Madalyn Murray O'hair
Born April 13, 1919 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Died September, 1995 Near Austin, Texas
Atheist activist
Madalyn Murray O'Hair was widely known as the woman who ended prayer in American public schools in the early 1960s. She proudly accepted the label "the most hated woman in America," given to her by Life magazine in 1964. O'Hair became known across the nation in 1961, when she and her son William challenged the Baltimore Public Schools' practice of saying a morning prayer. Excited by the publicity she received, O'Hair became a spokesperson for the atheist cause at a time when religious belief was included in most American institutions. Atheism is the belief that there is no God. Over the next thirty-four years, she published atheist periodicals, hosted atheist radio shows, toured in a religious debate show, and created a string of atheist organizations. Angry, profane, vengeful, and persuasive, she stirred controversy and attracted attention like few others. Then she suddenly disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1995. Investigators solved the mystery of her disappearance in 2001 when they discovered that she, her son Jon Garth, and her granddaughter had been killed in a bizarre triple murder.
Difficult Youth
A few of the details from O'Hair's early life are known to be true: Madalyn Evalyn Mays was born on April 13, 1919, in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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