calsfoundation@cals.org
March 9, 1868
Benjamin Bogard, founder and head of the American Baptist Association, was born in Hardin County, Kentucky. Bogard was Arkansas’s leading fundamentalist Christian in the 1920s. In 1928, his efforts resulted in a law banning the teaching of evolution in Arkansas public schools; it remained in place until 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it. A prolific author and a pioneer of radio evangelism, he was honored by Ripley’s Believe it or Not for preaching “every Sunday for 61 years without missing a single Sunday.”