George Rappalyea looked out of
place in Dayton, Tennessee,
a
quiet town of 1,800 nestled in the Cumberland Mountains of southeastern
Tennessee. The Chattanooga Times described the energetic
thirty-one year old chemical and mining engineer as “a stranger to the
south
and southern ways.” He appeared Jewish,
though his ancestry was French. He was
short, with brown eyes, horned-rimmed glasses, olive complexion, and
bushy,
black hair. He spoke with a New York accent, a product of having grown up on
Third Avenue
in New York City where, as a boy,
Rappalyea sold papers at
the entrance to the Times Square
subway
station.
An unfortunate encounter with a
copperhead while
surveying a Tennessee farm led to
Rappalyea’s
decision to settle in Dayton
in 1922. He married Ova Corvin, the
charming nurse who tended to his bite.
Ova took great pleasure, according to an expert scientist
who
came to Tennessee for the Scopes
trial, in riding horseback with
her husband in the hills surrounding Dayton. Ova’s brother operated a
grocery store in Dayton
and helped land Rappalyea a job as
manager of the bankrupt Cumberland Coal and Iron Company.
Under his supervision, men cut up furnaces
and mining machinery for scrap and, from time to time, dug a little
coal.
Although he’d not previously been
a
regular
churchgoer, Rappalyea began attending a Methodist church in Dayton.
The church’s young modernist minister, Howard Byrd,
convinced
Rappalyea
that evolution presented no conflict with Christianity, as properly
understood. Byrd baptized Rappalyea and
made him superintendant of the Sunday school at Five Points
Methodist Church.
Rappalyea traces his resolve to
fight
the new
Butler Act to the funeral of an six-year-old boy, the son of one of his
workers, who had been killed in the family Ford by the Southern
Railroad’s
oncoming Royal Palm Express. The
fundamentalist preacher, standing over the small coffin, told Rappalyea
and
other funeral attendees that the poor young boy was doomed to the
“flames of
hell” because he had never been baptized.
After the service, Rappalyea questioned the minister,
accusing
him of
“torturing” the already anguished mother of the dead boy.
The minister replied that couldn’t “lie” for
anybody; it was his “duty to preach the word of God.”
Rappalyea, still seething, told the minister,
“If your conscience won’t let you think of anything that will bring a
little
comfort to that poor creature, shut up!” A few days later, when news
came that
the anti-evolution bill had become law, Rappalyea, retelling the story
said, “I
made up my mind I’d show this same bunch, the Fundamentalists, to the
world.” Rappalyea’s resolve strengthened
when he took a boat trip, hosted by a strict Fundamentalist, soon after
the
boy’s funeral on the Tennessee River. “All of them kidded me. I
couldn’t even argue with my host, but I
told the others I would get even.”
Rappalyea blew off some steam by
writing a letter
critical of the Butler Act to the Chattanooga Times, but he saw
his real
chance to challenge the new law when, while sitting in his office at
the coal
yard, he spotted a story in that same paper.
The story in the May 4th edition quoted an American Civil
Liberties
Union chairperson, Professor Charles Skinner, as saying the
organization was
“looking for a Tennessee
teacher who is willing to accept our services in testing this law in
the
courts.” Rappalyea trotted off to Fred
E. Robinson’s fountain and drugstore, the favorite gathering spot for
the
town’s movers and shakers. Rappalyea
asked Robinson, who doubled as the chairman of the Rhea County
school board, whether he’d seen the ACLU ad in the morning paper. He said that he hadn’t. Rappalyea
then described his plan to test the
Butler Act in Dayton’s
own Rhea County Courthouse. He’d need a
teacher to volunteer to serve as a defendant in the test case, of
course, and
if he could find one, he’d contact the ACLU in New York.
Rappalyea’s idea found
considerable
support among
Dayton’s
elite,
many of whom saw the test case as providing a potential boost to the
town’s
recently troubled economy. Robinson said
he liked the plan. School Superintendent
Walter White, who had a more positive view of the antievolution law,
was skeptical,
but came around to the idea. Local
attorney John Godsey offered to defend.
Sue and Herbert Hicks, Dayton’s
two young city attorneys, agreed to prosecute, if a willing teaching
could be
found. Sensing sufficient local support
for his project, Rappalyea called the ACLU, which promised to honor its
advertised pledge.
