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Jehovah's Witnesses and not saluting the U.S. flag...
Jehovah's Witnesses and not saluting the U.S. flag...
Item # 725001
October 30, 1935
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Oct. 30, 1935
* Secaucus, New Jersey Jehovah's Witnesses
* 11 year old Alma Hering expelled from school
* For refusing to salute the American flag in classroom
* Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society member
* Charles Taze Russell followers - Bible Students
The top of page 22 has a one column heading: "Jersey Girl, 11, Defies Rule On Flag Salute" with subhead. (see images)
I suspect this to be an extremely rare item because there was really no reason to save it at the time.
Complete with 44 pages, rag edition, a little spine wear, nice condition.
background: The expulsion of the Hering family children on October 29, 1935, in Secaucus, New Jersey, remains a defining moment in the history of American religious liberty, marking one of the first times a state court was forced to weigh nationalistic ritual against private conscience. Following a directive from the Jehovah's Witnesses' leadership that viewed the flag salute as a form of "idolatry" prohibited by the Ten Commandments, Alma and Vivian Hering refused to participate in their school's morning patriotic exercises, leading the Secaucus Board of Education to promptly expel them for "insubordination." Their father, William Hering, challenged the constitutionality of the state’s 1932 flag-salute statute, but the New Jersey Supreme Court ultimately ruled against the family in 1937, infamously declaring that the salute was a "patriotic ceremony" rather than a religious rite and was therefore a valid exercise of state power to foster "national unity." Though the Herings lost their local battle, their defiance in that small New Jersey classroom helped ignite a national legal firestorm that eventually culminated in the 1943 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, which finally established that the government cannot compel any citizen to voice beliefs they do not hold.
Category: The 20th Century
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