It was truly fascinating, about the then-outright proselytizing of Illinois' public school system back in the early to late .40s. Mrs. Vashti McCollum took them on, lost twice at the local, then state levels ,but eventually the case went before the Federal Supreme Court, where those immortal words
"creating a wall of separation between church and state" were entered into the legal phraseology by one of the Supreme Court's more courageous scholarly judges.
Vashti McCollum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Illinois school board had been brazenly utilizing the public schools (and the taxpayers money...) to brow-beat innocent kids into a religious background, including bussing the less fortunate outlayers into the schools so they could "enjoy" a good Christian upbringing.
Mrs. McCollum, who was alive at 93 for the filming of this documentary,(she died in 2006), exhibited very courageous behavior. She was a truly ethical woman who correctly interpreted the Constitution, and didn't let the outrageous actions of a hubris-filled and über-arrogant Catholic Church despoil her children at their most vulnerable age-point. (at one point, the school made her son sit outside his classroom, even with a dunce cap on for a while, sitting alone and being taunted by the kids. No doubt at the insistence of the teachers...)
Of course, when the local and state courts initially supported the Christian agenda, the good Christian folk of her hometown of Champaign, Il,also did their expected usual response, pelting her home with eggs & cow dung, placing demeaning placards on their lawn, demanding that her un-involved professor hubby be fired from his tenured university position, and publicly damning them all in the local papers for being "Commie Atheists". Just like they'd like to do to to us this very day, but outright stupidity is no longer so easily tolerated.
Good on yah,
Vashti. May you rest in eternal peace.
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