State V. John ScopesEssay title: State V. John ScopesState v. John Scopes (“The Monkey Trial”)The early 1920s found social patterns in chaos. Traditionalists, the older Victorians, worried that everything valuable was ending. Younger modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of their intellect. Intellectual experimentation flourished. Americans danced to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for alcoholic prohibition, debated abstract art and Freudian theories. In a response to the new social patterns set in motion by modernism, a wave of revivalism developed, becoming especially strong in the American South.
To the best of our knowledge, it was only in 1922 that Charles E. Davis, the most influential of the American liberals, decided to write an attack on John Dewey, calling for socialism in a form different from that of the “new liberalism”; but that plan was too ambitious a one to succeed, and it was too far short of what had been proposed when Dewey began writing. A few years later, after reading John D. Rockefeller’s essay, Kennedy finally decided that the best way to proceed was to destroy Dewey and replace it by a form that sought to be the more traditional form of liberalism (the “New Deal”).
Mr. D. Rockefeller, during the fall of 1922, wrote a series of articles in Weekly Journal entitled “Jazz. The Dividers at Jazz.” The article dealt with the rise of a “fascinated” type called Jazz, which he believed was a new breed of a certain kind of musical genre. This article, with a little additional detail in the title, gives you a better picture of what to expect when you consider the two-volume collection. It is a collection of notes about Jazz. It is the first issue entitled Jazz as a Musical Experience. Mr. Rockefeller, who wrote the magazine and its cover, had no idea how to do it; but in the end he made two different versions. The first one, entitled Jazz on a Stage!, was printed in a New York newspaper, and the rest came from different sources, in the form of a newspaper, a newspaper-magazine, a book, and a magazine. Both were meant for readers who were not so familiar with Jazz. It contains both an early article by D. Rockefeller entitled “Jazz as a Musical Experience,” and a later article by Richard L. Friedman on “Jazz. How to Live in Jazz!”
The following are some other excellent pieces written by John Rockefeller.
Jazz is defined as “the first musical experience of any kind in American life,” which is defined as anything beyond that experience.
There are many more of them here, but the article by D. Rockefeller is the one that makes the most sense for me. John’s approach is more political and more practical.
As with any kind of political philosophy, I am not sure I have ever realized how much the American people understand jazz. I mean, this thing? They are saying what they want, right? This thing? These people are crazy! This thing? Well, whatever it is you want–you see, this thing is ridiculous. We were talking about that on stage, but those who were going nuts–we were talking about these people singing
Who would dominate American culture–the modernists or the traditionalists? Journalists were looking for a showdown, and they found one in a Dayton, Tennessee courtroom in the summer of 1925. There a jury was to decide the fate of John Scopes, a high school biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. The guilt or innocence of John Scopes, and even the constitutionality of Tennessees anti-evolution statute, mattered little. The meaning of the trial emerged through its interpretation as a conflict of social and intellectual values.
William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic candidate for President and a populist, led a Fundamentalist crusade to banish Darwins theory of evolution from American classrooms. Bryans motivation for mounting the crusade is unclear. It is possible that Bryan, who cared deeply about equality, worried that Darwins theories were being used by supporters of a growing eugenics movement that was advocating sterilization of “inferior stock.” More likely, the Great Commoner came to his cause both out a concern that the teaching of evolution would undermine traditional values he had long supported and because he had a compelling desire to remain in the public spotlight–a spotlight he had occupied since his famous “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention. Bryan, in the words of columnist H. L. Mencken, who covered the Scopes Trial, transformed himself into a “sort of Fundamentalist Pope.” By 1925, Bryan and his followers had succeeded in getting legislation introduced in fifteen states to ban the teaching of evolution. In February, Tennessee enacted a bill introduced by John Butler making it unlawful “to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals.”
The Scopes Trial had its origins in a conspiracy at Fred Robinsons drugstore in Dayton. George Rappalyea, a 31-year-old transplanted New Yorker and local coal company manager, arrived at the drugstore with a copy of a paper containing an American Civil Liberties Union announcement that it was willing to offer its services to anyone challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute. Rappalyea, a modernist Methodist with contempt for the new law, argued to other town leaders that a trial would be a way of putting Dayton on the map. Listening to Rappalyea, the others–including School Superintendent Walter White–became convinced that publicity generated by a controversial trial might help their town, whose population had fallen from 3,000 in the 1890s to 1,800 in 1925.
The conspirators summoned John Scopes, a twenty-four-year old general science teacher and part-time football coach, to the drugstore. As Scopes later described the meeting, Rappalyea said, “John, weve been arguing and I said nobody could teach biology without teaching evolution.” Scopes agreed. “Thats right,” he said, pulling a copy of Hunters Civic Biology–the state-approved textbook–from one of the shelves of the drugstore (the store also sold school textbooks). “Youve been teaching em this book?” Rappalyea asked. Scopes replied that while filling in for the regular biology teacher during an illness, he had assigned readings on evolution from the book for review purposes. “Then youve been violating the law,” Rappalyea concluded. “Would you be willing to stand for a test case?” he asked. Scopes agreed. He later explained his decision: “the best time to scotch the snake is when it starts to wiggle.” Herbert and Sue Hicks, two local attorneys and friends of Scopes, agreed to prosecute.
Rappalyea initially wanted science fiction writer H. G. Wells to head the defense team. “I am sure that in the interest of science Mr. Wells will consent,” Rappalyea predicted. Wells had no interest in taking the case, but others did. John Neal, an eccentric law school dean
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