Center of the Storm

The film Inherit the Wind was on a few weeks ago. It is a dramatized version of the Scopes Trial from the 1920s, a battle over an evolution law. Edward Larson wrote multiple books about the battle over evolution, including the award-winning Summer of the Gods. The title is from a quote by Clarence Darrow.

The playwrights were upfront that the play/film was not supposed to be a real-life account. It was an allegory with specific implications during the McCarthy Era. A good account of the real events was written a few years after the film was released. John Scopes himself wrote an autobiography, which is good since he died not too long after that.

One of the chapter titles in fact is "summer of the gods."  Scopes (edited by a journalist friend) comes off almost from central casting.  A freethinking down to earth guy, who was a bit bemused to basically being almost an also ran during the trial.  This was basically appropriate since it was a test case.  

He was barely in violation (the regular science teacher, a family man, refused to play the role) and the penalty ultimately was $100 (overturned on a technicality).  He wasn't put in prison or anything like in the film.  After the trial, he studied geology, spent some time in Venezuela (where he met his wife), and had a long career in the oil business.  

[$100 was the minimum; $500 was the maximum. The jury was to set the fine, but they (according to the supreme court wrongly) let the judge do it.  The defense did not challenge this, nor apparently was this uncommon practice, so it really should not have been an issue.  

It was a clear way to find a way to punt the whole thing.  Scopes' costs were all paid for by the defense -- a scholarship fund was even collected -- but in the 1920s, $100 was not a trivial fine.]

Scopes is a bit racy in a few vignettes.  He seems to say "whores" a lot when talking about the hypocrisy of trying to stop prostitution while not in a Christian way caring about the prostitutes.  And, he speaks about some "bitch" at a rape trial Darrow and company stopped to watch, who they thought was trying to railroad some poor mental defective ("moron" or "idiot" was used -- the mid-1960s not quite "PC" yet).  

The book is overall a good read.  A more complete analysis of the events, not the insights of one person involved, would add some details. The main thing that stands out here is that Scopes treats William Jennings Bryan as basically a one-note closed-minded fundamentalist in his opposition.  

Larson's account would add that opposition to the teaching of evolution was mixed in with his pacificism and social welfare sentiments.  Christianity here was not just put out as necessary for morals but the evolution of the "survival of the fittest" variety was feared to be the road to nihilism that brought the likes of World War I.  The evolution of non-human animals was less of a concern.

This is still misguided (as was the argument that the law was constitutional as a matter of education policy discretion or because evolution was unproven on the facts). It does make Bryan less of a stereotype though even in this accounting he comes off somewhat sympathetically.  

Near the end of the book, the lower court opinion of Epperson v. Arkansas is cited.  The lower court opinion (overturned by the state supreme court) found the Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution unconstitutional.  Scopes, shortly after the book was published, was around when the Supreme Court applied that to the nation as a whole. His wife died in 1990.

ETA: Bryan recorded a version of his famous "Cross of Gold" speech.