On Mar. 13, 2915, the Tennessee Senate approved the Butler bill 24 to 6 called for a ban on the teaching of evolution.

On Mar. 21, 1925 Tennessee Governor Austin Peay signed the Butler Act which prohibited the teaching of evolution in any Tennessee state-funded school and university.

On Jan. 21, 1925, Rep. John Washington Butler introduced legislation in the Tennessee House of Representatives that called for a ban on the teaching of evolution.

The proposed law, known as the Butler bill, would prohibit the teaching of “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.”