Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Abergen.

This day, May 19, 1967, the Tennessee legislature finally, after decades, repeals the Butler Act, the law on their books that had banned the teaching of evolution in public schools.

If you know anything about the Butler Act, it's probably in the context of way back in the mid-1920s

when it first passed and first was tested in the courts in what has come to be known as the Scopes Monkey Trial or just the monkey trial.

And that was the trial in which a teacher, John Scopes, was brought on trial for violating

this act and teaching evolution.

And then we got that famous trial in which William Jennings Bryan

argued on behalf of the prosecution and Clarence Darrow defended evolution in Darwin and it was effectively

a very high profile debate about Darwin versus the Bible,

but lots of other things in that stew as well, which we will get to.

And that was 1925.

The law is on the books until 1967 and that is what we are marking here today.

We will get into all of this though with as always Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter

Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello Jody.

Hey there.

So I just rattled off a bunch of, I think, fairly well known names,

John Scopes and Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan and H.L. Menkins in there too is the... and up a name that people probably don't know which is related in 1967 to what we're

talking about here a teacher by the name of Gary Scott and it is Gary Scott who

finally sets off the chain of events that get this law repealed.

So let's talk about the repeal and then go back to the Scopes trial and all of that.

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