April 1926—THIS MONTH IN SCOPES HISTORY
1926 April
National Book Company sells its last 1,000 copies of The World’s Most Famous Court Trial: Tennessee Evolution Case to Kansas publisher Emanuel Haldeman- Julius (1889-1951), a quirky socialist who had been in Dayton for the Scopes Trial. Haldeman-Julius was a friend of Darrow and Thomas Scopes.
1926 April
In an antievolution sermon at Paducah, Kentucky’s Tilghman High School, Vancouver minister Arthur I. Brown (1875-1947)22 claims that Esther Smith, Tilghman’s biology teacher, is using a textbook “full of lies.” Smith denied the charge, but two months later she and a colleague were released.
1926 April
The popular and prolific Uncle Dave Macon (1870-1952) records “The Bible’s True” for Vocalion Records. Although the song doesn’t mention Dayton or the Scopes Trial, it describes some of the trial’s issues in its first verse: “Evolution teaches man came from a monkey/ I don’t believe no such a thing in the days of a week of Sundays/ For the Bible’s true, yes I believe it/ I’ve seen enough and I can prove it.” Later in the song, Macon claims that God’s creation included no “monkey business.”
1926 April 5
When H.L. Mencken is arrested in Boston for defying a local censorship ordinance (i.e., for publishing an article in his American Mercury about a prostitute), he is represented by Arthur Garfield Hays.
1926 April 9
John Neal writes that “the appalling effect of the antievolution law in Tennessee is written in the anxious faces of every science teacher in the high schools and the state university.”
1926 April 26
In Toronto, the World Christian Fundamentals Association convenes its first conference in several years without Bryan in attendance. After promising to open a fundamentalist college in every state, the attendees dedicated an evening service to Bryan’s memory.
