On Jul. 10, 1925, the Scopes Trial, often called the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” began in Dayton, TN, when John Scopes was charged with violating the Butler Act which prohibited the teaching of evolution in any Tennessee state-funded school and university.

The case arose when, seeking to test the constitutional validity of the Butler Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) placed advertisements in Tennessee newspapers offering to pay the expenses of any teacher willing to challenge the law.

Into the tempest that was soon to become a cause célèbre stepped famed attorneys William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow. Bryan, the populist and three-time Democratic Party presidential nominee who was skewered by Darrow during direct examination about the Bible (Bryan professed to be an expert) on the trial’s seventh day, has been caricatured as a small-minded bigot. Yet Bryan volunteered to join the prosecution team because he opposed the theory of evolution for its association with eugenics and with social Darwinism.

In the case Scopes v. State (1925), Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but, on appeal, the Supreme Court of Tennessee, pointing to a technicality in the issuance of the fine, overturned Scopes’s conviction, while finding the Butler Act constitutional.