|
|
Article: A Debate That Does Not End; 'The most widely publicized misdemeanor case in American history' went to trial 80 years ago this month in Dayton, Tenn.(Tennessee)(the Scopes trial)(Column)
- Article from:
- Newsweek
- Article date:
- July 4, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Any reuse, distribution or alteration without express written permission of Newsweek is prohibited. For permission: www.newsweek.com. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Byline: George F. Will
John Scopes attended high school in Salem, Ill., where his commencement speaker was the town's most famous native son, William Jennings Bryan. Their paths would cross again.
Eighty years ago Scopes, 24, a high-school football coach and general-science teacher, attended a meeting in Robinson's drugstore in Dayton, Tenn. There, to the satisfaction of community leaders who thought that what was to come would be good for business, Scopes agreed to become the defendant in a trial testing Tennessee's law against teaching "any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man ...