Cole Relates, Analyzes Experiences As Witness in Scopes 'Monkey Trial'

Professor Fay-Cooper Cole of the University of Chicago, controversial witness the Scopes' "Monkey Trial," told a Summer School audience last week that the significance of the famous Tennessee legal battle went far beyond the confines of the state.

Scopes, a high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tenn., was indicted in 1925 for teaching the Theory of Evolution in violation of state law.

Evolution and Freedom

Cole, who testified on human evolution, declared that the Tennessee law had threatened the foundations of academic freedom and the teaching of science. Before the trial scientists had feared that similar laws might be passed in 20 states. After this test case, no other state would risk the ridicule Tennessee suffered, Cole said.

William Jennings Bryan, the most famous orator of his day and three times candidate for president, prosecuted the case, while Clarence Darrow led the defense. Cole declared that the importance of the trial was reflected in the fact that it received more news coverage than any other trial up to that time.

Rock, Not Roll, of Ages

According to Cole, the era of the trial was "a period of frustration, uncertainty, and intolerance" marked by the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. He quoted Bryan as saying that "it is more important to know "The Rock of Ages' than the age of rocks."

Public opinion in Tennessee was so much against Scopes, Cole added, that the witnesses in his defense could find no place to stay except in an abandoned "ghost" house.

Bryan lost the nation's sympathy when he argued against admission of scientific evidence as irrelevant, thus avoiding "the duel to the death" he had promised. Without the evidence in his defense, Scopes was convicted, but the Appellate Court later reversed the decision on a technicality.

Today: Relativity

A somewhat less cotroversial topic will be taken up in today's lecture in the Series.

Nathaniel Phillips Carelton, instructor and research fellow in physics at the University, will speak on the fundamental principles and the philosophical implications of the Theory of Relativity.