On 100th anniversary of Scopes Monkey Trial, role of WGN Radio echoes with impact

In the summer of 1925, a high school biology teacher in Tennessee named John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to his students. At the time, Tennessee law required the teaching of divine creation and prohibited Darwin’s scientific explanations.

A newsreel announcer intoned, “The issue was no longer the innocence or guilt of Scopes, but rather the final death struggle between two basic human philosophies. Fundamentalism versus modernism.”

A circus-like atmosphere surrounded the trial. Demonstrators held stuffed monkeys during public demonstrations at the courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee.

The trail attracted two of the most prominent men of the day: Three-time presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan, argued for the prosecution. Defending Scopes was one of the nation’s most well-known defense attorneys—Chicago’s Clarence Darrow.

But perhaps it was the appearance in Dayton, Tennessee, of Chicago’s WGN Radio and famous announcer Quin Ryan that truly made this a national event.

“WGN had an impact on America,” said David Plier, the president and CEO of the Museum of Broadcast Communications.

In the 1920s, WGN Radio’s 50,000-watt power allowed their signal to reach almost thirty states. 

“This became a story in and of itself,” said Plier, who also hosts a show on WGN Radio. “The star of the show was that a radio station from Chicago was even interested at all in this case, to transmit it back to the city.”

It was the first live broadcast of a trial in American history. It cost WGN more than $1,000 a day just for telephone lines.

“They rented a cable—a continuous cable from AT&T that went from WGN Radio studios at the time, all the way out to Dayton, Tennessee,” Plier said.

WGN engineers negotiated with Judge John T. Raulston to rearrange the courtroom.

“The judge was also interested and fascinated by the fact that WGN wanted to do this, so he allowed the radio station to reconfigure the entire courtroom, so they could set their four microphones up to get the best sound and transmit back to the Chicago area,” Plier said.

WGN’s Ryan, in previous interviews, said he sat on a windowsill during the trial. He would only occasionally speak into the microphones to identify speakers. Sometimes, he would move to another room to provide commentary.

The radio audience was riveted.  

In the end, the jury found Scopes guilty. He was fined $100. Just two years later, the decision was reversed on appeal.

The trial was fictionalized in the 1960 Spencer Tracy film “Inherit the Wind.” The prop microphone in the film was one of the actual microphones used in the trial 35 years earlier.

Today, only two microphones still exist. One is in the possession of WGN Radio in Chicago, while the other is held by the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

Technology at the time didn’t allow WGN to record the trial, but the impact of the first live trial broadcast across the country still echoes a century later.