Monumental work

There is hope for history after all

The whitewashing of American history continues posthaste. From New Orleans to Vermont, monuments, mascots, school names, all are coming down as soon as authorities can do it without being bothered by too much protest. That is, by sometimes taking down the offending memorial in the middle of the night, with police blocking access to the public. It’s not been America’s finest hour. It reminds one of the late and unlamented Soviet Union, which erased people from pictures, from books, even from movies, when they passed out of favor, as many did. How do you erase somebody from a movie? By editing, of course. Just place a soldier in front of the non-person in the editing room, and voila, the doubleplusungood person never existed. Down the memory hole.

Although these monuments remind us all that America has had a difficult and complicated past, those who prefer a more safe historical record insist that they come down. Their delicate sensibilities can’t abide anything with the word “confederate” in it. Even in Little Rock, Ark., the name of an old street had to be changed. Not that it had been named to praise the old (and also unlamented) Confederacy, but because a hospital for southern veterans had once been on that street 100 years ago. But some moderns were too pure to see such a street sign without getting the vapors. It had to be changed.

But there is yet hope for history in this country. And it so happens it might be found in little Dayton, Tenn.

You remember Dayton. That’s the town where the Scopes Monkey Trial took place back in 1925. (As named by H.L. Mencken, who covered the trial, and the locals. They might have even deserved some things he said about them.)

The official name of the trial—the one nobody used—was The State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes. Mr. Scopes, a high school teacher, was accused of violating the state’s Butler Act, a piece of legislation that made it illegal for schools to teach evolution. He was found guilty and fined a hundred bucks. But not before a trial was held, featuring not him, but two lawyers of some note: Clarence Darrow in Mr. Scopes’ defense and William Jennings Bryan at the opposing table.

Oh, what some of us wouldn’t give to have the whole proceedings on tape! And so play whenever we want to see those giants that once walked the land. Johnnie Cochran? F. Lee Bailey? No thanks. Give us Clarence Darrow and, when he wasn’t running for president, William Jennings Bryan going at it. Just reading the transcripts is an education in the art of debate. As in Mr. Bryan’s summation:

“Science is a magnificent force, but it is not a teacher of morals. It can perfect machinery, but it adds no moral restraints to protect society from the misuse of the machine. It can also build gigantic intellectual ships, but it constructs no moral rudders for the control of storm-tossed human vessel. It not only fails to supply the spiritual element needed but some of its unproven hypotheses rob the ship of its compass and thus endanger its cargo. In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellowmen on a single plane, the earth’s surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times as bloody as it was before; but science does not teach brotherly love.”

Or when Counselor Darrow was able to cross-examine Counselor Bryan. Yes, the defense called an opposing attorney to the stand! Stand and be sworn, Mr. Bryan.

Darrow: “You claim that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?”

Bryan: “I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there; some of the Bible is given illustratively. For instance: ‘Ye are the salt of the earth.’ I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God’s people.”

Evolution vs. Creationism. The battle is as important historically to the United States as any in the books. It’s part of our story. People have wept for the ignorance of the other side (pick a side) and bled in defense of their positions. The Scopes trial is as central to this chapter of American history as Selma is in another chapter, or Harpers Ferry is in another. We shouldn’t forget. Any of it.

Flash forward to 2017, and Mr. Darrow is back in the news. And some in Dayton, Tenn., have the same opinion of him.

A SCULPTOR from Up North is set to unveil a statue of Mr. Darrow next to Secretary Bryan’s this summer—at the Rhea County courthouse, the place where the Scopes trial was held. Opposition to Mr. Darrow’s statue in the small religious town is, as the papers say, increasingly vocal.

“This monument spits in the face of our Christian heritage,” said somebody with the Tennessee Pastors Network.

No, sir, it doesn’t. It’s a statue. It can’t spit. What it can do is illustrate, and mark a place where an important event in United States history took place.

For better and more level-headed advice, take a history professor named Travis Ricketts at Bryan College in Dayton. (Yes, Bryan College, built in his honor after he died suddenly after the trial.)

Professor Ricketts called the court battle between the two greats “a trial for the soul of our country” and the backand-forth in 1925 will be relevant “as long as we are walking and talking.”

That is, as long as we are talking about, and remembering, our shared history. All of it. Not just the pieces we are comfortable with.

It would be difficult to talk about our history if certain aspects, and people, are erased completely from it.

Instead, we should acknowledge our past, and look at it with awe and respect, and sometimes with fear and sorrow. It’s all there. It’s history.

As doubleplusungood as it was at times, it’s still ours.