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Key Events Surrounding the Scopes Trial
Darwin’s Origin of Species published, proposes theory of evolution.
1859The Fundamentals published, a series of pamphlets that claims the Bible as literal truth. Evolution is not a major concern.
1910-1915Refounding of the Ku Klux Klan with a new anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-Communist, and anti-immigrant agenda.
1915United States enters World War I.
April 1917First convention of World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, more than 6,000 people attend. Antievolutionism gains ground as a central issue for Fundamentalists.
January 1919Ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment, establishing Prohibition.
1919Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, establishing women’s right to vote.
August 1920Marcus Garvey’s black nationalist movement holds its first international convention in New York City.
August 1920A federal anti-lynching bill passed in the House of Representatives but was later blocked by filibuster in the United States Senate. Fifty-one black Americans are known to have been lynched in 1922.
July 1922Passage of the Immigration Act of 1924 limiting the number of immigrants entering the United States, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe.
May 1924Tennessee passes Butler Act, which prohibits teaching of evolution. Scopes trial begins in Dayton, Tennessee in July.
March 1925Antievolution laws pass in Mississippi and Arkansas; antievolution bills are proposed and defeated in 19 states.
1926-1928Butler Act repealed by Tennessee legislature.
May 1967Kansas Board of Education removes evolution from state tests, and makes the teaching of evolution a “local option.” Many states require that textbooks treat evolution as a theory of creation, rather than a scientific fact.
August 1999