“Jury selection marks first day of evolution case trial” was the three-column headline a century in the past within the July 10, 1925, Berkeley Day by day Gazette. This was what would grow to be often called the “Scopes Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, the place a trainer, John Scopes, was being prosecuted for violating a state regulation towards instructing evolution.
The United Press described the trial as “an atmosphere which combined the elements of a religious revival and county fair” the place “townspeople and (the) merely curious mingled in the huge courtroom while a new grand jury retired for a time to bring in a strictly legal indictment against the high school teacher who started the epic battle.”
The prosecution was led by three-time Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Jury choice started with a sequence of farmers within the native Rhea County, Tennessee, being questioned as to whether or not they knew something about evolution and believed they could possibly be neutral.
The county supplied consuming fountains each 50 toes (the climate was intensely scorching) within the park surrounding the courthouse, and arc lights hung from bushes “for the benefit of anti-evolution and Bible meetings at night.”
The county made cash charging $3 per linear foot for concession stands within the park promoting issues like scorching canines and drinks. The windfall would go to repairing county amenities, together with the courthouse clock that was, the story stated, chronically 35 minutes sluggish.
The courtroom additionally made seating provisions for greater than 100 journalists who had proven as much as cowl the trial. The seating adopted “convention rules” with “press associations given preference, then local or Tennessee papers … .”
In the meantime, again at UC Berkeley, “exponents of evolution and science in general” would collect for a three-day convention of the American Affiliation of the Development of Science in mid-July 1925. “The educators plan to discuss the teaching of science in the secondary schools” with “special reference to the teaching of science and religion, with regard to the conflict between the two.”
The Rev. Lawrence Cross, of the Northbrae Neighborhood Church, scheduled a sermon on Sunday, July 11, 1925, on “Evolution from the Liberal Point of View.” The Gazette editorialized in its difficulty that very same day in regards to the firing of Scopes’ sister from her job instructing math at a highschool in Paducah, Kentucky, as a result of she wouldn’t “renounce the theory of evolution.”
The Gazette condemned her firing, evaluating it to the persecution of individuals “in supposedly less enlightened days for not renouncing religious theories.”
Ferry pier: In early July 1925, the town of Berkeley was shifting towards consummating a lease with the Golden Gate Ferry Co. to construct a pier and supply ferry service direct from Berkeley. The Metropolis Council authorised the lease unanimously on July 14 over the objection of the Key System and Southern Pacific, which already operated ferry providers from Oakland and would presumably lose enterprise.
County police: Alameda County was going to see a doubling of its “traffic squad” in July 1925, from 4 to eight patrol officers, the Gazette reported July 9, 1925.
The story famous that on July 24, “the director of county traffic officers will be taken over by the motor vehicle department of the state instead of being under the direction of the district attorney of each county, and the salaries will be paid out of the county’s portion of the license tax and gasoline tax.” This appears a step towards what can be the creation of the California Freeway Patrol 4 years later, in 1929.
Summer season courses: UC Berkeley’s 1925 summer time session had 5,304 college students enrolled, about 100 greater than the earlier summer time.
