Charles Lee Smith

Charles Lee Smith (1887 – October 26, 1964) was an American atheist and white supremacist author and activist widely known for being the last successful conviction for blasphemy in the United States.

[9] His two most famous debates were with William Landon Oliphant, a Minister, Oak Cliff Church of Christ, Dallas, Texas.

[15] In 1928 Smith undertook a course that ended with him the last documented person to be convicted of blasphemy in the United States.

[16] That year, Smith rented a store-front in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he gave out free anti-religious atheist literature.

Because he was an atheist, he therefore refused to swear the court's religious oath to tell the truth and so was not permitted to testify in his own defense.

The judge then dismissed the original charge and replaced it with one of distributing obscene, slanderous, or scurrilous literature.

[17] Upon his release, he immediately resumed his atheistic activities, was again charged with blasphemy, and this time convicted.

The local fundamentalist Baptist minister Ben M. Bogard, known for successfully lobbying for an Arkansas state law banning the teaching of evolution in the public schools, unexpectedly defended Smith's right to free speech in the belief that he could defeat him in a fair debate.

Smith believed that Christianity and Marxism were invented by the Jews in order to seize power over humanity.