The Learning Curve Edward Larson
[00:00:00] Albert Cheng: Well, hello everybody and welcome to a brand new episode of the Learning Curve podcast. I am Albert Cheng, one of the co-hosts for this week’s episode and co-hosting with me this week is Justice Barry Anderson. Hey Judge. Good to have you back greeting.
[00:00:17] Barry Anderson: Delighted to be with everyone. For those of you who are wondering, I’m a former member of the Minnesota Supreme Court, retired a year and a half ago, and I’m delighted to be part of our little adventure today. We’re gonna have a great time, and we’ve got a great guest for people to listen to today.
[00:00:31] Albert Cheng: That’s right. Our guest is Professor Edward Larson, who’s gonna come and tell us what he knows about the Scopes trial. And I’m glad to have you, Justice Anderson here to talk about probably one of the most well known trials and cases in our nation’s history.
[00:00:46] And we’re doing this because this year marks the hundredth anniversary of State of Tennessee, the John Thomas scopes. Although we’re a bit late, aren’t we? Justice Anderson?
[00:00:57] Barry Anderson: I mean we are a bit late, but that’s all well and good. And, and of course the scopes, trial fame, you know, features not only a famous lawyer, it actually features of famous, famous two lawyers because William Jennings Bryan, who, uh, features heavily in the book, of course, as the adversary to teacher scopes, was a lawyer himself and a former candidate for President of the United States, among other things.
[00:01:17] Albert Cheng: That’s right. That’s right. Yes. And the cross of gold speech, I think everyone is, is probably familiar with is him.
[00:01:22] So, but hey, let’s talk a little bit about some education news before we get to that topic. So I found an article that’s perhaps a little bit more near and dear to my heart. I do some research into classical liberal education, and this is a report written by Robert Pio. I’m certainly a friend of the show and some others at a EI entitled The Achilles Heel of Classical Education.
[00:01:48] And this, he’s finally, you know, I I’ve, there’s a report that kind of summarizes what I think a lot of leaders in the classical renewal movement today have been talking about and trying to address in their own spaces. This issue of finding enough teachers, qualified teachers, well-prepared teachers to staff classical schools that are, you know, popping up all over the country at at a significant pace.
[00:02:13] And so I think many in the movement have been concerned and trying to figure out on a day-to-day basis this challenge of finding teachers to staff. But I’m glad to see Panio. Talk about this issue in a formal report, and I encourage others to read it, to get a, what I think is a, a very thorough description of the lay, of the land here.
[00:02:36] Barry Anderson: And so, you know, I, I was wondering, Albert, well, because I read the same article you did, and I’m just wondering, did you get the sense from his report that there’s some hope here? I mean, he, he goes on at some length about the disparity in numbers. Oh yeah. And how we’re gonna service that need. Given the sad state of education schools these days, it’s not entirely clear to me.
[00:02:57] Albert Cheng: No. Yeah, you’re right. Look, I mean, it lists a few institutions, the few institutions I think that currently provides teacher training that would, I guess, fit right and sufficiently prepare folks to teach in classical schools. And I mean, you can count them on two hands. Mm-hmm. You know, and so, so I think you’re absolutely right that the numbers.
[00:03:16] Don’t look very promising. But look, I, I think if you, if you talk to heads of schools, leaders of the associations that are there, everyone’s aware of this, but for whatever reason, there’s this. Excitement and hope to do it. I mean, look, I, I think everyone knows the work is cut out for them, but if you wanna put a bet on anyone who is hopeful about things in the future, um, yes.
[00:03:39] Pick someone that is into liberal education and knows how to wrestle with all the perennial challenges of the human condition and is ready to face the challenge of, of trying to solve this problem. So, yep, work’s cut out for us. But look, I’m hopeful, you know, based on what I’ve seen.
[00:03:56] Barry Anderson: Speaking of being hopeful, let’s talk a little bit about 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, an article that was done by Real Clear Education on their website.
[00:04:05] And for those of us of a certain age, I’m 71 years old, or I’ll be 71 years old here in October, and New Orleans was sort of the epitome of the failed school district. 60% of New Orleans students pre-Katrina were enrolled in failing schools. Test scores were awful. Now we’ve had this revitalization that has occurred as a result of reforms in the New Orleans school district.
[00:04:28] Post Katrina articles, quite lengthy. I recommend it to people. It’s not Pollyannish. There are certainly many challenges that remain, but building a system that focused on school, operating autonomy, performance based accountability, and family choice. The New Orleans School, public schools are really in a much better place than they’ve been previously, and the article goes on at some length to talk about improved student outcomes and that the data reflects, it’s not just a function of who’s attending the schools, but that even when you count for those variables, student background variables, population shifts, and whatnot.
[00:05:03] Quote, we have tested these alternative explanations and find that school reforms cause the vast majority of the improved outcomes. Now, one of the cautionary notes that I pick up from this is they are now moving to reunify with local school boards. And you know, there remains some challenges and the thing you always worry about with successful reforms is they’re gonna be backsliding.
[00:05:26] Is, yeah. Yeah. Is human nature having been tossed out the front door? Going to come in through the window, and I’m certainly hoping that’s not the case. I will tell you from the perspective of somebody who lives in Minnesota, Minnesota has always had, and I think with some justification, great pride in its public school systems had some problems in recent years.
