When John T. Scopes Visited Peabody 36 Years Ago, It Had Been 45 Years

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When John T. Scopes Visited Peabody 36 Years Ago, It Had Been 45 Years TESY OF THE TENNESSEAN THETESY OF R John T. Scopes spoke to a packed Human T JOHNSON / COU R Development Laboratory Auditorium on E B RO April 1, 1970. n April 1, 1970, I reported to work as I eye then 70 years old, with thinning gray hair and a always did, with intermingled feelings of dark suit, speaking to a group of biology students. Oboredom and dread, taking my seat in the It was his first appearance in a Tennessee class- claustrophobic office, which I shared with 16 teletype room in 45 years, one of four appearances he made Revisiting Scopes machines. Fred Moen, czar of the Associated Press that day, followed in order by a luncheon with the in Nashville, noted my arrival and shouted instruc- president and leaders of the college, a press confer- tions above the clatter of the news: “Gaillard! John T. ence, and a final lecture to an overflow crowd at one When John T. Scopes visited Peabody 36 years ago, it Scopes is speaking at Peabody. Get out there and do of the auditoriums on the campus. Until I went back had been 45 years since the infamous “Monkey Trial” an interview.” and looked up the clippings, I couldn’t remember I must have stood frozen for nearly a minute, much of what he said, just the dominant impression in Dayton, Tennessee. These days, the same controversies trying to take in what he had said. I couldn’t have that he made, not only on me, but apparently on haunt the teaching of biological sciences. been more stunned if he had told me to interview everybody who heard him. Abraham Lincoln. John T. Scopes. Was this some kind He was self-deprecating about his role in the trial, BY Frye Gaillard of April Fool’s joke? As a history major fresh out of seeing himself as a bit player in history. “I did little Vanderbilt, I knew a little about the famous “monkey more than sit, proxy-like, in freedom’s chair that hot, trial”—the trial of the century, many people said—and unforgettable summer,” he had written. “No great feat, 45 years later, that description still seemed to apply. despite the notoriety it has brought me.” But was it possible that Scopes was still alive, that To many of us that day at Peabody, Scopes’ this biology teacher from Dayton, Tennessee, this humility took us by surprise, given the melodrama apostle of science and academic freedom, was still of his case and the enduring controversy it produced. a living, breathing human being? The answer to the Scopes insisted that the issues he had sought to raise question turned out to be yes, for there was Scopes in Dayton were not yet resolved, and he said it was on the Peabody campus—a man with a spark in his important to understand the story. He had retained 20 F A L L 2 0 0 6 PEABODY REFLECTO R 21 back into my mind the emotions of youth. I would Even his opponents were inclined to agree that summer, and Scopes was playing tennis with some of try to remember what the world looked like to me Bryan was the greatest orator of his time, and in a his students. when I was a child. I would try to remember how curious way, his disdain for Darwin’s theory of evolu- When the game was over he made his way to strong were these instinctive, persistent emotions tion—the object of his oratory in later years—may Robinson’s Drug Store, one of the favorite gathering that moved my life. I would try to remember how have sprung from his deep progressive inclinations. spots in town. The owner, Fred Robinson, was chairman weak and inefficient was youth in the presence of the He was repelled by an explanation of life that didn’t of the school board, and he was talking with some of surging, controlling feelings of the child.” seem to leave any room for God, but just as strongly the town’s business leaders when Scopes pulled up That was Clarence Darrow, a man who could he hated the social implications of the theory, the a chair to join them. They showed him an ad in a move a trial judge to tears, and bolster his resolve to appalling notion that the fittest should survive. Chattanooga newspaper in which the American spare the lives of two troubled boys when the world “I object to the Darwinian theory,” he proclaimed, Civil Liberties Union offered to pay the legal costs at large was calling for their blood. “because I fear we shall lose the consciousness of God’s for anyone who would challenge the evolution law. The following year, when he asked for the chance presence in our daily life, if we must accept the theory They asked if Scopes would be willing to do it, to defend John Scopes, Darrow was 68 years old. He that all through the ages no spiritual force has touched since he had spent a few weeks near the end of the was a craggy-faced figure with pale blue eyes and the life of man and shaped the destiny of nations. semester subbing for the biology teacher who was ill. a casual, almost rumpled demeanor—camouflage “But there is another objection. The Darwinian Surely, they said, he had taught evolution in there at for his razor sharp mind. He was an avid reader theory represents man as reaching his present perfec- some point. Scopes wasn’t sure he had actually done of philosophers and poets, and a believer in the tion by operation of the law of hate, the merciless law it, but he believed that the law should be struck down, rationality of science. But if he was happy to support and he agreed to test it in a Ten- the theories of Darwin, he was even more eager to nessee courtroom. take his shots at William Jennings Bryan, regarded “I did little more than sit, proxy-like, in freedom’s chair He could see immediately that by many as a “fundamentalist pope,” barnstorming that hot, unforgettable summer. No great feat, despite the city fathers’ motivations were through the South and Midwest, stumping for laws different from his; their primary against teaching evolution. the notoriety it has brought me.” interest was publicity for Dayton, –John Scopes For Bryan, Tennessee had been the site of his something they believed would his fascination over time with the two most dominat- greatest success. In the spring of 1925, the legislature ing figures at the trial, Clarence Darrow and William had passed by a lopsided margin a bill that immedi- by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.” Jennings Bryan, protagonists whose different under- ately made it illegal “to teach any theory that denies Driven by his passion, and the certainty behind it, standings of the world had continued to echo down the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in Bryan came to Tennessee in 1925 to act as the pros- through the years. the Bible….” The sponsor of the bill was a politician- ecutor of John Scopes. There was nothing personal The flamboyant Darrow was known as the greatest farmer named John Butler, who simply didn’t think about his decision. He found Scopes to be a pleasant trial lawyer of his day, folksy and caustic, representing that a public school teacher ought to contradict the young man, and he told him at a dinner just before the leaders of organized labor and criminal defendants word of the Lord. the trial, “We shall get along fine.” nobody would touch. He came to Dayton in defense Though Bryan agreed, he was moved by a more Scopes had a similar respect for Bryan, but not of John Scopes, and it was not his first high profile sophisticated logic, one, in fact, that might have put for the law he had helped to inspire. Scopes, who was case. He had defended the union leaders Eugene him at odds with the fundamentalists who followed then 25, had come from a family of non-conformists; Debs and Big Bill Haywood and had crusaded often him a half century later. On many of the political his father was a socialist union man, working in the against the death penalty. issues of his day, he was not a reactionary at all, but railroad yards of Illinois, and had raised his son to Among his clients were two Chicago boys, Richard an ardent progressive. He supported higher income swim against the tide. Scopes was happy to do it— Loeb and Nathan Leopold, wealthy and pampered taxes for the rich, and women’s suffrage, and in 1915, not for Darwin or the theory of evolution, but for the teenaged murderers whose victim was only 14 years he resigned as U.S. Secretary of State, protesting his over-arching cause of academic freedom. old. Darrow never tried to prove them innocent— nation’s drift toward war. Scopes had been in Dayton for nearly a year, hav- they had confessed—but he pleaded powerfully for He was a three-time presidential candidate, ing worked as a teacher and a football coach, and he YAN COLLEGE YAN their lives. unsuccessful on each of those occasions, but he was liked the place well enough, the mountainous terrain br “Before I would tie a noose around the neck of a philosophical about his defeats. “The people gave and and small-town warmth. He was barely even curious F.E.
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