John T. Scopes Biography
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John Thomas Scopes (August 3, 1900 –
October 21, 1970), a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee at the age of 24, was
charged on May 25, 1925 with violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which
prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools.
Contrary to the impression created in
various versions of Inherit the Wind, Scopes was actually born and
raised in Paducah, Kentucky, but as a teenager attended Danville High
School in Danville, Illinois (Danville High was also the first school he
taught at shortly before he moved to Dayton). Scopes was a member of the
class of 1919 in Salem, Illinois, which is also Williams Jennings
Bryan's home town. Scopes did not move to Dayton until after he had
gained a law degree at the University of Kentucky in 1924. In Dayton he
took a job as the Rhea County High School's football coach, and
occasionally filled in as substitute teacher when regular members of
staff were off work.
Scopes' involvement in the so-called Monkey
Trial came about after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
announced that it would finance a test case challenging the
constitutionality of the Butler Act if they could find a Tennessee
teacher willing to be put on trial for violating the statute.
A group of businessmen in Dayton,
Tennessee, led by mine manager George Rappelyea, saw this as an
opportunity to get publicity for their town and approached Scopes.
Rappelyea pointed out that while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching
of evolution, the state required teachers to use the assigned textbook -
Hunter's Civic Biology - which included a chapter on evolution.
Rappelyea argued that teachers were essentially required to break the
law. When asked about the test case Scopes was initially reluctant to
get involved, but after some discussion he told the group gathered in
Robinson's Drugstore, "If you can prove that I've taught evolution and
that I can qualify as a defendant, then I'll be willing to stand trial."
By the time the trial had begun, the
defense team included Clarence Darrow, Dudley Field Malone, John Neal,
Arthur Garfield Hays and Frank McElwee, whilst the prosecution team, led
by Tom Stewart, included brothers Herbert and Sue Hicks, Wallace
Haggard, and father and son pairings Ben and J. Gordon McKenzie and
William Jennings Bryan and William Jennings Bryan Jr. Bryan had spoken
at Scopes' high school commencement and remembered the defendant
laughing while he was giving the address to the graduating class six
years earlier.
The case ended with a guilty verdict, and
Scopes was fined $100, which Bryan and the ACLU offered to pay. The case
was appealed to the Tennesee Supreme Court which found the Butler Act
constitutional, but overturned Scopes conviction on a technicality; the
judge had set the fine instead of the jury. The Butler Act remained
until 1967 when it was repealed by the Tennessee legislature.
It is questioned whether Scopes ever taught
evolution and was therefore innocent of the crime to which his name is
inexorably linked. After the trial Scopes admitted to reporter William
K. Hutchinson "I didn't violate the law," explaining he had skipped the
evolution lesson and his lawyers had coached his students to go on the
stand: the Dayton businessmen had assumed he had violated the law.
Hutchinson did not file his story until after the Scopes appeal was
decided in 1927. Scopes also admitted the truth to the wife of the
Modernist minister Charles Francis Potter. Scopes was not allowed to
take the stand at his trial for fear he would reveal his ignorance and
turned down a $50,000 offer to lecture on evolution on the vaudeville
stage because he did not know enough about the subject.
After the trial, Scopes went to the
University of Chicago, where he received a master's degree in geology.
After that he was mainly employed by the oil industry, in both the
United States and Venezuela. He died at the age of 70, probably from a
stroke. He is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Paducah, Kentucky.
John Scopes wrote an autobiography entitled
Center of the Storm: Memoirs of John T. Scopes. (Henry Holt & Company,
Inc.—June 1967), ISBN 0030603404
****
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URL of Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_T_Scopes
Date Article Copied:
March 17, 2006
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