[00:05:46] Only recently have formally adopted what you and I would know as the science of reading. And in a formal way, and it is a little, I think there’s a little angst on the part of folks, some folks around here who are looking to New Orleans for inspiration. This is a great story and it’s been a great success and you know where it goes from here I guess will be up to the people of New Orleans, but we went to a kind of a discouraging place with your article, but with some hope for the future.
[00:06:14] Yep. This is really an encouraging piece for educational reform and yes, it can be accomplished. It’s not perfect. Yep. The remain problems, the article’s quite clear that it’s not like we’ve arrived at the promised land, so to speak, but very encouraging.
[00:06:29] Albert Cheng: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s on point. And there’s much more of the story to be told over the next several years, several decades.
[00:06:37] You know, I guess you could keep extending the timeframe here, but that’s kind of what we, uh, can do with the time that’s given to us. You know, just face the issues and invest what we can with what we have, and. Hope for, you know, a better future for those that come after us. So we’ll keep rooting on New Orleans and all the schools and institutions that are there to, to educate our kids.
[00:06:58] So anyway, speaking of thinking about a story and looking back, we’re gonna talk about the Scopes trial and commemorate its hundredth year anniversary with Professor Edward Larson. So, stick around. He’s gonna come up right after this break.
[00:07:24] Edward Larson is the Hugh and Hazel Darling chair in law and is university professor of history at Pepperdine University. He has taught law at Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, university of Melbourne Laden University, and the University of Georgia, where he chaired the history department. Larson is the author or co-author of 14 books, including the Pulitzer Prize Winning Summer for the Gods, the Scopes Trial, and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, as well as a magnificent catastrophe.
[00:07:56] The tumultuous election of 1800 America’s first presidential campaign, Franklin in Washington, the founding partnership. The return of George Washington United States 1783 through 1789, which was a New York Times bestseller and the forthcoming declaring independence, why 1776 Matters. He has interviewed frequently in the media, including The Daily Show, the Today Show, P-B-S-B-B-C, the History Channel cspan, CNN, Fox News, M-S-N-B-C-N-P-R, and his articles have appeared in Nature Atlantic Monthly.
[00:08:30] Science, scientific American Time, wall Street Journal, American History, and the Guardian among others. Lawson graduated from Williams College, earned a PhD in the history of Science from the University of Wisconsin Madison, a JD from Harvard Law School, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from the Ohio State University.
[00:08:51] Professor Larson, welcome to the show. It’s such a pleasure to have you here. Thank you. Let’s start with a general overview. I mean, I, I think most of our listeners know something about the Scopes trial, but you’ve got the authoritative book on it, so why don’t you give our listeners a brief overview of the trial’s wider historical significance.
[00:09:09] Edward Larson: Americans frankly don’t remember many past trials, but for some reason this one has passed into our nation’s collective cultural consciousness, and I think from having lived with it. Longer than I would’ve liked to or never expected to. I think it’s because it’s truly a ripping good story involving larger than life celebrities engaged in a relatable conflict, pitting seemingly polar opposites with partisans enduring partisans on both sides.
[00:09:51] Or I should say all sides of that conflict because it took a variety of different frameworks over the years. And then the Victor William Jennings Bryan at the height of his triumph after winning this historic trial unexpectedly drops dead just as he is leaving for a nationwide celebratory speaking trip with all the venues booked Solid.
[00:10:19] Hollywood could not have written a better script. It tried, but I don’t think it did an actual event. A trial becoming a timeless American legend. A story with telling a hundred years later. You can’t say that about any other American trial Americans. Remember some court cases. Dred Scott, or they remember Marbury versus Madison or others, but they don’t remember trials.
[00:10:51] Indeed, my students today don’t even remember what this OJ Simpson trial was on, but they do actually know about the scopes trial, often remembering a legend rather than the actual event.
[00:11:05] Albert Cheng: Well, let’s get into the actual event and perhaps some of the background material. You know, in your book you write, quote, during the first quarter of the 20th century, scientists in Western Europe and the United States accumulated an increasingly persuasive body of evidence supporting a Darwinian view of human origins and quote.
[00:11:24] Why don’t you start by telling us about Charles Darwin and his theory of natural selection and the creationist worldview that it challenged.
[00:11:31] Edward Larson: Charles Darwin was a English. Sort of gentleman scientist. He loved everything to do with the so-called life sciences, geology, plant collecting zoology. He loved that stuff.
[00:11:46] And he went on a famous trip, voyage of the Beagle. The beagle was a ship. Mm-hmm. That went around the world and he collected various information and he started as a traditional creationist of the day. And you asked, what was that viewpoint that he challenged? Well, it was the viewpoint. Captured the dominant viewpoint that people believed in, and most of them were devout Christians.
[00:12:11] Sort of George Cuvier in France, Bucklin and Sedgwick in England, Owen Hitchcock and D in the United States. These were the leading biologists of the day, and all of them were devout Christians and they had the viewpoint that there was a long earth history that hit as generally was understood.
[00:12:32] Traditionally, the earth was very old and the days of creation. They posited as described in the Genesis account, symbolized geologic ages. There was extinction there where they had found the dinosaur bones there. They viewed to a long earth history, but the way they understood it is that even though there was abrupt appearance over time, that’s what they saw in the fossil record, abrupt appearance over time.
