THE LAST WORD
Scopes, Jack
THE LAST WORD Jack Scopes Grandpa's Famous Trial Grandpa never talked to me about the trial. When I was a boy, he taught me how to fish, so we talked fishing. As I grew older, we talked about a...
...You are the enemy of everything Christian and decent...
...My favorite letter—and I suspect it may have been Grandpa's favorite, too—came from a mental patient in a Mississippi institution who ignored the politics of the trial but had a request: "I think a dozen monkeys at the hospital would be splendid entertainment for the inmates," he wrote...
...No big deal...
...The Chattanooga Bus Line offered special service to Dayton and advertised it under the head, Let's All Go to the Scopes Trial...
...Every now and then someone would ask me whether I was related to the John Scopes of the Scopes Monkey Trial, and I'd smile and nod, and that was that...
...William Jennings Bryan, three times the Democratic Party's unsuccessful Presidential candidate, headed the prosecution...
...Thank God we are not cursed by the blight of Fundamentalism here...
...Years later, my grandfather told a reporter, "Every Bible-shouting, psalm-singing orator in the state poured out of the hills, bringing their soap boxes with them...
...Sometimes he would grant an interview, usually because academic freedom had come under yet another attack from some fundamentalist group...
...I think I know what Grandpa would say...
...From the Philippines, a man wrote, "That statute is a disgrace, not only to Tennessee but to the United States...
...When Bryan died suddenly five days after the trial, a North Carolina fundamentalist wrote, "The public holds you personally responsible for ending the life of William Jennings Bryan...
...He'd say what he said in 1960, when a Washington Post reporter asked him why the battle for freedom of thought was still being fought: Because, Grandpa replied, "people don't change that quickly...
...Women proposed marJack Scopes is a free-lance writer in Tampa, Florida...
...Those who couldn't come to the trial wrote letters...
...An Ohio minister weighed in: "Being a law-abiding citizen, I do not want to know anything I cannot find in Genesis...
...Grandpa was dead by the time I came to understand what the trial was all about...
...I knew Grandpa was famous, sort of, because my parents had told me so...
...Congratulations came from the Norwegian Students Association for "teaching truth, annoying hypocrites, and fighting the Big Boob...
...The battle lines were drawn between science and fundamentalism...
...My curiosity was aroused the summer I was fourteen, when I found a box full of old letters in the attic of the family home in Paducah, Kentucky...
...Grandpa was found guilty and fined $100...
...Mark my word, you are next...
...Vendors sold Scopes Soda outside the courtroom...
...I don't doubt that in your personal case you are descended from some low order of apes," wrote a California man, "but I am thankful that you are hot allowed to teach innocent children that they are no more than you are...
...But most of the correspondents worried about my grandfather's soul...
...Grandpa defied the law, and in the summer of 1925 he was put on trial...
...I think Grandpa was glad to have kids around, because grownups were always asking him about the trial and he was tired of discussing it...
...And having said that, he'd go fishing...
...If he were alive today, reporters would probably be calling him to ask for comment on the "secular humanism" trials in Tennessee and Alabama, or on Louisiana's Creation Science law, now being challenged in the courts...
...My grandfather was teaching high school in the small town of Dayton when the Tennessee legislature passed the Butler Act, which made it a crime to teach evolution in the public schools...
...God will not permit such a character to live...
...As I grew older, we talked about a few other things—books and politics and world events—but not a word about the trial...
...riage, and agents submitted movie and vaudeville contracts...
...He spent the rest of his life dodging the notoriety...
...The Smithsonian Institution offered advice on defense strategy...
...Clarence Darrow, the most famous trial lawyer in America, volunteered to defend him...
...A Tennessee housewife predicted, "The only thing you will accomplish will be the making of infidels and the sending of a number of souls to hell...
...One long-ago summer he had been tried in Tennessee for teaching evolution...
...What kind of monkeys would be the best entertainment and where may I be able to buy them...
...Mencken, who covered the story for The Baltimore Sun, named it the Monkey Trial...
...He preferred fishing...
...The letters, from all over the world, were addressed to Professor John T. Scopes of Dayton, Tennessee...
...Some hailed him as a hero, but most told him he would burn in hell...
...Charles Darwin's son, Leonard, sent a note of encouragement...
Vol. 51 • June 1987 • No. 6
