Clarence Darrow in courtroom during Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925.
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Post world war I America was in flux as new intellectual and social values swept the nation. Americans were increasingly picking sides between an older traditionalist viewpoint and the younger modernists. Traditionalist worried that their classic Victorian values were coming under attack by modern intellectualism. Looking for a chance to challenge the modern movement civic leaders in the small town of Dayton Tennessee urged a school teacher to challenge the inability to teach evolution in schools. In 1925 Dayton Tennessee was gripped by the Scopes Monkey Trial, legally known as the State of Tennessee vs John Thomas Scopes. John Scopes was accused by the State of Tennessee for teaching evolution to his students; violating the Butler Law passed in 1925. Reporters flocked from all over the nation to cover the trial, it became known as not only a battle for intellectual values but of social values as well.
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