“John Thomas Scopes, according to Berry Craig, landed a teaching job in Dayton, TN.  He told his sister, “I’m going there because it’s a small town with a small school where I won’t get in any deep water.”  The skinny, freckle-faced Paducahan made headlines worldwide in 1925 when he was convicted of teaching evolution.  “Brother didn’t think there was all that much to what he had done,” said sister Lela Scopes.   (Paducahans, Famous and Not So Famous, by Allan Rhodes, Sr. & John E. L. Robertson, Sr., pages 40-42) The famous Scopes Monkey Trial was held in Dayton, TN and…

Dennis Henry Anderson was born in West Tennessee, near Jackson, in 1866.   He graduated from Lane College, Jackson, Tennessee, in 1893 and became a Methodist minister and teacher.   He married Artelia Harris, a native of Virginia, on July 14, 1897 while they were teachers in the Fulton, Kentucky public schools. Anderson believed that education and job training were vital for change for African Americans. He opened schools in Fulton and Graves counties, raising the funds for the building of the first high school in Fulton County in 1905.  On December 9, 1909, the 43 year old Anderson began work on…