Warning ( contains a qoute from 1976 that oulines a lude comment that cost his job) Lived from July 3 1909- Feb 2 2008. Born in Albion, Indiana, Butz was an alumnus of Purdue University where he was a member of Alpha Gamma Rho Fraternity. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture in 1932, and then a doctorate in Agricultural Economics in 1937. He was the uncle of NFL player Dave Butz.In 1948, Butz became vice president of the American Agricultural Economics Association, and three years later was named to the same post at the American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers. In 1954, he was appointed Assistant Secretary of Agriculture by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. That same year he was also named chairman of the United States delegation to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He left both of the aforementioned posts in 1957, when he became the Dean of Agriculture at his alma mater, Purdue University. In 1968, he was promoted to the positions of Dean of Education and vice president of the university's research foundation.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon appointed Butz as Secretary of Agriculture, a position in which he continued to serve after Nixon resigned as the result of the Watergate scandal in 1974
The racist Remark In 1976
Earl Butz, the secretary of agriculture, resigned after it was widely publicized that he had made a racist remark. Butz's statement had been: "I'll tell you what the coloreds want. It's three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit." Most people watched Butz make his exit without knowing exactly waht he had said. The Associated Press sent out the uncensored quotation but, according to Columbia Journalism Review , only two newspapers printed it: Wisconsin's Madison Capital Times and Ohio's Toledo Bladem . Other newspapers said Butz had derogatorily described blacks' "sexual, dress and bathroom predilections," or that he had said "a tight [obscenity] ... a warm place to [vulgarism]," or otherwise cleaned up the language. ("Courageously." David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times commented, "...no editors dropped 'shoes' from Butz's remarks and substituted 'an article of footwear.'") Two newspapers provided ways for readers to see Butz's uncensored remarks. The Lubbock Avalanche Journal in Texas announced that the original statement was available in the newspaper office, and more than two hundred people came to read it. The San Diego Evening Tribune offered to mail a copy to anyone who requested it, and more than three thousand people did so.
It has been reported that Earl Butz simply died as a result of complications of age.
