Inherit the Wind is not a true story in the strictest sense, but it is based on real events. The play, written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which took place in Dayton, Tennessee.
The trial involved John T. Scopes, a high school teacher who was accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act by teaching the theory of evolution in a state-funded school. The play dramatizes the trial, with the characters and events being loosely based on the real-life participants and occurrences.
While the play takes creative liberties with the facts, it captures the essence of the trial and the broader cultural and intellectual conflict between fundamentalism and modernism in the United States during that period. The characters in the play, such as Matthew Harrison Brady and Henry Drummond, are fictionalized versions of the real-life figures William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, respectively.
In summary, Inherit the Wind is a dramatization inspired by true events rather than a factual recounting of the Scopes Monkey Trial.