The Fundamentals of Sex

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Dr. June Dobbs Butts was a magazine columnist, taught at three HBCUs, and wrote Bermuda's sex ed curriculum.

Her op-eds debunked myths about to HIV/AIDS, queerness, teen pregnancy, sexual abuse, and sex addiction.

She was an early advocate for comprehensive sex ed covering sexual rights, health, diversity, and autonomy.

Dr. June Dobbs Butts was a sexual education pioneer whose legacy deserves greater recognition and preservation, especially during Black History Month. Born in 1928, Dr. Butts was arguably the first Black feminist scholar to declare that equitable and inclusive sex education is integral to racial justice.

In college, Dr. Butts and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—her childhood playmate—traversed the U.S. conducting the Baptist Ministers Survey, collecting data for a research study called “The Negro Baptist Ministry: An Analysis of its Profession Preparation and Practices.” Years later, her master’s thesis, “An Interrogation of the Relational Meanings of Sex and Race in the United States,” explored gendered racism nearly a decade before the critical theory of intersectionality entered academic discourse.

As a Planned Parenthood board member in 1970, she met William Masters and Virginia Johnson—a couple who founded the sexology field—and became the first Black sex therapist trained at their renowned institute.

By the mid-1970s, Dr. Butts had departed from the Masters and Johnson Institute to establish her own private practice. A 1980 Washington Post profile hinted at a shift in priorities, explaining, “At Masters and Johnson, all of her patients were white; now 90 percent of them are Black.”

At this stage, she was known for her specialization in culturally adapted sexual education. In 1976, for instance, the Government of Bermuda commissioned her to develop and implement a national sex education program and, in April 1977, she debuted "Sex Education: Who Needs It?", Ebony Magazine’s first-ever op-ed on sexuality.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, she taught at three historically Black universities: Tennessee State University and the medical schools of Fisk University and Howard University. Despite academic commitments, she still hosted a call-in radio show, wrote “Sexual Health”, an Essence Magazine column published from 1980-82, and consulted with the CDC. And in 1983, she presented at the First National Conference on Black Women’s Health Issues, which convened over 3,000 Black women at Spelman College.

Dr. Butts’ archive is timely for Black History Month, but also politically relevant. Similar to how Reagan-era policies conflicted with her advocacy, the last presidential election ushered in an administration that is rapidly unraveling social policies via Project 2025. These parallels mean that Dr. Butts’ archive is not just an interesting artifact, but a source of moral courage for advocates at the intersection of emotional, reproductive, and sexual health.

As early as 1978, Dr. Butts advocated for comprehensive sex ed, specifically curricula that explored cultural attitudes framing sex as a shameful taboo. In "Growing Up: An Essay on Human Emotions," for example, she discusses sexual silence. One section urges parents to overcome their own fears:

The Fundamentals of Sex

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“Most adults have difficulty handling their own emotions when it comes to discussing sex with youngsters. They either freeze up, or talk in the abstract, as my mother did. Also, there are parents who don’t even talk, who assume that their child has taken everything in stride and digested the facts of life simply because the youngster can prattle off psychological jargon. It is the polysyllabic words which make adults feel secure, not the display of insight on the part of the youngster, or intelligent questioning about one of life’s puzzling phenomena. How can concerned adults clue in to the state of knowledge of children and help them build a frame of reference which includes but does not exploit their own sexuality?”

“Most adults........

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