Dayton, Tennessee

 Josh Goforth, Bil Lepp, and I have just finished the Stories Under the Oaks Storytelling Festival in Dayton, Tennessee.  This is a brand new Festival in its inaugural year and everything was great through and through.  The idea came from Kelley Kroeker, one of my workshop attendees.  She proposed the idea to the Public Library and they, along with the city of Dayton put together a marvelous event.

We started Friday morning with school students and home school families.  It was a splendid, appreciative, and extremely attentive audience.

Friday evening was to open in the same big tent we were in that morning, but, stiff afternoon winds began to pull stakes loose and there was danger of collapse.  No worries, the Festival Commitee simple moved everything right next door to an outdoor park stage venue and the evening went forward without a hitch!

The tent rental company arrived after dark and repaired the tent setup so we could start right in there on Saturday morning.

You can see that the tent is right on the back grounds of the historic Rhea County Courthouse where the famous Scopes Trial happened in July of 1925.  Earlier that year the Tennessee legislature has passed a bill making it illegal to teach evolution in schools.  The ACLU sought to oppose the bill on First Amendment grounds and secured John Thomas Scopes as a volunteer to help provoke the trial.

While substituting in a biology class, Scopes supposedly taught a lesson (straight from the state textbook) on Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest.  He was arrested and brought to trial.  While both prosecution and defense were handled by Rhea County attorneys, “supporting” attorneys were brought in by both sides.

The prosecution brought in William Jennings Bryan who had run for President three times and was besides a well known orator on many topics.  He was a religious fundamentalist.

The defense acquired Clarence Darrow, a religious agnostic.  These two men were probably the most famous attorneys in the United States at the time.  The trial was the first trial in the US to be broadcast on radio and drew National attention.

The trial quickly turned into a debating match between Bryan and Darrow with the local attorneys almost staying in the background.  After five days, Scopes was found guilty (he never denied his teaching) and the Judge fined him one hundred dollars.   The fine was never paid and in 1927 the verdict was overturned in grounds that the Judge himself had set the penalty illegally.  The statute, though largely ignored, remained on the books in Tennessee until 1968.

It was great fun telling stories right in the shadow of the Courthouse where these events took place. Two movies, each entitled Inherit The Wind, were made preserving the whole story of the trial.

Bil, Josh, and I had a fine time working together and hope this Festival will really take off as it should.