"....Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick forbidding the teaching of evolution?...." From Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here (near the end of Chapter 2).
Here we go again.
Much of Bryan's concern was with the effect that teaching a materialistic theory of evolution had on morality. He may have been wrong about the science, and certainly was unnecessarily slighting about opposing views, but when you look at the ideas of "scientific" racism and eugenics circulating in Bryan's day, he probably deserves better than he's gotten on this issue.