John Thomas 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 $1,737 in 2023).

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.[1] 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.[2]

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.[3]

Scopes relocated to Dayton, Tennessee where he became the Rhea County High School football coach, and occasionally served as a substitute teacher.[4]