Tennessee banned teaching human evolution from 1925 to 1967

Tennessee Governor Austin Peay signed the Butler Act on March 21, 1925, making it illegal for public-school teachers to teach “any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible.” It stayed on the books for 42 years, until the legislature repealed it in 1967.

The bill came from John Washington Butler, a Macon County farmer and Primitive Baptist who had found, while overseeing state-run schools, that some of their textbooks taught Darwinism. It passed overwhelmingly, with fines of $100 to $500. Peay signed it while calling it a protest against irreligious trends and saying he doubted it would ever be actively enforced.

Not everyone took it seriously. University of Tennessee students circulated a mock petition for further laws, including one to “change Pi from 3.1416 to an even 3,” and five of the twelve UT floats in that spring’s circus parade ridiculed the “monkey law.”

How the test case was staged

Peay’s prediction did not last. The ACLU offered to defend any Tennessee teacher willing to challenge the act, and civic leaders in Dayton saw a chance for publicity. They recruited John T. Scopes, a football coach and science teacher who could not remember for certain whether he had actually taught evolution, though he had used the state-approved textbook that covered it.

• March 21, 1925: Peay signs the act, doubting it will be enforced.
• July 1925: Scopes is convicted and fined $100.
• January 1927: the Tennessee Supreme Court upholds the law but overturns his conviction. The state constitution required any fine above $50 to be set by a jury, and the judge had set it himself.
• 1967: the legislature repeals the act, after 42 years.

The trial did not slow the anti-evolution campaign. Mississippi and Arkansas passed similar laws within a few years, and publishers quietly dropped evolution from biology textbooks.