Date: Fri Oct 03 12:47:52 1997
To: Frank Grose
From: Rob Weinberg
Subject: It makes you think...
I've scanned two articles and a letter on the op/ed pages. They are from August of this year, less than two months ago. As is always the case, there's a little more to the story than is told in the press, but the basic facts appear to be uncontroverted.
After reading the articles, I throw the question back to you: If Jews fear anti-Semitism from the Christian right, "How can [you] Christians (not to be confused with non believing Gentiles) turn this attitude around?"
Take care, my friend. Rob
Jewish parents give reasons for suing Pike school system
By Sandee Richardson
MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER
Sue Willis' voice trembled and her hands shook Tuesday as she read aloud her 11-year-old daughter's written account of what it's like to be a Jewish child in the public schools of Pike County.
"One of the times the ministers came and said I was going to hell, because I was not a Christian. I felt scared to admit I was Jewish to anyone. I was scared to even be Jewish." Willis' daughter, Sarah Herring, wrote, "That was when I was on the ground shaking and crying with my hands over my ears..."
At a Tuesday morning news conference in Montgomery, Wayne and Sue Willis discussed their reasons for taking legal action against the Pike County School Board and its administrators.
On Aug. 4, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama filed a lawsuit in federal court in Montgomery on behalf of the couple and their three children — Paul, David and Sarah Herring.
And attorney for Pike Count School Superintendent John Key told the Associated Press that the Willeses ignored attempts to resolve the dispute without a court fight.
Donald B. Sweeney Jr. of Birmingham said Key and his staff worked to make sure that the children "do not experience any mistreatment at school because of their religion."
But Wayne Willis said his complaints on behalf of his children, including this fourth child who started kindergarten Tuesday, were ignored for several years before the Aug. 4 lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims the Willis children have endured five years of threats, intimidation and violence because of their religious faith.
Sue Willis said, "We did not come to this point easily. It was a last resort. You who have never experienced this type of persecution can only imagine the amount of stress and trauma our family has had to endure."
ACLU attorneys said harassment of the children has been particularly bad following "blatantly Christian assemblies."
"These harmful and hateful acts are the product of a culture of religious bigotry in the Pike County School system," said Pamela Sumners, one of the ACLU attorneys handling the case. "This school system needs to take a civics class because they need some training in the requirements of our constitution."
Among other allegations, the suit claims:
The children have been forbidden to wear Star of David lapel pins while classmates wore crosses.
The children were ordered to submit to Christian prayers
The children were forbidden to participate in physical education classes while wearing their yarmulkes, a head covering
Two of the Willis children also have been physically assaulted by classmates and have had swastikas drawn on their lockers, book bags and jackets, the lawsuit states.
"When we've watched our children change from happy outgoing, proud young Jewish children into scared, angry, bitter, introverted young people, then any caring parent must do something," Wayne Willis said. "My children are ashamed to be Jewish now."
The Willises said they don't want to stop Christian students in the Pike County school system from freely expressing their religious beliefs.
But as the parents of the only Jewish children currently enrolled within this public school system, the Willises want to stop what they call anti-Semitic harassment.
The Willises said their children would continue to attend Pike County schools, although they're aware that the lawsuit might prompt more problems.
The lawsuit has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent, who in March issued an order that struck down Alabama's school prayer law.
DeMent's order in the school prayer case said that the law wrongly coerced schoolchildren to participate in religious activity.
* * *
CHILDREN'S STATEMENTS
Excerpts from statements written by the children involved in the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama lawsuit against the Pike County school board.
Sarah Herring, 11, sixth-grader at Pike County Elementary School: I had nightmares and I cried myself to sleep for months from how bad my feelings were hurt and how scared I was. My dreams were about me dieing and going to hell. There were lots of people throwing lava on me.
Paul Herring, 14, ninth-grader at Pike County High School: When they made fun of me because I was a Jew it made me feel bad inside. When I got home I was crying. Then later I started to get mad and before you know it I was punching them.
David Herring, 13, seventh-grader at Pike County High School: When I first came to school and most of the years I've been spending there bullies have taken everything and now everyone is trying to take all I have left — my religion.
