"George Rappleyea George Washington Rappleyea (July 4, 1894 – August 29, 1966), an American metallurgical engineer and the manager of the Cumberland Coal and Iron Company in Dayton, Tennessee. He held this position in the summer of 1925 when he became the chief architect of the Scopes Trial. During a meeting at Robinson's Drug Store it was Rappleyea who convinced a group of Dayton businessmen to sponsor a test case of the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the state's schools. Rappleyea is held responsible for convincing John T. Scopes to be the defendant in the famous"
"such memorabilia as the microphone used to broadcast the trial, trial records, photographs, and an audiovisual history. Every July, local people re-enact key moments of the trial in the courtroom. In front of the courthouse stands a commemorative plaque erected by the Tennessee Historical Commission: 2B 23 THE SCOPES TRIAL Here, from July 10 to 21, 1925 JohnThomas Scopes, a County High School teacher, was tried for teaching that a man descended from a lower order of animals in violation of a lately passed state law. William Jennings Bryan assisted the prosecution; Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, and Dudley Field"
"Rhea County Courthouse The Rhea County Courthouse is a historic county courthouse in the center of Dayton, the county seat of Rhea County, Tennessee. Built in 1891, it is famous as the scene of the Scopes Trial of July 1925, in which teacher John T. Scopes faced charges for including Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in his public school lesson. The trial became a clash of titans between the lawyers William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense, and epitomizes the tension between fundamentalism and modernism in a wide range of aspects of American society. The"
"1925 JohnThomas Scopes, a County High School<BR> teacher, was tried for teaching that<BR> a man descended from a lower order<BR> of animals in violation of a lately<BR> passed state law. William Jennings<BR> Bryan assisted the prosecution;<BR> Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield<BR> Hays, and Dudley Field Malone the<BR> defense. Scopes was convicted. The Rhea County Courthouse was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 1976. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. On October 1, 2005, a statue of William Jennings Bryan was dedicated on the courthouse lawn, funded by a donation from"
"Sue K. Hicks Sue Kerr Hicks (December 12, 1895 – June 17, 1980) was an American jurist who practiced law and served as a circuit court judge in the state of Tennessee. He is best known for his role as a co-instigator and prosecutor in the 1925 trial of John T. Scopes, a Dayton, Tennessee teacher accused of teaching the Theory of Evolution in violation of Tennessee state law. Hicks may have also been the inspiration for the Shel Silverstein song ""A Boy Named Sue,"" which was popularized by country music performer Johnny Cash in 1969. Hicks was born in"
"bar that same year. He operated a law practice in Nashville until 1910, when he was elected as an associate justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court. He was subsequently re-elected in 1918, 1926, 1934, and 1942. Green became the Chief Justice of Tennessee in 1923, serving until his death. As of 2011, he holds the record as the person who served the longest on Tennessee's highest court. In 1927, Green presided over the appeal of John T. Scopes, who had been convicted of teaching evolution. The court found the law against teaching of evolution to be constitutional, but overturned Scopes'"
"nearby Bryan College. The statute was placed to commemorate the school's 75th anniversary. On July 14, 2017, a statue of Clarence Darrow was unveiled near Bryant's statue, funded by a donation from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Rhea County Courthouse The Rhea County Courthouse is a historic county courthouse in the center of Dayton, the county seat of Rhea County, Tennessee. Built in 1891, it is famous as the scene of the Scopes Trial of July 1925, in which teacher John T. Scopes faced charges for including Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in his public school lesson. The trial became"
"professor of Communication at the University of Miami, wrote that Duffy “displayed uncommon vigor in attacking the Ku Klux Klan”. Just a year after Duffy began working for ""The Baltimore Sun"", 1925, a famous trial began in Tennessee. Tennessee had passed a law, the Butler Act, barring teachers against the topic of evolution in the classroom, but one biology teacher, John T. Scopes, ignored the law and taught his students evolution. Scopes decided that the students should learn evolution, even if it went against the teachings of the bible. Since the trial was popular and a nationwide topic, Mencken took"
"Wallace Haggard, father and son pairings Ben and J. Gordon McKenzie, and William Jennings Bryan and William Jennings Bryan Jr. Bryan, Senior, had spoken at Scopes' high school commencement and remembered the defendant laughing while he was giving the address to the graduating class six years earlier. The case ended on July 21, 1925, with a guilty verdict, and Scopes was fined $100. The case was appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court. In a 3–1 decision written by Chief Justice Grafton Green, the Butler Act was held to be constitutional, but the court overturned Scopes's conviction because the judge had"
