by Patrick Murfin
President of the Congregational Unitarian Church, Woodstock,
Illinois
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John
T. McCollum on the witness stand.
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Vashti
Ruth Cromwell, named for the queen of Ahasuerus in the
first book of Esther, who was one of the few biblical
women to stand up for women’s rights, was born in
Lyons, New York, on November 6, 1912, to Arthur G. and
Ruth C. Cromwell. She was raised in Rochester, New York,
and after graduation from a public high school, attended
Cornell University on a full tuition scholarship until
the market crash of 1929. Transferring to the University
of Illinois, she eventually obtained her A.B. in the College
of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1944 and, after interruptions
for marriage and children, an M.S. in Mass Communications
in 1957, .
After
arriving in Champaign-Urbana to attend the University
of Illinois, she met Dr. John P. McCollum, a staff member,
whom she married in 1933. Their three sons all graduated
from college with at least one degree. James Terry, the
oldest, went on to obtain a J.D. and practiced law in
Rochester, New York, for 33 years until his retirement
in 1994. Dannel obtained an M.S. in history and has served
for several terms as mayor of Champaign, Illinois. Errol
Cromwell, after obtaining his B.S. in mechanical engineering,
eventually established a chain of bicycle stores, along
with a partner, and was actively engaged in that enterprise
until his retirement in 1996.
Vashti lived up to her namesake when she and her oldest
son, Jim, were confronted with pressure to enroll him
in a Christian Sunday School class being offered in the
public schools of Champaign during school hours. Resisting
the pressure at first, she and her husband eventually
relented and allowed Jim to attend the classes throughout
the balance of his fourth grade year. However, the following
year, the McCollums, feeling that such a program was totally
inappropriate in the public schools, refused further participation.
This, of course, resulted in Jim’s ostracism by his
peers and the suffering of some indignities at the hands
of his unenlightened fifth grade teacher.
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John
and Vashti McCollum review a newspaper report on
their case.
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After unrequited attempts to have the program discontinued
administratively and after much soul searching, with the
aid and support of the Rev. Phillip Schug, the Unitarian
minister in town, and with financial assistance from a
group of Jewish businessmen in Chicago, Vashti filed a
writ of mandamus in the Champaign County Circuit Court
in the late summer of 1945. At this point things really
became difficult for the McCollums, ranging from physical
confrontations between Jim and his peers, to vandalism
of their home, to attempts at terminating Prof. McCollum’s
employment at the university. Fortunately for Dr. McCollum,
his tenured status secured his position with the university.
However, Vashti’s employment as an adjunct instructor
in the women’s physical education program, was terminated.
The three-judge panel, sitting to hear the case in the
Circuit Court, decided that, in spite of the clear language
in the Illinois constitution to the contrary, the practice
violated neither it nor the establishment of religion
clause of the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The Illinois Supreme Court agreed with the lower court
and the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which
granted certiorari in the fall of 1947. On 9 March 1948,
the US Supreme Court handed down its andmark decision
in the People of the State of Illinois, ex rel McCollum
-v- Board of Education, 333 US 203 (1948), a decision
written by Justice Hugo L. Black, that was to become a
landmark case in U.S. constitutional law. The significance
of the decision was that it was the first case of impression
that held the states accountable to the strictures of
the "establishment of religion" clause of the
1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution under the aegis
of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. All cases,
involving school prayers, aid to parochial schools, sectarian
religious displays on public property, and other such
incursions into Jefferson's wall of "separation of
church and state" by the states and their municipalities,
descend from this case.
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| The
headline reads, "Court Upholds Mrs. McCollum" |
As
in any such case and particularly in this one, because
of the McCarthyistic mood of the late 40’s and 50’s—when
Communism was considered the scourge of humanity and atheists
were considered by many as either Communists or fellow
travelers—this case took its toll on Mrs. McCollum
and her family. However, she was resolute, as was her
namesake in the Bible, and persisted, despite disappointing
losses in the lower courts, until she finally triumphed
with her decisive 8 to 1 victory in the high court. For
the results of this case alone, if not for her courage
and perseverance, she deserves recognition in the annals
of U.S. constitutional law.
Among the awards and recognition accorded her in subsequent
years were the prestigious Johns Haynes Holmes Award (now
the Holmes-Weatherly Award) from the Unitarian Fellowship
for Social Justice, the second person to be so honored.
(Other recipients were Whitney Young, Roger Baldwin and
the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.). She also has received
recognition from the Illinois ACLU, the Champaign County
Chapter of the Illinois ACLU, the Roger Baldwin Foundation,
Americans United for the Separation of Church and State,
the Rochester, New York Chapter of Americans United, and
the American Humanist Association.
Abridged from “Vashti Cromwell McCollum,”
available online at www.clss.com/McCollum/vashti.htm.
Separation
Means Separation
by Alfred McClung Lee
Mrs.
McCollum of Champaign, Illinois, found that her children,
like others in the public schools, had to choose between
using “released time” for sectarian religious
education and being treated as social isolates. She was
sending her children to the Unitarian Sunday School, and
she did not want to have her freedom of conscience—and
that of her children—denied by forcing them to enroll
for either federated Protestant or for Roman Catholic
instruction.
At
great personal sacrifice, Mrs. McCollum carried her case
to the United States Supreme Court and won an eight-to-one
decision for the separation of church and state. As Justice
Wiley Rutledge had observed in a 1947 case, “complete
separation between the state and religion is best for
the state and best for religion,” and so, too, the
freedom of churches to maintain their own schools if they
wish is “best for the state and best for religion.”
The McCollum case became another bulwark against the encroachment
of churches and their sectarian differences as such—not
of religion and morality in a broad sense, it should be
noted—upon the public schools, even though a decision
this year written by Justice William O. Douglas apparently
weakens the Supreme Court’s position again.
Concerning the McCollum case, Justice Felix Frankfurter
wrote, “Separation means separation, not something
else,” and he added, “Jefferson’s metaphor
in describing the relation between Church and State speaks
of a ‘wall of separation,’ not a fine line easily
overstepped.”
from the Christian Register of the
American Unitarian Association, September 1952.
