My life

For much of the twentieth century, fundamentalists had opposed evolution as being inconsistent with a literal reading of the biblical account of human creation, and in the early 1900s, several states, including Arkansas, outlawed the teaching of evolution. Even after the Supreme Court struck down such bans, most science texts didn’t discuss evolution until the 1960s. By the late sixties, a new generation of fundamentalists were at it again, this time arguing that there was scientific evidence to support the Bible’s creation story, and evidence that cast doubt on the theory of evolution. Eventually, they came up with the idea of requiring that schools that taught evolution had to give comparable attention to “creation science.”

Because of intense lobbying efforts by fundamentalist groups like FLAG (Family, Life, America under God) and the governor’s support, Arkansas was the first state to legally embrace the creation science notion. The bill passed without much difficulty: we didn’t have many scientists in the legislature, and many politicians were afraid to offend the conservative Christian groups, who were riding high after electing a President and a governor. After Governor White signed the bill, there was a storm of protest from educators who didn’t want to be forced to teach religion as science, from religious leaders who wanted to preserve the constitutional separation of church and state, and from ordinary citizens who didn’t want Arkansas to become the laughingstock of the nation.

Frank White became an object of ridicule for the opponents of the creation science law. George Fisher, the Arkansas Gazette cartoonist who drew me on a tricycle, began presenting the governor with a halfpeeled banana in his hand, implying that he hadn’t fully evolved and was perhaps the proverbial

“missing link” between humans and chimpanzees. When he started feeling the heat, Governor White protested that he hadn’t read the bill before he signed it, digging himself into a deeper hole. Eventually, the creation science bill was declared unconstitutional by Judge Bill Overton, who did a masterly job at the trial and wrote a clear, compelling opinion saying the bill required the teaching of religion, not science, and therefore breached the Constitution’s wall between church and state. Attorney General Steve Clark declined to appeal the decision.

Frank White had problems that went beyond the legislative session. His worst move was sending prospective appointees for the Public Service Commission to be interviewed by the Arkansas Power and Light Company, which had been seeking substantial increases in utility rates for the last few years. When the story came out, the press pounded the governor over it. People’s electric rates were going up far more steeply than the car tags had. Now they had a governor who wanted to give AP&L prior approval of the people who would decide whether or not the company got to raise its rates even higher. Then there were the verbal gaffes. When the governor announced a trade mission to Taiwan and Japan, he told the press how glad he was to be going to the Middle East. The incident gave George Fisher the inspiration for one of his funniest cartoons: the governor and his party getting off an airplane in the middle of a desert, complete with palm trees, pyramids, robed Arabs, and a camel. With banana in hand, he looks around and says, “Splendid! Whistle us up a rickshaw!”

While all this was going on, I made a few political trips out of state. Before I lost, I had been invited by Governor John Evans to speak at the Idaho Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner. After I got beat he asked me to come on anyway.