John T. Scopes

John Thomas Scopes (August 3, 1900 – October 21, 1970) was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925, with violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in Tennessee schools. He was tried in a case known as the Scopes trial, and was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1,793 in 2024).

Scopes was born in 1900 to Thomas Scopes and Mary Alva Brown, who lived on a farm in Paducah, Kentucky. John was their fifth child and only son. The family relocated to Danville, Illinois, when he was a teenager. In 1917, he relocated to Salem, Illinois, where he was a member of the class of 1919 at Salem Community High School.

He attended the University of Illinois briefly, then quit for health reasons. He earned a degree at the University of Kentucky in 1924, with a major in law and a minor in geology.

Scopes relocated to Dayton, Tennessee, where he became the Rhea County High School football coach, and occasionally served as a substitute teacher.

Scopes' involvement with the Scopes trial occurred after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that it would finance a test case challenging the constitutionality of the Butler Act if it could find a Tennessee teacher who was willing to act as a defendant.

A group of businessmen in Dayton, Tennessee, especially engineer and geologist George Rappleyea, considered this an opportunity to get publicity for their town, and Rappleyea spoke with Scopes, stating that while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of human evolution, the state required teachers to use the assigned textbook, George William Hunter's Civic Biology (1914), which included a chapter concerning evolution. Rappleyea argued that teachers were thus essentially required to violate the law. When asked about a test case, Scopes was initially reluctant to get involved. 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. The prosecution team, directed by politician Tom Stewart, included brothers Herbert Hicks and Sue K. Hicks, Wallace Haggard, father and son pairings Ben and J. Gordon McKenzie, and William Jennings Bryan and William Jennings Bryan Jr. The elder Bryan had spoken at Scopes' high school commencement, and remembered the defendant was laughing while he was giving the address to the graduating class six years earlier.

The case ended on July 21, 1925, with a verdict of guilty, and Scopes was fined $100 (equivalent to $1,793 in 2024). The case was appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court. In a 3–1 decision written by Chief Justice Grafton Green, the Butler Act was held to be constitutional, but the court overturned Scopes's conviction because the judge had set the fine instead of the jury. The Butler Act remained in effect until May 18, 1967, when it was repealed by the Tennessee legislature.