Scopes Monkey Trial
Poets involved
What happened
In Dayton, Tennessee, high school teacher John T. Scopes was prosecuted for violating the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in state-funded schools. The trial became a national media spectacle when William Jennings Bryan argued for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense, climaxing in Darrow calling Bryan to the stand as an expert on the Bible. Scopes was convicted and fined one hundred dollars, though the conviction was later overturned on a technicality.
Literary impact
The Scopes trial became a defining cultural reference in American poetry and literature, inspiring treatments from Sinclair Lewis's "Elmer Gantry" to the poetry of the Fugitive poets and their opponents. The trial's confrontation between fundamentalism and modernism influenced Southern poets like John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate, and the figure of the persecuted teacher entered American verse as a symbol of intellectual freedom, referenced by poets from Carl Sandburg to contemporary writers addressing the evolution debate.
Source: Wikipedia
