Station 1 the Scopes Monkey Trial When Darwin Announced His Theory That Humans Had Descended from Apes, He Sent Shock Waves Thro
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Station 1 The Scopes Monkey Trial When Darwin announced his theory that humans had descended from apes, he sent shock waves through the Western world. In the years that followed his 1859 declaration, America's churches hotly debated whether to accept the findings of modern science or continue to follow the teachings of ancient scripture. By the 1920s, most of the urban churches of America had been able to reconcile Darwin's theory with the Bible, but rural preachers preferred a stricter interpretation. Amid the dizzying changes brought by the roaring decade, religious fundamentalists saw the Bible as the only salvation from a materialistic civilization in decline. Darwin Banned In 1925, the Tennessee legislature passed the Butler Law, which forbade the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in any public school or university. Other Southern states followed suit. The American Civil Liberties Union led the charge of evolution's supporters. It offered to fund the legal defense of any Tennessee teacher willing to fight the law in court. Another showdown between modernity and tradition was unfolding. The man who accepted the challenge was John T. Scopes, a science teacher and football coach in Dayton, Tennessee. In the spring of 1925, he walked into his classroom and read, from Dayton's Tennessee-approved textbook Hunter's Civic Biology, part of a chapter on the evolution of humankind and Darwin's theory of natural selection. His arrest soon followed, and a trial date was set. Darrow versus Bryan Representing Scopes was the famed trial lawyer Clarence Darrow. Slick and sophisticated, Darrow epitomized the urban society in which he lived. The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate and former secretary of state. The "Great Commoner" was the perfect representative of the rural values he dedicated his life to defend. Bryan was a Christian who lobbied for a constitutional amendment banning the teaching of evolution throughout the nation. A Media Circus — with Monkeys The trial turned into a media circus. When the case was opened on July 14, journalists from across the land descended upon the mountain hamlet of Dayton. Preachers and fortune seekers filled the streets. Entrepreneurs sold everything from food to Bibles to stuffed monkeys. The trial became the first ever to be broadcast on radio. Scopes himself played a rather small role in the case: the trial was reduced to a verbal contest between Darrow and Bryan. When Judge John Raulston refused to admit expert testimony on the validity of evolutionary theory, Darrow lost his best defense. He decided that if he was not permitted to validate Darwin, his best shot was to attack the literal interpretation of the Bible. The climax of the trial came when Darrow asked Bryan to take the stand as an expert on the Bible. Darrow hammered Bryan with tough questions on his strict acceptance of several Bible's stories from the creation of Eve from Adam's rib to the swallowing of Jonah by a whale. The jury sided with the law. Clearly, Scopes was in violation of Tennessee statute by teaching that humans descended from monkeys. He was fined $100 and released. But the battle that played out before the nation proved a victory for supporters of evolutionary theory. A later court dismissed the fine imposed on Scopes, though in the short term, the antievolution law was upheld. Fundamental Christians were down but not out. Through the radio airwaves, ministers such as Billy Sunday reached audiences of thousands. Aimee Semple McPherson of California preached her fundamentalist message over loudspeakers to arena-sized crowds. At one point, she used a giant electric sports scoreboard to illustrate the triumph of good over evil, foreshadowing generations of televangelists who would follow her lead. Clearly, the 1920s did not see the end to these conflicts or the answers to their major questions. Station 2 Edward Hopper Edward Hopper, an American Realist painter whose highly individualistic works are a benchmark of American realism, epitomizes an art awareness that eerily depicts contemporary American life as characterized by isolation, melancholy, and loneliness. As many young artists do, Hopper wanted to study in France. In October 1906, his wish was fulfilled when, with his parents' aid, he left for the Continent. During that trip, he also visited London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Brussels. Hopper made return visits to Europe in 1909 and 1910. However, after those trips, he never again sojourned in Europe. Hopper was greatly moved by the works of Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Goya, Honore Daumier, and Edouard Manet. His early paintings exhibited some of the basic Realism characteristics that he would carry all the way through his career, a