by William Trollinger

Jerry Bergman is at it again. And it’s as bad as ever.

A prolific writer for the Answers Research Journal and similar creationist outlets, Bergman has gone to great lengths to promote the Darwin-to-Hitler trope, which has been vigorously critiqued by the Anti-Defamation League and mocked by a host of scholars. Then there is the even more absurd Darwin-to-Vietnam War trope, as presented in his scarcely readable article, “The Central Role of Darwinism in the Vietnam War.” 

Now Bergman has moved on to The Other Side of the Scopes Monkey Trial, which Glenn Branch has described as the worst book ever written about this topic. This book has as its subtitle, “As Its Heart the Trial was about Racism,” an astonishing claim to make, given that there was virtually no mention of racism and eugenics in the trial. More than this, there is also virtually no actual evidence for this argument in the book; instead, what we have from Bergman is (to quote Branch), “hagiographizing, conspiracy theorizing, and mudslinging.”

Paucity of evidence notwithstanding, Bergman continues undaunted. In his July 2025 Creation-Evolution Headlines article, “1925 Scopes Trial 100-Year Anniversary: Evolutionists are Still Teaching Myths,” Bergman repeats his argument that racism is “The Issue at the Core of the Scopes Trial.” In this piece he confidently asserts that William Jennings Bryan “was unapologetically pro-democracy and anti-racism.” In making this claim Bergman uses Goshen College historian Willard Smith’s 1969 Journal of Negro History article, “William Jennings Bryan and Racism,” an article which Bergman describes as the “definitive study on Bryan and racism.” Quoting from the first paragraph of Smith’s article, Bergman observes that “Bryan believed democracy ‘is founded upon the doctrine of human brotherhood – a democracy that exists for one purpose, [that is, for] the defense of human rights. It would be extremely difficult to select from his political career, lasting from 1890 to his death in 1925, a concept which he emphasized more than this.’”

Even for Jerry Bergman, this is extraordinarily egregious cherry-picking. In the very next sentence of Smith’s article – a sentence that, not surprisingly, Bergman chooses not to quote or mention or reference – the author says that, given Bryan’s repeated emphasis on democracy, “it is surprising and ironical to discover a contradiction in his life that certainly did not square with his much-vaunted talk about democracy and rule by the people.” And that contradiction involved “Bryan’s attitude toward race relations,” particularly, Bryan’s attitude toward black Americans, attitudes that were “acceptable to the strict segregationist” (127). 

Smith went on to document that:

• Bryan claimed that “social equality should be opposed on the ground that amalgamation of the races is not desirable . . . and amalgamation [including racial intermarriage] would be the ‘logical result of social equality’” (139-140). 
• Bryan condemned President Theodore Roosevelt for inviting Booker T. Washington to the White House, as this would suggest social equality between the races. Bryan also attacked “Roosevelt’s appointments of Negroes to office, again [taking] the southern white’s point of view’” (139, 141).
• There is no evidence that Bryan opposed Woodrow Wilson’s segregating of government workers (143).
• “When an anti-lynching bill was before Congress in 1922, [Bryan] thought its passage would be a ‘grave mistake which the North would regret as much as the South” (144).
• In 1923 Bryan gave a speech at the Southern Society in Washington, D.C., in which he proclaimed that:  

Where two races are forced to live together, the more advanced race “will always control as a matter of self-preservation not only for the benefit of the advanced race, but for the benefit of the backward race also.” Negroes have made great progress when associated with the whites. “Slavery was an improvement over independence in Africa. The very progress that the blacks have made, when – and only when – brought into contact with the whites, ought to be a sufficient argument in support of white supremacy . . . Anyone who will look at the subject without prejudice will know that white supremacy promotes the highest welfare of both races.” (Emphases mine.)

As Smith went on to document, while Southern whites (of course) received the speech favorably, blacks, on the other hand, “took a dim view of the matter, and at least a few let Bryan know how they felt about it” (144-145).

Smith concludes his article by asking why, given Bryan’s “great emphasis on the common people, democracy, and rule by the people” (146), did he hold these views regarding race? Smith does not give a definitive answer to this question, but he does rightly note that Bryan was certainly not unique among Progressives: 

One of the ironies of American history is that at the same time that progressivism was reaching its height – the second decade of the twentieth century – Negro rights, in terms of the expectations of the Civil War and reconstruction period, were reaching a new low. At the same time that new legislation and new amendments to the constitution were reforming our society and making our government more responsible to the will of the people (at least the white people), other developments were occurring which eroded the rights of colored people and made much less meaningful the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution. In these respects, Bryan was simply one of the crowd. (127-128)

Ah yes. In his “definitive study on Bryan and racism,” Willard Smith had it right. William Jennings Bryan was simply your everyday, early 20^th-century white racist. Less racist than some, no question, and that needs to be acknowledged. That said, he was still a racist who – as Bryan himself made very clear – firmly held to white supremacy. 

But if you want to claim that the Scopes Trial was at heart a battle between racism and anti-racism, if you want to celebrate William Jennings as a champion of human brotherhood and racial equality – well, then you need to do what Bergman has done here, and what he seems to do as a regular course of action. Distort the historical record for ideological purposes. Truth be damned.

P.S. Not surprisingly, Bergman is silent about the fact that at Bryan’s death the Ku Klux Klan commemorated “The Great Commoner” by setting afire tall crosses. Here in Dayton Ohio the cross bore this inscription: “In memory of William Jennings Bryan, the greatest Klansman of our time, this cross is burned; he stood at Armageddon and battled for the Lord.” While there is no evidence that Bryan was a member of the KKK, it is fair to say that if he had actually stood for racial equality – as opposed to standing for white supremacy – there would have been no Klan ceremonies honoring Bryan. 

P.P.S. Bergman also uses his article to claim that in our book, The Bible and Creationism (Jerry, it is an article, not a book), Catholic University professors Susan Trollinger and I (Jerry, we are University of Dayton professors, not Catholic University professors, but we know that our Catholicism is anathema to you and so this needs to be highlighted) engage in “censoring creationism” (wow, Jerry, we had not realized that we have the power to suppress young Earth creationism!) by pointing out that “fully 1 in 4 Americans reject evolution a century after the Scopes Monkey Trial spotlighted the clash between science and religion.” This uncontroversial observation qualifies as censorship? Censorship of what? Is this just another example of fundamentalists manufacturing evidence that they are being persecuted in America?