While millions of Americans were defending liberty against the
Nazis, liberty was under vicious attack at home. One of the worst
outbreaks of religious persecution in U.S. history occurred during
World War II when Jehovah's Witnesses were intimidated, beaten, and
even imprisoned for refusing to salute the flag or serve in the
armed forces.
Determined to claim their First Amendment rights, Jehovah's
Witnesses waged a tenacious legal campaign that led to twenty-three
Supreme Court rulings between 1938 and 1946. Now Shawn Peters has
written the first complete account of the personalities, events,
and institutions behind those cases, showing that they were more
than vindication for unpopular beliefs-they were also a turning
point in the nation's constitutional commitment to individual
rights.
Peters begins with the story of William Gobitas, a Jehovah's
Witness whose children refused to salute the flag at school. He
follows this famous case to the Supreme Court, where he captures
the intellectual sparring between Justices Frankfurter and Stone
over individual liberties; then he describes the aftermath of the
Court's ruling against Gobitas, when angry mobs savagely assaulted
Jehovah's Witnesses in hundreds of communities across America.
"Judging Jehovah's Witnesses" tells how persecution--much of it
directed by members of patriotic organizations like the American
Legion--touched the lives of Witnesses of all ages; why the Justice
Department and state officials ignored the Witnesses' pleas for
relief; and how the ACLU and liberal clergymen finally stepped
forward to help them. Drawing on interviews with Witnesses and
extensive research in ACLU archives, he examines the strategies
that beleaguered Witnesses used to combat discrimination and goes
beyond the familiar Supreme Court rulings by analyzing more obscure
lower court decisions as well.
By vigorously pursuing their cause, the Witnesses helped to
inaugurate an era in which individual and minority rights emerged
as matters of concern for the Supreme Court and foreshadowed events
in the civil rights movement. Like the classics Gideon's Trumpet
and Simple Justice, Judging Jehovah's Witnesses vividly narrates a
moving human drama while reminding us of the true meaning of our
Constitution and the rights it protects.
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