March 17, 2025: ScopesStudying: The Butler Act

[100 yearsago this month, the Tennessee General Assembly passed the ButlerAct, prohibiting public school teachers from teaching evolution. Sothis week I’ll AmericanStudy that law and the famoustrial it produced, leading up to a weekend post on current attacks oneducators.]

For thelaw’s 100th anniversary, on three interesting historical ironies aroundit.

1)     JohnWashington Butler’s Beliefs: The state representative who introduced theAct (and for whom it was nicknamed thereafter) was mostly known as a farmer,but had worked as a teacher as a young man. That’s an interesting detail, butthe irony I want to highlight is that, by his own admission, Butler had noknowledge of evolution when he introduced the bill. As henoted, “No, I didn’t know anything about evolution when I introduced it. I’dread in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and tellingtheir fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense.” Perhaps it not anirony so much as a very telling, and frustratingly American, detail that theauthor of the nation’s most famous anti-evolution educational law was poorlyeducated about evolution.

2)     Austin Peay’s Advocacy:Butler’s bill passed the Tennessee House in January 1925 and the TennesseeSenate in March, and then was signed into law on March 21 by Governor AustinPeay. Peay, was serving the first of what would be three terms as Governor (he tragicallydied in office in October 1927), was an influential political figure in thestate on multiple levels (he was ranked the state’s best governor by historiansin a 1981 poll, forexample). But the irony here is that the most significant level seems to havebeen hiseducational reforms—when he took office the state’s education system wasworst in the country by several measures, and he worked to change that,building new schools, lengthening the school year, increasing teacher pay andbenefits, and more. Guess those pro-teacher policies didn’t extend to academicfreedom, though.

3)     An Overdue, Immediate Repeal: The famous trialabout which I’ll have much more to say this week was the Act’s most prominent aswell as immediate legacy—but the law stayed on the books for more than fourdecades, greatly influencing generations of Tennessee schoolkids (and thus theentire state) in the process. The irony, though, is how suddenly that changed—whenteacherGary Scott, who had been fired for violating the Act, successfully sued forreinstatement under the First Amendment, it took just three days for both legislativehouses to pass (and Governor Buford Ellington to sign) a billrepealing the Butler Act. A state legislature acting swiftly and decisivelyto do away with an outdated, prejudiced law and help the state move forwardinto a more progressive future? Not just ironic but, here in 2025, ideal.

NextScopes context tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?