┘PARA ╤PAR@ ` qTEXT ` cO╒Hair, Madalyn Murray1919╨lawyer and reformerBorn in Pittsburgh on April 13, 1919, Madalyn Mays grew up in a well-to-do home until the stock market crash of 1929 forced her father to become an itinerant laborer. She attended the University of Toledo in 1936-1937 and the University of Pittsburgh in 1938╨1939. In World War II she served as a cryptographer in the Women╒s Army Corps in Africa and Italy. After the war and her marriage to William J. Murray she entered Ashland College, Ohio, from which she graduated in 1948. She then studied for a year at Western Reserve (now Case Western) University, for another year at Ohio Northern University, and finally at South Texas College of Law, from which she received a law degree in 1953. For two years thereafter she studied social work at Howard University. Over the next several years she worked in a variety of jobs, frequently as a psychiatric social worker in various public welfare agencies. A convinced atheist since her youth, Murray asked in October 1960 that her son be excused from daily prayers in his Baltimore public school. The request was at first refused by local authorities and then granted by the state attorney general, but harassment of her son and herself stemming from the publicity surrounding the matter led her to bring suit in Baltimore to eliminate prayer exercises from the school entirely. The suit was dismissed in Baltimore Superior Court and then in the Maryland Court of Appeals, but in June 1963 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled eight-to-one in Murray v. Curlett that prayer exercises in public schools violated the constitutional provision for separation of church and state. Murray╒s legal victory had personal repercussions as she became the target of escalating harassment and was unable to find work. She fought back by organizing the Freethought Society of America and publishing American Atheist, a monthly magazine, and sundry tracts on her position. She launched a campaign to have the tax-exempt status of churches rescinded, on the grounds that the consequent higher taxes imposed on other citizens amounted to unconstitutional governmental support of established religion. Another campaign, which ended unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court in 1979, attempted to have the motto ╥In God We Trust╙ removed from U.S. coinage. In 1965 she settled in Austin, Texas, and in October married Richard F. O╒Hair. She founded and served as director until 1986 of the American Atheist Center and of the Society of Separationists. She established the American Atheist Press to publish such works as Why I am an Atheist, 1965, Let Us Prey; an Atheist Looks at Church Wealth, 1970, An Atheist Epic, 1970, James Lick: American Atheist, 1983, All the Questions You Ever Wanted to Ask American Atheists With All the Answers, 1986, Atheists: The Last Minority, 1990, and Atheist Heroes and Heroines, 1992. In 1968 she began a series of weekly radio broadcasts under the title ╥Atheist Point of View,╙ and she traveled and lectured widely on atheism, religion, government, and morality. In 1980 she branched out into television with the American Atheist Television Forum. >styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ 2 !I └ 5¬ ┴ !I !I !I !I !I î 5¬ ì !I _ !I o !I
