Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Logos-Sophia, Journal of the PSU Philosophical Society
Volume
14
Publication Date
Spring 2017
Abstract
As the drama of the Scopes trial made headlines in July 1925, a little drama was unfolding in southeast Kansas at the Kansas State Teachers College in Pittsburg. A history professor, John G. Scott, was relieved of his teaching duties after his students made plans to hold a “mock monkey trial” in the courthouse downtown. The trial, much anticipated in the local press, never occurred thanks to the intervention of the school president, W. A. Brandenburg. An ardent Christian and creationist, Brandenburg had earlier invited Harry Rimmer, a popular lecturer and debunker of evolution, to lecture at the KSTC and three times offered him a job at the college. The “mock trial affair” became a bone of contention between newspapers in Kansas City and in Pittsburg. Scott was eventually dismissed but not without taking aim at Brandenburg and the KSTC in a satirical article published in the Haldeman-Julius Monthly alongside an article on the Scopes trial by Anna Marcet Haldeman-Julius.
Recommended Citation
Donald W. Viney, "Monkey Business in Southeast Kansas: The Case of Professor Scott, The 'Scopes of Kansas'" Published in Logos-Sophia, Journal of the PSU Philosophical Society, vol. 14 (Spring 2017): 30-55.