REACTION TO CHANGE IN MODERN AMERICA
             The most controversial court case of the 1920's took place in the county of Dayton Tennessee and was commonly referred to as the scopes "monkey" trial. The trial was purposely set up to challenge the constitutionality of the Butler Act. The Butler Act prohibited the teaching of "any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the bible," and in particular, the theory of evolution. The newly formed American Civil Liberties Union sought a teacher willing to be the center of this constitutional challenge. John Thomas Scopes, a local high school track coach and science teacher accepted the challenge and stood trial for teaching evolution the previous spring. The attorneys involved in the trial were Charles Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. One of the lasting aspects of the trial was that it brought the media into the courtroom, and the courtroom into the lives of the American people.
             The Scopes trial symbolized the debates that raged in American during the early 1900's. That debate was between the conservative religious movement and the new liberalized ideas of evolution or as a debate between science and religion.
             After World War I America was facing an era industrialization and of consumerism and with that the a change in values as well as a change in the roles of men and women in society. The traditional values of the Victorian period were being challenged by the new more modern changing thoughts and values. The 1920's have gone down in history as a radical period of time in America, known as the "jazz age" and the "roaring twenties".
             The Scopes trial became a battle ground between the new American values and the traditionalists. Many people of the time were terrified by the changes taking place and longed for the stability they felt in the past and out of that fear grew the Fundamental...