November 12 in U.S. History: The Supreme Court Struck Down Arkansas’s Ban on Teaching Evolution in 1968

Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

A Little Rock biology teacher won her challenge to a 1928 anti-evolution law on November 12, 1968; the same date marks Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s birth in 1815 and the 1999 law that repealed key sections of Glass-Steagall, with both New Hampshire senators on record.

November 12 keeps landing where government power meets one person or one rule: a biology classroom in Little Rock, a hall of diplomats in Washington, an immigration station emptied in New York Harbor, a federal courtroom in New York and a bill signing that rewrote American banking law. The lead entry is a 1968 Supreme Court decision holding that a state may set the school curriculum but may not ban a scientific theory because one religious reading objects to it.

November 12, 1968

The Court Voids Arkansas’s Anti-Evolution Law

Susan Epperson had a criminal problem she did not create. The opinion in Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 describes her as a graduate of Arkansas schools who earned a master’s degree in zoology at the University of Illinois and was hired by the Little Rock school system in the fall of 1964 to teach 10th-grade biology at Central High School. For the 1965-1966 school year, on the recommendation of its biology teachers, the administration adopted a textbook with a chapter on the theory that man descended from a lower form of animal.

Arkansas law made teaching that chapter a crime. The statute, which the Court dates to 1928, barred any teacher in a state-supported school or university from teaching that mankind “ascended or descended from a lower order of animals.” A conviction carried a fine of up to $500 and the loss of the teacher’s position. Epperson asked the state Chancery Court to declare the law void. Chancellor Murray O. Reed ruled that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The Arkansas Supreme Court reversed in a two-sentence opinion that upheld the law as an exercise of the state’s power over the public school curriculum.

At oral argument, according to the opinion, Arkansas’s counsel said a teacher who simply told students about Darwin’s theory could be prosecuted. Justice Fortas, writing for the Court, declined to rule on vagueness. He held instead that the law conflicted with the First Amendment’s bar on laws respecting an establishment of religion, which the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the states. The Court found that Arkansas had singled out evolution for the sole reason that it was deemed to conflict with a particular religious group’s reading of Genesis. The syllabus draws the line in plain terms: a state’s right to prescribe the curriculum does not include the right to prohibit teaching a scientific theory for reasons that run counter to the First Amendment.

The opinion notes that only Arkansas and Mississippi still had such laws on their books, that Tennessee had repealed its own in 1967, and that there was no record of any prosecution under the Arkansas statute. Justices Black and Harlan concurred, and Justice Stewart concurred in the result. The U.S. Reports print no dissent. The case was argued October 16, 1968, and decided November 12, 1968.

November 12, 1815

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Is Born in Johnstown, New York

Elizabeth Cady was born in Johnstown, New York, on November 12, 1815, according to the National Park Service, the daughter of Daniel Cady, a lawyer, judge and land speculator, and Margaret Livingston Cady. She graduated from the Troy Female Seminary in 1832. She and her husband, Henry Brewster Stanton, moved to Seneca Falls in 1847.

At a gathering at the home of Jane and Richard Hunt on July 9, 1848, Stanton and four other women decided to call a woman’s rights convention. It met July 19-20, 1848, and heard the Declaration of Sentiments. Stanton met Susan B. Anthony in May 1851, and the two worked together for half a century. The Park Service says Stanton believed the movement should work for a broad platform, including suffrage, property rights, equal wages, and divorce and custody law reform. She co-wrote the three-volume History of Woman Suffrage and died in 1902.

November 12, 1921

The Washington Arms Conference Holds Its First Session

The Conference on the Limitation of Armament held its first session at Continental Hall in Washington on November 12, 1921. The American delegation’s report, sent to the Senate in February 1922, says the opening was pushed back so delegates could attend the burial of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington on November 11. The State Department’s Office of the Historian says Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes invited the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy to discuss naval reductions, and Belgium, China, Portugal and the Netherlands to join talks on East Asia. Senator William E. Borah of Idaho had led a congressional effort demanding disarmament negotiations with Japan and the United Kingdom.