[00:13:00] Those were signs of an ongoing creative. And that as the earth evolved, as they understood that the earth, it evolved over time. Gradually cooling molten iron ball floating around, circling around in the heavens, following Newtonian laws of mechanics, that the environment would change and that at different times, different types of animals, kinds of animals, way better suited.
[00:13:27] So those would be created. What Darwin did. He wasn’t the first. There were other, Lamar had developed a theory of evolution before that in the late 17 hundreds is that rather than there be a series of creation events with those resulting kinds of animals spreading out from those points of creation, rather, that God had implanted in this evolving universe, laws of life that.
[00:14:00] Successfully evolved new beings fitted to their changing environment from preexisting ones through a process. Now, what Darwin added to that was the idea that one of the driving forces was natural selection. That is that as those varieties come in each generation. And they are struggling to survive in the environment.
[00:14:26] There are too many offsprings to survive, and so only the fittest ones do and reproduce their greater fitness. Now that was his theory. Hmm. What his observation was that there’s a common descent that species and different kinds come from preexisting, going back, as he famously said in the last paragraph of his origin of species as the earth goes circling around following certain set laws of physics.
[00:14:59] So. There was from a few original organisms created by God. All of that great variety of the world has.
[00:15:12] Albert Cheng: Thanks for, I mean, what, yeah, that’s a, a, a fascinating, very detailed view to draw out all those nuances, so we appreciate that. Let me ask you another bit of background material. Part of the Scopes trial is, is this idea of, you know, propaganda in public schools.
[00:15:25] Right? And, and you point out in your book that this was not the first attempt or alleged attempt. You know, you remark about how the Massachusetts Puritans. Founded in America’s first public schools to promote their distinctive and religious political system later in the 19th century with the common school movements.
[00:15:43] It was a means to indoctrinate into American ways, a lot of non-English immigrants. So I guess my question here is, what was the State of American public schools? How did they teach religion and science at the time of the trial?
[00:15:57] Edward Larson: It’s a great question because American schools have, public schools are a distinctly American product.
[00:16:06] Others countries did not have them as early or as vigorously as we did. And it does go back to the Puritans, but then Horace Mann in the mid 19th century, and this idea of assimilating. All these wide variety of immigrants coming to America. I mean, we think about it. Most countries are a geographical manifestation of a ethnic group.
[00:16:31] France is for the Franks, and Poland is for the poles, and Thailand is for the ties. America has always been a geographical manifestation of an idea. The idea of liberty, the idea of democracy, and that is what you need to inculcate in people. You know, you don’t have to worry about inculcating, Swedes into Sweden.
[00:16:52] They’re Swedes, right? But in America, you had to worry. You had to think about the Irish and you had to think about the Italians, and you had to think about these successive generations of immigrants coming into what had originally been mostly English and then some Scottish original Europeans in. There wasn’t, there was some attempt to assimilate the Native Americans, but that’s a whole different story.
[00:17:15] And so science and religion are two very traditional English, British ideas. England was the center of science. It was also a center of Christianity between the Puritans and the and the Anglicans, those are featured primarily. In this American school movement. Now we’ve gotta remember that as the judge certainly knows, before the Everson decision, the First Amendment bar on the establishment religion didn’t apply to the states.
[00:17:46] It only applied to the, well. The First Amendment says Congress shall make no laws respecting, uh, establishment. Religion doesn’t say anything about the states, and so you really need to go. Education has always been a function of the states, not the national. And in our federal system, every state would have their own system and they would work out their own balance.
[00:18:08] But often they, at this time, they broadly would include the religion and the scientific worldview that was popular and dominant among the elites in that area. And so Massachusetts would have one sort of system. New York would have a different, Tennessee would have a different, they would typically have prayer in school.
[00:18:29] They would typically have religious instruction, and they typically have science instruction. So what was different though? What is important? About the time of the scopes trial is traditionally public education had gone through eighth grade and what was increasingly happening with the industrialization and industrial movement and urbanization that was started in America around the 1890s, but spread to places like Tennessee only in the 1920s.
[00:18:59] At the time of the scopes trial was compulsory secondary education. That is you’re adding high schools. At the time, Dayton, Tennessee, where the scope drought took place, had a new public high school funded with state support and local taxes, and those were spreading throughout America. Parts of Tennessee didn’t yet have secondary schools, but you began having compulsory attendance laws that went beyond the eighth grade.
[00:19:29] Now you’re not gonna cover issues. Very much science and you’re not gonna cover higher biology before eighth grade. Maybe you’re gonna learn about farming, whatever’s locally important. But now with high schools, these concepts that include the various theories of evolution that were competing at that time are making it into the compulsory public school program at the secondary level.
[00:19:56] Albert Cheng: Let’s drill in on the trial, and I want to first talk about the setting here. I mean, you wrote in your book, quote, in the summer of 1925, the sleepy Hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee became the setting for one of the 20th century’s most contentious courtroom dramas in a famous debate over science, religion, and their place in public education.
[00:20:18] Before we kind of get into the detail, you know, just what exactly happened in the case. What else should we know about the larger historical context of 1920s America, Dayton, Tennessee, that you know, that really set the stage for the trial?
[00:20:32] Edward Larson: It did, and along with what I just talked about, about the compulsory student movement and the founding of public high schools, which of course is important, but that’s tied to the time too.
