3/8: Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation Hardcover – August 13, 2024 by Brenda Wineapple (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Faith-Democracy-Riveted-Nation/dp/0593229924/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.JDRqUc36UiUIH3eK1_Pqbjxg6Sx8dBlH9BsLvmHdHafp_9Muk2_yEUhSCVX__F0MdOA4DhC69ktDYCzLlsPHGTcm-frb_k2Hnexz13sMaJxDWfyq4IUe0ILOyiUrFYPU_NYz6u09C36A1AtGqgDqw-0-ZLbsGdLDtipkKF2KSkk07atZvK0AX5heVgt9YYHDgNjftDlcWA5itjSpDZyEvB8zB6lDdr4CX5yJWAy-aRc.53SKRbwc3rF4M4p-RAjIj8VWAu0wIY5LjLXsK3oVBwM&qid=1730836318&sr=1-1
The dramatic story of the 1925 Scopes trial, which captivated the nation and exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today—divisions over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, censorship, and civil liberties in a democracy
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“No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school.
Brenda Wineapple, the award-winning author of The Impeachers,explores how and why the Scopes trial quickly seemed a circus-like media sensation, drawing massive crowds and worldwide attention. Darrow, a brilliant and controversial lawyer, said in his electrifying defense of Scopes that people should be free to think, worship, and learn. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president, argued for the prosecution that evolution undermined the fundamental, literal truth of the Bible and created a society without morals, meaning, and hope.
In Keeping the Faith, Wineapple takes us into the early years of the twentieth century—years of racism, intolerance, and world war—to illuminate, through this pivotal legal showdown, a seismic period in American history. At its heart, the Scopes trial dramatized conflicts over many of the fundamental values that define America, and that continue to divide Americans today.
1912 Woodrow Wilson launched and promoted by Willliam Jennings Bryan.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the world. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm John Batchel, visiting with Brenda Wineapple, her new book, Keeping the Faith, |
| 0:10.5 | God, Democracy, and the trial that riveted a nation. |
| 0:13.4 | The ACLU intends to challenge the Tennessee law. |
| 0:18.0 | The Tennessee law is going to be very much represented not only by its own prosecutors, |
| 0:24.2 | local in Dayton, Tennessee, and also men who are interested from the state capital, but a man named |
| 0:30.6 | Brian, William Jennings Bryan, who is as famous in 1925 as you can be, given him coming out of having run for the presidency three times, |
| 0:42.0 | and Ben Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State. |
| 0:45.1 | What we're looking at here, Secretary of State, what we're looking at here is names that everybody knew right away. |
| 0:53.2 | Why did they know Clarence Darrow? Who is he? Where did he come from? |
| 0:58.7 | The man is skillful in courtroom drama. He's extremely well spoken. Right away, we have to start with how he got to |
| 1:09.0 | have such a reputation in the courtroom. |
| 1:12.8 | He goes to Chicago from small town America, and he meets up with a man named Altgeld, |
| 1:19.0 | who becomes his mentor. Who is Altgeld, Brenda? |
| 1:22.8 | John Altgelt. I think he would be better known today had he not died early on. |
| 1:28.1 | He was a very outspoken socialist-leaning, shall we say, progressive, who was a governor in Illinois. |
| 1:40.4 | I mean, he was a big figure in Chicago. |
| 1:42.4 | He had made a lot of money investing in real estate. |
| 1:46.5 | He later lost all of that money. |
| 1:48.8 | And when young Darrow came to Chicago from small town in Ohio, he and Altgud became |
| 1:59.2 | very, very good friends. |
| 2:00.7 | And Altgad really got Darrow on his way. |
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