"teacher John T. Scopes was arrested and charged with violating the act. The state was represented by the renowned orator and fundamentalist Christian icon William Jennings Bryan, and Scopes was defended by an ACLU-funded team headed by noted criminal defense lawyer Clarence Darrow. Although Scopes was convicted in a highly sensationalized trial, the culture clash between legal principles as well as fundamentalism and modernism left an enduring mark on American society. The defense called Bryan to the stand to defend fundamentalism, and successfully exposed the underlying ignorance of his views. In subsequent years, many states that had enacted similar laws"
"and up to $50 for costumes.) Nonetheless, the KKK had become prominent enough that it staged a huge rally in Washington DC in 1925. Soon afterward, the national headlines reported rape and murder by the KKK leader in Indiana, and the group quickly lost its mystique and nearly all its members. The Scopes Trial of 1925 was a Tennessee court case that tested a state law which forbade the teaching of ""any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order"
"schools in the region's more rural areas. In the 20th century, national trends began to have more of an effect on education in Appalachia, sometimes clashing with the region's traditional values. The Scopes Trial—the nation's most publicized debate over the teaching of the theory of evolution—took place in Dayton, Tennessee, in southern Appalachia in 1925. In spite of consolidation and centralization, schools in Appalachia struggled to keep up with federal and state demands into the 21st century. Since 2001, a number of the region's public schools were threatened with loss of funding due to difficulties fulfilling the demands of No"
"Moon. He was elected judge of the Eighteenth Tennessee District in 1918. Raulston commenced the proceedings by obtaining the grand jury indictment of John T. Scopes, a 24-year-old schoolteacher. Raulston accelerated the convening of the grand jury and ""... all but instructed the grand jury to indict Scopes, despite the meager evidence against him and the widely reported stories questioning whether the willing defendant had ever taught evolution in the classroom."" During the trial, Raulston sided with the prosecution and barred testimony from experts in theology and the natural sciences. He was accused of being biased and frequently clashed with"
"the team as a special prosecutor. While the trial was wildly successful in bringing publicity to Rhea County, much of the publicity was negative, and portrayed local residents as backward and uneducated. And although Scopes was convicted — as had been planned — the ""test case"" came to an end in 1927, when the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled the Butler Act constitutional, but overturned Scopes' conviction on a technicality. This kept the case out of the federal court system and ended any chance of it proceeding to the United State Supreme Court, which the drugstore conspirators had originally hoped. Hicks"
"A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court decision of 1926 prompted the press to pursue Scopes again. During this time Scopes wrote to Thorn, “I am tired of fooling with them.” It is evident that the media attention given to Scopes was affecting him emotionally. Even worse, the Depression combined with being a significant figure of the Scopes trial affected his career. After graduation, Scopes was “barred” from career opportunities in Tennessee, requiring him and his wife to move to Kentucky in his childhood home around 1930. Striking out in education, Scopes attempted a political career the summer of 1932"
"Theory of Evolution was true, but instead involved ""the freedom of teaching, or more important, the freedom of learning."" Following Scopes's conviction, the ACLU grew frustrated over Neal's handling of the case, especially after he missed the deadline to file a bill of exceptions to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which essentially meant they couldn't base their appeal on the state's handling of the case. While Neal's role was somewhat minimized, he nevertheless remained part of the defense team throughout the appeals process, and consistently sought to move the case into the federal court system. Throughout the 1920s, Neal was a"
"425 students that attend the school, there are only five African Americans and one Hispanic person. About 40 miles away is the Rhea County Courthouse, where, in 1925, a teacher was convicted for teaching evolution during the Scopes ""Monkey"" Trial. The trial upheld a statute which outlawed teaching any theory that denies the Divine Creation. A hundred miles from Whitwell, in Pulaski, Tennessee, the infamous Ku Klux Klan was reportedly born. The city is quite poor, as its main business, coal mining, started to decline after an accident 30 years ago; the last mine was shut down completely in 1997."