Fred Robinson asked a high school
student, who
happened to be enjoying a soda at the drugstore’s fountain, to locate
and bring
back John Scopes, the twenty-four-year- old general science instructor
and
football coach at the high school. The
student found Scopes on a nearby tennis court.
After Scopes showed up at Robinson’s and took a seat ,
Rappalyea
asked
the young teacher, “John, we’ve been arguing, and I said that nobody
could
teach biology without teaching evolution.”
“That’s right,” Scopes answered.
He added that the book he used, Hunter’s A Civic
Biology, included
a unit on the subject. Conveniently,
Robinson’s drugstore also sold textbooks, and a copy of A Civic
Biology
was hastily retrieved and examined.
Scopes told Rappalyea and the other men that used the book
while
filling
in for the principal, the school’s regular biology teacher, during his
recent
illness. “Then you’ve been violating the
law,” Robinson concluded. Robinson then
asked Scopes whether he’d “be willing to stand for a test case.” Rappalyea urged Scopes to agree, and he
did.
Rappalyea announced he’d swear
out the
warrant
for the “arrest” of Scopes and then proceeded to wire the ACLU in New York. “WIRE ME COLLECT IF YOU WISH TO COOPERATE AND
ARREST WILL FOLLOW,” the telegram concluded. A few days later, after
receiving
in a reply telegram the ACLU’s promise of financial support, Rappalyea
spotted
a deputy sheriff walking the street in front of Robinson’s. He rushed out to hand him the warrant
demanding
the arrest of Scopes, and the legal machinery that would produce America’s
strangest and most enduring trial was set in motion.
Rappalyea
had his own idea about who should serve on the Scopes defense team. His first choice was writer H. G. Wells,
author of the science fiction classic War of the Worlds.
Rappalyea told reporters, “I am sure that in
the interest of science Mr. Wells will consent.” Wells,
in London,
dismissed the idea saying, “I have never heard of Dayton.” Rappalyea
also mentioned philosopher John Dewey as a possible candidate
to defend Scopes, but that idea never took either.
Several other notable attorneys, however,
soon jumped in to offer their services.
John Randolph Neal, an eccentric University
of Tennessee law professor
volunteered
first, followed by America’s
most famous defense attorney, Clarence Darrow, and a international
divorce
lawyer, Dudley Field Malone.
Rappalyea expressed serious
misgivings
about
Darrow, fearing that Darrow, a well-known agnostic, would turn the
trial into
an attack on religion rather, than as he favored, a debate on whether a
modernist view of Christianity could be reconciled with the theory of
evolution. “Dr. Neal accepted Darrow’s
help in this case, “ Rappalyea said, “I wish he had not.”
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On the lawn outside the Rhea
County
Courthouse,
Darrow continues his harsh examination of William Jennings Bryan. He identifies one miracle after another in
the Bible, and demands to know whether Bryan
believed each miracle actually happened.
Did Joshua make the sun stand still?
Did a whale really swallow Jonah?
Did God really confuse the tongues of those arrogant
enough to
build the
Tower
of Babel?
Was Eve “literally made out of Adam’s rib”?
The exchanges become increasingly
testy. Bryan
accuses Darrow of calling the spectators in the bleachers “yokels.” Darrow angrily replies, “I have never called
them yokels.” Bryan insists, “Those are the people
you
insult” with your charges of ignorance and bigotry.
Darrow responds, “You insult every man of
science and learning in the world because he does not believe in your
fool
religion.” Judge Raulston jumps in, “I
will not stand for that!” (t, 288)
Minutes later, Attorney General
Stewart
rises to
object to the merciless examination.
“What is the purpose of this examination?” Bryan offers his
opinion: “The
purpose is to
cast ridicule on every body who believes in the Bible.”
Darrow follows with his answer to Stewart’s
question: “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses
from controlling
the education of the United
States—and you know it.”
(t, 299)
Bryan
decides to explain his decision to take the stand.
“I am simply trying to protect the word of
God against the greatest atheist or agnostic in the United States.” The crowd erupts in loud applause, before Bryan can
continue. “I am not afraid to get on the
stand in front
of him and let him do his worst. I want
the world to know.” The crowd responds
again with prolonged applause. Darrow
turns to the crowd and says, “I wish I could get a picture of these
clackers.” (t, 299)
The face-off in the hot sun of
the
courtyard
continues. Bryan repeatedly takes a handkerchief
to wipe
the sweat off his brow. Darrow asks Bryan whether
the reason
snakes crawl on their belly was because a snake in the Garden of Eden
tempted
Eve with an apple. Bryan says, “I believe that.” Darrow asks how snakes walked before the
apple incident: “Do you know whether he walked on his tail or not?” Bryan,
to laughter in the audience, replies, “No, sir. I have no way to know.”
