In Search of History: The Monkey Trial Review

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In Search of History: The Monkey Trial Review"In Search of History: The Monkey Trial" was originally produced for the History Channel, which I know because they called me up to ask if I knew about any good sources for archival footage of the trial (I did my dissertation on the trial). The "Monkey" Trial was the State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes, accused of violating the Butler Act, which made it unlawful for any teacher "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." The truth of the matter is that Scopes never taught evolution to anybody--he was the football coach and was covering a science class for the regular teacher--but he believed in academic freedom and had no idea that when the ACLU asked for a test case that he would end up watching Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan skewer each other in court. This 50 minute video does indeed use lots of news footage from that summer of 1925, mixed with contemporary footage and interviews with such notables as Edward J. Larson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion" and Richard Cornelius, professor at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, site of the trial. There is even some fascinating comments form a local lady who witnessed the trial as a little girl.
This video certainly provides a basic understanding of the trial, although it is skewed towards what everybody already knows, which is simply my way of pointing out that Dudley Field Malone's role in the trial has once again been ignored. Malone was one of the defense counsels and he had the responsibility for arguing that what Scopes did, did NOT violate the Butler Act. To wit, that teaching evolution did not DENY the story of Divine Creation. Malone made his argument in support of the defense attempt to put scientists on the stand who would show that evolution did not contradict Christianity. Judge Raulston stuck down the testimony and the defense was left with nothing but Darrow putting Bryan on the witness stand and ridiculing him in front of the national media for his lack of knowledge about scientific and historical matters. Why is this of any importance to those studying the trial? Because it shows that the first inclination of the defense, after failing to prove the Butler Act unconstitutional, was to argue the reconciliation of Darwin and Genesis, and not to simply make fun of Fundamentalism, which is the legacy the trial has in the popular mind today. That is an important point, which has been forgotten in history, due as much to the various versions of "Inherit the Wind" that have been filmed as the inadequacy of historical accounts. However, of the two videos covering the Scopes "Monkey" Trial this is the better of the pair, providing some appropriate historical contextualization along with the fascinating footage. At 50-minutes in length it can be shown in your average class period of your average American history class. Unlike most of the Trials of the Century of the last century, the issues of the Scopes trial are obviously alive and well. This video is a more than adequate first step in presenting the Monkey trial to students.In Search of History: The Monkey Trial Overview

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