On Mar. 13, 1925, the Tennessee Senate approved the Butler bill 24 to 6 called for a ban on the teaching of evolution.  Governor Austin Peay signed the Butler Act on On Mar. 21, 1925 which prohibited the teaching of evolution in any Tennessee state-funded school and university.

Rep. John Washington Butler originally introduced the legislation in the Tennessee House of Representatives on On Jan. 21, 1925, 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.”

The Butler Bill was subsequently challenged in court. The Scopes trial — or “Monkey Trial,” as it was called — dominated headlines across the country.  It was not until 1967 when the Tennessee Governor Buford Ellington signed a law that repealed the prohibition of teaching evolution that was used to prosecute teacher John Scopes in 1925.