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John T. Scopes Anti-Evolution Case Summary

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In 1925, a young Tennessee school teacher named John T. Scopes defied the state’s law prohibiting the teaching of evolution. Scopes was arrested and the case immediately got national headlines causing William Jennings Bryan to announce his intention to join the prosecution. Then, the ACLU got involved and offered to defend Scopes. When Darrow heard about the case, he said he would defend the school teacher free of charge. To Darrow’s thinking, Bryan was the embodiment of all those aspects of rural America that Darrow had escaped so many years before. The reality of the situation was that it was not a trial in the strict sense of the term. Instead, as Tierney (1979) points out, it was a set piece; a contrivance. The anti-evolution law was out

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