Thomas Theodore Martin (born 1862 in Smith County, Mississippi, died May 23, 1939), was a Christian evangelist who became one of the most important figures of the anti-evolution movement in the 1920s.
[3] In Martin's view this was "the greatest curse that ever fell upon this earth" and was an even greater sin than when the Germans poisoned wells and gave children poisoned candy during World War I. Martin wanted parents to pressure school boards and state legislatures to take steps to stop the teaching of evolution.
Christ or Evolution was his other significant work, and is in a similar vein, constituting a colorful pair of diatribes if not outright polemics on the subject.
However, Martin proved to be just as influential in getting anti-evolution laws passed, which is what makes these two works of great interest to those studying the history of the conflict between Christianity and science over evolution in this country and a struggle that is now almost a century old.
The best sellers proved to be Hell and the High Schools and the Adventist science educator George McCready Price's The Phantom of Organic Evolution.
In the state Senate there was a heated debate, during which an opponent proposed an amendment to make the penalty "death by burning at the stake, it being the spirit of this bill to restore the Spanish Inquisition."
An ACLU offer to assist any Mississippi taxpayer or member of the American Association of University Professors in a suit to challenge the case was ignored given what had happened in Dayton to John T. Scopes.