Guest: Jim McCollum
Freethought Radio
Freedom From Religion Foundation
4.6 • 578 Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2013
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In honor of the 65th anniversary of the historic McCollum v. Board of Education victory before the Supreme Court (March 8, 1948), we interview Jim McCollum, who was the young boy in that case challenging religious instruction in the public schools. We also listen to Dan Barker's rousing freethought song, "The Battle of Church and State."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Free Thought Radio with co-host Stan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Irreverent Views, News, Music, and Interviews. |
| 0:18.8 | Imagine there's no heaven. |
| 0:21.6 | It's easy if you try. |
| 0:27.6 | No hell below us, above us only sky |
| 0:41.2 | imagine all the people |
| 0:47.3 | living for today |
| 0:57.2 | Welcome to Feed Thought Radio. I'm Annie Laurie Gaylor, and hello to all you heathens and freethinkers. |
| 1:01.5 | And I'm Dan Barker, your friendly neighborhood, heathen and freethinker. |
| 1:06.1 | This is the March 16th, 2013 broadcast of Freethought Radio. |
| 1:10.7 | We stream and broadcasts Freethot Radio. |
| 1:11.6 | We stream and broadcast from the Mike 92.1 in Madison, Wisconsin. |
| 1:17.0 | We also broadcast in Missouri, in New York, in Michigan, and in California. |
| 1:24.0 | Free Thought Radio is the weekly production of FFRF that stands for the Freedom from Religion Foundation and our two purposes, are to educate about non-theism and to keep religion out of government. |
| 1:36.4 | And we have over 19,000 members in North America, and we hope today you will join us. |
| 1:42.5 | Today we're going to talk with Jim McCollum, who when he was growing up in the 1940s, |
| 1:48.6 | was the little boy at the center of a legal storm that produced the most important Supreme Court |
| 1:56.8 | decision about separating religion and government in legal history. It's called the McCollum |
| 2:03.5 | decision. Jim grew up, perhaps not surprisingly, to become an attorney. And today, although he is |
| 2:10.2 | semi-retired, he's still teaching constitutional law, so that's very appropriate. And we'll talk |
| 2:15.1 | with him on the second half of Free Thought Radio. But we also want to |
| 2:18.6 | play some interviews of Vashti McCollum. That's his mother who brought McCollum versus Board of Education. |
| 2:25.3 | And she died in 2006, but at the age of 93, but her words and her work live on. And that's the only |
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