balanced, combinative style based on simple, large analytical forms; broad areas of color, and the use of architectural fundamentals in his scenes. For many years, memories of days abroad dominated Hopper's painting style. His first showing, a painting reminiscent of his “European” style, was a failure. Following that attempt, Hopper renewed his efforts by using homegrown American subjects, for which he is remembered most. Edward Hopper made his first sale in 1913, at an exposition in New York. Despite his success, he was plagued by doubt and fear following his first one-man exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club, where he was unable to sell anything. For several years after he turned 37, Hopper earned a living as a commercial illustrator. Edward Hopper's banner year was 1924. His second one-man exhibition at the Rehn Gallery in New York, was a sell-out that year. The following year, he painted “The House by the Railroad,” which is now proclaimed as his first entirely realized painting. In that work, he commenced what was to become typical of all his creations, a deliberate and disciplined sparseness. His paintings would thereafter be a blend of deceptively mismatched character. They were Modern in their austerity and cleanness, but also complete in reminiscence of the unsophisticated virtues of the American past. Hopper’s career took off and would be remarkably unaffected by The Great Depression of the Thirties. Edward Hopper had made his mark on the world. The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) held a 1929 exhibition, Paintings by Nineteen Living Americans, which included Hopper's work. A year later, “The House by the Railroad” became part of its permanent collection, and “Early Sunday Morning,” was purchased by the Whitney Museum. In 1933 and 1950, Hopper was honored with retrospective exhibitions by MOMA and the Whitney, respectively. Although his work lay outside the mainstream of mid-20th-century abstraction, his simplified schematic style was one of the influences on the later representational revival, and on pop art. Station 3 Charles A. Lindbergh Human flight was essentially a novelty in the early 1920s, the domain of dashing barnstormers who performed stunts to delight the crowds at county fairs. In the military realm, the record of the air force in World War I had not won universal admiration. Many influential officers stoutly resisted the pleas from Billy Mitchell and a handful of others who believed that the future of warfare would be closely linked to the airplane. The U.S. Post Office had contracted with a number of firms to transport the mails by air, but still regarded the program as experimental. An important force in changing attitudes toward flight was found in Raymond Orteig, a New York restaurateur of French descent. Orteig was a great airplane enthusiast and offered a prize of $25,000 for the first flight to be completed nonstop between New York and France. A number of famed aviators and adventurers accepted the challenge, including Admiral Richard E. Byrd, the famed polar explorer*; several were injured and killed in their attempts to claim the prize. Charles Lindbergh had been commissioned in the Air Corps Reserve in 1925 and worked for four years as an air mail pilot operating out of St. Louis, Missouri. He decided to enter the competition and attracted financial support from a group of local businessmen. The other aspirants concentrated on developing large two- or three-engine airplanes that could carry multi-person crews. Lindbergh took a minimal view and constructed the Spirit of St. Louis as a single-engine, one-man aircraft; every effort was made to avoid amenities in order to maximize the amount of space available for fuel storage. During the development and testing phases of Lindbergh’s venture, he became a well-known public figure, flying the Spirit from California to New York, and setting new speed and distance records in the process. Several aviators were on the verge of attempting the transatlantic crossing in the spring of 1927, but Charles Lindbergh seized the opportunity when unexpectedly favorable weather appeared on May 20. He departed from Roosevelt Field on Long Island at 7:52 a.m., successfully getting his plane into the air — no mean feat given the weight of the fuel. Once under way, his prime concerns were avoiding ice build-up on the wings, keeping his bearings and staying awake. He completed the 3,600-mile journey in 33 hours and 32 minutes and landed at Le Bourget Field outside Paris at 10 p.m. on May 21. A crowd of more than 100,000 cheering Frenchmen welcomed the new hero, who was variously dubbed by the world press as “Lucky Lindy” or the “Lone Eagle.” In March 1932, the Lindbergh’s infant son was kidnapped from the family home in New Jersey. A few weeks after paying a $50,000 ransom, the body of Charles Jr. was discovered. Bruno Richard Hauptman, a German immigrant, was arrested two years later and charged with murder.