Description
Published on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Scopes trial, this book vividly recalls that famous episode through an array of fascinating archival photographs, many of them never before published. Images of the circus-like atmosphere that overtook Dayton All through the trial alternate with candid photos of the key players. The accompanying text and captions summarize the events and clarify the underlying issues of the trial. Whilst the legal consequences of the trial were minuscule—it ended in Scopes’s conviction, which used to be later overturned on a technicality—its symbolic importance used to be enormous, defining the science-religion debate in the twentieth century.
In addition to revisiting the Scopes trial, the book also examines its continuing legacy in Tennessee history, politics, religion, and education. Even though the 1925 law used to be in the end repealed in 1967, state legislators have made subsequent efforts to challenge the teaching of evolution. “Like life itself,” notes Edward Caudill in his introduction, “the controversy does not simply stop, but helps to keep evolving.”
The Contributors: Edward Caudill is associate dean for graduate studies and research in the College of Communications at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He’s the creator of Darwinian Myths: The Uses and Misuses of a Theory.
Edward J. Larson is Richard B. Russell Professor of History and professor of law at the University of Georgia. His book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and The usa’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for history.
Jesse Fox Mayshark is senior editor of Metro Pulse, a weekly newspaper in Knoxville, Tennessee.