Butler Act
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| Butler Act | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Tennessee General Assembly | |
| |
| Passed by | Tennessee House of Representatives |
| Passed by | Tennessee Senate |
| Signed by | Governor Austin Peay |
| Signed | March 21, 1925 |
| Repealed | September 1, 1967 |
| Legislative history | |
| Initiating chamber: Tennessee House of Representatives | |
| Bill citation | House Bill No. 185 |
| Introduced by | John Washington Butler |
| Introduced | January 21, 1925 |
| Committee responsible | House Committee on Education |
| Passed | January 28, 1925 |
| Voting summary |
|
| Revising chamber: Tennessee Senate | |
| Committee responsible | Senate Judiciary Committee |
| Passed | March 13, 1925 |
| Voting summary |
|
| Repealed by | |
| Chapter No. 237, House Bill No. 48 | |
| Status: Repealed | |
The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the book of Genesis account of humankind's origin. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of humans from what it referred to as lower orders of animals in place of the Biblical account. The law was introduced by Tennessee House of Representatives member John Washington Butler, for whom the law was named. It was enacted as Tennessee Code Annotated Title 49 (Education) Section 1922, having been signed into law by Tennessee governor Austin Peay.
The law was challenged and upheld later that year in a famous trial in Dayton, Tennessee called the Scopes Trial which involved a raucous confrontation between prosecution attorney and fundamentalist religious leader, William Jennings Bryan, and prominent defense attorney and religious agnostic, Clarence Darrow.
It was not repealed until 1967.
The law, "An act prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof" (Tenn. HB 185, 1925) specifically provided:
- That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.[1]
It additionally outlined that an offending teacher would be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined between $100 and $500 for each offense.
By the terms of the statute, it could be argued, it was not illegal to teach evolution in respect to non-human creatures, such as that apes descended from protozoa or to teach the mechanisms of variation and natural selection. The bill also did not touch on, or restrict the teaching of prevailing scientific theories of geology or the age of the Earth. It did not even require that the Genesis story be taught, but prohibited solely the teaching that humans evolved, or any other theory denying that humanity was created by God as recorded in Genesis. However the author of the law, a Tennessee farmer and member of the Tennessee House of Representatives John Washington Butler, specifically intended that it would prohibit the teaching of evolution. He later was reported to have said "No, I didn't know anything about evolution when I introduced it. I'd read in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and telling their fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense." After reading copies of William Jennings Bryan's lecture "Is the Bible True?" as well as Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man,[2] Butler decided the teaching of evolution was dangerous.