The Centennial of the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial

Tim Madigan on the creation and the evolution of a legend.

- Tim Madigan

The prominent philosopher Lewis White Beck (1913-1997), a leading authority on Kant’s work, was born in Griffin, Georgia, in the heart of the Bible Belt. Like many Americans of that era, he had vivid memories of a seminal event in the mid-Nineteen Twenties: the trial of John T. Scopes for the crime of teaching evolution in the state of Tennessee. Beck writes:

In 1925, I was awakened from my dogmatic slumber by newspaper accounts of the ‘Monkey Trial’. John T. Scopes was found guilty of breaking a law of the state of Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. Reading accounts of both sides of the trial made me admit that Mr. Scopes was indeed guilty - there was no question about that — but made me see that the law itself was foolish. I bought and read The Origin of Species, which confirmed what became a new dogmatism for me. . . . By the age of twelve, my education as the village atheist was essentially complete (Falling in Love with Wisdom: American Philosophers Talk about Their Calling, 1993, p. 13).

Beck was by no means alone in finding the trial to be a legal farce, and yet ultimately a vindication for the theory of evolution as well as a defeat of Biblical Fundamentalism. It remains a milestone in United States legal history. And yet, the trial itself was, to say the least, unorthodox.

It is safe to say that unlike Professor Beck, who had firsthand knowledge about the trial, most people’s awareness of it comes primarily from a single source, the 1955 play Inherit the Wind as well as the 1960 film version of that work. Given that 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the trial it’s not surprising that the play is currently being revived throughout America. I myself recently attended an excellent production starring actor and former U.S. House Representative Fred Grandy and directed by his Love Boat costar Ted Lange.

Ironically, though,