[00:20:44] That’s tied to the twenties as well, especially in a town like Dayton. Dayton itself is in the, in the hills of East Tennessee. The rising foothills. It’s on the Tennessee River and it is in the Hill country, coal mining country, iron country, not in the flatlands or the wealthier areas of Western Tennessee.
[00:21:07] Far from Nashville, close to Chattanooga and Knoxville, but even places like day. Were at the time being connected much more to the national world, and that helps set the tone. Remember, this is the beginning era. This is the first generation of radio and movies. They’re movie theaters now. Movies are incredibly popular.
[00:21:34] Stars like Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin are national celebrities and people are going and watching their films. They’re being brought into a national world. Radio radio’s new at that time, but it’s really spreading by the twenties. And the Scopes trial is the first broadcast trial broadcast nationally over the radio first broadcast trial in American history.
[00:21:57] This was also a time, I mean, we know it. Even today as the roaring twenties or the judge age, this was a very disconcerting. Time for many Americans and think about what had happened. The first World War had just ended. The first World War was the bloodiest conflict in world history. Up to that time, millions died.
[00:22:20] Europe was overturned and many Americans were dragged in or recruited in, or volunteered into the army and sailed across to Europe. These are people from small towns like Dayton. That’s a very. Disconcerting. They’re seeing Europe for the first time. Yeah. America’s being drawn into the world stage in a new way.
[00:22:40] Following World War I. You had the Spanish flu, which was the largest epidemic in world history. Millions. Millions of people died worldwide. Over three quarters of a million died in the United States. This was a traumatic event. You had a flow of immigrants caused by World War I. There were the collapse of multi-ethnic empires like the Ottoman Empire, the Austria-Hungary Empire, the Russian Empire, and they were replaced with these ethnic states.
[00:23:13] Ethnic states like Serbia or ethnic states like Poland and, and Hungary and Bulgaria, and all these states practiced ethnic purity. They expelled many people, and so this created the largest refugee crisis in world history, and many of them landed right on American doorsteps. Finally, you had the mass migration called the Great Migration of African Americans.
[00:23:42] From the south for the first time to the industrial jobs in the north. They’d been recruited to take these jobs at Ford Motor Company and other northern factories during the war, and they continued to come. That’s what launched the jazz age because the southern. African Americans, the southern black people had brought their music up.
[00:24:01] Mm-hmm. To Harlem, to Detroit, to northern cities, and they also left their agricultural jobs in the South. So that was disorientating and discombobulating. And so you had a time of tremendous. Cultural revolution in America that reached into even tiny Dayton because, well, Dayton itself was an interesting place because Dayton itself was not an old southern town with a lot of heritage.
[00:24:29] It had only been created out of nothing. Less than 50 years earlier when Northern Money following the Civil War, and remember we’re in Tennessee within living memory of the Civil War, and Tennessee was a very divided state while Northern Money had funded, that’s why it’s called Dayton. It’s named after Dayton, Ohio.
[00:24:49] Northern Money had funded building rail lines into the south down the valley that Dayton sprung up in the 1880s. And. Foreign money. Scottish money. Actually, Scottish investors figured out that there was coal and iron there, and with the rail lines, they could make pig iron and coke and that they could move up to these new northern factories.
[00:25:15] So it’s very much a product and they brought over a whole. Bunch hundreds of Scottish immigrants to work those mines and create the coal and the pig iron, which was then sent up to the new steel mills in the north. So it was a new town without much heritage. But what had happened is in 1913, the coal and coke mines, Dayton Coal and Iron.
[00:25:37] Folded because a Scottish owner had died and it was always an iffy affair. It really wasn’t the greatest coal in iron and coke. Mm-hmm. But they had tried. And so suddenly you had the town’s population drop in half and they had imagined this great town with these laid out streets, and all the cold furnaces and everything went cold.
[00:26:00] And now the people there were struggling to find something new. So what had happened was they were trying to attract business and investment in different things, and what had happened is that 10, the state of Tennessee had passed this law against the teaching of, at Brian’s urging at William Jennings, Brian’s urging had passed this law banning the teaching of human evolution in public schools.
[00:26:24] And the A CLU had offered to test the constitutionality of that. And so local civic leaders came up with a bright idea of staging, of publicity. Of indicting one of its own teachers to stand trial, to test the validity and wisdom of the law. They thought it’d be a national spectacle and it attract business and tourists to their town.
[00:26:47] Albert Cheng: Well, look, you’ve given us the geographic setting, the historical context of all this. Let’s talk about two of the major characters in this hole. Episode Lawyer Order and Democratic politician, William Jennings. Bryan, who you’ve mentioned already. And then the labor trial lawyer, Clarence Darrow, who represented the teacher?
[00:27:07] John Scope. So tell us about the two legal figures here, Brian and Darrow.
[00:27:12] Edward Larson: These are what makes the trial memorable. These two individuals. I’m glad you singled them out and focused on them. Brian was a populist. With a national following. He was a, a member of Congress from Nebraska and he had been launched on the national stage in 1896.
[00:27:34] Went out of the blue giving a mesmer. He was a great order, giving a mesmerizing speech at the Democratic National Convention. He had won not only the populist people’s party. Ticket because he was a populist and a member of the populist party, and he had had that in the bag, but he also got the Democratic nomination on this speech calling for bism.
