. In a similar vein the speeches led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the trials known as the “Red Scare” enraged many American authors and producers, leading these individuals to spread their own ideas and to defend civil rights. Two playwrights who lived through the “Red Scare” trials, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, addresses the oppression of the McCarthy trials by a meek character called Bert Cates throughout their play named Inherit the Wind. A nationally recognized lawyer, Henry Drummond, uses his gift of freedom of speech to support Cates. Cates love interest, Rachel Brown, grows intellectually and portrays the change that Lawrence and Lee want to see in Americans. Furthermore, Brady comes to prosecute Cates for teaching Evolution throughout the schools in Tennessee. In this allegorical play Lawrence and Lee’s use of symbolic characters challenges the status quo and inspires American intellectual growth.
simple terms: either Darwin or the Bible was true.” (265) The road to the trial began when Tennessee passed the Butler Act in 1925 banning the teaching of evolution in secondary schools. It was only a matter of time before a young biology teacher, John T. Scopes, prompted by the ACLU, tested the law. Spectators and newspapermen came from all over to witness whether science or religion would win the day. Yet, below all the hype, the trial had a deeper meaning.
Since the Age of the Enlightenment, the institution of religion has had to contend with the opposition of science regarding the issues of the origins of the world and of the human species. Up until around the end of the 17th century, the church was the authority on how the world and everything in it had come to be. However, with the great intellectual revolution came thinkers such as Galileo, Copernicus, Bacon, Descartes, and many others who challenged the biblical assumptions with empirically deduced scientific theories. The Catholic Church had a nasty habit of persecuting such ideological dissent toward creationism, calling it heresy and thereby somewhat suppressing a complete upheaval of the Scriptures. For many centuries to come, the scientific research grew and developed into theories like the Big Bang and evolution, though primarily in places where such progress was tolerated. The state of Tennessee in 1925 was not such a place. In the town of Dayton in Tennessee, a high school biology teacher was found to be in violation of a recently passed law, the Butler Act, because he taught the theory of evolution in his classroom. The debate that ensued has yet to be resolved, what with the modification of creationism into the theory of intelligent design. The argument in favor of creationism was solely based in scripture, though it had to be changed in light of its revamping, whereas the argument for evolution has only been strengthened by continued scientific discoveries.