Inherit the Wind is a 1955 play written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. The play, which takes place in the American South in 1925, is a fictionalized account of the Scopes Monkey Trial, in which a high schooler teacher was convicted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in his science class. The play explores the tension between science and religion in small-town America. Lawrence and Lee wrote the play in response to the hysteria happening around them as a result of McCarthyism in the 1950s.
In the play, teacher Bertram Cates is arrested for reading a chapter about Darwin's theory of evolution to his science class. He is put on trial (a trial which is followed closely by the...
