The Majority always rule...NOT!

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Madalyn Murray O'Hair.jpg

Madalyn Murray O'Hair was known for her role in the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision in Murray v. Curlett , which, combined with Abington v. Schempp , ended school prayer in public schools across the U.S. and turned her into the self-described "most hated woman in America."

"It is doubtful there is anyone in the United States who does not know the name Madalyn O'Hair," read the introduction to her 1966 pamphlet, "Why I Am an Atheist." [O'Hair took the last name of her second husband, Richard O'Hair, when she married him in 1965.] "She is probably the best-known Atheist in the world today." Other publications concurred: "Life" magazine described her in 1964 as "anathema to millions of Americans."

Now, ten years after her mysterious disappearance in late August, 1995, which culminated in the discovery years later of her grisly murder by a former employee, the legacy of this controversial activist still influences atheists in America today.

"Madalyn gave legitimacy to the atheist movement," said Ann Rowe Seaman, author of the recent biography, "America's Most Hated Woman: The Life and Gruesome Death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair." "She put it on the map as a viable thing."

"She laid a foundation for atheists coming out of the closet," agreed Wendy Britton, a former acquaintance of the O'Hair family who organized an event for atheists in the Seattle area on August 28 called "Madalyn Murray O'Hair: What She Stood For And Why Her Ideas Matter Today."

Born in 1919 to a poor family in Pittsburgh, she was raised by church-going parents but claimed she became an atheist after reading the complete Bible in her early teen years. Madalyn Murray O'Hair became a household name when she contested the required moment of prayer and Bible reading in her son William's Baltimore-area public school in 1960. The Supreme Court, then under Chief Justice Earl Warren, delivered its 8-1 verdict in favor of O'Hair on June 17, 1963, expanding an earlier school prayer decision in the 1962 Engel v. Vitale case. Murray v. Curlett, along with Abington v. Schempp, eliminated not only obligatory school prayer but also mandatory Bible readings in public schools.

Though the Schempp case got top billing, O'Hair quickly became a hero among secular Americans. "The Schempps did not want to be in the limelight," O'Hair biographer and University of Missouri-Kansas City dean Bryan LeBeau told Beliefnet in a 2004 interview. "Madalyn walked right out to the front of the Supreme Court building, her son by her side, and grabbed the microphone from the press and insisted that this was a major case and she was responsible for it. She took credit and then went on to say that she wasn't done, that she was going to go on and challenge all kinds of other church-state matters."

Undeterred by the backlash (O'Hair received death threats and was the victim of vandalism long after the 1963 decision), O'Hair continued to insert herself into church and state legal battles as the country's atheist-in-chief. "I am an Atheist," she wrote in the "Why I Am an Atheist" pamphlet. "I am a bit more than that--an Atheist. I am, in fact, the Atheist. The Atheist who made Americans stop to take a little stock of their accepted values."

Later in 1963, O'Hair founded American Atheists, which remains one of the most activist atheist groups in the U.S. today. She used her platform as president of the organization to launch a number of other separation of church and state cases. None, however, were as successful or as notorious as Murray v. Curlett. In late 1963, she unsuccessfully sued the city of Baltimore to eliminate the city's tax exemptions for churches. She also challenged the school board of Baltimore to remove "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance and filed suit over Maryland's "moment of silence" law, also without success.

Still, these suits managed to keep O'Hair in the public eye long after the 1963 decision. "Her suits might have failed," said Seaman, "but because she was so outrageous, they put her in the spotlight. She was always colorful and good copy for newspapers and TV. She knew how to get people stirred up. She knew how to say outrageous things that would get a furious reaction."

Her brazen style got her a great deal of press coverage, but also earned her enemies--surprisingly among atheists as well as Christians.

 

Some of the grossly uniformed say that the Democratic Party was responsible for it, and since most Blacks were democrats at the time, they are responsible for this. But let’s look at the time line.

  • Madalyn Murray O'Hairwas known for her role in the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision in Murray v. Curlett , which, combined with Abington v. Schempp , ended school prayer in public schools across the U.S. and turned her into the self-described "most hated woman in America."
  • Amendment XV to the U.S. Constitution -
    Passed by Congress February 26, 1869. Ratified February 3, 1870.
    "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
  • Amendment XV did give black people the right to vote in 1870, and some used it right away, electing state and federal senators and representatives. Jim Crow quickly snatched away that right for all practical purposes, however, as poll taxes and literacy tests--and Klansmen--denied blacks that fundamental right. President Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the true turning point in the USA's history of beginning to embrace blacks as full citizens with equal rights.
  • The answer actually depends upon where in the United States you are talking about. Free Blacks had the right to vote and actually held various elected offices throughout the North from the very beginning. The slaves states of the South did not allow blacks to vote, or do much of anything. The ratification of the 15th Amendment codified the right throughout the United States. The Jim Crow laws of the South were an attempt to avert the 15th Amendment until the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950s and finally of 1964 put an end to those laws, if not to the racist views, of the Southern States.
  • Actually, the Civil rights act of 1964 did not grant the vote to African-Americans. I do believe that what did grant the vote was President Johnson's Voting Rights act of 1965. This happened after marchers protesting against segregation and to be granted the right to vote were violently attacked by white segregationists who were trying to stop the protest. The marchers were planning to go from Selma to Montgomery. They later succeeded at walking to Montgomery, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "address at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March" on March 25th, 1965.

So according to the time line, the people responsible for passage of the bill were Caucasian democrats and not Black democrats as suggested by the low-informed.

 

In 1995 she was kidnapped, murdered and mutilated along with her son Jon Murray and granddaughter Robin Murray O'Hair, by the former American Atheist office manager David Roland Waters.

 

Throughout history, the thinking of the low-informed has always been let’s kill the source and that will solve the problem. Well, has it? Only by the renewing of one’s mind will anything change. Romans, chapter 12, KJV will give you wisdom to live by. However, there is one stipulation…you have to believe what you read or it is just a waste of time for YOU!

Entry #335

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