[00:27:58] Now, that’s a complicated term, but it’s his typical populist solution. America was in, what was then the worst recession in American history, the so-called crisis of 1893, and. His solution. He always had simple solutions to every problem. That’s a good populist, that’s what populism is. His solution was Bism.
[00:28:20] That was, we were then on the gold standard and he argued that we should also coin silver at a ratio of 16 to one and that would expand the money supply and therefore deal with this recession That got him the nomination. He was opposed, of course, vigorously as that being a viewed as a. Economically risky solution opposed by the Republicans and William McKinley vested him narrowly.
[00:28:49] But after that, Brian gives up the practice of law. He’d been a local practicing attorney in Nebraska before he became a member of Congress and basically became a public speaker in writer and public intellectual, I suppose, pushing a series of populist reforms for whatever. Then Aled America. So he took on, they just went one from another, from another.
[00:29:13] ’cause he was a, he made most of his money being a public speaker, traveling around the country. Remember he was a mesmerizing order and he would have these set stump speeches and he would give up to 200. Paid lectures a year and selling pamphlets and booklets for his speeches, writing, having a news, his own newspaper, and he took on a whole variety of cures.
[00:29:36] He brought the income tax to America. He claimed four constitutional amendments because that he thought would deal with a variety of social problems, women’s suffering. He adopted that because he thought that that would increase fairness, and he thought we’d never have a war again if, if women could vote prohibition. He picked on prohibition, Jim Crow laws in the south. He picked on all these issues from a variety of perspectives, but when his talks, he always rooted him in his deep faith as a Christian, and he thought they were advancing the Christian social gospel, which he deeply believed in. And so as he went through different solutions, he became worried.
[00:30:23] After World War I and during World War I actually that a belief in a Darwinian sort of social Darwinism, a Darwinian struggle, survival was pushing militarism, world War I and also the exploitation of labor and therefore it should not. Be taught, or at least human evolution shouldn’t be taught in the American public schools, and that became one of his populous solutions.
[00:30:50] He then spoke in Nashville during the legislative huge, huge lecture in in Nashville during the 1920. Five meeting of the Tennessee State legislature that led directly to the introduction and passage of the anti-evolution law that was involved in scopes. Now, Darrow, you ask also about Darrow. Darrow was a practicing lawyer, probably the most famous lawyer in America then or ever.
[00:31:18] He was mostly a criminal defense lawyer. He was also a, a libertarian who deeply distrusted government. And he thought government authoritarian and power. He, you know, he opposed all the impositions he thought on individual rights imposed by the Wilson Administration During World War I, there was quite a, there was quite a oppressive effort to bring the country in line behind a very controversial war. Then he defended labor organizers. He defended a whole variety of causes. So when this law passed in Tennessee, he volunteered his legal services. By the way, it was the only time in his life he ever volunteered free legal aid.
[00:32:02] At the time, he was typically getting retainers of a quarter million dollars for a case. He was that good. And he volunteered his services to go to Dayton and try to defend scopes and challenge this law that he viewed was a limitation on free speech and a promotion of a particular value set.
[00:32:25] Barry Anderson: Professor, we’ve talked a little bit about Wellknown, historic figures, Brian and Darrow, but let’s talk a little bit about John Scopes, the high school teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, charged with violating the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee schools.
[00:32:43] Tell us a little bit about him, his background, and how he became to be the defendant in the American Civil Liberties Union. Test case that Clarence Darrow was bringing challenging the constitutionality of the Butler Act.
[00:32:57] Edward Larson: Judge, you asked another wonderful question. Scopes was part of this story, became part of this story in a weird way.
[00:33:05] Now, John’s scopes was born in Kentucky. Then went, this is a great coincidence, and then went to school of all places. His father was a railroad mechanic in Salem, Illinois, which was the hometown of William Jennings Bryan. And in one of the weird coincidences, William Jennings, Bryan gave his graduation high school graduation address, and they had actually met each other.
[00:33:31] Well, he graduates from the University of Kentucky. He had just graduated the year before. Before the scopes trial, and he gets his first job as school teacher in Dayton, Tennessee. Now, he wasn’t a biology teacher, he was hired as the football coach for the new school. They had had a terrible year, the year before.
[00:33:52] Just an awful year. And he becomes the football coach and he manages to end up with a four four record that year. So he was a bit of a local hero for turning the team around. But you know, it’s still true in these small high schools. You gotta give the football coach something else to teach. And among the courses he taught was middle school science, and it was his first year teaching.
[00:34:16] He was well known. He was single. He was only. What, 26 or he is in mid twenties and he fills in for three weeks. We know pretty much what he taught because we have his exam, he fills in for the regular biology teacher who was sick for about three weeks. Now, there’s no evidence he ever taught human evolution that he ever violated the actual law.
[00:34:40] Everybody knew that at the time. That’s why he couldn’t testify because he, he’d have to say he never taught it, but. He was young. He opposed a law. He thought it was restriction on academic freedom and on free speech. He was a, you know, he was a progressive in his own way. I mean, he was a football coach, so it, it wasn’t that political, but when these local civic leaders led by the chair of the school board.
[00:35:09] Effie Robinson who ran the local drugstore and George Rapier, who managed the closed down blast furnaces of the coal company. They basically concocted this scheme when they read about the ACLU’s offer to defend any school teacher willing to challenge the New Tennessee anti-evolution law in court, they came up to the scheme as they’d host a, it’s all a publicity stunt.
