Her great-grandfather was a doctor called to attend to the lawyer who put the case for creationism. Her great-grandmother was related to Charles Darwin. And now she works in the courthouse where the “trial of the century” – in which a high school teacher was accused of illegally teaching evolution – began exactly a century ago on Thursday.
No one has a perspective on the “Scopes monkey trial” quite like Pat Guffey, a former high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee. As the city prepares to mark the centenary with a week-long festival including a dramatic re-enactment of the court battle, she is aware how its legacy proved both a blessing and a curse.