As Darrow moves on to his next
miracle,
relating
to the ending of the Great Flood, Bryan
blasts back at Darrow. “I want the world
to know that this man, who does not believe in a God, is trying to use
a court
in Tennesseee to slur at [the Bible].”
Darrow breaks in, “I object to that.”
He tries to shout down his adversary, “I object to your
statement. I am
exempting you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth
believes.” (t, 303-04)
Judge Raulston has had enough. He adjourns court.
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Reports of a
possible
competing Butler Act
prosecution, this one of a Chattanooga
teacher,
precipitated an urgent meeting of Rappalyea and other Dayton trial
boosters. Most Daytonians at the gathering
expressed
outrage that the nearby large city would try to deprive them of their
moment in
the national spotlight. Prosecutor Sue
Hicks called the move by Chattanooga
prosecutors “dirty tactics.” When
Rappalyea stood to express his disgust with the events in Chattanooga,
he was rushed Thurlow Reed, who ran a barbershop across the street from
Dayton’s
main hotel. Yelling, “You can’t call my
family monkeys!”
Reed bit the seemingly surprised Rappalyea on the hand before others in
attendance pulled the barber off.
Papers loved the story. Later,
however, Rappalyea revealed the fight was a staged event, designed to
publicize
the coming trial.
In late May, Rappalyea, in a
speech to
his Five
Points Methodist Episcopal congregation, announced that—in view of his
leading
role in the upcoming trial--he intended to resign his position as
superintendent of the Sunday School.
Church members did not urge him to reconsider.
Before the trial began, Rappalyea’s own
minister, Howard Byrd, also offered his resignation.
Byrd became upset when church trustees told
him they would “lock him out of his own church” if we followed through
with his
announced plan to let a Unitarian minister from New York speak from the church
pulpit. Urged
to reconsider, Byrd refused saying, “No, not after this.
I didn’t know they were so narrow-minded.”
As stage manager of the Scopes
trial,
Rappalyea
make countless arrangements. Fixing
up
an abandoned eighteen-room house, called by locals “The Mansion,”
occupied much
of his time. Many townspeople believed
the frame house, yellow with brown trim set on a little hill and shaded
by
large trees, to be haunted. The Mansion
was the largest house in Dayton
and the only one capable of housing all of the defense’s scientific
experts. About a mile from town, it also
had the benefit of relative seclusion––considered a very good thing in
the
heated atmosphere surrounding the trial.
A few short weeks before the start of the trial, the house
stood
without
screens, without furniture, without electricity, and without a usable
plumbing
system. But Rappalyea got it ready. He arranged for screens to be fixed, for
sewer hook ups, and hired servants. He
carried in iron cots, Japanese mats, tables, chairs, spittoons, and
lots of
candles.
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The last day of the Scopes trial,
and both William Jennings Bryan and
Clarence Darrow have given their final remarks to the crowd at the Rhea
County
Courthouse. Judge Raulston asks if
anyone else would like to be heard.
George Rappalyea rises from his front row seat and
answers,
“Yes, your
honor.”
Rappalyea
remarks that it has been said that, “Big movements make big men, but
this the
case of the reverse, where big men have made big movements.” He thanks William Jennings Bryan for
“relieving me of the embarrassing position I was in as the original
prosecutor,
and carrying through what he thought was right despite the criticisms
that he
has had.” Turning in the direction of
the Great Commoner, Rappalyea bows his head slightly and says, “Mr.
Bryan, I
thank you.” (t, 317)
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Five days later, Bryan died of a
heart attack. Rappalyea told ACLU
officials in New York, “The death of Bryan
swept away any victory we might have gained before the people of Tennessee. I am the only modernist that now remains in Dayton.”
Some people blamed Rappalyea for Bryan’s sudden
death. A man he considered a friend
surprised him by
asking, “You killed a good man like Bryan; who else have you killed
lately?” A reporter warned Dayton that he
might get
shot. Rappalyea took the first
opportunity to leave Dayton, a job
offer at an
investment company in Mobile. Later he became vice president of a boat
building company in New Orleans, before
finally
settling in Miami.
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