The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O'Hair

2 Murray v. Curlett

2 Murray v. Curlett ATHEISM IN COLD WAR AMERICA AS IN SO many things, timing is crucial, and that was the case for Madalyn Murray’s suit against the Baltimore Public Schools. By 1960, the McCarthy era, a period of rabid anticommunism in which communism and atheism were assumed to be synonymous, had peaked but not run its course. Similarly, the era in which prayer in the public schools was being called into question had begun, but not peaked. Twenty years later, Murray’s crusade against religion would have raised much less concern. Twenty years earlier, prior to Everson v. Board of Education (1947), her suit against the Baltimore public schools may never have made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. But she brought her suit in 1960, and that made all the difference. Anticommunism in America predates the Cold War by decades, being particularly virulent just after World War I and the Russian Revolution . In 1919, however, although the immediate stimulus of fear was Russia, the underlying reason for fear was not fear of foreign invasion, but the potential spread of Communist ideas. Prophecies of national disaster resulting from subversion from within abound—at the highest levels. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer advised the U.S. House Appropriations Committee that “on a certain day, which we have been advised of,” radicals would attempt “to rise up and destroy the government at one fell swoop.” Senator Charles Thomas of Colorado warned that “the country is on the verge of a volcanic upheaval.” And they were hardly lone voices.1 The American flag became a sacred symbol, as did national purity. In 1916 Woodrow Wilson issued the first presidential proclamation of 57 Flag Day. When he marched in a parade with an American flag draped around him, patriotism entered a boom period, to which, in 1918, was added Loyalty Week. In that year, in the midst of war, July Fourth was rechristened Loyalty Day and the nation was treated to an array of loyalty pageants, parades, and ceremonies.2 “We must remake America,” a popular author wrote. “We must purify the source of America’s population and keep it pure. . . . We must insist that there shall be an American loyalty, breaking no amendment or qualification.” Attorney General Palmer did his part in purifying America by rounding up and deporting over 6,000 aliens.3 The Red Scare died out in 1920, but it revived in the post-World War II period. After 1945, anti-Communist leaders in the United States were able to perform an extraordinary propaganda coup when they turned the American people from an anti-Hitler coalition with the Soviet Union, against the Soviet Union by creating an enemy image of tremendous proportions. They employed techniques honed during World War II to consolidate home-front citizens into the war effort in order to make citizens an integral part of the Cold War. It took only two or three years to move from the war-time alliance to the Evil Empire theory.4 Morever, the fear of internal subversion was as great in the post–World War II period as it was after World War I. Americans believed the external threat was really only as great as internal weakness through subversion allowed—that fortress America was impregnable as long as it remained strong at home and committed to its ideals and God. By 1945, God had guided his people to the promised land. By remaining faithful to his charge, Americans had become the most powerful and prosperous people in the world. Thereafter, if they faced the threat of destruction from a godless enemy from without—an enemy that for the first time in history was capable of massive destruction within the borders of the United States—they had to be certain not to breach their covenant with God, not to pursue their “carnal intentions ,” whereby God, in his wrath, would remove his protection. In Cold War America, the pursuit of “carnal intentions” was linked to atheistic communism. In March 1947, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9835, the first anti-Communist act to be made into law by presidential fiat. It decreed that anyone perceived to be disloyal (read a Communist) could not hold a government job. A loyalty board—and there would be two hundred such boards in the late 1940s and early 1950s—was put in 58 MURRAY V. CURLETT place, soon to be...