The John Scopes Trial July of 1925 saw the most celebrated American battle between creation and evolution: the Scopes “Monkey” Trial. The defendant, John T. Scopes was found guilty of violating a Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools. Although the penalty was small (a $100 fine paid by someone else), the ramifications were anything but. The verdict would later be overturned in a higher court, and evolution became standard teaching in classrooms across America. This ruling was a huge win for science and the separation of church and state, and a crushing blow to the fundamentalist movement