For many today, the Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925 pretty much settled the debate over the theory of evolution, confirming in a court of law that the biblical account of creation contradicts science. Many also mistakenly believe that it was in this trial that William Jennings Bryan, a former Democratic Party candidate for president and former U.S. secretary of state, was exposed as a buffoon, a typical ignorant believer in the biblical account of creation.

We find this narrative in history books and in popular culture. The 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, which starred Frederic March as Bryan and Spencer Tracy as the “heroic, but kindly” agnostic Clarence Darrow, is a prime example of altering our understanding of an historical event through a motion picture. 

The historical reality differs sharply from the cinematic version of events. Bryan felt so strongly about the theory of evolution and the way it was being taught, and the consequences that he believed it would engender, that he offered his services to the prosecution in the case, a case against a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who had been charged with teaching the theory of evolution as a fact, in violation of Tennessee state law.

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