A Visit By History

Robert H. Jackson Center Hosts Exclusive Interview With Supreme Court Subjects

By STEVEN M. SWEENEY

Without a doubt in their minds, Gathie and Marie Barnett refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and flatly refused to salute the American flag in their classroom.

Their Charleston, W.Va., elementary teacher promptly sent the girls both to the principal’s office.

‘‘ ‘Why, doesn’t your teacher remember the Supreme Court decision?’ ’’ Gathie Barnett Edmonds said, recalling her principal’s words.

At the Robert H. Jackson Center on Friday, Mrs. Edmonds and Mrs. Snodgrass told their story — of going to school, not saluting the flag and being sent home. It was an exclusive interview the Jackson Center hosted with the Barnett sisters and Bennett Boskey, law clerk for then-Chief Justice of the United States, Harlan Stone.

Apparently, the teacher forgot the two girls had been the center of a lawsuit, the latest in a series of hundreds, lodged by Jehovah’s Witnesses against government institutions aimed at winning genuine religious freedom.

For almost four years from 1940, the United States officially compelled children to say the Pledge and honor the flag — against the beliefs of many. After the decision in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, historians reminded the packed house that Jehovah’s Witnesses were specifically targeted by average fellow citizens who fired them from their jobs, expelled them from schools and ransacked their congregating halls.

Fortunately the girls did not see the worst of it.

‘‘We had some cousins that weren’t allowed on the school bus. The other children just kind of ignored us,’’ Mrs. Edmonds said. ‘‘We had moved into Charleston in the meantime. Teachers didn’t really want us to come, my mother sent us anyway.’’

For the girls, the case was suddenly finished. They only testified once, before a justice of the peace, ‘‘and he ruled against us before had hardly been there,’’ Mrs. Edmonds said. The case was argued before the entire West Virginia court system and appealed by the state Board of Education to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Essentially, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, was a repeat of the Minersville case. Several justices on the court had thought they had wrongly decided, especially after the violence that ensued. Even in the heat of World War II, the judges thought suddenly it was primary to protect all civil rights, not only the majority’s.

Chief Justice Stone had lead the court turnaround after being the only dissenting voice in Minersville. Boskey said his one-time boss would have written the court’s opinion but really wanted a different voice saying it. Stone could not depend on four agreeing judges to write opinion narrowly enough to keep all the votes together, so he chose one of the court’s newest members, Robert Jackson.

‘‘He decided the best thing to do for the court to get an opinion would be to subscribe the assignment to Justice Jackson,’’ Boskey said. ‘‘If you read and reread the opinion ... it is written with elegance and eloquence with application beyond its boundaries. I think it is one of those cases that is not likely to be overruled.’’

After Jackson’s opinion had been distributed through the court for commentary, it was released to the public. Mrs. Edmonds and Mrs. Snodgrass agreed conditions improved for them and for the lot of all Jehovah’s Witnesses, and probably for many others to worship and believe as they choose.

But commentators Friday couldn’t help but note the unusual irony of the date the Supreme Court handed down its opinion on Barnette, June 14 — Flag Day.

The Post-Journal

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Vol. 179, No. 312

Section A, Pages 1 and 3