William Jennings Bryan

In 1921 Wheaton College proudly hosted William Jennings Bryan(1860-1925). The former Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson,three-time Democratic presidential nominee, social reformer, lawyer andunswerving Presbyterian fundamentalist addressed a standing-room-onlyassembly for an evening service in Blanchard Hall's compact Fischer Chapel,which had seen the likes of D. L. Moody and Jane Addams. According tostudent Edward Coray, Bryan "was a fascinating speaker and spiced hismessage with some good humor." Known as The Great Commoner forchampioning causes like prohibition and women's suffrage, he lecturedforcefully to faculty and students against the theory of evolution,later using those very arguments in his seminal debate with attorneyClarence Darrow during the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Exhausted, Bryanexpired in his sleep five days after the verdict was declared, hisdeath compounded by weight and cerebral hemorrhaging. He is buried inArlington National Cemetery. To this generation when one thinks ofDemocratic Conventions the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention can comereadily to mind, but in 1896 Bryan, at age 36, addressed aless-raucous, but no-less significant Democratic Convention in Chicagowith his historic "Cross of Gold" speech, which responded to the thosedemanding a currency based upon a gold standard. Bryan shouted, "wewill answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: Youshall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, youshall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." Sadly, many don'tremember the compassionate statesman. Bryan is cruelly satirized as theoafish "Matthew Harrison Brady" in the 1955 Broadway smash, Inherit theWind. However, R. G. Lee, the eminent Southern Baptist pastor andconvention president, memorialized him as "a mighty statesman eagle,quarreled at but not hindered in his lofty flight, by the noisy humansparrows of his day who envied but could not attain unto his eminence."