inherit the wind

These notes will help you follow this film -- and are adapted / edited / from Stephen Jay Gould's: HEN'S TEETH AND HORSE'S TOES. It is a film about the ( supposedly ) teaching of evolution in Dayton, TN ( north of Chattanooga ). The title comes from a passage in the Bible that says something like -- "he who stirs up their own home -- shall inherit the wind." Nope - I don't understand the metaphor. Go figure.

chapter 20: Dayton (TN) -- Revisited

* Govenor Austin Peay signed The Butler Act on March 2l, l925 ... which declared it "unlawful for any teacher ... to teach any theory that denies the story of Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible ..." Note: EIU plays in the Ohio Valley Conference against Austin Peay University.

No one believed the law would get thru the State Assembly . . .

... or if it did, that the Governor would sign it.

It did.
He did.
Peay was shocked and embarrassed that the legislature sent it to him but signed it as a favor to a friend, and the Governor couldn't imagine it causing any harm to any teacher.

* the ACLU advertised for someone to test the law ... thinking an urban teacher would accept the offer and the case would go to trial in Chattanooga. No one came forth.

* John Scopes didn't even teach biology and was hired as a physics teacher and coach. When the principal fell ill, Scopes became the substitute biology teacher ... and as such, assigned a few pages of reading about evolution as a re-vu for an exam.

* some businessmen in Dayton thought they could drum up some $$$$ and put the city on the map if they challenged the law, and they needed a volunteer to do so.

[ They never considered the intellectual / philosophical implications ]

The regular biology teacher was old, married, conservative ... and Scopes was young, single and a mind of his own.

* the school year was over and Scopes was pulled away from a tennis match to visit "Doc" Robinson at his drug store and other community leaders who had a proposition for him: buck the law.

* George Rappelyea made the "formal arrest."
Bryan and Darrow came to prosecute and defend, respectively. H.L. Mencken, the leading social critic of the time, came too. He was from the Baltimore SUN ... a paper that would finance the defense, if needed. The town was invaded by a strange entourage that even included a chimpanzee [ shown in the film ].

Dayton was a creationists town long before this trail. Darwin's ideas were the origin of the "four P's" [ prostitution, perversion, pornography and permissiveness ]. And don't forget the devil himself. "But even Mencken titrated his acid tongue and expressed a likeness for the town."

* part of the trial was held outside because the crowd was so large there was fear the courthouse floor would cave in !

* three common misconceptions of the trial:

* remember Governor Peay never intended to enforce this law ... W.J. Bryan even lobbied AGAINST passing the law with a specific penalty since that would lead to quick overthrow by the courts.

* the trial with its foregone conclusion was somewhat of a bore. The defense WANTED a quick GUILTY verdict so they could appeal to the higher court. But ... the trial went on and on and on [ 83l pages of testimony ].

* the art of speechifying was on glorious display during the trial. Darrow put Bryan in a hole ... but perhaps not as badly as did Dudley Field Malone, Darrow's assistant from NYC.

He out-yelled, out-manuvered and out-argued Bryan. He even managed to conquer some of the fundamentalists ... who cheered and cheered his brand of speechifying.

* at the close of testimony on Friday, the fate of the jury seemed locked: they would re-convene on Monday and find Scopes guilty since Judge Raulston had constructed the case to exclude all of the "experts." Many journalists including Mencken, left town for the weekend.

* when Darrow put Bryan on the stand as a Biblical scholar there was a depleted local crowd and a skeleton crew of scribes (no pun intended) about. Many tried to convince Bryan not to do it, but perhaps he thought he could regain some stature after being drubbed by Malone. The judge later expunged the entire testimony from the record.

* some of the most famous exchanges involved ...

* the case was thrown out since the Judge had made an error in setting the fine at $l00. The law demands any fine over $50 be set by the jury. Thus, unfortunately, there was no case to appeal. * in the heroic version, "Darwin" won. in reality ... it didn't work that way. For one, Bryan became a hero by dying a week after the trial. Today, fundamentalist Bryan College stands in Dayton. Secondly, with the technical error, the law could never be tested.

* the Butler Act remained on the books until l967, and altho it was never enforced, who can tell how many teachers failed to present SCIENCE to the children because the spirit of the law was alive and well in the hallways of schools and the political board rooms. It was a smokeless bookburning.

* in l973, Tennessee passed a "Genesis Bill [ vote: 69-l6 ] that required "equal time" and required all books to carry a disclaimer that "... the origin and creation of man ... is .... not ... fact." The Bible was a recommended reference book (and as such didn't need a disclaimer on it's first page). The Genesis Bill was junked a few years later.

* in l965, John Scopes wrote that he believed the trail in Dayton was a victory for academic freedom and that Fundamentalism began to decline ... with religion and science retreating to points of mutual respect and a common quest for truth.

* today, creationism [ S.J.Gould ]

"... is a mere stalking horse or subsidiary issue in a political program that would ban abortion, erase the political and social gains of women by reducing the vital concept of the family to an outmoded paternalism and re institute all the jingoism and distrust of learning that prepares a nation for demagoguery."

* "the major weapon used by creationists is the time-proven, simple, easy, efficient lie. They misquote, take things out of context and lie, lie, lie." [ mb leyden ]

* another basic flaw of the Creationists is their inconsistency. They object to evolution being taught because it is "only a theory" ... but they don't object to the Kinetic Theory; Gene Theory; Continental Drift / Plate Tectonic Theory being taught. They say words in the Bible cannot be interpreted ... unless . . . . they need be. And they will be the ones to do it. Jerry Falwell doesn't use the same Bible as Pat Robertson. They print their own.

* their arguments are based on a forensic illogic called "reducto ad absurdum" (sp) ... that is to reduce the argument to an absurdity. They offer no proof that the earth is l0,000 years old ... just "proof" that the physicists might be wrong. Thus, if I can prove you cannot swim ... I must be an Olympic Gold Medalist.

* Bryan's boss, President Woodrow Wilson said, "... of course, like every other man of intelligence and education, I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date ( l920's ) such questions should be raised." Ronald Reagan, however, raised them on the ( political ) stump before a fundamentalist crowd in Dallas in l980.

* "The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance." [ Steven J. Gould ]

* journalists, including Mencken noted that the people of Dayton were quite secure in their fundamentalism but showed no intolerance or even discourtesy to the opposition. Oooop - the film shows the opposite. They live by a credo indigenous to their area.

* Bryan, however, was easy prey for ridicule ... he was once the nation's hero and he ended up being its fool ... The film has a great scene of Bryan's wife talking to her old friend - Darrow -- about her hubby's zealousness.

* the current "debate" about "equal time" can be summarize with Darrow's hallowed words: "If today you can take a think like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to even think about it."