Black left the KKK formally only for expedience, but he never really left it intellectually. What attracted Black to the Klan was its anti-Catholic positions, including the KKK doctrines of supporting government schools and the “sacred principle” of “separation of church and state”. Indeed, Black was well known in the KKK for his “eloquent” anti-Catholic speeches.
These two points were, in fact, an explicit part of the KKK membership oath, which Black took and may have administered to others. The reason for these two KKK doctrines was that they were directed at suppressing Catholicism. Government schools were seen as a way of coercively protestantizing Catholic children, and the separation doctrine was really just code for separating Catholics from their tax money by making sure that all education money flowed to government schools. This is why we had thirty years and more of litigation at the constitutional level over “aid to parochial schools”.
Black, not surprisingly, authored the Everson opinion in 1947. Everson for the first time applied the Establishment Clause to the states and inserted Black’s favorite KKK doctrine into our constitutional jurisprudence - “separation of church and state.” It only took 15 years for Black’s liberal, secular humanist allies to hoist Protestants on their own petard by driving Christianity out of government schools altogether using Black’s KKK separation doctrine.
Government schools and their financing arrangements - all courtesy of the KKK and its nativist predecessors. I certainly hope that all “conservatives” addicted to aid-to-dependent-parents are proud of the remarkable intellectual heritage of “their” really special government schools.
Although the first government schools offered up a generic and lukewarm Protestantism, it didn't take long for them to be basically secular. This was many decades before 1947.
I know from my own family experience that there was a great difference between the education of my government schooled grandmother (b.1894) and father ( b.1913) and that of my Catholic mother and her family.
Yes, there was a prayer and scripture read in the government schools that my grandmother and father attended, and, yes, they did have the influence of basically Christian teachers. ...but...the curriculum was godlessly secular. My grandmother and father were, indeed, taught to think and reason godlessly.
If children are educated in socialist-funded, godless, government schools they will learn to be very comfortable with socialism. They will learn to think godlessly, and they will look to government as their redeemer and savior. Within a few short generations of government schooling we had the following:
** the IRS
** the take over of great swaths of land for federal parks and monuments
** Woodrow Wilson
** the federal reserve
** the failed “One World” League of Nations
** feminism
** unions
** direct election of Senators
** FDR and his New Deal
** the U.N.
** Johnson's Great Society
** the abolishment of the gold standard
( And...These are only a few that come to mind, and, you will see that most of what is listed happened before 1947.)
Conservatives who believe that putting prayer back into the government schools, or returning to some magical decade, will somehow fix government schools, are very very foolish. The very foundation upon which government schools were built is corrupt.
The smart thing would to have been to vote against Roosevelt and the Democrat party. Protestants did that, 1936 was the last time that the Democratic party won their support, except for 1964.