ig Protestant denominations. In 1923, the Oklahoma Legislature passed a bill banning the use of all school texts that included evolutionist theories. Later that same year, the Florida Legislature approved a joint resolution declaring it "improper and subversive for any teacher in a public school to teach Atheism of Agnosticism, or to teach as true, Darwinism, or any other hypothesis that links man in blood relationship to any other form of life."
             During the summer of 1925, Dayton, Tennessee became the setting for one of the most famous court cases in American history- The Scopes Trial. During this time a clash of ideas developed, with some people believing modern theories while others clung to traditional thinking .
             On one side of the debate were those who believed in the evolution theory of Charles Darwin as expressed in his book The Origin of Species. Darwin asserted that humans had evolved from apes over millions of years . On the other side of the debate was the large Christian population of America, whose beliefs were mainly based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. These "creationists" believed that Darwin's Theory of of Evolution was fundamentally flawed , and that God was the almighty creator, and therefore created all species, including humans, and placed them on the earth in the beginning of time, physically built the same way they stood during the time of the Scopes trial .
             In the early 1920's, evolutionary science based on Darwin's theory, began to be taught in public schools. Many fundamentalists, especially in the south, began to protest the teaching of evolution. In Tennessee, the controversy was heightened when John Butler, a Tennessee state legislator wrote a law prohibiting the teaching of Darwin's evolution theory in Tennessee public schools. The Tennessee State legislature passed the "Butler Act" on March 21st, 1925 . The statute proclaimed ...