After an opening prayer, President Harding addressed the conference. The American plan, as the delegation reported it, offered to scrap every capital ship the United States had under construction, 15 ships on which more than $330 million had already been spent. The delegation reported that the capital-ship replacement limits it negotiated came to 525,000 tons each for the United States and the British Empire and 315,000 for Japan, keeping a 5-5-3 ratio, with 175,000 tons each for France and Italy. The original American plan had proposed 500,000, 500,000 and 300,000. The Office of the Historian’s summary of the Five-Power Treaty gives the original plan’s round figures; the delegation’s report, written by the negotiators, is the stronger source for the final numbers. The historian’s office notes that some ship classes were left unrestricted and a cruiser-building race followed. The conference ran to February 6, 1922.

November 12, 1954

Ellis Island Processes Its Last Immigrant and Shuts Down

The Ellis Island Immigration Station shut down on November 12, 1954. The National Park Service records the last immigrant processed there as Arne Peterssen, a seaman detained for overstaying his shore leave, who was released on parole to return to Norway. On November 29, 1954, the ferry Ellis Island made its final trip back to the island and stayed at the slip for years until it sank in a storm.

The Park Service says the facility was abandoned after it closed. On October 15, 1965, it was proclaimed part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. Rehabilitation work began in the 1980s, and the immigration museum in the Main Building opened in September 1990.

November 12, 1997

Two World Trade Center Bombers Are Found Guilty

On November 12, 1997, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Eyad Mahmoud Ismail Najim were found guilty of conspiracy in federal court for their roles in the February 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center. The FBI’s report Terrorism in the United States 1997 calls Yousef the “operational mastermind” and says the bombing killed 6 people and injured more than 1,000.

FBI agents apprehended Yousef in Islamabad, Pakistan, in early February 1995, and Ismail was apprehended in Jordan the same year. Both were returned to stand trial in the Southern District of New York. The bureau says Ismail was charged with driving the van that carried the bomb. Sentencing for both was set for early 1998, and Yousef also faced sentencing that year for the December 11, 1994, bombing of Philippine Airlines flight 434 and a related plot against U.S. air carriers in the Far East. The FBI report spells the co-defendant’s name both Ismail and Ismoil; this entry follows its narrative text.

November 12, 1999

Clinton Signs Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Repealing Large Parts of Glass-Steagall

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act became Public Law 106-102, approved November 12, 1999. Its Section 101 repealed Sections 20 and 32 of the Banking Act of 1933, which the law notes is commonly referred to as the Glass-Steagall Act. The Federal Reserve’s history essay says President Clinton signed the law, which repealed large parts of the Glass-Steagall Act that had separated commercial and investment banking since 1933, led to the creation of financial holding companies and gave the Fed new supervisory powers over them.

The law reached past bank charters. Its Title V declared that each financial institution has “an affirmative and continuing obligation to respect the privacy of its customers.” The Senate and House each agreed to the conference report on November 4, 1999. The Senate roll call, vote 354, was 90 to 8, with one senator voting present and one not voting. New Hampshire’s two senators, Gregg and Smith, both Republicans, voted yea.

Two records from this date are worth keeping close. In Epperson, a state’s own lawyer told the Supreme Court a teacher could be prosecuted for describing a theory, and the Court answered that power over the curriculum stops at the First Amendment. In 1999, both of New Hampshire’s senators voted yea on the 90-to-8 Senate roll call adopting the conference report on the bill that repealed large parts of Glass-Steagall. Every entry here traces to a primary record linked above.

Fact check

Editor’s note. This edition draws on the U.S. Reports, the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States series and Office of the Historian, the National Park Service, the FBI, the Government Publishing Office, the U.S. Senate, Federal Reserve History and the Library of Congress. Where the FBI report spells a name two ways, the entry says so. The Library of Congress gives two possible dates for the conference photograph, and the caption reports both. The Office of the Historian and the American delegation’s report give different tonnage figures; the entry explains why it follows the delegation’s report.

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.