As you read The Wise of Heart, you’ll find it follows closely the real-life story of the Scopes Trial. Many of the events in the story recapitulate events that actually happened in the real trial.
A key participant in the trial was immortalized in a poem written by Shel Silverstein that was made popular by Johnny Cash. Cash was at the height of his success when he recorded the song live at California's San Quentin State Prison at a concert on February 24, 1969.
The judge’s decision to deny the defense motion to quash the indictment really was anticipated by a reporter who correctly inferred the trial would continue.
The “balding reporter” who opines with some of the most acerbic prose of any media member? That’s H.L. Mencken, whose real-life Scopes Trial reporting needed only modest editing to make it relevant to my modern retelling. Mencken was also a ringleader in crafting the false narrative that Dayton, TN residents were anti-science bigots, and even - as we shall see - attempted to engineer false events to paint the town in a more negative light.
Finally, in the transcript there was a surprising foreshadowing of the trial’s climax - the cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan by Clarence Darrow. Is this the moment that inspired Darrow to devise the brilliantly unorthodox tactic of cross-examining Bryan?
Read on for the details.
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