[00:35:34] They’d host such an event in Dayton during the summer. They called it a Summer Chautauqua, an educational event. And they thought people would come to town to watch it. It’d be a big event because the passage of the wall was, got national publicity because it was, you know, it did what it did. And it was part of Brian’s national crusade to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools.
[00:35:55] And so they came up with the idea of inviting John Scopes, who was. That morning he was off playing tennis at the tennis courts, and they sent some guy down from the Robinson’s drug store to drag him back and said, would you be willing? And they brought in the city solicitors, the Hicks brothers and the superintendent schools, Walter White, and they asked him there.
[00:36:18] So I sort of pressured him, said, would you be willing to stand trial? We don’t wanna prosecute the regular biology teacher. He is got a family and he is also the principal of the high school. Would you be willing to stand trial? And they all remembered it ’cause they all wrote it up. They said, sure, sure, I’ll, I’ll go ahead and do it.
[00:36:35] They promised his in job back. There was no threat of, you know, the only. The law only carried a fine, a 100 to $500 fine. It was a misdemeanor, it wasn’t a felony. And so, you know, there was no doubt somebody was gonna pay his fine. And he was, as they say, promised his job back. It seemed like to him sort of a interesting summertime caper.
[00:36:57] And of course he was being pressured to agree by his boss.
[00:37:02] Barry Anderson: You know, as a old trial lawyer, long before my judicial career, I can honestly say I don’t think I ever tried a case. Where we had more than a half a dozen people in the courtroom and most of them weren’t interested in the trial. That’s not true about the scopes trial.
[00:37:16] And you have this great beginning to the preliminary rounds chapter of your book, and I’m just going to read it here. The crowd gathered early on Friday, July 10th for the opening of the trial. The first spectators gathered early on filtering into the courthouse before 7:00 AM a full two hours before the scheduled start.
[00:37:34] Could you discuss that?
[00:37:35] Edward Larson: The public atmosphere of this event it was a carnival, literally. Literally, it was a carnival. Thousands of people, hundreds of reporters had descended on Dayton for this. It was front page news in papers across the country. Honestly, it was billed before it began as the trial of the century fitting Clarence Darrow.
[00:37:57] William Jennings Bryan in a timeless conflict over this controversial new statute. John Scopes himself was an afterthought. You know, nobody cared about him. Now, the courtroom itself, it’s still there. You can, uh, I urge your listeners to go see it. I was there two weeks ago. Again, it’s a very, very large courtroom.
[00:38:18] The reason why is Dayton, when it was founded at 40 years earlier, had these high hopes of being a great city. It hadn’t panned out, but there’s this large courtroom on the second floor of the courthouse, so remember it’s broadcast. So all around the courtroom there are these microphones and in the corners, they’re the news rail cameras, because the entire trial is being filmed, we still have the clips of the film.
[00:38:42] They’re readily available now on the internet, and it was packed. You had a team of lawyers on each side. The defense had a whole team of lawyers. Darrow was just one of many. On the prosecution side, there was the chief State prosecutor, Stewart. There were the local city solicitors, both the current ones and the former ones, and then tagged on the end because you know he’s not a stump speaker and he hadn’t tried a case in 40 years.
[00:39:08] William Jennings, Bryan and his son Billy. Came out, he was a, he had been a US attorney in the Wilson Administration out in Los Angeles, and he came to join it, but also there were Carnival Barkers. There were trained monkeys. There was bands that played. There was a bandstand built on the courthouse lawn so people could come to hear the entertainment.
[00:39:30] At night, there was an ox roast going out in the courthouse lawn. There were all sorts of people hawking beverages. This thing was just a carnival end. Because there were so many reporters, despite the fact that the courtroom is pretty large, there is no room for virtually anyone else because there are telegraph typers in there.
[00:39:50] You know, back then, like baseball games, they telegraph out the transcript, which appeared the next day in newspapers around the country. We have lots. Of those transcripts. So the townspeople mostly had to fill up various halls around town, mostly churches where there were live feeds of the sound coming from the courtroom.
[00:40:10] Because remember, it’s all on the radio anyway. It’s literally a carnival and a festival. And that’s why people had to, uh, line up and go in early because there were no seats.
[00:40:23] Barry Anderson: Let’s talk a little bit about the trial itself.
[00:40:25] Brian, of course, criticizes evolution for teaching children that humans were but among thousands of types of mammals.
[00:40:32] And Darrell responds in what I think is considered to be sort of the highlight, the apex of the trial oratory, you know, challenging Brian’s conclusions. Tell us a little bit about the facts and the main arguments as well as the effectiveness of our, of our two very well known lawyers, Brian and Darrell.
[00:40:52] Edward Larson: Well, actually, none of those talks and speeches happened at the trial. In the trial. They happened outside William Jennings. Brian rarely spoke in court. He wasn’t an ex dam speecher. He was a stump speaker. He had prepared a rousing closing argument. He had spent two months on it, and it is a beautiful speech that he planned to give, but.
[00:41:15] He never ended up being able to give it. So he didn’t really say much in court, but Brian was in a habit of criticizing evolution on the grounds you, you know, he was giving, as I said, in the run up to the scopes trial, he was giving on average of 200 speeches a year, and many of them were from a few set text, like in his image.
