Dr. June Dobbs Butts, Ed.D.

Dr, June Dobbs Butts is a hidden figure of sex research the way Katherine Johnson was of astronautics.

Therapist and family counselor June Dobbs Butts was born on June 11, 1928 in Atlanta, Georgia.

She spearheaded more liberated sex education and therapy for African Americans, advocating for more open and honest discussion about sexuality and sex practices, including those long considered taboo. Butts earned her doctorate in family life education at the Teachers College of Columbia University and taught at New York University, Fordham University, the Howard University College of Medicine and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dobbs Butts was the first black person to be trained at Masters and Johnson Institute, after having met Virginia Johnson while serving on the board of Planned Parenthood. She brought her particular experience to the study of sex research and therapy by synthesizing the cultural phenomena of the time: the Civil Rights, Black Power, and the women’s rights movements.

Dr. Butts advocated honest discussion of topics like masturbation, bisexuality and gender reassignment. Butts authored four book chapters on human sexuality and wrote several articles in popular magazines, including: Jet and Ebony and a column, Our Sexual Health, for Essence in the late 1970s.

This work caused her to constantly confront respectability politics. In a time when black Americans were just starting to make headway in being considered upright members of society, many wanted Butts to pipe down about something as distasteful as sex. In an interview, Butts recounted that "When I first wrote [the recurring Essence column, “Sexual Health”], I sent a copy to one of my sisters. I didn't hear anything. Finally, I asked her what she thought. You know what she said? 'Well, to tell you the truth, June, it turned my stomach. I didn't think black women would write about things like that.'" Her daughter, too, was embarrassed by her mother’s “salacious” academic focus, insisting she not lecture at schools she was attending despite invitations to do so.

Author, Wednesday Martin suggests you might honor her memory by telling a friend about her contributions to your healthy sex life.