Original article source: National Catholic Reporter
In the small, rural community of Little Axe, Okla., a religious war is being waged about prayer in public school. It is not a battle between believers and nonbelievers, of the godly against the ungodly. It is people of faith pitted against people of faith...
Here Lucille McCord and Joann Bell, two local women whose children attended the Little Axe school system, filed a civil suit in 1981 to stop school officials from allowing religious services on public school property. The women, one a member of the Church of the Nazarene and the other of the Church of Christ, say they believe strongly in a religious education for their children....
After the school board meeting, and the subsequent filing of the suit, unusual things began to happen to the McCord and Bell families. On Sept. 14, 1981, shortly after the suit was filed and the court had issued an injunction on the prayer sessions, Bell received a phone call telling her a bomb had been placed in the school. She notified the police and drove to the school to get her children.
As the children were being evacuated, a cafeteria worker spotted Bell and attacked her, smashing her head repeatedly against the car door. Bell was taken to the hospital. The cafeteria worker was later charged and fined a small fee in addition to Bell's hospital bills. The Little Axe community took up a fund to pay the cafeteria worker's expenses.
In response to the attack, a school board member, in a newspaper interview, said of Bell that "those who play with fire get burned." The Bells' trailer home burned to the ground Sept. 18, 1981. Fire marshals ruled it arson.
The McCords received hundreds of threatening phone calls and letters. When Lucille was mailed her own obituary, the family decided to leave Little Axe.
But they did stay awhile longer - until the family pets were mutilated.
Oh yeah, and the two families were also regularly denounced as "communists." As well as "atheists," of course.
http://www.williamgbecker.com/littleaxeok.html
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