What Was Really on Trial in These Cases?
Courtroom trials are ready-made drama. Some are far less dramatic than others, but some trials achieve a status that people tend to call “iconic.” Several trials have been called the Trial of the Century including the O.J. Simpson trial in the 1990’s. That trial had a sensational crime, a creepy defendant, and most importantly it appealed to our obsession with celebrities. Some Trials of the Century are more about ideas and a society’s culture being on trial.
Such was definitely the case with two particular trials in the 20th Century, one real, the other fictional. Both are important parts of America’s literary heritage. In 1925, high school teacher John Scopes was taken to court in Dayton, Tennessee for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. The 100 year anniversary of this trial is coming up next year. The other example that I have in mind is the trial in the classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
In the drama play Inherit the Wind and in movie adaptations, a science teacher is arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. A famous lawyer defends this teacher in the name of academic freedom in a Bible Belt town that is universally against him. The actual trial was not as exciting. Scopes was not even sure if he actually taught from the chapter of the biology textbook that was about evolution. Other events in Inherit the Wind happen differently than in the real Scopes trial and the names of the characters and town are changed. The whole affair was seen as a publicity stunt to bring media attention and tourism dollars to a dirt-poor Appalachian town. The authors of the play openly admit that this is theatre, not journalism.
The To Kill a Mockingbird trial is of a Black man who was accused of rape in the Maycomb, a town in Maycomb County, Alabama. He was bravely defended by a lawyer not because he wanted to defend the man but because it was his job. The Black man is convicted but the trial makes the community think. The trial is fictional, but the setting is based on author Harper Lee’s childhood memories of being the daughter of a lawyer in Monroeville in Monroe County, Alabama in the 1930’s. My mother once told me that To Kill a Mockingbird reminds her very much of when and where she grew up. Her father was a lawyer and the Mississippi town she grew up in was very similar. (The setting I grew up in was more like The Wonder Years).
What do these two trials have in common? Both are set in small Southern towns in the first half of the 20th Century. People can now go to Dayton, Tennessee and Monroeville, Alabama and relive these historic trials. Both represented challenges to established values that were popular in the South. Both were viewed as moral victories by progressives. Both have been called the Trial of the Century. These trials were about what we would today call “culture wars.” The bottom line is that these trials have been a part of the American consciousness since they were introduced to the public by authors and journalists.
Ideas have weight and they have been feared, challenged, embraced, and adopted not only on the aforementioned occasions but throughout human history. It should be no surprise when battles over ideas take place in courtrooms, it seems like the whole world is watching.
