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Revue canadienne d’études américaines 32 (2002) 147 The Monkey Trial Myth: Popular Culture Representations of the Scopes Trial L. Maren Wood During the summer of 1925, The Nation told its readers that the famous Scopes trial, or “the battle of Tennessee” as they dubbed it, “may play as significant a part in American history as the Battle of Gettysburg” (“The Battle” 589). The magazine’s prediction may still prove true. To this day, one of the persistent debates in American society has been the subject of the origins of human life and its teaching in the public schools of America . Both sides in the dispute over science education acknowledge that one of the major confrontations originated in the Tennessee community of Dayton. Yet to discuss the Scopes trial simply in terms of evolution and religion is to narrow the broad significance of an episode that continually re-appears as a subject in American history. Unique to this analysis of the Scopes trial is the central importance of a sociocultural historical interpretation, an objective seldom applied to this trial. This perspective emphasizes the forces at work within the society that produced the atmosphere for such a trial and the aspects of society in conflict during the summer months of 1925. Political historians have addressed how the trial is representative of political turmoil surrounding science, religion, and education, and have focused their studies to illustrate how these debates have marked the legal history of the United States. Historians of science and scientists are concerned with how the trial and the ensuing debates have shaped the scientific community. Moreover, both camps trace a Whiggish theme of progression through their works that chronicle how science eventually united to defeat attacks on evolutionary theory. Both are committed to positioning the Scopes Canadian Review of American Studies 32 (2002) 148 trial at the beginning of a long debate and constitutional fight to teach evolution in the schools. Rather than discussing the political and scientific consequences of the trial, this article explains how a myth emerged in the popular culture of the 1920s and outlines the construction of that myth from its origins as found in the coverage printed in daily newspapers and magazines covering the initial trial’s events. These popular-press accounts have been used in many privileged sources on the Scopes trial to create a fixed and false legacy in American culture. Once the myth has been defined and illustrated , the social context that produced and established the milieu for its persistence can be better understood. While many works debate who was victorious, this discussion of the trial focuses on how the facts surrounding the trial have been skewed into a mythic battle that extends beyond the issues of evolution and creation and beyond individual freedoms versus government tyranny. Recently, some academics identified a myth that they claim began in the early 1930s and was continued through popular works in the 1960s. Yet they fail to recognize that this mythic battle was nothing short of a contest over modernism; and equally important, it was a myth and a legend perpetrated from the very beginning of events in 1925. This article illustrates that the trial was used as a battleground for modernity and its struggle against traditionalism, as well as developing into a playing field to redefine a useable American identity for the post–Great War era. It is significant to realize from the outset that the creation-evolution debate has been a struggle primarily fought out in America, which illustrates that the debate is not, as it would seem, a debate between religion and science but a debate associated with American nationalism and identity. In order to understand clearly the creation and impact of the myth, it is essential to recount briefly the trial’s events. The events leading up to the Scopes trial were undramatic. In March 1925, a bill was introduced and passed in the Tennessee legislature that made it unlawful to teach the theory of evolution.1 Following the passage of this law, known as the Butler Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) advertised in the Tennessee newspapers for a teacher to volunteer as a defendant in a...

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