Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial is a 2006 novel written by American author Ronald Kidd. [1] The story is set in summer 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, and is based on the Scopes Trial.
Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial is a 2006 novel written by American author Ronald Kidd. [1] The story is set in summer 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, and is based on the Scopes Trial.
Frances Robinson, a fifteen-year-old daydreamer, lives in Dayton, a small town in Tennessee. When the summer starts, she wants only to play tennis and drink Coke. However, things bounce out of normal range when her father, the school board chairman, arrests local teacher (and Frances' friend and love interest) John Scopes for teaching Charles Darwin's evolution theory in class, in an effort to attract publicity to the town. Scopes is put on trial. Frances takes Scopes' side and defies her father, even though the case is not completely genuine. [2] [ self-published source? ] [3]
Notable people such as politician William Jennings Bryan (prosecutor of Scopes), lawyer Clarence Darrow (defender of Scopes), and journalist H. L. Mencken arrive in Dayton, along with a horde of reporters, and drama stirs.
The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books reviewed Monkey Town, stating that "Though the book rewrites a few bits of history to make its point, it's not the wholesale revisioning of Inherit the Wind , and the story is filled with authentic and lesser-known details." [4] In their review the San Francisco Chronicle wrote "Kidd does his best to blend the historical bits into the coming-of-age narrative, and the result is a very smooth read, with no breaks into discussions of Darwin's life story or extraneous details about the time period." [5]
The book also received reviews from the Horn Book Guide, [6] Kliatt, [7] ALAN Review , [8] Christian Science Monitor , [9] Chicago Sun-Times , [10] and the School Library Journal . [11]
The Scopes trial, formally The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925, in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant.
The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the book of Genesis account of mankind's origin. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of man from what it referred to as lower orders of animals in place of the Biblical account. The law was introduced by Tennessee House of Representatives member John Washington Butler, from whom the law got its name. It was enacted as Tennessee Code Annotated Title 49 (Education) Section 1922, having been signed into law by Tennessee governor Austin Peay.
Dayton is a city in and the county seat of Rhea County, Tennessee, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 7,065. The Dayton Urban Cluster, which includes developed areas adjacent to the city and extends south to Graysville.
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer who became famous in the early 20th century for his involvement in the Leopold and Loeb murder trial and the Scopes trial. He was a leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a prominent advocate for Georgist economic reform. Darrow was also well known as a public speaker, debater, and miscellaneous writer. He is considered by some legal analysts and lawyers to be the greatest lawyer of the 20th century. He was also posthumously inducted into the Trial Lawyer Hall of Fame.
John Thomas Scopes was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925, with violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee schools. He was tried in a case known as the Scopes Trial, and was found guilty and fined $100.
John Tate Raulston was an American state judge in Rhea County, Tennessee, who received national publicity for presiding over the 1925 Scopes trial, a famous creationism–evolution debate.
The Great Monkey Trial is a book on the Scopes Trial by L. Sprague de Camp, first published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1968. The book is a non-fiction account of the trial, as well as its social and political context and impact. This history of the trial was based on the archives of the A.C.L.U., assorted newspaper files, correspondence and interviews with over a dozen of those present at the trial, books and magazine articles written on the trial, and a couple of visits to Dayton. The book also contains several political cartoons published at the time of the trial. Several critics have referred to the book as the definitive or comprehensive account of the Scopes Trial.
Thomas Theodore Martin, was a Christian evangelist who became one of the most important figures of the anti-evolution movement in the 1920s. When the Anti-Evolution League of Minnesota founded by the dynamic William Bell Riley of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, blossomed into the Anti-Evolution League of America in 1923, it was with the Kentucky preacher Dr. J. W. Porter as president and Martin as field secretary and editor of the organization's official organ, The Conflict. Martin would go on to become the secretary general of the North Carolina Anti-Evolution League and an official of the Bible Crusaders.
Edward John Larson is an American historian and legal scholar. He is university professor of history and holds the Hugh & Hazel Darling Chair in Law at Pepperdine University. He was formerly Herman E. Talmadge Chair of Law and Richard B. Russell Professor of American History at the University of Georgia. He continues to serve as a senior fellow of the University of Georgia's Institute of Higher Education, and is currently a professor at Pepperdine School of Law, where he teaches several classes including Property for the 1Ls.