[00:41:37] Was in the title of one and the Menace of Darwin was another. And we know his arguments from those. Darrow did some cross-examination of witnesses and including famously of William Jennings Bryan when he called him to the stand. But the great speech was actually given by one of the other defense lawyers, Dudley Field Malone, which Brian himself said it was the best speech he ever heard, and that was a speech for academic freedom.
[00:42:02] But what were the main facts? I mean, it’s a real puzzle because the two sides sort of like were two ships passing in the night originally. William Jennings. Bryan said he would. He volunteered to go to Dayton and join the prosecution of this case because he viewed the event at not as a real trial, because everybody knew it wasn’t.
[00:42:22] It was a made up trial. It was a publicity event. Scopes hadn’t really taught evolution. They were testing the constitutionality under the state constitution. Remember, the federal didn’t apply under the state constitution and the wisdom of this law. They were trying to use the. Courtroom as a soapbox each side to make their arguments for and against the statute.
[00:42:45] And so Brian mostly spoke outside of court to reporters and talks that he gave around town. There was a ready audience, and Brian loved an audience, as did Clarence Darrow. But originally he said publicly that this was gonna be a battle royal. About the theory of evolution of whether it was corrupting of youth, and also the fact that the people who pay.
[00:43:11] The parents and the taxpayer should determine what’s in a public school. You remember, he was a populist, he believed in that sort of popular democracy, and so he was gonna bring all these experts in to testify against evolution and for a popular rule. Now, Darrow and the defense responded by bringing a, an impressive group of scientists very carefully.
[00:43:37] They were all Christians. They were all. Believed in theistic evolution that God used evolution. They were from the best schools, from Princeton, Chicago, theologians as well, Vanderbilt, but they were very careful. They were all Sunday school teachers. They were all deeply involved in their church and they were gonna say, wait.
[00:43:56] This law says, and the law is very short. The law simply says that it was a misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor punishable by a hundred to $500 fine to teach that humans descended from a lower order of animals in opposition to the biblical text. Well, they were gonna argue, no, the biblical text has to be interpreted.
[00:44:18] Theistic evolution does not violate our understanding of the Bible. And of course, Brian was gonna. The prosecution was gonna give a different event. What turns out is while the, the defense gets this laundry list of experts, the prosecution, Brian literally can’t find anybody who’s willing to come and testify for his side.
[00:44:40] And as a result, at the last minute, they shift strategy and say, all we’re gonna do is argue that scopes taught evolution. He violated the law. It doesn’t matter whether the law is good or bad, that’s nothing to do with the lower court. That’s for consideration on appeal. And so they objected to any expert testimony whatsoever.
[00:44:58] So when the trial actually occurs, the judge rules on their side that that’s all relevant. That except for that weird caboose that happened. The prosecution presents two hours of testimony basically pointing out that human evolution, the theory of human evolution is in the state assigned textbook. Now the defense does not wanna challenge the scope to evolution because they are challenging the statute.
[00:45:23] And so as a justice, you know, they want a conviction so that they can, if the court won’t consider that the trial court, we wanna take it up to the Tennessee Supreme Court and then the US Supreme Court to. Challenge the constitutionality of the law. And so with this mixed strategy, you ended up having a lot of speeches given by the various lawyers, arguments that, you know, motions that the statute is unconstitutional, which are turned down motions to let their witnesses in, which are turned down a lot of back and forth.
[00:45:58] But in the end they had, and the jury was excluded for all that. The poor jury who. Had lobbied for seats because they thought that way they could get in. The courtroom ended up only being in the courtroom for two hours. The two hours of testimony by two students and a couple school officials pointing out that evolution was in the the textbook, and then Clarence Darrow and the.
[00:46:22] Defense offer no defense because they can’t get their experts in. And in the end, they ask the jury to go ahead and convict the guy because on the testimony you’ve heard, you have no choice but to convict him. Weird case.
[00:46:37] Barry Anderson: I’m wondering, professor, was the decision of Darrow to say we, we have no witnesses to offer, bring the jury in, instruct the jury to find the defendant guilty? Did that move come as a surprise to Brian and the prosecution team?
[00:46:50] Edward Larson: Oh, no. They knew that. No, absolutely not. They knew it was coming. What they were surprised is when Darrow waived his closing argument. Darrow was famous as a lawyer in American history for pioneering techniques of jury selection and the closing argument.
[00:47:07] Those were the two most famous things he was famous for. He gave mesmerizing closing arguments. But under Tennessee Jurisprudence, if you waive your own closing argument, if the defense waives it, then the prosecution can’t give its closing argument. So Darrow wanted scopes convicted, and he didn’t want.
[00:47:26] Brian to give this mesmerizing closing argument in court. Brian was already scheduled to give it around the country and he had established all these, you know, they were already sold out speaking places all over the country where they said, you’ve been following the scopes trial. Now you can hear William Jennings Brian give this great closing argument right in your hometown and that had already been scheduled.
[00:47:48] Remember, this is publicity stunt on both sides.
[00:47:52] Barry Anderson: From darrow’s perspective, professor, the worst, the worst possible result would be a verdict from the jury against the evidence saying that he was not, that he was not guilty and he didn’t want that.
[00:48:01] Edward Larson: Absolutely. So he basically urges the, and of course he can’t put scopes on the stand because scopes under oath would’ve to testify that he never taught evolution and therefore the jury would happily acquit him.
