The original prosecutors were Herbert E. and Sue K. Hicks, two brothers who were local attorneys and friends of Scopes, but the prosecution would be ultimately led by Tom Stewart, a graduate of Cumberland School of Law, who later became a U. S. Senator.

It was Mencken who provided the trial with its most colorful labels such as the " Monkey Trial " of " the infidel Scopes.

Edward J. Larson, a historian who won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, notes: " Like so many archetypal American events, the trial itself began as a publicity stunt.

Dayton is also home to Bryan College, a four-year Christian liberal arts school named in honor of William Jennings Bryan, who died in Dayton five days after the Scopes Trial ended.

John Thomas Scopes ( August 3, 1900 – October 21, 1970 ) was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925 for violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tenneissee schools.

In 1925 Malone was one of the lawyers who joined with Clarence Darrow to defend John T. Scopes in the famous " Monkey Trial ".

During the Scopes Trial itself, a report in The New York Times said " After flocking to view the monkeys, Dayton has decided that it was not man who evolved from the anthropoid, but the anthropoid which devolved from man ; and it points now at the two chimpanzees and the " missing link " to prove the assertion ".

In 1925 he was adviser on the Bible to Clarence Darrow in his defense of John Thomas Scopes, a schoolteacher who was charged with teaching evolution in his classes.

Scopes mentioned that while he couldn't remember whether he had actually taught evolution in class, he had, however, gone through the evolution chart and chapter with the class.

Judge John T. Raulston accelerated the convening of the grand jury and "... all but instructed the grand jury to indict Scopes, despite the meager evidence against him and the widely reported stories questioning whether the willing defendant had ever taught evolution in the classroom.

The Scopes trial had both short and long term effects in the teaching of science in schools in the United States.

Though the ACLU had taken on the trial as a cause, in the wake of Scopes ’ conviction, they were unable to find any volunteers to take on the Butler law and by 1932, the ACLU gave up.

* The Scopes Trial ( 1925 ), which declared that John T. Scopes had violated the law by teaching evolution in schools, creating tension between the competing theories of creationism and evolution.

In the half century after the Scopes Trial the Fundamentalists had little success in shaping government policy, and generally were defeated in their efforts to reshape the mainline denominations.

After he had earned a law degree at the University of Kentucky in 1924, Scopes moved to Dayton where he took a job as the Rhea County High School's football coach, and occasionally filled in as substitute teacher when regular members of staff were off work.

The prosecution team, led by Tom Stewart, included brothers Herbert Hicks and Sue K. Hicks, Wallace Haggard, father and son pairings Ben and J. Gordon McKenzie and William Jennings Bryan and William Jennings Bryan Jr. Bryan had spoken at Scopes ' high school commencement and remembered the defendant laughing while he was giving the address to the graduating class six years earlier.

In a 3-1 decision written by Chief Justice Grafton Green the Butler Act was held to be constitutional, but overturned Scopes ' conviction on a technicality: the judge had set the fine instead of the jury.

After the trial Scopes admitted to reporter William Kinsey Hutchinson " I didn't violate the law ," ( DeCamp p. 435 ) explaining that he had skipped the evolution lesson and his lawyers had coached his students to go on the stand ; the Dayton businessmen had assumed he had violated the law.

In this manner, flappers were an artifact of larger social changes — women were able to vote in the United States in 1920, and religious society had been rocked by the Scopes trial.

Except for the willingness of William Jennings Bryan to be cross-examined by Clarence Darrow, Stewart's positions controlled the trial and the Scopes defense had no recourse but to ask the jury to convict the defendant so the case could be appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court ( which overturned the conviction on a legal technicality but upheld the constitutionality of the Butler Act ).

Darrow previously had been an attorney in the Scopes Trial.

Writer David S. Cohen had the inspiration for the episode after visiting the American Museum of Natural History, and decided to loosely parallel themes from the Scopes Monkey Trial.

The ACLU offered to assist any Mississippi taxpayer or member of the American Association of University Professors in a suit to challenge the case was ignored given what had happened in Dayton to John T. Scopes.

Evangelicals had been politicized in the 1920s, battling to impose prohibition and to stop the teaching of evolution in the schools ( as in the Scopes Trial of 1925 ), but had largely been politically quiet since the 1930s.

Based on a true story of a teacher arrested for teaching his students evolution also known as the " Scopes Monkey Trial ," Spacey played defense lawyer Henry Drummond, a role that was made famous by actor Spencer Tracy in the 1960 film of the same name.

* 1925 – Scopes Trial: serving of an arrest warrant on John T. Scopes for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.

* 1925 – Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate for the Democrats, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes.

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union financed a test case in which John Scopes, a Tennessee high school science teacher, agreed to be tried for violating the Act.

Paul Patterson, owner of The Baltimore Sun, put up $ 500 in bail for Scopes.

The court rejected this argument ( Scopes v. State, 154 Tenn. 105, 1927 ), holding that the determination of what laws cherished science was an issue for the legislature, not the judiciary:

After Scopes was convicted, creationists throughout the United States sought similar anti-evolution laws for their states.

Twenty-two telegraphers sent out 165, 000 words per day on the trial over thousands of miles of telegraph wires hung for the purpose ; more words were transmitted to Britain about the Scopes trial than for any previous American event.

Here, from July 10 to 21, 1925 JohnThomas Scopes, a County High School teacher, was tried for teaching that a man descended from a lower order of animals in violation of a lately passed state law.

Anticipating that Scopes would be found guilty, the press fitted the defendant for martyrdom and created an onslaught of ridicule.

* Booknotes interview with Edward Larson on Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, June 28, 1998.

** Scopes Trial: Dayton, Tennessee, biology teacher John Scopes is arrested for teaching Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

** Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.

* 1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $ 100.

* July 21 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $ 100.

* July 21-Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John T. Scopes is found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $ 100.