Tennessee Repeals Anti-Evolution Law — 42 Years After the Scopes Case
Forty-two years after the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, Tennessee on this day finally repealed the 1925 Butler Act, which banned the teaching of evolution in the public schools.
The law led to the famous trial began on July 10, 1925, which pitted the famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow, opposing the law, against William Jennings Bryan, who had become one of the nation’s leading Fundamentalists.Scopes was convicted, but the judge erred in imposing the sentence, and as a result the state supreme court overturned the conviction. Tennessee officials were so embarrassed by the circus atmosphere that had surrounded the trial that they did not seek to retry Scopes.
As a result of the conviction being overturned, the Scopes case never reached the Supreme Court for a decision on the constitutional issues the case had raised. A similar Arkansas law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Epperson v. Arkansas, on November 12, 1968.
Learn more about the battle between science and religion at the National Center for Science Education: http://ncse.com/evolution
Read about the on-going struggle: Edward J. Larson, Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution (1985)
Watch a documentary on the Scopes trial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVD4TjxnJ0M