Here's a link to a brief (90 seconds) audio excerpt (mp3) from a Religious Talk radio interview I did several years ago with Joann Bell, Executive Director of Oklahoma's office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Joann summarizes her experiences as a complainant against practices and policies associated with before school prayer meetings at the Little Axe ISD in the early 1980's. Joann is also featured in an ACLU video on "America's Constitutional Heritage: Religion and Our Public Schools." Here's what she said about her experience in the video:
Joann: I got my own obituary in the mail. My kids were threatened constantly -- their lives. I was told my kids were not going to survive. They said my house would be burned. The threats to burn my home was the one that I probably should have taken the most seriously. I just couldn't see in an civilized area -- I considered that these people would not ever do that. But my home was firebombed. Unless you've ever had a fire -- the devastation is something you cannot even begin to describe. To lose everything you've ever had. And with four children you really accumulate a lot of things -- the trophies. Everything that you saved, your baby pictures, the little things -- your marriage license. You lose everything. There's nothing hardly that can be saved. One of the things, the very few things that survived the fire was the christening dress of my daughter. We have three sons and we have a daughter that we're very proud of and this was her christening dress and that little hat was melted. It's one, it's one of the things that you'd like to pass on and let them use it for their children. This is just an example of things that were ruined and what our family lost in the fire. Because we essentially lost everything we had.Eventually, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit put an end to the unconstitutional endorsement of a fundamentalist Baptist religiosity in that school district.
Some of the most enduring reporting about the case was done by the National Catholic Reporter.
Joann will be a guest on my radio program again this Sunday. We'll talk a lot more about her experiences with the Little Axe ISD then.
