| This dissertation argues that the twentieth-century reach of civil rights owes much to a religious group, the Jehovah's Witnesses. Beginning with the First World War, Jehovah's Witnesses carried out acts of civil disobedience, calculated to inspire court cases. Insisting on their rights to publish their religious opinions (which predicted an imminent Armageddon and condemned other religious groups), to proselytize in public, and to refuse to salute the flag, the group asserted that the rights to publish and to preach were inseparable from their First Amendment right to believe. "Judge" Joseph Rutherford, the group's leader and a lawyer himself, concluded that the best remedy was to bring "test cases" in the courts. The Jehovah's Witnesses adopted a strategy of civil disobedience and litigation which would be implemented widely later in the twentieth century. This dissertation argues that Jehovah's Witnesses were, in fact, pioneers of the twentieth century "rights revolution.";While historians have acknowledged that the Jehovah's Witness Supreme Court cases in the 1930s and 1940s were key to the expansion of religious liberty, neither the intentionality of this legal strategy, nor its linking of freedoms of speech, press and religion, have previously been made clear. Recognition of the strategic litigation implemented by Jehovah's Witnesses calls into question the broader story of civil rights in America. The religious liberty cases pursued by the Jehovah's Witnesses were critical to the protection of other civil rights. The converging strategies of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the ACLU, and other groups demonstrate that religious liberty, far from being an afterthought, was integral to the twentieth century transformation of civil rights. |
