Butts, June Dobbs

Description

In this interview, June Dobbs Butts provides an overview of her life and work. She details the dynamics of her immediate and extended families, and talks about her childhood growing up in Atlanta. She discusses her father, John Wesley Dobbs, and his beliefs about civil rights organizing, as well as her childhood friend Martin Luther King, Jr. Butts talks about her undergraduate education at Spelman College and her graduate education at Columbia University, where she studied human sexuality. She describes meeting the famous sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson at a conference, and subsequently working at their St. Louis research facility. Butts discusses other aspects of her career, including teaching at various places and writing a sex column for Essence magazine. Butts also discusses her children and ex-husband throughout the interview.Therapist and family counselor June Dobbs Butts was born on June 11, 1928 in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the youngest daughter of Irene and John Wesley Dobbs, one of Atlanta’s most prominent African American leaders before the Civil Rights Movement. Butts is also the aunt of the late Honorable Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor. Butts received her B.A. degree in sociology from Spelman College in 1948, setting a national education record – six sisters graduating from the same college. That same summer, Butts worked with her close friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Then, in the fall of 1948, she entered the Teacher’s College of Columbia University in New York City, where she received her Ed.D. degree in...

Record Contributed By

Georgia State University

Record Harvested From

Digital Library of Georgia