Ask most Americans to name the “Trial of the Century,” and they’ll likely say the O.J. Simpson case. I still remember where I was when the verdict came in: driving down Highway 90 in Gulfport, Mississippi, when the radio announced, “Not guilty!”
That trial was unforgettable, but it didn’t change how most people lived.
I would argue the real “Trial of the Century” happened 100 years ago this week in Dayton, Tennessee. The eight-day Scopes “Monkey” Trial wasn’t just a courtroom drama, it reshaped how Americans think about science, faith, skepticism, education and freedom.
The case began when the newly formed American Civil Liberties Union decided to challenge Tennessee’s Butler Act, which banned the teaching in schools of “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible” and that “man has descended from a lower order of animals.”