Background
Austin Peay was born on June 1, 1876 in Hopkinsville, Christian County, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Austin and Cornelia Frances (Leavell) Peay. He was given the middle name, Leavell, but he stopped using it about 1900.
Austin Peay was born on June 1, 1876 in Hopkinsville, Christian County, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Austin and Cornelia Frances (Leavell) Peay. He was given the middle name, Leavell, but he stopped using it about 1900.
Austin Peay attended Centre College at Danville, Kentucky and then Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.
In 1895 Austin Peay began the practice of law in this town, where he made his home for the remainder of his life. Soon he entered politics as a Democrat. In 1900 and 1902 he was elected to membership in the Tennessee House of Representatives. He became chairman of the Democratic state executive committee in 1905. Three years later he was campaign manager for Malcolm R. Patterson, the successful candidate of the anti-Prohibitionists for the governorship. For the next decade he devoted himself to his legal practice, becoming increasingly popular and prosperous. In 1918 he was defeated by Albert H. Roberts for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Four years later, however, he won the nomination against three opponents and easily defeated the Republican candidate, Gov. Alfred A. Taylor.
In 1924 Austin Peay was reelected with negligible opposition, and in 1926 he broke a tradition of many years by winning election to a third consecutive term. In his campaigns he attacked the political machine that then dominated the state, and he advocated administrative reforms, the reduction of taxes on land, and the improvement of the state's educational system. His speeches were serious and thoughtful discussions of the state's needs, which appealed to the intelligence of the voters. The legislature was unusually responsive to his wishes, and his administrations were notable for the enactment of a number of laws of progressive character. He procured the enactment of an administrative reorganization bill that centralized responsibility and power by regrouping twenty-seven departments and thirty-seven boards into eight departments, headed by commissioners who were directly responsible to the governor.
Austin Peay obtained a considerable shifting of the burden of taxation from the land owner, but he was unable to obtain an amendment to the state constitution that would have made possible an efficient and equitable system of taxation. He effected a reorganization of the highway department that resulted in the efficient construction of many miles of paved roads, financed largely from the proceeds of a tax on gasoline. He advocated successfully much-needed appropriations for the state university and the enactment of a general education bill that established an eight months' term for schools, higher salaries for teachers, and other improvements in the state's educational system. He obtained also the creation of a park in the Great Smokies and a game preserve at Reelfoot Lake.
The most notorious piece of legislation of Austin Peay's administrations, however, was an act, in 1925, which made it "unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State to teach 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". He had not advocated the passage of this measure, and there are private reports that he was greatly angered when the legislature forced him to commit himself by sending it to his desk. The labored message he sent to the legislature, and through it to an interested world, in justification of his signature, seems to have been dictated by political expediency and by the conventional opinion that religious and moral safety lie in an "old-fashioned faith and belief" rather than along the new ways of exploration and experiment.
Yet, John T. Scopes, a young teacher in Dayton, was soon prosecuted and convicted under it. Peay had no part in the trial, and the anti-evolution law played an insignificant part in his successful campaign in 1926 for a third term. Austin Peay died at the executive mansion in Nashville on October 2, 1927.
Austin Peay was a member of Democratic Party.
Austin Peay strongly supported the establishment of the Smoky Mountains National Park.
On September 19, 1895, Austin Peay married Sallie Hurst of Clarksville, Tennessee. They had two children.