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The Scopes Monkey Trial: Eugenics, White Supremacy

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The Scopes Monkey Trial: Eugenics, White Supremacy THE SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL: implications. Several generations of America’s youth were taught the concepts Nazi Germany’s Hitler Youth Eugenics, White Supremacy, were schooled in. & The so-called Monkey Trial came about after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced Utopian Socialism that it would finance a test case challenging the constitutionality of Tennessee’s Butler Act if they A.E. Samaan – Dec. 2020 could find a teacher willing to act as a defendant. The law, Tenn. HB 185, 1925 specifically provided: “May the son of Charles Darwin send you in his own That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of name one word of warm encouragement.” the Universities, Normals and all other public (Leonard Darwin letter to John Scopes) schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals. A band of businessmen in Dayton, Tennessee, led by engineer and geologist George Rappleyea, saw this as an opportunity to get publicity for their town. Rappleyea approached one of the small town’s teachers, Mr. Scopes. He pointed out that while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of human evolution, the State required teachers to use the assigned textbook, “A Civic Biology,” which included a chapter on evolution. Rappleyea argued that teachers were essentially required to break the law. What historians have failed to mention is just how this book, “A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems,” fully propagated the views of the international eugenics movement. The chapter on how evolution applied to humanity had been written by none other than Charles Benedict Davenport, the head of the Cold Spring Harbor Eugenic Records Office, the epicenter of the American eugenics lobby. While historians have feigned outrage over the alleged disservice of attempting to keep evolution out of the classrooms, they have equally forgotten the one chapter that everyone should have been paying attention to: The Scopes “Monkey Trials” was nothing more The Races of Man. -- At the present time there than a publicity stunt. The beneficiary of this stunt exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, was the international eugenics movement. Some of the each very different from the other in instincts, influential figures behind the impetus remain well social customs, and, to an extent, in structure. known. What is not common knowledge is their ties These are the Ethiopian or negro type, to the eugenics lobby, and, by extension, the explicitly originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, white supremacist views woven into the passages of the from the islands of the Pacific; The American book at the center of the controversy. More to the Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including point, it is incredible that this aspect of this famous the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and trial has not been delved into much. Consider the finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of animals, we would probably kill them off to Europe and America. ... prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of Here were the odious racial hierarchies of the separating the sexes in asylums or other places eugenics cult being taught to the American youth. Even and in various ways preventing intermarriage and worse, this passage of the textbook flirted with the the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and creation of a “master race”: degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been Improvement of Man. - If the stock of tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting domesticated animals can be improved, it is not with some success in this country. unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future Blood Tells. - Eugenics shows us, on the other generations of men and women on the earth hand, in a study of the families in which are might not be improved by applying to them the brilliant men and women, the fact that the laws of selection. This improvement of the future descendants have received the good inheritance race has a number of factors in which we as from their ancestors. The following, taken from individuals may play a part. These are personal Davenport’s Heredity in Relationship to hygiene, selection of healthy mates, and the Eugenics, illustrates how one family has been betterment of the environment. famous in American History. Eugenics. - When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race Interestingly enough, the word “eugenics” was should demand. The most important of these is never used throughout the trial, and in doing so, both freedom from germ diseases which might be the prosecution and the defense intentionally evaded handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, the point of why treating man as an animal was syphilis, that dread disease which cripples and abhorrent. This is certainly curious, as the text of the kills hundreds of thousands of innocent children, allegedly violated law placed this issue at the heart of epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps the mater, and demanded it be addressed. which it is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity. The science of being well born CLARANCE DARROW’S “EUGENICS CULT”: is called eugenics. In hindsight, the choice of attorneys on both sides sheds light on the evasion of the salient aspects Of note is the devaluation of human life down to of this actual controversy at hand. The Scopes case was the level of “parasites,” a rhetorical tactic later a dream come true for Clarence Darrow. In his identified as that of Nazi propaganda: autobiography, “The Story of My Life,” he admits Parasitism and its Cost to Society. -- Hundreds that as soon as he heard William Jennings Bryan had of families such as those described above exist joined the prosecution team, “at once I wanted to today, spreading disease, immorality, and crime go.” On a speaking tour in Richmond at the time, to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals Darrow confided to a friend, “I believe I could bring or plants become parasitic on other plants or him down.” So irresistible was the chance to battle animals, these families have become parasitic on “the idol of all Morondom” that Darrow felt society. They not only do harm to others by compelled “for the first, the last, the only time in my corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they life” to volunteer his services in a case. (Pg. 244 – are actually protected and cared for by the state “Story of My Life”) The ACLU leadership was out of public money. Largely for them the decidedly less enthusiastic about Darrow’s poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from participation in the case, and reluctantly accepted him society, but they give nothing in return. They are on the defense team, when John Scopes “insisted on true parasites. having him as a defender.” The fact that the word “eugenics” and any The book then went on to provide the typical reference to Charles B. Davenport was never discussed eugenic proposals that were part of their international in the Scopes Trial certainly raises suspicion. movement: Interestingly enough, Darrow, the lawyer defending the The Remedy. - If such people were lower use of Davenport’s textbook had very strong opinions against eugenics. Darrow had previously vacillated in sway in their claims: his opposition and support for eugenics and Why do eugenists dodge the perfectly obvious euthanasia. However, he wrote an article in the 1925 facts to bolster up their case for tinkering with September to December issue of American Mercury, the human race? ---- The Jukeses in a barren, the same year as the “Monkey Trial,” poking fun at and rocky, isolated community are contrasted in the debasing eugenics. The article is vicious, to say the literature of eugenics with a family in the fertile least. It is noteworthy as the timing of its publication Connecticut river valley – a family in which a few leaves no doubt that Darrow had at least begun to members having fame were able to pass this write the article while he was defending the use of the heritage to others down the line. Why go out of Davenport portions of “A Civic Biology.” The scant the way to even infer that the germ-plasm had days separating the publication and the end of the trial anything to do with either case? were too few in the era of manual typesetting and analog print presses for Darrow to have evolved such a Of note is the fact that in all its satirical and bitterly opposed opinion to the side of the trial he biting criticism of eugenics the article specifically called out Charles Davenport, the author for the defended. Darrow begins with an attack on eugenics: It is not possible within the limits of this article eugenics section of “A Civic Biology,” the very book to show the utter absurdity of tracing out any Darrow fought to maintain as part of the school given germ-plasm or part thereof for nine curriculum during the Scopes trial. This level of generations, or five, or three. Not only does new incoherence can hardly have escaped a legal mind as blood enter at each generation, but to follow the sharp as Darrow’s. germ-plasm one must go across, as over the In fact, Darrow wrote more than one article squares in a checker board, and take a blind bashing eugenics, and both articles were published just chance at every one of the infinite cross-roads weeks after the Scopes trial concluded.
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