I had never realized that the Scopes Monkey Trial was planned stunt until I was reading a history of the 20th Century and it said that the accused teacher and the town fathers and the accused teacher very deliberately planned to teach evolution and have the trial come together primarily as a stunt to boost the local economy.
Not quite the previous image I had of a lone voice bravely struggling for intellectual freedom against the odds.
I hate to tell you this, but Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s famous landing at Letye was filmed multiple times until MacArthur thought he looked authoritative enough. Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” was not written on the train ride there, was not the main purpose for his visit, and was not received with great applause and laudatory enthusiasm. And the “mission” still hasn’t been “accomplished”.
History is mostly bunk. Plato explains how this is all for the greater good in The Republic.
Stranger
Says who? Any history book that devotes more than a paragraph to the Scopes trial makes it clear that it was an arranged case. It’s the garbage that people think they know because they don’t read about history that’s bunk.
While it’s clear that the case was arranged, I’ve never heard that they did so to bolster the local economy. None of the books I’ve read (ibcluding Scopes’ own, Center of the Storm written many years after the case) says this is the case.
Where did Jennings get this information? It ought to be referenced or footnoted in the book.
George Rappleyea, the New York-born chemical engineer who instigated the case, was sincere in wanting to challenge and overturn the antievolution law. He recognized, however, that the best way to get the townsfolk on his side was to frame the matter as local boosterism. Fred Robinson, whose drugstore and soda fountain served as the town meeting place, later quoted Rappleyea as saying, “Mr. Robinson, you . . . are always looking for something that will get Dayton a little publicity” before broaching the matter.
During the trial, Dayton published a promotional brochure saying, “Of all places, why not Dayton? . . . This bowl in the Cumberlands holds . . . the ampitheater for a world’s comedy or tragedy, whichever viewpoint the spectators may hold.” The brochure went on to tout Dayton as a place to live and work.
The most recent book-length treatment of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods, discusses this at length and quotes several Tennessee newspapers as slamming Dayton for unbecoming self-promotion.
I heard that was actually written by Francis Bacon.
It was, that’s why whenever dictators try to excuse its glorification of the enlightened despot, I picture them in a throne, screaming.
"The Scopes Monkey Trial was a planned stunt to boost the local economy "
I heard that about 9/11, too.
Bumping this because I’m curious. Can anyone shed some more light on it/
On what, exactly?
Well, was it no more than a publicity stunt, really? and if so, does that make it unimportant historically?
It’s absolutely false to say that it was “no more than a publicity stunt”. There is no question that the primary instigator of the case, George Rappleyea, sincerely believed that antievolution laws were both unconstitutional and dumb and wanted to challenge them as a state establishment of religion.
However, few things happen for only one reason, especially when they involve multiple actors. To proceed with a trial, the county prosecutors had to agree to indict and prosecute and someone had to agree to stand as the nominal defendant. And although it wasn’t a strict legal requirement, Rappleyea wanted to have the townspeople on his side (not necessarily in being antievolution, but in agreeing that the trial was a good idea). He had to live and work in the town, and didn’t want an antagonistic relationship. To bring these people on board, he argued (correctly, as it turned out) that the trial would serve as an economic stimulus.
As it turned out, the trial took on a life beyond the imagination of even Rappleyea. It was historically very important, especially in the light of continuing antievolution agitation to this day.
Thanks, I think that’s mainly what I was curious about. The OP made it seem like it was a farce.
I guess a comparison might be Rosa Parks–it was planned/organized that she would refuse to give up her seat, but it’s not like that makes it any less of a big deal, no?
The OP says:
italics mine, although the cite backs up that interpretation.
This is why I questioned the OP – i hadn’t heard that it was primarily done as a publicity stunt – I was under the impression that it was an attempt to challenge what was thought to be a bad law, and the books I’ve read held the same view. Freddy and the book he cites say that the primary objective was to get the law overturned, and took advantage of the publicity angle to get people to go along with it.
In other words, the OP’s contention isn’t correct.
The OP is also incorrect in saying that “the town fathers and the accused teacher very deliberately planned to teach evolution”. Nobody planned anything. By the time Rappleyea began arguing for the trial, the school year was already over. During the school year, the teachers taught evolution because it was in the state-assigned textbook. Scopes was a PE teacher who had served as a substitute biology teacher, and at first he wasn’t sure whether he had taught evolution at all, but he finally decided that he had.
As an aside, anyone inclined to see cardboard heroes and villains in history needs only to read the racist and eugenicist passages in A Civic Biology. They’ll make your skin crawl.
Here’s another little-known fact. The Tennessee state law did not in any way prohibit the teaching of the theory of evolution. It only prohibited teaching that humans were evolved from lower life forms. Other than that, teachers could teach evolution to their heart’s content.
I was going to step in and say this; challenges to unjust laws do sometimes take a lot of planning. ISTR that there was another case like Rosa Parks’ in Montgomery in 1954, but the young woman in question was an unwed mother and anti-segregation activists thought that might be a little too scandalous for the spotlight.
Don’t know if the ensuing boycott was planned, but I’d put my money on ‘not’, same as the publicity surrounding the Scopes trial.
I wouldn’t call the Scopes trial a stunt. OTOH, it wasn’t some lone heroic act. Asl already noted, there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than people usually realize.
Performing a lone personal action is heroic. When you have enormous resources behind you, there’s not nearly as much risk, so it’s not as heroic as it’s been presented.
Actually, when I finally found out about the background of the Rosa Parks incident, it really did surprise me and the glamor of the incident dimmed considerably. I thought, “How much more have they been hiding?” And I continue to wonder this about a lot of things.
I’m not seeing the parallels between Scopes and Parks. The Montgomery bus company and police were very much in the habit of enforcing the segregation policy, and didn’t require any advance arrangement to do so. The Tennessee prosecutors were not in the habit of harassing school teachers, and there is no evidence that they would have done so had not Rappleyea and Scopes asked them to do so.