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Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Raised as Jehovah's Witnesses, Marie and Gathie Barnett had been taught that pledging allegiance to the flag was a form of idol worship prohibited by their religion. So when other children in their four-room schoolhouse in West Virginia rose every morning to salute the flag, the two sisters, ages 8 and 10, remained silently in their seats.
The year was 1942, and the United States had just entered World War II. Patriotic fervor was at a peak in their small town outside Charleston, and the West Virginia Board of Education had adopted a resolution that a student's refusal to salute the flag would "be regarded as an act of insubordination."
Morning after morning, the Barnett sisters were sent home in disgrace, and the West Virginia authorities appeared to be on solid ground. Two years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled by a vote of 8 to 1 that school officials in Minersville, Pa., were not required to exempt an elementary school brother and sister, Jehovah's Witnesses named Lillian and William Gobitis, from reciting the Pledge. There seemed to be little chance that the Barnett sisters would be able to continue in public school without violating a central tenet of their faith.
But then something remarkable happened. The Supreme Court changed its mind. Appalled by mob attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses after the Gobitis decision and with two new Justices, the Court reversed its decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis and held on June 14, 1943, that a compulsory flag salute was a form of compelled expression that violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech.
A HUMAN INSTITUTION
The Supreme...
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