ITW Lecture Supplement
Name: _______________________
Section: _____________
Date: _______________
Supplement to Introduction to Drama and to Inherit the Wind Lecture IV.A-F. (fully quizzable and testable)
Note: this sheet and rest of ITW lecture available on Internet: _______________________
A. Cates = Scopes
1. football coach at school, athletic director, 24, well-liked
2. forever plagued by trial
3. 1970--protested U.S. Supreme Court ruling forbidding classroom prayer in public schools
B. Brady = Bryan
1. unsuccessful presidential candidate 1896, 1900, 1908
2. helped women's suffrage movement
3. had read Darwin; allowed that plants/animals evolved, but not man; publicly declared that teaching evolution as theory was ok, but teaching it as a fact was wrong
C. Drummond = Darrow
1. great American lawyer
2. saved two clients--child murderers--from death penalty; one of them came to repent before dying in prison
3. In autobiography, he said he set out to discredit Biblical Christianity, advance evolution.
D. Hornbeck = H. L. Mencken--sun editorialist with acid wit
E. Tenn. Butler Act: illegal to teach evolution theory in public classroom and to deny Biblical account of Creation--repealed in 1967 (!)
F. ITW trial is approximation of real trial
1. similarities
a. immense media hype: first radio broadcasted trial; newly laid transatlantic cable carried updates
b. guilty verdict, fine
2. differences
a. no Rachel, no Rev. Brown
b. In real life, the N.Y. office of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) asked if Scopes were willing to go to trial to destroy anti-evolution law. He agreed. In memoirs, he said he couldn't exactly remember teaching his students evolution and even his students-turned-witnesses had to be coached to make it appear he had taught them evolution.
c. 15 lawyers
d. Bryan died of stroke several days later in his hotel bed
e. "Read Your Bible" banner taken down
f. Darrow was honored at a banquet, too
g. case went to Tenn. Supreme Court; conviction overturned on technicality
Note: Be able to explain the differences between historical fact and ITW. For example, why might the playwrights have added a Rachel?
Some helpful Internet sites:
1. Pope's speech to International Academy of Science:
http://www.natcenscied.org/pope.htm2. Overview of ITW and tv productions:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/ Then click "Search UVA" and search "Scopes' trial"3. Interesting modern symptom of debate between evol/creat from Detroit News:
http://www.detnews.com/1998/metro/9801/29/01290105.htm4. Article in Seattle Times on relationship between evol/creat:
http://www.seattle-times.com/science/science_religion.html5. Check the Washington Post's archives (last 14 days only) for articles on evol/creat:
www.washingtonpost.com