Montgomery Advertiser, Wednesday August 13, 1997
Jewish family challenges school's Christian practices
By Jay Reeves
The Associated Press
BRUNDIDGE — It's not easy being the only Jewish kids in Pike County's public schools.
Assemblies include Christian prayers and scripture readings. The Gideons give New Testament Bibles to fifth graders in class. When disruptive, a Jewish student is told to write an essay entitled "Why Jesus loves me."
Visitors in the system's main office can read from either of two Bibles displayed in the reception area, and preachers sometimes are invited to make school-wide addresses on topics like morals and decision-making.
"One of the times the ministers came in and said I was going to hell because I was not a Christian. I felt scared to admit I was Jewish to anyone," said Sarah Herring, 11.
No one has ever questions this mingling of religion and public education. Despite decades of court rulings erecting barriers between church and the classroom, it has always been that way in this rural, overwhelmingly Protestant area of Southeast Alabama.
But always may be near an end.
The only Jewish family in this school system of 2,600 students claims in a federal lawsuit filed this month that school-sanctioned Christianity has led to continual harassment of their oldest children.
Educators have forced the children to bow their heads during Christian prayers, and some talked openly of converting them to Christianity, contends the suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
Students have drawn swastikas on the Jewish children's lockers and book bags, the family claims, and the two boys have been beaten, mocked and wrongly punished. Classmates even played keep-away with their yarmulkes, the suit contends.
"Had there been a handicapped student in that school in a wheelchair, that kind of teasing would not be tolerated," said Wayne Willis, stepfather of Paul Herring, 14; David Herring, 13; and Sarah. His youngest daughter, 5-year-old Rachel Willis, entered kindergarten this year.
Superintendent John Key denies there is an organized effort to harass the Herring children, and he said many minor incidents have been "embellished beyond belief" by Willis and his wife, Sue.
Willis, a logging truck driver, moved from Seattle, Wash., to Pike County with his family in 1991 in search of work. Mrs. Willis was raised Jewish in Kentucky, while Willis wants to formally convert to Judaism.
The depiction of us being a bunch of neo-Nazi skinheads is just not accurate said Key, a veteran of 18 years.
Yet Key confirms many of the allegations in the lawsuit, which seeks not money but an order ending religious practices in the schools.
The Superintendent concedes that an assistant principal at Pike County High School ordered Paul Herring to write an essay on "Why Jesus loves me" for disrupting class. The paper was never written after Mrs. Willis objected.
Paul also was ordered to remove a Star of David lapel pin, Key said, but only because a teacher thought it was a gang symbol. Another teacher admitted ordering one of the Herring children to bow his head during a Christian prayer, not realizing her was Jewish, he said.
"That bothers me and we're going to do all we can to keep it from happening again," said Key, who is still investigating the family's claims about physical abuse and proselytizing teachers.
Fellow students say the Herring children often talk about their faith and are teased because of it.
Tenth-grader Todd Williams said he has seen people draw Nazi symbols on the Herrings book bags, and eight-grader Susan Campbell said classmates "mess with them all the time."
"(They) go up to them and say, 'You don't eat pork, do you?'" she said. The Herrings, she said, "talk about 'We're the chosen ones,' and weird stuff like that."
Key doesn't condone bullying or teasing, yet he also said he cannot uniformly prevent it.
"If you wear thick glasses or are fat or wear a hat, you're a target," Key said. "There is a pecking order with children. I'm not condoning it, but it's a fact."
The superintendent blames the lawsuit on the ACLU, which already is fighting a two-pronged battle to exorcise religion from public life in Alabama.
An ACLU suit filed by the same lawyer representing the Willis family resulted in a federal judge striking down Alabama's 1993 school prayer law as unconstitutional. The ACLU also is in court against Gov. Fob James seeking to remove a plaque of the Ten Commandments from a courtroom in Etowah County.
James, an evangelical Christian, has condemned the alleged harassment described in Pike County. But he also continues to advocate the return of prayer in public schools.
"I think a lot of his attitudes ... breed the kind of environment that my children have been living in," said Mrs. Willis.
The Southeast regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, Jay Kaiman, said the case is unusual in that most religious minorities, particularly in the rural South, never go public with claims of harassment.
