The famous 1925 legal case about teaching evolution in a Tennessee school was the Scopes Trial.
Formally called Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, the case tested Tennessee’s Butler Act, which prohibited teaching that humans descended from earlier forms of life in public schools. High-school teacher John T. Scopes agreed to serve as the defendant in a test case backed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The trial took place in Dayton, Tennessee, from July 10 to July 21, 1925. It became a national spectacle, with three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan prosecuting and famed attorney Clarence Darrow leading Scopes’s defense. Journalists and radio audiences followed the courtroom battle as a clash between religious fundamentalism and modern science.
Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, but Tennessee’s highest court overturned the conviction on a technicality in 1926. The ruling did not immediately invalidate the Butler Act. The case is commonly called the Scopes Monkey Trial, though its lasting importance came less from the legal result than from its cultural impact.