Gov. Austin Peay signed anti-evolution bill into law
Tennessee Governor Austin Peay, who had heard Bryan attack evolution in Nashville on Jan. 24, 1924, signs into law the Butler Act (Chapter 27, House Bill 185 of the Public Acts of Tennessee for 1925). This is the first law in the United States to criminalize the teaching of human evolution in public schools.
Peay confidently claimed that “probably the law will never be applied,”that “nobody believes that it is going to be an active statute,” and that there is “nothing of consequence in the books now being taught in our schools with which this bill will interfere in the slightest manner.”
State Rep. John Butler agreed, later adding that he assumed “everybody would abide by it… [and] we wouldn’t hear any more about evolution in Tennessee.”
The Butler Act, which would stay on the books for 42 years, was invoked just four months later to prosecute John Scopes, who described the law as “the first attempt at trying to turn out a generation of conformists.”
This information is taken from “Causes Go On Forever…: A Chronology of the Scopes Trial,” by Randy Moore and Tom Davis. Copies of the book are available from the Rhea County Historical Society, P.O. Box 31, Dayton, TN 37321. Cost is $25.
