John T. Scopes and Clarence Darrow
John T. Scopes (center), with attorneys Dudley Field Malone and Clarence Darrow outside of the courtroom during the Scopes "Monkey Trial" (Dayton, TN, 1925).
John T. Scopes (1900–1970), the high school teacher who agreed to test the Butler Act, was impacted deeply by the trial. Though he sometimes regretted his involvement, he afterwards followed a career in science and in later life reappeared in the media. During the trial, an endless stream of letters invited him to speak, to marry, and otherwise to profit from his celebrity, but he turned down the offers. He felt the issues at stake were sacrosanct and deferred to the defense to lead the media efforts.
Soon after the trial, a group of scientists including Kirtley Mather funded his graduate studies in geology at the University of Chicago, close to Darrow’s home. After a period of training, Scopes began a career in the oil industry, living mostly in Texas and Louisiana with his family. In 1932, Scopes also ran unsuccessfully for a US congressional seat on a Socialist Party ticket.
In 1960, Scopes returned to Dayton to attend the premiere of Inherit the Wind. In 1967, he published his memoir, Center of the Storm, about his life and experiences. In this later period, he appeared on television and gave talks about his involvement in the famed trial.
Letter from John T. Scopes to Clarence Darrow, November 15, 1927.
After the trial, Scopes became closer friends with Darrow and his wife, Ruby. When Scopes was enrolled in graduate school at the University of Chicago, he often visited their home and participated in the informal salons the Darrows hosted there. As Scopes later wrote in his memoir:
“It was in the midway apartment that Darrow held his famous get-togethers, to which he invited leading professors from the University of Chicago. They frequently brought along their most promising graduate students. Darrow usually asked me over also, so that while I was in Chicago I was in the Darrow home almost every week … Darrow’s apartment was an intellectual paradise and an open market place for ideas. Men prominent in their fields were his dinner guests; afterward they would discuss topics relating to each guest’s area of specialization.” (Scopes, The Center of the Storm, 224.)
Scopes continued to correspond with the Darrow after he left Chicago. The Law Library holds two letters from Scopes to Darrow, both from 1927, when Scopes visited Venezuela as part of a hired oil exploration trip while still studying geology at the University of Chicago.
[Signed Typescript] John T. Scopes and James Presley. The Center of the Storm: Memoirs of John T. Scopes. New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1967.
Scopes published his memoir during a period when the play and movie, Inherit the Wind, had revived interest in the trial, and a year after high school teacher Susan Epperson began to test anti-evolution statutes again. The Supreme Court decision in the case, Epperson v. Arkansas, would see anti-evolution statutes overturned nationally in 1968, as a violation of the Establishment Clause.
Scopes’s book largely deals with the trial, quoting frequently from the transcript and providing unique details and impressions of trial scenes and figures. In the postscript, citing Epperson’s case, Scopes affirms his position: “the law restricted the freedom to learn and the freedom to teach; the evolution theory is not so dangerous as to justify the suppression of constitutional freedoms by the state.”
These pages come from a typescript of the first chapter of Scope’s memoir, signed by Scopes on the last page.
Clarence Darrow’s Library
Books from Clarence Darrow's library.
The Law Library holds more than sixty works once owned by Darrow and his family. These comprise titles on science, history, poetry and children’s books, among other subjects. The books here are representative of what John Scopes would have encountered in the “intellectual paradise” of Darrow’s Hyde Park apartment near the University of Chicago. Scopes often visited Darrow beginning in the fall of 1925 when he enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Chicago in geology. The scientific books are in keeping with Darrow’s interests, though Joseph Le Conte’s Evolution (1896) argued for a compatibility of Darwin’s theories with religious faith.