Vashti Mc Collum

Vashti Mc Collum

Vashti Cromwell McCollum (November 6, 1912 – August 20, 2006) was the plaintiff in a landmark 1948 Supreme Court case that struck down religious education in the public schools. The defendant in the McCollum case was the school district of Champaign, Illinois, wherein instructors chosen by three religious faiths had taught classes within the public schools.

McCollum wrote a book on the case, One Woman's Fight (1953), became a world traveler and served two terms as president of the American Humanist Association from 1962–1965. She was also a signer of the Humanist Manifesto II in October 1973 and the Humanist Manifesto III in 2003.

In 1948 McCollum told The New York Times "As long as the public school is used to recruit the child or to segregate the children according to religion or to use the truancy power of the public schools to make them go to religions classes, I'm against it".