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.
