EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region’s history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.

Nearly a century ago, one of the most famous legal showdowns in American history unfolded in a Dayton, Tennessee, courtroom with defense attorney and former Kinsman resident Clarence Darrow serving as a focal point during the trial.

In March 1925, the Butler Act was passed, which banned the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools. Soon after its passage, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) offered legal representation to any educator in the state willing to challenge the law in court.

John Scopes, a 24-year-old high school science teacher, agreed to be the defendant in the case. His lead counsel was John Neal. William Jennings Bryan, the famed orator and three-time presidential candidate, led the prosecution.

There may have been several factors that led Darrow to join the defense and offer his services at no charge. He grew up in a household where biblical literalism was questioned and worked briefly as a teacher — both experiences adding a personal layer to the Scopes defense.

Darrow also had a public disagreement with Bryan regarding the teaching of evolution about two years prior via letters published in the Chicago Daily Tribune. This case presented an opportunity to confront Bryan in person and on a national stage.

According to “For the Defense,” a Darrow biography, one of his motives for taking part in the trial was to prevent similar anti-evolution laws from spreading to other states.

He viewed the trial as a test of both academic freedom and free speech.

“This case will be remembered because it is the first case of this sort since we stopped trying people in America for witchcraft,” Darrow said.

The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, or The Scopes “Monkey” Trial began on July 10, 1925, and captivated the nation. It was the first U.S. trial broadcast live over radio.

The second to last day of trial saw Darrow’s defense strategy culminate in a dramatic moment. After moving the proceedings outdoors because of the heat, Darrow called Bryan to the stand as an expert on the Bible. In a heated exchange, he challenged Bryan’s literal interpretation of scripture.

It was a tactic that gave Darrow the opportunity to ask Bryan an extensive number of questions — the same questions he wanted him to answer since their exchange in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Still, it did not change the fact that Scopes had indeed taught evolution in his classroom.

On July 21, the jury found Scopes guilty, and he was fined $100. But the larger battle, for Darrow, was never about the verdict. While the verdict was a legal loss for Scopes, the trial sparked a national conversation about education, science and the role of religion in public life — conversations still relevant 100 years later.

Bryan died five days after the trial. In 1927, Scopes’ verdict was overturned on a technicality by the Tennessee Supreme Court. The Butler Act was never again enforced and it was eventually repealed in 1967. In 1968, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Epperson v. Arkansas struck down evolution-banning statutes nationwide.

Darrow’s defense left a permanent mark on American history. In a 1960 recounting of the case, Scopes described his attorneys’ impact on the field of education as having created an “oratorical storm” that “swept like a fresh wind through the schools and legislative halls of the country, bringing in its wake a new climate of intellectual and academic freedom that has grown with the passing years.”