"ranged from Wall Street brokers and best-selling authors to notorious gamblers and the Dionne quintuplets.) Hays took part in numerous notable cases, including the Sweet segregation case in Detroit as well as the Scopes trial (often called the ""monkey trial"") in 1925, in which a school teacher in Tennessee was tried for teaching evolution; the ""American Mercury"" censorship case (1926); the Sacco and Vanzetti case, in which two Italian anarchists in Boston were convicted and executed in 1927 for a murder they denied committing; and the Scottsboro case, in which eight black men from Alabama were convicted and sentenced to"
"Trial was held in Dayton and, for a period of time, filled the town with hucksters of every description and journalists from around the world. The participants included William Jennings Bryan in the role of prosecutor and Clarence Darrow as the principal defense counsel. The trial was over the issue of whether evolution should be taught in public schools. John T. Scopes, the defendant in the trial, was a local science teacher who was recruited by George Rappleyea to begin to teach evolution in his science class, and at the provocation of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), despite it"
"and how they are taught in school. The film, an adaptation of the play of the same name, written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, was a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes Trial, which concerned a violation of Tennessee's Butler Act. This law had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school in Tennessee. It starred Spencer Tracy, portraying the real Clarence Darrow, defending the teacher, and Fredric March as his rival attorney, William Jennings Bryan, who insisted that creationism was the only valid subject that should be taught to children. It was nominated for"
"Butler Act The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law introduced by Tennessee House of Representatives member John Washington Butler prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of mankind's origin. It was enacted as Tennessee Code Annotated Title 49 (Education) Section 1922, having been signed into law by Tennessee governor Austin Peay. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of man from what it referred to as lower orders of animals in place of the Biblical account. The law was challenged later that year in a famous trial in Dayton, Tennessee called the Scopes Trial which"
"""Inherit the Wind"" and the 1960 film adaptation. In the film, the character of the judge was played by Harry Morgan. He was also played by John Cullum in the 1999 television remake. John T. Raulston John Tate Raulston (September 22, 1868 – July 11, 1956) was an American state judge in Rhea County, Tennessee, who received national publicity for presiding over the 1925 Scopes Trial, a famous creationism-evolution debate. Raulston, who was a member of a prominent Republican family, was born on a small farm in Marion County, Tennessee. He attended U.S. Grant University, later known as Tennessee Wesleyan"
"of evolution being banned in Tennessee public schools under the Butler Act, took place in Rhea County in 1925. The trial was one of the first to be referred to as the ""Trial of the century"". William Jennings Bryan played a role as prosecutor in trial, and he died in Dayton shortly after the trial ended. A statue of Bryan was recently erected on the grounds of the Rhea County Courthouse. In 1956, the State Supreme Court upheld a ""regular and customary practice among certain of the teachers, during the regular school hours and in the classrooms, to read, or"
"of worship. So far as we know, there is no religious establishment or organized body that has in its creed or confession of faith any article denying or affirming such a theory. — Scopes v. State 289 S.W. 363, 367 (Tenn. 1927) Despite this decision, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the conviction on a technicality (that the jury should have fixed the amount of the fine), and the case was not retried. During the trial, Butler told reporters: ""I never had any idea my bill would make a fuss. I just thought it would become a law, and that everybody"
"game show ""To Tell the Truth"". In June 1967, Scopes wrote ""Center of the Storm: Memoirs of John T. Scopes"". In his life, John T. Scopes “made a quiet gentle sacrifice of livelihood for principle” which affected his personally and professionally. Scopes married Mildred Elizabeth Scopes (née Walker) (1905–1990). Together they had two sons: John Thomas Jr. and William Clement ""Bill"". He died on October 21, 1970 of cancer in Shreveport, Louisiana at the age of 70. Books Web John T. Scopes John Thomas Scopes (August 3, 1900 – October 21, 1970) was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was"
