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Article: Scopes Monkey Trial
- Article from:
- West's Encyclopedia of American Law
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 The Gale Group, Inc. 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)
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SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL
The criminal prosecution of John T. Scopes was an attack by citizens of Dayton, Tennessee, on a Tennessee statute that banned the teaching of evolution in public schools. The Butler Act, passed in early 1925 by the Tennessee General Assembly, punished public school teachers who taught "that man has descended from a lower order of animals" or any theory "that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible."
Some citizens of Dayton decided to challenge the statute. On the last day of school in May 1925, they congregated in Robinson's Drug Store and devised a plan to use a willing teacher to challenge the constitutionality of the statute. ...