Thomas Nast and the Public School of the 1870s

"Because of the prohibition of the First Amendment against the enactment of any law "respecting an establishment of religion," which is made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, state officials may not compose an official state prayer and require that it be recited in the public schools of the State at the beginning of each school day - even if the prayer is denominationally neutral and pupils who wish to do so may remain silent or be excused from the room while the prayer is being recited." --Justice Black(?), Engel v. Vitale, 1962

Contrast the 10th A. ignoring statement above with the post 14th Amendment ratification historical information below.

"In 1871 the state legislature approved the incorporation of a collection of villages at the northwestern tip of Long Island into Long Island City. ... Seizing on their new powers, the appointed Board of Education passed a by-law requiring all the schools of the city to conduct opening religious exercises, "reading, without note or comment, a portion of Holy Scripture, and the singing of secular airs." A trustee from the predominantly Catholic Ward One protested the by-law before its adoption, warning that a large portion of his ward would certainly oppose the provision. But the board ignored the request. ... Adding insult to injury, the Board of Education announced an expanded religious exercises requirement that would include prayer in addition to Bible reading and singing." --Benjamin Justice, Thomas Nast and the Public Schools of the 1870s.

According to Justice Black's Hollywood interpretation of the 14th Amendment concerning official religious exercises in public schools, the Long Island City school issue, not Engel v. Vitale, was possibly the earliest candidate issue that could have served as the basis of a case to test how far 14th A. protected personal federal rights can check the 10th A. powers of the states to authorize religious exercises in public schools.

Instead, to the best of my knowledge, the Long Island City issue never became a 14th A. concern (corrections welcome). If this was the case, then the Long Island issue shows that, despite the fact that the northern states authored the 14th A. and then forced the southern states to help ratify it, the north nonetheless continued to allow public schools to teach Protestant Christianity as local government subsidized common schools had been doing before the Civil War - as if the north had never gone to the trouble of having the 14th A. ratified in the first place.

The bottom line is that the north evidently never intended for the 14th A. to put a stop to official religious exercises in public schools as Justice Black later asserted. So historical facts once again show that Justice Black had failed to do his history homework concerning respecting the intentions of our lawmakers where laws which relate to our religious freedoms are concerned.

But we have already seen from his bogus, 10th A. ignoring interpretation of the establishment clause that Justice Black wasn't interested in doing his homework to defend our religious freedoms anyway. Black was only interested in pushing politically correct, anti-religious expression interpretations of religion related amendments, even if such interpretations meant rewriting history where the intentions of two generations of lawmakers are concerned.

You need to look further. It was the Taft Court that originally used the Fourteenth Amendment to extend the incorporation clause of the First Amendment to the states, thus setting the stage for the majority decision of which Justice Black wrote. The Fourteenth Amendment had been ratified nearly 60 prior to Taft court decision. Chief Justice Taft, the only president to serve on the Supreme Court, was the precursor to Chief Justice Warren, also a Republican. The composition of the courts was quite different in that the Taft Court had an absolute Republican majority.

Cases brought before the Supreme Court on behalf of the Jehovah Witnesses in the 1940's seeking prohibitions on state requirements to the pledge with the word God inserted were upheld in favor of the Jehovah Witnesses, and based upon the 1925 Taft Court ruling. This took place nearly two decades before the Black written decision, and during the midst of WWII.

All that aside, it would require a Constitutional Amendment to restore the First Amendment as written because of the loose interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment. Also, there is widespread misunderstanding of the First Amendment as many people believe it restricts government from making law regarding the establishment of religion. It restricts only Congress, and Congress is well defined in Article I of the Constitution as being but one of the three branches of the federal government. No such restriction was upon the executive branch, nor the states, before the Taft Court ruling.

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