The NICE "Madalyn Murray O'Hair" Dies at 93

[Eve]

Remember how that loudmouth bully Madalyn Murray O’Hair was always proclaiming herself the heroine al all atheists and how she personally got prayer out of school? Well, you don’t hear much about the quiet heroes of separation of church and state like this lady:

Vashti McCollum, whose lawsuit to stop religious instruction on school property led to a landmark ruling by the United States Supreme Court in 1948 to protect the separation of church and state in education, died Sunday in Champaign, Ill. She was 93. Her death was confirmed by her son James, whose refusal as a fifth grader to attend voluntary religious instruction led to the lawsuit.

Mrs. McCollum, who called herself an atheist in Illinois court proceedings but later preferred the word “humanist,” said her son was ostracized and embarrassed by his schoolmates because she refused to let him attend the religion classes at his public school in Champaign. The classes for Protestants were on school premises; Jews and Roman Catholics went to religious buildings elsewhere . . . After losing in two Illinois courts, Mrs. McCollum won an 8-to-1 decision by the Supreme Court. Justice Hugo L. Black, who wrote the majority opinion, said the practice in Champaign was “beyond all question” using tax-established and tax-supported schools “to aid religious groups to spread their faith,” and, he added, “It falls squarely under the ban of the First Amendment.”

Vashti Ruth Cromwell was born in Lyons, N.Y., on Nov. 6, 1912, and grew up in Rochester. She was named for the queen of the Persian King Xerxes depicted in Esther 1 in the Bible who refuses to obey her husband’s order and is divorced for her spunk. Her father, Arthur G. Cromwell, was an architect who read the works of atheists like Spinoza and Thomas Paine, then read seven versions of the Bible. After letting the conflicting ideas germinate for years, he had become a vocal atheist by the time his two daughters were in college, James McCollum said.

. . . His mother talked with the school system’s superintendent, but he said there was nothing he could do. She was careful to say that she was making no criticism of religion, The New York Daily News reported in 1945 . . . A dramatic moment during the initial trial of the case came when Mrs. McCollum’s father said he did not believe in God, and a gasp went up from the crowd. Later, James McCollum said the same thing. Both “affirmed” that they would tell the truth instead of swearing by God. Mrs. McCollum called herself “a rationalist or an atheist.” In the three-year legal battle, Mrs. McCollum received physical threats and was fired from her job as a dance instructor at the university. At Halloween, a mob of trick-or-treaters pelted the McCollum family with rotten tomatoes and cabbages. The family cat was lynched.

[silenus]

I’m hoping the cat got into Heaven while the lynchers didn’t.

[The_King_of_Soup]

@silenus

I’m hoping the cat got into Heaven while the lynchers didn’t.

“Prominent atheist’s cat goes to Heaven.” I like it. It reminds me of Niels Bohr’s horseshoe.

Mrs. McCollum’s quiet and modest insistence that she be allowed to respect others’ beliefs without adopting them as her own provides a model for civil behavior.

[Shirley_Ujest]

What did the cat have to do with the whole thing?

Geez. People are so stupid.

[samclem]

You’d have to understand the mind-set of the general public at the time. Very different from today.

Here’s a snippet from an article I read from a 1945 article when her challenge was still at the local/Illinois level.

“The school board denied that the teaching of voluntary religious education violated any State or Federal laws or constitutions,” the board said in an answer filed in circuit court. Suit was brought by Mrs. Vashti McCollum, former University of Illinois faculty member, who described herself as an “atheist or rationalist.” She complained that school building “were not equally available” to her to teach her doctrines.
The board replied that school district properties “are in fact equally available to all organized religious or anti-religious groups whose teachings are consistent with good public morals and the peace and safety of people residing in the school district.”

Hey! That’s how we used to talk in them days.

[Eve]

This is the part that reminded me how lucky I am to be living in 2006:

A dramatic moment during the initial trial of the case came when Mrs. McCollum’s father said he did not believe in God, and a gasp went up from the crowd.

[samclem]

And now, to give equal time, I’ll share another quote from a newspaper from the time, about the suit as it now proceded to the SCOTUS–

A Baptist group said today that programs of religious instruction in public school building were “an invasion of the time-honored doctrine of the separation of church and state.”

This was the position of the Southern Baptist Convention, Northern Baptist Convention, National Baptist Convention,Inc., and National Baptist Convention (not incorporated).

But, to put it into perspective, “four Baptist churches in the Champaign-Urbana area were giving financial support to the program objected to by Mrs. McCollum.”

I’m just amazed at how much the Southern Baptist Convention which I grew up with has changed over the years. This would never have happen in the last 10-20 years.

[GingerOfTheNorth]

I had never heard of her. Thanks for posting this, Eve.

[Little_Nemo]

I read the title and was wondering how Madalyn Murray O’Hair had just died when I knew she had already died years ago. And I was thinking if anybody would have made the news by rising from the dead, it was her.

[Voyager]

I read the obit in the Times today, and was impressed by her too. I lived in Champaign for four years, and never knew that such a crucial case had originated there.

[Denis]

Thank you for providing that, Eve. I knew of many non-shrill public atheists, but not this particular lady. It really warms my heart to learn of her.

And my condolences to the family of this noble lady.