Vashti McCollum
2022
AHA President · Author · Activist
Vashti prevailed in a landmark Supreme Court case in 1948 dealing with religious involvement in public schools.
“The question of my own personal beliefs is entirely beside the point. I have never meant this to be a question of religion versus atheism; but rather, a definition of the separation of church and state."
Vashti Cromwell McCollum was born on November 6, 1912, in Lyons, New York. She began her studies at Cornell University and later transferred to the University of Illinois. She earned a BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences and a master’s degree in Mass Communications. Vashti and John Paschal McCollum were married in 1933 and the couple had three children, James, Dannel, and Errol. After winning in the Supreme Court, McCollum went on to write One Woman’s Fight (1953), and to serve two terms as president of the American Humanist Association. She was also one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto I and II. A PBS documentary titled “The Lord is Not on Trial” was released in 2010 based on a book by the same title written by her son, Dannel McCollum.
In 1944, James McCollum was enrolled in the Champaign, Illinois public school system as a fourth grader when he was given a permission slip to take home. The form sought parental consent for James to be included in a program of religious instruction during the school day known as “release time” when children were instructed in the parents’ choice of Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish teaching. Instead of the students leaving school to attend at their houses of worship as was the custom in other areas, the Protestant clergy were allowed to teach students in the school facility for 30 minutes each week.
The McCollums at first agreed to allow their son to attend the Protestant classes, but when he entered the fifth grade, they refused since they felt the class content was inappropriate for public schools, a waste of taxpayer money, and discriminated against minority religions. James’ teachers pressured him to attend, and school officials pressured his parents to allow him to be included since he was the only child in his class not attending. James was made to sit alone in the hallway while the classes were being held, a condition viewed as ostracism by his parents. After meeting with the administration, school officials refused to change this policy, and in 1945 Vashti McCollum filed a lawsuit against the school district.
The suit sought to bar the classes from public school. The classes, the suit claimed, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by favoring one religion over another, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that the law applies equally to all people. The 6th judicial circuit court ruled against McCollum, and the Illinois Supreme Court also ruled against her on appeal. On December 8th, 1947, the Supreme Court of the United States took up the case, and on March 8th, 1948, the decision was handed down with a vote of 8-1 in favor of McCollum. The key component of the decision was that the Establishment Clause required neutrality between belief and nonbelief, not only equal treatment of different religions. McCollum is a landmark case because even today it is adhered to in issues such as school prayer, sectarian displays on public property, and taxpayer aid to private religious schools.
“I am pleased to discover that there are so many people actively supporting the real issue–separation of church and state."