Porter Freeman Butts Porter Freeman Butts Was
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Porter Freeman Butts Porter Freeman Butts was born on February 23, 1903 in Pana, Illinois. As Butts noted in his 1979 oral history interview with Donna Taylor Hartshorne, his parents moved him and his brothers—R. Freeman Butts and Robert Paddock Butts—to Springfield, Illinois in 1907. Reflecting on his younger self, Butts stated that “for whatever reason, possibly as much as anything due to the influence of my father who was a very busy and active person, I guess I became … ‘a doer.’”1 Butts’ participation in multiple extracurricular activities illustrates that point. “[I]n high school, I found myself . active on the basketball team, president of the chemistry club, president of the high school debating society, president of the senior class [and] of assorted other minor organizations, active in musical shows of the high school and Friday morning assemblies” as well as the school quartet and orchestra.2 After graduating from high school, Butts enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the fall of 1920 with the intent of transferring to Princeton once he acquired the requisite language credits. He never did transfer. Instead, he spent the next five decades attending, working for, and teaching at UW- Madison. The transition from Springfield to Madison proved difficult for Butts. Since his uncle— Porter Paddock—belonged to Phi Gamma Delta and had written his nephew a letter of introduction, Butts assumed the fraternity would invite him to join. When no such invitation arrived, Butts reported that he found life on campus grim. “The Greeks, so called fraternity and sorority people, were the dominant social group, political group, active group on campus.” They “had ample and rather posh buildings for chapters for living and dining and social life.” Conversely, non-Greek students—called ‘barbarians’ or ‘barbs,’ for short, and ‘independents’— “did what they could to find rooming house accommodations and dining.” This made for what Butts remembered as “a pretty thin kind of existence.”3 [B]efore I came, there were literally no general meeting places, no university provisions for housing. And so there was literally no way to find fellow students or to fraternize with them or to meet together in club groups or social groups except if someone was aggressive enough to find a classroom that was empty to meet in and this was an especially painful experience for anyone who had hoped to be associated to a fraternity or sorority. this sudden isolation was a new experience and frightening, I must say.4 That “rather dreary” period ended when Butts joined Alpha Tau Omega by the midpoint of his freshman year. Regardless of the change in circumstances, the isolating experience affected Butts and shaped the nature of his work with the Memorial Union at UW-Madison. Same as he was in high school, Butts remained a doer as an undergraduate. His first year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison found him witting for both the Daily Cardinal and the student humor magazine the Octopus as well as performing in the Union Vodvil and participating in the Haresfoot Dramatic Club. By his sophomore year, Butts had taken up residence in the Alpha Tau Omega house and was working as the publicity director for the Octopus. He also continued to act on the Vodvil stage and write for the Daily Cardinal. In addition, Butts served as the foreign publicity chairman of the Homecoming Committee and 1 Transcript of Oral History Program interview with Porter Butts, 1979. 2 Transcript of Oral History Program interview with Porter Butts, 1979. 3 Transcript of Oral History Program interview with Porter Butts, 1979. 4 Transcript of Oral History Program interview with Porter Butts, 1979. joined two interfraternity social societies for sophomore men—Inner Gate and Skull and Crescent—by the end of his second year in Madison. Butts became increasingly involved in university organizations and campus life during his third and fourth years as an undergraduate. In his junior year he served as secretary of the Haresfoot Club and chairman of the Haresfoot Follies as well as program editor for the Homecoming Committee. In addition to living in the Alpha Tau Omega house for a second year, Butts represented the fraternity as a junior member of the student organization honorary interfraternity society Ku Klux Klan for the 1922/1923 academic year.5 He also joined the White Spades, a junior men’s honorary society, and became editor of the Daily Cardinal. As a senior, Butts remained an engaged student. In addition to becoming president of the Haresfoot Dramatic Club and managing editor of the Daily Cardinal, he joined Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Delta Chi, and the honorary dramatic fraternity National Collegiate Players. At the same time, Butts remained on as a senior member of the White Spades. He also served as assistant general