"Clarence Darrow, a member of the ACLU National Committee, headed Scopes' legal team. The prosecution, led by William Jennings Bryan, contended that the Bible should be interpreted literally in teaching creationism in school. The ACLU lost the case and Scopes was fined $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court later upheld the law but overturned the conviction on a technicality. The Scopes trial was a phenomenal public relations success for the ACLU. The ACLU became well known across America, and the case led to the first endorsement of the ACLU by a major US newspaper. The ACLU continued to fight for the"
"being against Tennessee law at that time. Rappleyea believed that this conflict would create an enormous amount of publicity for the town, and he was proven correct. The town bustled with activity as people began to flock from near and far to hear the verdict on this controversial issue. Although this trial is often represented as being pivotal in the movement to allow evolution to be taught in American schools, it actually marked the beginning of a major decline in the teaching of evolution which did not start to recover until the early 1960s. Likewise, the Butler Act, which Scopes"
"the Tennessee State Parks and Forestry Commission that same year, and convinced the legislature to appropriate $1.5 million for the purchase of land in what would eventually become the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In March 1925, Peay signed the Butler Act, banning the teaching of the Theory of Evolution in the state's schools. Peay stressed that he signed the law to protest the decline of religion in public schools, and did not believe it would be enforced. This law was challenged that summer by Dayton teacher John T. Scopes and the American Civil Liberties Union in what became known"
"was supposed to have violated—though it was never invoked again—remained on the books until 1967, when it was repealed by the Tennessee Legislature. H. L. Mencken famously covered the trial for the Baltimore ""Sun"" and recruited Clarence Darrow to lead the defense team. Immediately after the trial, Bryan continued to edit and deliver speeches, traveling hundreds of miles that week. On July 26, 1925, he drove from Chattanooga to Dayton to attend a church service, ate a meal, and died (the result of diabetes and fatigue) in his sleep that afternoon—just five days after the Scopes trial ended. Dayton is"
"the Bible was all nonsense."" Tennessee governor Austin Peay signed the law to gain support among rural legislators, but believed the law would neither be enforced nor interfere with education in Tennessee schools. William Jennings Bryan thanked Peay enthusiastically for the bill: ""The Christian parents of the state owe you a debt of gratitude for saving their children from the poisonous influence of an unproven hypothesis."" In response, the American Civil Liberties Union financed a test case in which John Scopes, a Tennessee high school science teacher, agreed to be tried for violating the Act. Scopes, who had substituted for"
"Bryan for the prosecution, and Clarence Darrow for the defense, argue their case. Tennessee was ridiculed in the northeast and West Coast press as the ""Monkey State,"" even as a wave of revivals defending religious fundamentalism swept the state. The trial was also given the name ""Monkey Trial"" by the same reporters. The legal outcome of the trial was inconsequential. Scopes was convicted and fined $100, a penalty later rescinded by the state court of appeals. The law itself remained on the books until 1967. At the very time that Tennessee's rural culture was under attack by urban critics, its"
"many original features, including the main courtroom on the second floor, where the Scopes Monkey Trial took place. The building was constructed in 1890-91, after Dayton was named the county seat, replacing Washington. It was designed by W. Chamberlain and Co., architects from Knoxville, Tennessee, and was built by contractors from Chattanooga. In July 1925 the courthouse was the scene of one of the mostly widely reported trials of the 1920s, the Scopes Trial. Essentially cooked up as a publicity stunt by locals after passage of the state's Butler Act banned the teaching of biological evolution in public schools, science"
"included a raucous confrontation between prosecution attorney and fundamentalist religious leader, William Jennings Bryan, and noted defense attorney and religious agnostic, Clarence Darrow. It was repealed in 1967. The law, ""An act prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof"" (Tenn. HB 185, 1925) specifically provided: It additionally outlined that an offending teacher would be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined between $100 and $500 for"