ACLU History: The Scopes 'Monkey Trial'. In March 1925, the Tennessee state legislature passed a bill that banned the teaching of evolution in all educational institutions throughout the state. The Butler Act set off alarm bells around the country. The ACLU responded immediately with an offer to defend any teacher prosecuted under the law.
The American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) retained what renowned attorney to defend John Scopes F. Scott Fitzgerald Who wrote The Beautiful and the Damned(1922) and The Great Gatsby
Populist, three-time Democratic Party candidate for president, against the teaching of evolution and served as prosecutor at the Scopes Trial Clarence Darrow famous lawyer retained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1925 to defend teacher John Scopes
The case became a national spectacle, drawing intense news coverage. The American Civil Liberties Union retained the renowned attorney Clarence Darrow to defend Scopes. Bryan wrangled an appointment as special prosecutor, then foolishly allowed Darrow to call him as a hostile witness.
The case became a national spectacle, drawing intense news coverage. The American Civil Liberties Union retained the renowned attorney Clarence Darrow to defend Scopes. Bryan wrangled an appointment as special prosecutor, then foolishly allowed Darrow to call him as a hostile witness.
Some Americans expressed their discontent with the character of modern life in the 1920s by focusing on family and religion, as an increasingly urban, secular society came into conflict with older rural traditions. Fundamentalist preachers such as Billy Sunday provided an outlet for many who yearned for a return to a simpler past.
World War I had overturned the Victorian social and moral order. Mass prosperity enabled an open and hedonistic life style for the young middle classes. The leading intellectuals were supportive. H.L. Mencken, the decade's most important social critic, was unsparing in denouncing sham and venality in American life.
Intended to eliminate the saloon and the drunkard from American society, Prohibition created thousands of illegal drinking places called "speakeasies," made intoxication fashionable, and created a new form of criminal activity – the transportation of illegal liquor, or "bootlegging.". Widely observed in rural America, ...
The 18th Amendment would be repealed in 1933 . Fundamentalism and Prohibition were aspects of a larger reaction to a modernist social and intellectual revolution most visible in changing manners and morals that caused the decade to be called the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, or the era of "flaming youth.".
Most settled in urban areas, especially New York City's Harlem, Detroit, and Chicago. In 1910 W.E.B. Du Bois and other intellectuals had founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which helped African Americans gain a national voice that would grow in importance with the passing years.
Mencken, an elitist and admirer of Nietzsche, bluntly called democratic man a boob and characterized the American middle class as the "booboisie.". Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald captured the energy, turmoil, and disillusion of the decade in such works as The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) and The Great Gatsby (1925).