chairman of the Homecoming Committee and gained membership to the senior men’s honorary society Iron Cross. Finally, Butts continued to represent Alpha Tau Omega as a senior member of Tumas, formerly Ku Klux Klan—a fact reflected in his senior profile for the 1925 Badger yearbook.6 Immediately after graduating from the University of Wisconsin in Madison with a B.A. in English, Butts began working for the university, first as an Alumni Recorder. In that position, which he held from 1924–1926, Butts “laboriously assembled from the registrar’s records” a list of alumni that, according to Jim Feldman, author of The Buildings of the University of 5 It is interesting to note that Butts consistently omitted this information from accounts of his undergraduate years, even though he frequently discussed and detailed his activities as a student at UW-Madison. For example, he neither mentioned nor listed his involvement with the student honorary organization by the name Ku Klux Klan in his 14-hour oral history interview with Hartshorne or communications about fellow alumni Fredric March’s affiliation with the earlier student honorary group Klu Klux Klan. Butts also did not include his participation in the honorary Ku Klux Klan as a junior representative of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity on the multiple faculty information sheets held by the University Archives, which he filled out and submitted over the course of his employment at UW-Madison. From Sherrill Butts Randall (daughter of Porter Butts, 7/17/2018): Similar to his practice of withholding information about his affiliation with the student honorary organization Ku Klux Klan, records held by the University Archives show that, apart from his senior yearbook profile, Butts also dissociated himself from Tumas in his biographical information because it sometimes was listed as formerly Ku Klux Klan. He withheld the information on purpose because he wanted to dissociate from the KKK name that he disliked and for what it represented. Additionally, family history tells that Porter vehemently opposed the ideology of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. This is also evidenced by Porter’s actions when he was a student. He and his class changed the student honorary KKK name to Tumas officially on April 17, 1923. Source: Daily Cardinal April 18, 1923 p. 1. He either wrote or approved an editorial when he was Managing Editor of the Cardinal in 1924. This editorial condemned the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as being “Undesirable and Uneeded.” Source: Daily Cardinal March 11, 1924 p. 4. Porter Butts Family history has that Porter expressed a negative opinion about the Ku Klux Klan in his college days in a speech for his UW ’24 class reunion in 1949. Source: Speech "Souvenir for the Class of 1924” located in Porter Butts biographical file. 6 The Daily Cardinal reported on April 18, 1923 that “Ku Klux Klan, junior interfraternity society, has changed its name to Tumas. ‘We changed the name of the organization because so many people confused it with the name of the non-collegiate secret organization of the same name,’ Gordon B. Wanzer ’24, president, said last night.” Tumas was comprised of 16 juniors and 18 seniors representing 18 of the 56 fraternities in existence at UW- Madison in the 1923/1924 academic year. Over the years, some have claimed Tumas functioned as the Interfraternity Council at UW-Madison during the time in question. Others have more recently suggested that Tumas was a predecessor of the Interfraternity Council. An Interfraternity Council existed prior to the formation of either the Klu Klux Klan, which later became the Ku Klux Klan before changing its name to Tumas in the spring of 1923. 2 Wisconsin, was used “to raise pledges for the [Memorial] Union.”7 In 1926, Butts became Executive Secretary and Campaign Director of the Memorial Union Building Committee. For the next two years, as E. David Cronon and John W. Jenkins state in The University of Wisconsin: A History, 1925-1945, Butts “worked full-time to coordinate fund-raising for the [Union] project.”8 Years of planning, fundraising, and construction come to fruition in 1928 when the Memorial Union opened with Porter Butts as its first director. During his tenure as director, Butts helped establish the Hoofers Outdoor Recreation Club (1931), served as an officer and trustee of the Memorial Union Building Association (1926–1990), organized and ran the Memorial Union Art Gallery that now bears his name, and helped establish a major in Community Leadership in Recreation (1947). Butts held the position of Memorial Union Director from 1928 until June of 1969 when a university policy that mandated the retirement of major administrative heads once they reached 65 years of age triggered his withdrawal “from the directorship of active operations of the Union building.”9 Outside of his role as director, Butts served the university in a variety of capacities.