[00:48:13] They didn’t wanna convict him, but in the end, the jury never even leaves the room. They just huddle for a couple minutes, and based on the testimony, they’d heard unrebutted testimony that he taught human evolution. They declare him guilty.
[00:48:28] Barry Anderson: Let’s talk a little bit about the cultural issues here for my last question, and then I’m gonna ask you to read a paragraph from your wonderful book here.
[00:48:35] The Acerbic American journalist and cultural critic, HL Minkin, observes he was not a fan of this community. Quote, Neanderthal man is organizing in these four lo backwaters of the land led by a fanatic, rid of the sense and devoid of conscience. Talk a little bit about the wider legal media and cultural legacy of the Scopes trial as we wrap up our program for the day here.
[00:49:00] Edward Larson: HL Mankin did set the tone for some people, and it’s great to quote him. The trial, as I said, became legend, and it had champions on all sides, especially when Brian died unexpectedly less than in day, still in Dayton, just as he was ready to leave on his nationwide tour. He was a diabetic and it was very, very hot and under a lot of stress, and he dies.
[00:49:27] He becomes a hero. His coffin is carried in a special train across country for burial in Arlington National Cemetery, where his caskets carried by sitting US Senators. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people wind the train route as it’s going by, go by his coffin as it stops in town after town, and so you end up getting the mankin legend.
[00:49:52] That this trial pitted North versus south, the future versus the past, rural versus urban. And Mankin invented and played that doctrine. And then you get the other version that’s pushed by the Moody Bible Institute pushed by religious leaders who rushed to take up the cross, laid down by Brian, who they depict as being his life’s work finish being called to glory in heaven.
[00:50:19] They. Right to paint it just as the opposite way that this jury, this state, found that you should, and you could exclude evolution for public schools because of its atheistic implications. And so other states, other school districts. Adopt similar rules and evolution virtually disappears from American textbooks.
[00:50:42] There’s country music songs written about Brian and his crusade. It becomes, so they’re basically two sides. This becomes both sides, all sides. Take this story and make. Their own. That is why it has become, because it just doesn’t have one side and because it doesn’t have a simple answer on either side, and because they’re partisans on both sides, this trial becomes a legend and part of American culture.
[00:51:12] Barry Anderson: Can you share with us a paragraph from your great book, please, as we wrap up our program today?
[00:51:17] Edward Larson: Sure. I’d be happy to. I mean, we talked a lot about the town. Let me read from that. This is from chapter beginning of chapter four. Why Dayton of all places a local a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial ask in May of 1925, why Dayton local civic boosters adopted this question as the title for a promotional booklet sold during the trial of all places.
[00:51:44] Why not Dayton? The booklet as back. Situated midway between Knoxville and Chattanooga and the Valley carved by the Tennessee River and the rising foothills of East Tennessee, Dayton lack both the sense, tradition, and confidence in the future. Only a few farmhouses existed in the area at the time of the Civil War, which in 1925 remained a vivid memory for many Tennesseans.
[00:52:07] The town sprang up in the late 18 hundreds with the coming of the railroads and became the commercial. Governmental center for Ray County was part of the so-called New South Outside Money Finance, laying the railroads, digging local cone and iron mines, and building Coke ovens that attracted hundreds of Scottish immigrants and unemployed southerners to the New Town.
[00:52:31] Barry Anderson: Professor, thanks very much for having joined us today in your wonderful book.
[00:52:35] Edward Larson: It’s been a delight. Feel free to have me back.
[00:52:39] Albert Cheng: I really enjoyed that interview, Barry. I mean, to kind of commemorate the a hundred years, I mean, it’s been a hundred years since that trial’s happened and to, you know, walk down memory lane and think about the significance that that trial still has today. That was a treat.
[00:52:53] Barry Anderson: I agree. It was interesting and it is a piece of American history that we should all know, as you correctly observed sort of at the beginning of our little adventure today.
[00:53:02] It may not have legal significance, but it is a trial that had cultural significance. Yeah, I think the book very much captures it in certainly the interview with Professor Larson captured it as well.
[00:53:13] Albert Cheng: That’s right Barry, I wanna thank you for co-hosting the show with me. You know, come back soon, huh? You know how to find me.
[00:53:20] I’m available. And before we bid everyone farewell, I do wanna leave everyone with the tweet of the week. This one comes from Education Week two, former Trump and Biden appointees hash out what’s ahead. A little rhyme there. I had an ad or had an education policy. It’s an opinion piece published by Education Week and check it out.
[00:53:42] We’ve got Jim Blue. We actually had recently on the learning curve as well as Roberta Rodriguez. They had a conversation on video to share their perspectives on the future of the US Department of Education and lots of other topics in Ed policy. So check that out. Make sure to check us out. For next week’s episode of this podcast, we’re gonna have Keith Hilton, who is the William Fairfield War and Distinguished professor at Boston University.
[00:54:12] And professor of law at the Boston University School of Law, he’s gonna come talk to us about creation, but not creation as we understand in the Scopes trial, but Laws of Creation. This, this is his book, laws of Creation, property Rights in the World of Ideas. So hope to see you then, and until then, I hope you are well.
[00:54:32] Hey, it’s Albert Cheng here, and I just wanna thank you for listening to the Learning Curve podcast. If you’d like to support the podcast further, we’d invite you to donate to the Pioneer Institute at pioneerinstitute.org/donations.
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