On May 25,1925,a school teacher in Dayton, Tennessee named John Thomas Scopes was charged in court for violating Tennessee's Butler Act. He was being punished because this law did not allow public school teachers to teach the theory of evolution in school. At the time, schools were only allowed to teach creationism, which argued that man was a creation of God.
After Charles Darwin published his book The Origin of Species in 1859, evolution began to again popularity as a scientific explanation to how humans came into being. However, the United States was a very conservative society at the time of Scopes' trial, and people did not even consider the thought that humans had evolved frome apes.
Scopes' trial became very popular because there was much controversy over what to teach in public school biology classes evolution or creationism. In 1968, the United States Supreme Court ruled that creationism was an explanation of man's origin put forth by a particular religion , and said that it should not be taught in classroom. However, the debate over which theory is correct continues even to this day.