J. William T. "Bill" Youngs, American Realities, Volume Two:
Historical Episodes from Reconstruction to the Present, Chapter Eight |
Clarence Darrow (left) and William Jennings Bryan (right) during the Scopes Trial in 1925. courtesy of the Wikipedia Commons
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8. Modernity versus Tradition
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SummaryThis article tells the story of the Scopes trial. We learn about the various elements in the trial: the antagonists, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow; the town of Dayton, Tennessee; the issue of evolution; and the American impulses toward fundamentalism and modernity. Then we follow the course of the trial itself, watching the interplay of all these elements as the lawyers argue about science, God, and human destiny. In the crucible of the Scopes trial they and the townspeople of Dayton articulated the hopes and fears of Americans torn between the allure of science and the longing for tradition.
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Author reads from the Text
In our imaginations the 1920s is a decade of fun and fads. It is the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties or, as columnist Westbrook Pegler styled it, “The Era of Wonderful Nonsense.” Unlike the previous decade and the two that followed, no one event shaped life in the 1920s, no Great War or Great Depression. The people focused instead on a string of mini-events. It was an age in which thousands sought to outdo each other in sitting atop flagpoles or setting records in marathon dances. When we think of the 1920s, our minds turn immediately to such glamorous icons of popular culture as bootleg whiskey, Babe Ruth, and the Charleston.
Certainly beneath the surface glitter large forces were at work. But even these came to notice and were dramatized by colorful episodes, tawdry as the Leopold–Loeb murder case or triumphant as Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight. One of the decade’s most talked-of events was the trial in Dayton, Tennessee, of the young John Thomas Scopes, who had committed the crime of teaching evolution to his high school biology class. In the hot summer of 1925 more than a hundred reporters would converge on Dayton and send out a million words of news to a fascinated nation. Two of the most renowned public figures in America, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, argued the case.
Certainly beneath the surface glitter large forces were at work. But even these came to notice and were dramatized by colorful episodes, tawdry as the Leopold–Loeb murder case or triumphant as Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight. One of the decade’s most talked-of events was the trial in Dayton, Tennessee, of the young John Thomas Scopes, who had committed the crime of teaching evolution to his high school biology class. In the hot summer of 1925 more than a hundred reporters would converge on Dayton and send out a million words of news to a fascinated nation. Two of the most renowned public figures in America, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, argued the case.