John Scopes

A buzz ran through the crowd as I took my place in the packed court on that sweltering July day in 1925. The counsel for my defence was the famous criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow. Leading counsel for the prosecution was William Jennings Bryan, the silver-tongued orator , three times Democratic nominee for President of the United States, and leader of the fundamentalist movement that had brought about my trial.

A few weeks before I had been an unknown school-teacher in Dayton, a little town in the mountains of Tennessee. Now I was involved in a trial reported the world over. Seated in court, ready to testify on my behalf, were a dozen distinguished professors and scientists, led by Professor Kirtley Mather of Harvard University. More than 100 reporters were on hand, and even radio announcer s, who for the first time in history were to broadcast a jury trial. "Don't worry, son, we'll show them a few tricks," Darrow had whispered throwing a reassuring arm round my shoulder as we were waiting for the court to open.

The case had erupted round my head not long after I arrived in Dayton as science master and football coach at the secondary school. For a number of years a clash had been building up between the fundamentalists and the modernists. The fundamentalists adhered to a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. The modernists, on the other hand, accepted the theory advanced by Charles Darwin-that all animal life, including monkeys and men, had evolved from a common ancestor.