When Religious Freedom and the Pledge of Allegiance Collided

Bruce A. Ramsey is the author of the WSU Press book Seattle in the Great Depression: A History of Business, Labor, and Politics Drawn from Local Chronicles. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Washington and studied graduate-level journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Ramsey began his journalism career as a business reporter at the Daily Journal American in Bellevue, Washington, followed by stints at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Marple’s Business Newsletter, Asiaweek magazine, and the Seattle Times, where he was an editorial columnist and member of the editorial board. Ramsey has two previous books, both from Caxton Press: Unsanctioned Voice: Garet Garrett, Journalist of the Old Right and The Panic of 1893: The Untold Story of Washington State’s First Depression.

In November 1935, three girls at the Silver Lake Elementary School in Snohomish County refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Ruth Ann Wade, 9, Hazel Simmons, 10, and Marilyn Perenoud, 8, stand at attention but make no salute.

This is a problem, and not just at one elementary school south of Everett. N.D. Showalter, state superintendent of public instruction, says schoolchildren have been refusing to salute the flag in King, Yakima, and Grays Harbor counties.

“We do not wish to penalize the children for something the parents undoubtedly are much to blame for,” he says. “Some of the parents claim to be citizens but fail to show citizenship papers. Many are on relief rolls.” (This is the middle of the Great Depression.) Showalter suggests that noncitizen families can be deported.

The roots of this go back two decades. World War I brings with it a harsh campaign for national loyalty. Germans are the enemy; saying anything pro-German is a federal crime. Favoring German literature, music, and language is not a crime, but it is seen as anti-American.

As the war ends, the worry shifts to the Communists: Lenin’s Bolsheviks are in the midst of conquering Russia, and the labor movement, particularly in Seattle, is looking on with obvious interest. In Olympia, the legislature responds in 1919 with a law making it a felony to fly the Soviet flag. The law also instructs all state public schools to fly the Stars and Stripes and for pupils to salute it once a week. Teachers who refuse to lead the salute can be fired. Children who refuse to salute the flag can be expelled.

In 1935, with the nation deep into the Depression, comes another upsurge in radicalism. Once again, the response is a campaign for loyalty. “One of the most disastrous effects of our easy-going way of allowing Communist propaganda to seep into our educational institutions is the refusal of many of our young people to salute the flag,” says the Post-Intelligencer, Seattle’s morning daily.

The girls at Silver Lake Elementary School are not refusing to salute the flag on account of Communist propaganda. They are Jehovah’s Witnesses, a sect whose members have been instructed that that sort of fealty should be reserved for God, not the state. In some states, schoolchildren are free not to salute, but Washington’s law cuts no slack for religious belief. (And in 1935, there is no “under God” in the Pledge.)

Wade’s parents transfer her to a school in Everett, where the newspapers report that she follows the rules and salutes the flag. The other girls don’t. Clifford Carpenter, Snohomish County superintendent of schools, spends nearly an hour trying to convince Simmons that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is different from worshipping a graven image. The girl is not moved. She and Perenoud are duly expelled.

“We dislike doing this,” school principal Ray Treichel tells the press, “but the girls are setting a bad example. The other youngsters are teasing them and in some instances pretending to ape them.”

There is almost no public argument about this. It doesn’t matter that the legislature that passed the law in 1919 was Republican, and in 1935 it is overwhelmingly Democrat. Seattle has three daily newspapers with different political orientations. The Times is establishment Republican, the Star is liberal Democrat, and the Post-Intelligencer, reflecting William Randolph Hearst’s position, is shrilly right wing. (This will change after the P-I strike a year later.) None of Seattle’s three dailies comes to the girls’ defense.

In 1935, Seattle also has three left-wing weekly papers: the Washington Commonwealth (socialist), the Voice of Action (communist), and the Western States Technocrat (an oracle of technocracy). None of them is interested in the Pledge of Allegiance cases. The one note of dissent comes from Seattle’s upper-class weekly, the Argus, which suggests it’s no big deal that three schoolgirls refuse to say the Pledge, and that the teacher should have just looked the other way.

In the early 1940s, cases of Jehovah’s Witnesses refusing to salute the flag twice go to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the first case, Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), the Jehovah’s Witnesses lose. In an 8-1 ruling, Justice Felix Frankfurter argues, “The flag is the symbol of our national unity,” and that “National unity is the basis of national security.” Notably, Gobitis is handed down during a moment of national emergency when Nazi Germany is invading France.

In 1943, the court changes its mind. The war is going better for the Allies; the Russians have beaten the Germans at Stalingrad. Also, the court’s ruling in Gobitis has prompted violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses, which is not what the government wants. In the second flag-salute case, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the court rules that the state cannot compel its citizens to salute the flag. Justice Robert H. Jackson famously writes, “No official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

And that has been the rule ever since.