Vashti McCollum

Vashti Cromwell McCollum (November 6 1912 – August 20 2006) was the plaintiff in a landmark 1948 Supreme Court case that struck down religious education in the public schools. The defendant in the McCollum case was the school district of Champaign, Illinois, wherein instructors chosen by three religious faiths had taught classes within the public schools.

Background/Education

Born as Vashti Ruth Cromwell in Lyons, New York, she was raised in nearby Rochester and attended Cornell University on a full tuition scholarship until the stock market crash and deepening economic depression depleted the scholarship fund and forced her to withdraw from Cornell. She later transferred to the University of Illinois.

Family

She met her husband-to-be, John P. McCollum at Champaign-Urbana, and the couple married in 1933. The McCollums had three children: James, Dannel, and Errol. Dannel McCollum later served three four-year terms as mayor of Champaign, Illinois.

Activism

In 1944, James McCollum, then a fourth grader enrolled in the Champaign public schools, came home with a parental consent form for his attendance at "voluntary" religion classes during the school day. The form allowed choice between Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish instruction. The religious education program in the Champaign public schools had been established in 1940, and was based on a concept known as released time. Released time was also known as the "Gary plan", after Gary, Indiana, where the concept was devised in 1914. The released time concept allowed children to be released from public school to attend religious instruction at their house of worship. In the released time system in Champaign, the three represented religious faiths chose clergy and laypeople to teach the religion classes, which were taught in the public schools. With some reluctance, the McCollums allowed their eight-year-old son to attend the Champaign school district's Protestant religious course during his fourth grade year, but after reviewing the course materials, they withdrew permission for James' participation for the following year in the fifth grade, based on their belief that the content of Champaign's religion classes was inappropriate for the public schools. James – the only student in his class not participating in the religion class – was subsequently pressured by his teachers to conform, and his parents were pressured by school officials to permit him to join the religion classes to help James "get along". The McCollums were angered at their son's ostracization by his teachers, which included James being forced to sit alone in a hallway while the other pupils attended religion classes. Fact|date=June 2008 After a meeting with school officials which failed to change the school district's policy, McCollum filed suit against Champaign's school district in July 1945. During the court case, McCollum described herself as an atheist, though later in life used the term "humanist" to describe her beliefs. McCollum's suit, Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Ed. of School Dist. No. 71, Champaign Cty., was filed in the county circuit court and sought to bar the classes, which were taught by members of a private religious association and not public school employees. The petition before the court complained that the school district's practice was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which provides that the state will not establish or favor one religion over another religion, or favor religion over non-religion; as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees that the law will apply equally to all people. The county court ruled against McCollum and was subsequently upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court upon appeal.

During 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. Mrs. McCollum wrote a book on the case, "One Woman's Fight", became a world traveler and served two terms as president of the American Humanist Association. "We don't bother ourselves with the question of whether there is or isn't a God", she said in a speech in 1948. Fact|date=June 2008 The U. S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case In an 8-1 decision announced on March 8 ussc|333|203|1948, the high court reversed the ruling of the lower court, and held that the school district's religious instruction program was unconstitutional. A critical issue in the case was whether the constitutional ban on establishing religion meant that all sects must be treated equally, as lawyers for Champaign argued was the case in their schools or whether it required strict neutrality between belief and unbelief, which was Mrs. McCollum's successful contention. "The First Amendment rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other in its respective sphere", Justice Black wrote. The case was also important because it extended First Amendment protection to individual states by using the due process clause of the 14th Amendment as a justification. Fact|date=June 2008 All other cases that have since tested and continue to test Jefferson's wall of "separation of church and state", including school prayer, aid to parochial schools and sectarian religious displays on public property, descend from this case. The language used by those who oppose(d) the Supreme Court's ruling in this case has continued for decades, sometimes in vitriolic terms. The Catholic bishops accused the court of making a religion of secularism. Fact|date=June 2008

Zorach vs. Clauson

In 1952, the Supreme Court revisited the issue of religious instruction in Zorach v. Clauson. The 6-to-3 ruling modified McCollum v. Board of Education by allowing public school students to leave their building and enter religious school buildings for a short period of religious instruction during the school day "because it did not use public school facilities or public money".

External references

* [http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2006/08/21/champaign_woman_who_won_high_court_ruling_dead_at_93 Champaign woman who won high court ruling dead at 93, obituary from the Champaign "News-Gazette" online edition, August 21, 2006]
* [http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=refresh&docId=5001330429&type=magazine Article on McCollum and her lawsuit from "Church & State" (magazine), Vol. 51, April 1998, via questia.com]
* [http://www.inmccollum.org/JIMMC/vashti_mccollum.htm Biography of Vashti McCollum by her son James]