"Scopes Monkey Trial" was an American legal case that tested a law passed on March 13, 1925, which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." The case was a watershed in the creation-evolution controversy.

John Scopes, a high school teacher, was charged on May 5, 1925 with teaching evolution from a chapter in a textbook which showed ideas developed from those set out in Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Spec[b]...

"Scopes Monkey Trial" was an American legal case that tested a law passed on March 13, 1925, which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." The case was a watershed in the creation-evolution controversy.

John Scopes, a high school teacher, was charged on May 5, 1925 with teaching evolution from a chapter in a textbook which showed ideas developed from those set out in Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species. The trial pitted two of the pre-eminent legal minds of the time against one another. Three time presidential candidate and former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan headed up the prosecution, while prominent trial attorney Clarence Darrow spoke for the defence.

The famous trial was made infamous by the fictionalized accounts given in the 1955 play Inherit the Wind, the 1960 Hollywood motion picture and the 1965, 1988 and 1999 television films of the same name.

Court house
At the site of the trial, the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, a $1-million project which restored the second-floor courtroom to as it looked during the Scopes trial was completed in 1979. A museum of trial events in its basement contains such memorabilia as the microphone used to broadcast the trial, trial records, photographs, and an audiovisual history. Every July local people re-enact key moments in the courtroom. In front of the courthouse stands a commemorative plaque erected by the Tennessee Historical Commission.

[i]Here, from July 10 to 21, 1925 John Thomas Scopes, a County High School teacher, was tried for teaching that a man descended from a lower o[b]...

Court house
At the site of the trial, the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, a $1-million project which restored the second-floor courtroom to as it looked during the Scopes trial was completed in 1979. A museum of trial events in its basement contains such memorabilia as the microphone used to broadcast the trial, trial records, photographs, and an audiovisual history. Every July local people re-enact key moments in the courtroom. In front of the courthouse stands a commemorative plaque erected by the Tennessee Historical Commission.

Here, from July 10 to 21, 1925 John Thomas Scopes, a County High School teacher, was tried for teaching that a man descended from a lower order of animals in violation of a lately passed state law. William Jennings Bryan assisted the prosecution;
Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, and Dudley Field Malone the defense.
Scopes was convicted.