305 The Scopes Trial and America's Search for Answers
History | Registration opens 4/15/25 9:00 AM EDT
In the summer of 1925, the attention of the nation was focused on the tiny town of Dayton, Tennessee, where John T. Scopes, a substitute high school biology teacher, was on trial for violation of the Butler Act. Passed by the Tennessee legislature a few months earlier, the Butler Act made it a crime “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” That Scopes had violated the law was never in question; instead, the trial served as a very public forum in which Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, two of the most preeminent attorneys in the country, debated the opposing concepts of creationism and evolution. Coming as it did amidst the “ballyhoo” of the 1920s, the Scopes Trial is often remembered for the intense media attention it generated across the nation and the circus-like atmosphere outside the courtroom. In fact, the public obsession with the Scopes Trail revealed a nation searching for answers about evolution, science, and their place in the classroom, a search that remains unsettled 100 years later.
Reddick Toomey
Steve Reddick earned his BA in history and MA in British history at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and an MA in Irish history at the University College, Cork, Ireland. He also completed a year of doctoral study at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. From 1984-2019, he taught American history in the Oak Ridge Schools, and he’s currently a Teacher Fellow with Facing History and Ourselves and the Tennessee Holocaust Commission.
Michael Toomey graduated from the University of Tennessee Chattanooga in 1980. He moved to Knoxville in 1981 and completed his doctoral degree in U.S. History at the University of Tennessee in 1991. He recently retired from Lincoln Memorial University, where he was Professor of History and Assistant Dean of the Paul V. Hamilton School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. He worked previously as Curator of History at the East Tennessee Historical Society (1999-2007) and Managing Editor of The Journal of East Tennessee History (1999-2009).