JOHN T. SCOPES

A few years back I found myself piddling around Paducah, Kentucky. As I was on my way to supper one evening, I passed a Kentucky Historical Marker. So, I pulled over to see what tidbit of history I had stumbled on. 

This History on a Stick stood at the entrance to Oak Grove Cemetery which is the final resting place of John. T. Scopes.  So, you know me and cemeteries, I had to go and explore. 

For those of you that don’t know or may have forgotten John Scopes was a football coach and part-time substitute teacher at Rhea County High School in Dayton, Tennessee. During one of his stints as a substitute teacher, Mr. Scopes taught a course that included Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. 

This course was in violation of a Tennessee Law known as the Butler Act, which prevented the teaching the Theory of Evolution in place of the Biblical Account of the creation of man. Scopes was charged and eventually went on trial. The “Scopes Monkey Trial” garnered national attention.

When it began in 1925, Mr. Scopes defense team included the nationally known lawyer Clarence Darrow. The prosecution team countered with equally well-known attorney name William Jennings Bryan. The trial lasted several days, but the most dramatic moment came when Darrow ask the jury to return a verdict of guilty so that the case could be appealed.  Darrow’s dramatic closing argument silenced Bryan and prevented him from delivering the closing argument that he had been working on for weeks. Bryan was humiliated and embarrassed. 

The jury deliberated only 8-minutes before returning a guilty verdict just as Darrow had ask. The Judge fined Mr. Scopes the sum of $100. Five days later William Jennings Bryan, lay down to take an afternoon nap and died quietly in his sleep. True to his word, Darrow appealed the guilty verdict and while the Butler act was found to be legal and constitutional, the Scopes Convictions was overturned because the fine was set by the judge rather than the jury. The State of Tennessee chose not to retry Mr. Scopes.

While visiting his grave that afternoon, I got to thinking, what happened to this man after the trial. Here is what I found out.

After the trial Mr. Scopes was humiliated and harassed by media and tried to retreat from public view.  He attempted to return to college, but his notoriety made furthering his education exceedingly difficult, but he succeeded and specialized in the fields of energy and geology. His notoriety coupled with the great depression made life hard for Mr. Scopes and he chose to step back into the limelight when he ran unsuccessfully for congress in 1932.

Following his political defeat, he again stepped out of public view and moved to Texas where he took a job in the oil and natural gas industry. He continued to further his education and became an expert in his field, working throughout Texas and Louisiana.  His only foray back into the public limelight was a 1960 appearance on the TV Show “To Tell the Truth.” He continued to work in the oil and natural gas industry and moved for the final time to take a job with Pennzoil in Shreveport, Louisiana. 

John T. Scopes, the little-known substitute teacher that gained national attention as the subject of the famous “Monkey Trial” died of cancer at his home in Shreveport on October 21, 1970. He is buried next to his wife and parents here in Paducah.