The Scopes trial is sometimes considered "the trial of the century" because it was about much more than John Scopes's guilt or innocence. What were the largest issues at stake in the Scopes trial?
Not all Americans accepted modern culture and ideas in the 1920s. Many Americans remained deeply conservative in their political, religious, and cultural views. For these Americans, the decade's rapid changes were troubling. In 1925, a high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, John T. Scopes, was arrested for teaching his students Charles Darwin's theory of evolution -- that human beings were descended from other primates. Opponents of evolution charged that it denied the biblical story of God's creation of the earth and of Adam and Eve. This was illegal in Tennessee and several other Southern states, where many Fundamentalist Christians believed that every word in the Bible was literally true. The Scopes trial held the nation's attention throughout the summer, since it was widely publicized in newspapers and on radio. During Scopes' trial, two of the nation's most famous lawyers, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, battled not only to determine whether Scopes was guilty, but over the conflicting theories of evolution and divine creation. Ultimately, Scopes was found guilty. But coverage of the trial had often ridiculed fundamentalist Christians for believing that God had created the world in only six days. Fundamentalists remained numerous but resented being held up to national ridicule.