The Scopes Monkey Trial: The Women's Rights Movement

The Scopes Trial of 1925 put the Butler Act, passed in 1925 by the State of Tennessee, on the national stage. The Rhea County Courthouse was the center of the trial, situated in Dayton, Tennessee, a small town that wanted to get its name on the map. At the time of the trial, the nation was ending its time with the Progressive Era and beginning a new age called the “Roaring ‘20s”. Nationwide, circumstances and conditions had changed for the better. Calvin Coolidge, a Republican nicknamed “Silent Cal”,was the president at the time of the Scopes Trial. He ensured free-market policies and favored business, highlighted in his quote of “the business of America is business”. The women’s rights movement was underway with the ratification of the 19th

The Jazz Age, with the improvisation in music, sparked more independence from musicians. Americans were welcoming of the new culture, especially in big cities like New York, with the Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance helped create a “black culture” for the African-American community with an explosion of art and music. The compulsory public education movement was especially important in relation to the Scopes Monkey Trial because the trial was to determine whether evolution should be taught in public schools or not. The movement actually focused on removing private schools to ensure an “equal and fair education”. It also focused on nativism, meaning the need to Americanize these immigrants. The new media movement with the newspapers and tabloids influenced the trial because more people were interested in what was happening. H.L. Mencken was one of the premier journalists covering the trial and he sent daily trial reports to Nashville and Chattanooga. He dramaticized William Jennings Bryan and his character in his reports. The 18th Amendment and its passage reflected the state of the nation and the controversy over an issue. It was the work of the Republicans who got the amendment passed. The lower classes favored this, especially

Calvin Coolidge was the nation’s president at the time of the trial. The Republican was pro-business and ensured that America was operated like a business. This influenced the trial because the business side of the trial was large, due to the attention the trial received. The 19th Amendment’s passage was influential in the trial because it showed that there were more impactful opinions in the nation. The rights of free speech and opinion were heavily focused on in the women’s rights movement. The women’s suffrage movement was controversial, as were the topics of evolution vs. religion. The Fundamentalism vs. Modernism movement was influential in this regard. The far-left, radical Democrats were influential in the trial with the Red Scare. The Red Scare was right after the Bolshevik Russian Revolution where there was the radical takeover of the Russian Government in an attempt to turn it into a communist nation. The Palmer Raids of 1919 were launched to attack communism in the United States, to prevent similar events from happening in America. The nation was afraid of such a thing to happen that no one knew what to impose on the people. The Red Scare caused the trial to be different in respect of teaching ideas that could possibly create violence for imposing laws on people. The education was not controlled in fears that the U.S. may become