In 1947 North Dakota found itself considering the separation of church and state because the state employed seventy-five nuns who taught in public schools in the heavily Catholic western portion of the state. When school boards could not find teachers, nuns often filled the gaps. The sisters' annual taxpayer-paid salaries averaged about one thousand dollars. When Protestants took the issue to court, the North Dakota Supreme Court determined that the simple fact of a teacher wearing religious garb did not constitute a violation of the separation of church and state.
A similar instance of political figures sacrificing academic freedom by bowing to conservative pressure groups occurred in the Newark and New York schools in 1948. At issue was a banning of the political journal the Nation from school libraries. The Nation had printed articles highly critical of Roman Catholic authorities in the New York City area......
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