John Thomas Scopes

John T. Scopes

John Thomas Scopes (born August 3, 1900 in Paducah , † October 21, 1970 in Shreveport ) was originally an American teacher . He became known in 1925 for the so-called monkey trial after he had defied a ban on the theory of evolution in school lessons in Tennessee .

Life

John Scopes was a teacher in Dayton , Tennessee. Prejudices against Darwin's theory of evolution widespread at the time and the supremacy of fundamental Christian politicians led to the Butler Act in 1925 , a law that forbade teaching the theory of evolution in Tennessee. Encouraged by civil rights activists, Scopes refused to accept this rule.

In the summer of 1925, the 24-year-old was charged with violating the aforementioned law. The process that went down in US history as the monkey trial came about. At the end of this, Scopes was sentenced to a minimum fine of 100 US dollars, but shortly afterwards he was acquitted of a formal error. The actual trial exposed the ridiculousness of the law and the prosecution's arguments. It was he who first made the theory of evolution known to a broad population. In this way, prejudices against her could ultimately be reduced, and large parts of the population supported Scopes.

The process was accompanied by a deep dispute between fundamental Christians like the populist William Jennings Bryan on the one hand and a front made up of scientists and the American Civil Liberties Union , above all Clarence Darrow , on the other.

After the process was over, Scopes graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in geology and later worked in the US and Venezuela in the oil industry. Scopes recorded his memories in an autobiography . He died in 1970.

plant

In retrospect, the ape trial represents an important milestone for the liberation of the USA from traditional ideological standpoints and thus a building block in the transition to modernity . The process lastingly weakened the movement of radical critics of evolution, who are called creationists .

However, this movement, which later became financially strong, experienced a renewed impetus in the course of neoconservatism in the USA at the end of the 20th century and beyond, and also found support in the US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush . Meanwhile, more and more evidence was found for the manifestation of evolution as one of the most important theories in science.

Theater and film

Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee turned the 1925 lawsuit against Scopes into a play. Based on this, Stanley Kramer made his film Who Sows the Wind in 1960 with Spencer Tracy , Fredric March and Gene Kelly in the leading roles.

literature

• John T. Scopes, et al .: Center of the Storm- Memoirs of John T. Scopes. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1967, ISBN 0-03-060340-4 . @googlebooks

Web links

• John T. Scopes in the Internet Movie Database (English)