Austin Peay was an American politician who served as the 35th governor of Tennessee from 1923 to 1927. He was the state's first governor since the Civil War to win three consecutive terms and the first to die in office. Prior to his election as governor, he served two terms in the Tennessee House of Representatives (1901–1905).

The Scopes trial, formally The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925, in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant.