John Scope Monkey Trial :: essays research papers

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) were already conscious that the Act was likely to become law because it had been passed by the lower kinfolk of the Tennessee legislature by a landslide (in January, 1925). After a fewer false starts, the ACLU displace a press release to several Tennessee newspapers, much(prenominal) as the Chattanooga Daily Times, announcing that they would provide legal assistance, etc. for a school teacher in Tennessee who would be willing to stand tryout for having taught evolution in a public school so that a test case could be mounted to challenge the constitutional severeness of the Act.Encouraged by George Rappelyea, (a mining engineer who managed six local coal and iron mines owned by the Cumberland Coal Company), a group of leash citizens in the small town of Dayton* - the "drug store conspirators" - decided to possess the ACLUs offer, in the hope that the publicity surrounding the tally would help to revert the towns declining fortunes. On may 4th the group recruited John Scopes, football tutor and occasional stand-in teacher at Rhea County High coach as the subject for the test case, on the basis that he had taught from the atom on evolution in Hunters A Civic Biology - the State-approved textbook.(* Dayton is fixed in the valley between the Cumberland Plateau and the Appalachian Mountains. It is just a few miles West of a line from Chattanooga (36 miles to the Sou Sou West) to Knoxville (79 miles to the North East).)Rappelyea sent a telegram to the ACLUs New York office. The ACLU replied promptly, accepting his proposal. Scopes was charged on May 7th with having taught evolution on April 24th, 1925. A preliminary hearing on May 10th bound him over pending a oddly convened Grand Jury hearing on May 25th. The membersof the Grand Jury, who argon well aware of the true purpose of the charge against Scopes, handed rase an indictment and Scopes was instructed to present himself at the Rhea County court house for trial on the morning of July 10th.At no time was Scopes held in confine on this charge which, by the way, was only classed as a " irreverence", not a "crime."The OvertureOn hearing about the trial, from the leading of the WFCA (Worlds Christian Fundamentals Association), on May 12th William Jennings Bryan volunteered his services to the prosecution. By the end of that week Clarence Darrow had contacted Scopes with an offer to appear pro bono for the defense.