What Was The Significance Of The Scopes Trial

The persecution of John T. Scopes was a very peculiar case, but it was also one of the most famous and important cases to ever appear in the Western world. The Scopes trial is often referred to, as Mencken says, “completely switching the direction the country seemed to obviously be going in at the time” (Mencken’s Trial Account). The Scopes trial is often misperceived in it’s message for the country, it is seen as a random trial against a science teacher that eventually led to an argument over evolution. But it is much more than a small trial with unintentional results and hopefully it will be realized soon.
In the early 1900s schools mostly taught good Christian qualities along with math and other subjects. This led to a quarrel over the teachings
Bryan had been in many judicial cases before his anti-evolutionary push, this brings up the points that in his early cases he was often on the side of someone that was both an underdog and being accused.
On March 21, 1924, the Butler Acts went into place in Tennessee. The Butler Acts were a set of laws restricting and prohibiting the teaching of anything but the Bible’s genesis story. Laws similar to this one were being put into place in other states, but Tennessee was very early with it’s set of laws. On April 21, 1925, John T. Scopes, a high school science teacher commits the crime of teaching his children in his class about evolution.
Scopes would have gone unnoticed if not for George Rappalyea. 31-year-old Rappalyea was an activist against the new Butler Acts, and he spotted the perfect opportunity to do something about it. Rappalyea was looking for a case such as this, in a small town that would welcome the popularity, a man with not much to lose, and right before the Butler Acts could sink in and be normal for everyone. Rappalyea approached Scopes in a drugstore and, after introducing himself and making it clear he knew of what Scopes had done, asked him “Have you been teachin’ ‘em this book?” as he showed him a copy of Hunter’s Civic Biology. After Scopes confirmed it Rappalyea said “Then you been breakin’ the law,
Another problem with the case was that there was a very unfair jury and judge, seeing as they were all very Christian and went to Church every week, this makes it so they were very unequal to everything the defence said against anything along with instant verdict on the case.
On the first day of the trial there were nearly one thousand people in attendance in a town of only 3000 people. The trial was held in the Rhea County Courthouse, the only courthouse that was close to the town, which was barely big enough to hold everyone The mayor actually wanted this popularity in the town because it had been on the decline in population for a while now and this could really help. Many people everywhere had a strong opinion of the case before it had even started, this case wasn’t about Scopes or if he taught a class about evolution or not, this was about which belief had a place in this