“Jury selection marks first day of evolution case trial” was the three-column headline a century ago in the July 10, 1925, Berkeley Daily Gazette. This was what would become known as the “Scopes Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, where a teacher, John Scopes, was being prosecuted for violating a state law against teaching evolution.
The United Press described the trial as “an atmosphere which combined the elements of a religious revival and county fair” where “townspeople and (the) merely curious mingled in the huge courtroom while a new grand jury retired for a time to bring in a strictly legal indictment against the high school teacher who started the epic battle.”
The prosecution was led by three-time Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Jury selection began with a series of farmers in the local Rhea County, Tennessee, being questioned as to whether they knew anything about evolution and believed they could be impartial.
The county provided drinking fountains every 50 feet (the weather was intensely hot) in the park surrounding the courthouse, and arc lights hung from trees “for the benefit of anti-evolution and Bible meetings at night.”
The county made money charging $3 per linear foot for concession stands in the park selling things like hot dogs and beverages. The windfall would go to repairing county facilities, including the courthouse clock that was, the story said, chronically 35 minutes slow.
The courtroom also made seating provisions for more than 100 journalists who had shown up to cover the trial. The seating followed “convention rules” with “press associations given preference, then local or Tennessee papers … .”
Meanwhile, back at UC Berkeley, “exponents of evolution and science in general” would gather for a three-day conference of the American Association of the Advancement of Science in mid-July 1925. “The educators plan to discuss the teaching of science in the secondary schools” with “special reference to the teaching of science and religion, with regard to the conflict between the two.”
The Rev. Lawrence Cross, of the Northbrae Community Church, scheduled a sermon on Sunday, July 11, 1925, on “Evolution from the Liberal Point of View.” The Gazette editorialized in its issue that same day about the firing of Scopes’ sister from her job teaching math at a high school in Paducah, Kentucky, because she would not “renounce the theory of evolution.”
The Gazette condemned her firing, comparing it to the persecution of people “in supposedly less enlightened days for not renouncing religious theories.”
Ferry pier: In early July 1925, the city of Berkeley was moving toward consummating a lease with the Golden Gate Ferry Co. to build a pier and offer ferry service direct from Berkeley. The City Council approved the lease unanimously on July 14 over the objection of the Key System and Southern Pacific, which already operated ferry services from Oakland and would presumably lose business.
County police: Alameda County was going to see a doubling of its “traffic squad” in July 1925, from four to eight patrol officers, the Gazette reported July 9, 1925.
The story noted that on July 24, “the director of county traffic officers will be taken over by the motor vehicle department of the state instead of being under the direction of the district attorney of each county, and the salaries will be paid out of the county’s portion of the license tax and gasoline tax.” This seems a step toward what would be the creation of the California Highway Patrol four years later, in 1929.
Summer classes: UC Berkeley’s 1925 summer session had 5,304 students enrolled, about 100 more than the previous summer.
Bay Area native and Berkeley community historian Steven Finacom holds this column’s copyright.