In July 1925, the US was transfixed by State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, also known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. Held in Dayton, Tennessee, the proceedings examined whether high school teacher John T. Scopes violated the law by teaching evolution in a state-funded school. Then, as now, the trial served as a prism for societal debate around education and intellectual freedom.
“There’s just so much surrounding the whole story,” says Jennifer Beals, assistant dean and director of the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections and University Archives at University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), who curated the library’s exhibit commemorating the trial’s centennial.
UTK’s Scopes trial archive includes transcripts, photos, and ephemera from locals and attorneys involved in the case. The exhibit highlights the history of Tennessee’s Butler Act (which prohibited teaching that humans evolved from “lesser animals”), campus and community reactions, pop culture reflections, and the media circus surrounding the proceedings.
Among Beals’s favorite items are poems written in response to the trial and photographs of Joe Mendi, a “show business monkey” who was brought to Dayton to entertain the crowds.
The trial remains a touchstone for how society parses tensions between conflicting beliefs. “When you look at [the 1955 play] Inherit the Wind, which was using the Scopes trial as a vehicle to talk about the McCarthy [hearings], it’s very multilayered,” Beals says. “What always strikes me is how everything changes and yet nothing changes.”
