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ACLU and Minority Rights
During World War I the ACLU clashed with President Wilson’s majoritarian view of government. Even Rodger Baldwin, the ACLU’s founding director found himself a victim of the government’s policies regarding antiwar activities, and was imprisoned for quite a while during the war. As such, by the mid-1920’s the ACLU’s policy initiatives became centered on the idea that the “majority should never assert control over matters of individual conscience.”[1] Upon learning about Tennessee’s anti-evolution legislation and the enactment of the Butler Law, the ACLUA sprang to action. Believing the Butler Law to be a representation of majoritarian oppression of minority rights, the ACLU set into motion the events that would lead to the trial of John T. Scopes.
From the beginning, the ACLU had no plans on winning the Scopes case in the Dayton trial. Instead, they planned on drawing as much attention to the case as possible, mobilizing public support, and then appealing the judge’s decision in the higher courts in hopes of having them rule that the Butler Law and the majoritarian view it represented were unconstitutional. That being said, there were anti-evolutionists that believed the trial was a mistake and that it would end tragically. When Bryan invited Alfred McCann, the author of God or Gorilla?, an outright attack on the theory of evolution, to come to Dayton and testify for the prosecution, McCann declined. He offered the following response in a letter to Bryan:
I disapprove of the entire procedure from beginning to end….I cannot believe that good will come out of it, for I am very sure that the spirit of this generation must feel outraged by the spectacular methods invoked to put a muzzle on the teachings of any sect or cult, however erroneous those teachings may be….We cannot put a harness on their freedom of will nor can we control their imaginations. To attempt to do so is to resort to futile violence, and men will go on thinking their thoughts regardless of any inhibition or dictum to the contrary. Perhaps they would think more rightly if less sensational and more truly American methods were employed with the other side to their thoughts, thus leaving them in full possession of their own freedom of choice and avoiding for ourselves the abhorrent and indefensible device of suppression and persecution.[2]
It would have behooved Bryan to heed McCann’s warning, but as it was, the trial continued, and the debate of majority rule and minority rights continued to play out.
[1] Edward J. Larson, "The Scopes Trial and the Evolving Concept of Freedom.” Virginia Law Review Vol. 85 No. 3 (April 1999): 514.
[2] “Declines Bryan’s Request: Anti-Evolutionist Won’t Testify – Calls Scopes Case Futile.” New York Times, July 13, 1925, Page 6.
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