"The Monkey Suit" is the twenty-first and penultimate episode of the seventeenth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 14, 2006. In the episode, Ned Flanders is shocked after seeing a new display at the museum about evolution. Together with Reverend Lovejoy, he spreads the religious belief of creationism in Springfield, and at a later town meeting, teaching evolution is made illegal. As a result, Lisa decides to hold secret classes for people interested in evolution. However, she is quickly arrested and a trial against her is initiated.
William Kinsey Hutchinson was an American reporter known for his connections with presidents, legislators, cabinet members, and other U.S. government diplomats and officials. Between 1913 and 1920 William (Bill) worked as a reporter for a Reading, Pennsylvania newspaper. He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1920 and started work for William Randolph Hearst's International News Service (INS). As an INS reporter, he covered the John T. Scopes trial, also known as the Scopes Trial, in Dayton, Tennessee and on July 24, 1925 he was the first reporter to file the dispatch stating the outcome. A conversation that occurred during the last days of the trial, Scopes said:
Edmund Duffy, was an American editorial cartoonist. He grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, eventually moving to metropolitan areas. Duffy did not attend high school, but instead went into the Art Students League of New York. Duffy's career took him to London, Paris, New York, and finally to Baltimore, where he spent the majority of his professional career working for The Baltimore Sun.
Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes is a 1958 book about the Scopes Trial by Ray Ginger, first published in hardcover by Beacon Press and later reprinted in paperback by Oxford University Press. Ginger, a New York trade book editor at the time and later, a professor of history at Brandeis, Wayne State University, and the University of Calgary, had written about Eugene Debs and the city of Chicago in the time of John Peter Altgeld before he tackled the Scopes trial. In the conclusion of Six Days or Forever? Ginger wrote that his book had two purposes: First, to get "the facts straight" in order to correct "many mistakes in previous accounts of the episodes," believing that his book "comes much closer than do those accounts to telling what actually occurred." Second, Ginger "tried to view the Scopes trial in the broadest possible context" (242).
The Rhea County Courthouse is a historic county courthouse in the center of Dayton, the county seat of Rhea County, Tennessee. Built in 1891, it is famous as the scene of the Scopes trial of July 1925, in which teacher John T. Scopes faced charges for including Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in his public school lesson. The trial became a clash of titans between lawyers William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense, and epitomizes the tension between fundamentalism and modernism in a wide range of aspects of American society. The courthouse, now also housing a museum devoted to the trial, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
Sue Kerr Hicks was an American jurist who practiced law and served as a circuit court judge in the state of Tennessee. He is best known for his role as a co-instigator and prosecutor in the 1925 trial of John T. Scopes, a Dayton, Tennessee, teacher accused of teaching the Theory of Evolution in violation of Tennessee state law. Hicks may have also been the inspiration for the Shel Silverstein song "A Boy Named Sue", which was popularized by Johnny Cash in 1969.
Inherit the Wind is an American play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, which debuted in 1955. The story fictionalizes the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial as a means to discuss the then-contemporary McCarthy trials.
Inherit the Wind is a 1960 American film directed by Stanley Kramer and based on the 1955 play of the same name written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. It stars Spencer Tracy as lawyer Henry Drummond and Fredric March as his friend and rival Matthew Harrison Brady. It also features Gene Kelly, Dick York, Harry Morgan, Donna Anderson, Claude Akins, Noah Beery Jr., Florence Eldridge, Jimmy Boyd and Gordon Polk.
George Washington Rappleyea, an American metallurgical engineer and the manager of the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company in Dayton, Tennessee. He held this position in the summer of 1925 when he became the chief architect of the Scopes Trial. During a meeting at Robinson's Drug Store it was Rappleyea who convinced a group of Dayton businessmen to sponsor a test case of the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the state's schools. Rappleyea is held responsible for convincing John T. Scopes to be the defendant in the famous "Monkey" Trial.
John Randolph Neal Jr. was an American attorney, law professor, politician, and activist, best known for his role as chief counsel during the 1925 Scopes Trial, and as an advocate for the establishment of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1920s and 1930s. He also taught law at the University of Denver and the University of Tennessee, and served in the Tennessee state legislature. He was a candidate for governor or senator numerous times between 1912 and 1954.
Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP is a large U.S. law firm in Nashville, Tennessee with other offices in the Southern United States.