"They're taking a huge risk by speaking out," he said.
Key said some of the school's policies are being changed because of the lawsuit and the order earlier this year from U.S. District Judge Ira DeMent overturning the school prayer law, which allowed student-led prayers.
Organized prayers at assemblies and athletic events will be eliminated or replaced by a moment of silence, Key said, and all employees have been told to keep a close eye on any religious harassment.
Bible distributors from Gideons International, of which Key is an inactive member, will be restricted to offering students Bibles in school cafeterias or outside of buildings, instead of during class.
"Schools aren't religious institutions and they can't be treated as such," said Key. "At the same time, the judge in this has said that everybody has a right to his own religion."
Mrs. Willis said Key's actions do not go far enough.
"They ask us, 'What do you want us to do?' I always say, 'It's against federal law. What part of that do you not understand?'" she said.
The Huntsville Times, Monday August 25, 1997
Pike County School Incidents Recall Cruelties of Past
By James O. Johnson
Alabama Voices — EditorialNot since the Second World War has an incident occurred that recreated the soul-shattering horrors of Nazi Germany as did the story of frightening, ignorant and bigoted actions of the Pike County residents against Sue and Wayne Ellis, a Jewish family unfortunate enough to live with neighbors of this ilk.
Initially, waves of sadness, shame and guilt at having to acknowledge that I am of the same religion as these racists swept over me. Rational thinking gradually modified my emotions upon realizing, as I hope the Ellis family can do, that there are undoubtedly a number of Pike County residents who are as horrified as I am at this specter of hubristic anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and anti-human barbarianism. Hopefully, they have not yet voiced their sentiments. Perhaps they will.
The horrendous nature of this crime committed by those responsible for this collapse of moral and religious principles is magnified a thousand-fold by the fact that it was perpetrated under the aegis of Christianity. It firmly reinforces the validity of Judge Ira DeMent's order striking down Alabama's school prayer law and convinces me to support his order in any future altercation concerning the subject.
It isn't only a comparatively few students who are guilty of the vicious, character-destroying, racist and bigoted harassment, but the entire community-wide milieu that has apparently supported the putrescent hatred and egomaniacal, segregationist convictions of its citizens.
Where are the churches and responsible civic groups of Pike County? So far, they have been most noted by their silence.
As the philosopher Montesquieu said in 1748, "The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not half so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy."
Bringing legal action against the Pike County school board isn't enough to resolve the problem. The state Board of Education must bring all of its resources to bear over a period of many years to give the citizens of this county the opportunity to rid themselves of a social cancer that is destroying basic, life-supporting values.
In addition, the visceral impact of this heinous event occurring in a taxpayer-supported school system has increased its shocking effect upon a state and national conscience a hundredfold. It is impossible to believe that teachers, parents and students could have fostered such monumental hatred for five years without the knowledge of principals, the school board and the superintendent of Pike County schools. To expect such widespread ignorance to exist for so long destroys the credibility of these personnel.
It was further eroded by the insulting and lugubrious statement, "Key and his staff worked to make sure that the children do not experience any mistreatment at school because of their religion."
As long as their religion is Christianity, this is perhaps true, evidenced, if valid, by the statement of ACLU attorneys that "the harassment of the children has been particularly bad following blatantly Christian assemblies."
Lastly, the sacrilegious desecration of the graves and sacrifices of millions of people, including thousands of young Americans, during the Second World War, as exemplified by the actions of these hatemongers, cannot be treated as merely a passing occurrence happening far, far away in little ol' Pike County. The blood which these patriots shed for us all including the people of Pike County, covers the land as a protective shield against this type of social destruction and the rape of freedom their acts represent.
Many of those who "gave the last full measure of devotion" (Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863) were close friends of mine, and I most vehemently resent the outrageous ignorance created by the Pike County school system and contributing populace manifesting itself as it did.
Perhaps the most regrettable aspect of this whole affair is the possibly irreparable damage done to Sarah, Paul and David Herring. These children are our future. To insult and castigate the heritages of these young people is to denigrate us all.
James O. Johnson, a former aerospace education specialist, writes from Montgomery.
Montgomery Advertiser, Friday, August 29, 1997
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