Introduction
Lawrence and Lee wrote Inherit the Wind nearly thirty years after the Scopes Monkey trial. Although the basis of the play is the Scopes trial, the play itself is not a historical retelling of the events. Instead, the play is fiction. Each of the two main characters, Matthew Harrison Brady and Henry Drummond, represents one side of the central conflict: Brady represents the fundamentalist viewpoint, and Drummond is the advocate for science and freedom of thought. The courtroom battle that ensues between these famous attorneys is the focus of the play.
The Butler Act
After World War I, American society changed dramatically. The economy was thriving, the stock market was booming, and consumerism was at an all-time high. In addition, people migrated from rural to urban areas, leaving the conservative farmers with dwindling power. These changes fostered an atmosphere in which time-honored mores were questioned. Modernists—those who adapt their faith to contemporary trends in the sciences, philosophy, and history—embraced the changes taking place in America. Fundamentalists, on the other hand—those who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible—clung to traditional beliefs.
Amidst the fast pace of the 1920s, people sought stability and fought to maintain a conservative lifestyle; as a result, the fundamentalist movement experienced a revival. Fundamentalists turned their attention to issues regarding the infallibility of the Bible in matters concerning science and history. Their focus became Darwin’s theory of evolution, which espouses that species evolved over time through natural selection—a theory that is in direct opposition to the fundamentalist belief in the Biblical story of creation. Although teaching evolution in public schools was standard practice in the 1920s, fundamentalists initiated a movement to stop what they considered to be heretical teaching (that is, teaching that differed from their beliefs) and encouraged legislators to pass laws forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools.
In 1921, John Washington Butler, a successful farmer in Tennessee, feared that the theory of evolution was influencing young people and crippling their religious beliefs. Firmly believing that the Bible was the foundation for American government and that anyone who disagreed was guilty of weakening the principles of the nation, Butler vowed to oppose the teaching of evolution in the public schools in Tennessee. He was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1922 and was reelected in 1924. During his second term, he wrote his infamous anti-evolution act. The Butler Act, which sought to prohibit the teaching of evolutionary theory in all public schools in Tennessee, passed the Tennessee House of Representatives and the Tennessee Senate by solid majorities. On March 21, 1925, the governor of Tennessee, Austin Peay, signed the Butler Act into law.
The constitutionality of the Butler anti-evolution law was soon tested. John Scopes, a public school teacher, was arrested for teaching evolution. In Dayton, Tennessee, in July 1925, in the case Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes (also known as “The Monkey Trial”), he was tried, convicted, and fined for violating the law.
