O'Hair, Madalyn Murray

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Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Born April 13, 1919 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Died September, 1995 Near Austin, Texas

Atheist activist

"We are Atheists. As such, we are foes of any and all religions. We want the Bible out of school because we do not accept it as being either holy or an accurate historical document."

—Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair was widely known as the woman who ended prayer in American public schools in the early 1960s. She proudly accepted the label "the most hated woman in America," given to her by Life magazine in 1964. O'Hair became known across the nation in 1961, when she and her son William challenged the Baltimore Public Schools' practice of saying a morning prayer. Excited by the publicity she received, O'Hair became a spokesperson for the atheist cause at a time when religious belief was included in most American institutions. Atheism is the belief that there is no God. Over the next thirty-four years, she published atheist periodicals, hosted atheist radio shows, toured in a religious debate show, and created a string of atheist organizations. Angry, profane, vengeful, and persuasive, she stirred controversy and attracted attention like few others. Then she suddenly disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1995. Investigators solved the mystery of her disappearance in 2001 when they discovered that she, her son Jon Garth, and her granddaughter had been killed in a bizarre triple murder.

Difficult youth

A few of the details from O'Hair's early life are known to be true: Madalyn Evalyn Mays was born on April 13, 1919, in a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her parents were John Irwin, a carpenter, and Lena Christina Scholle Mays, a homemaker. Most of the other details of her early years have been contested, with O'Hair's own recollections at odds with those of her family and friends. O'Hair later recalled a very happy, even wealthy childhood, complete with chauffeurs and fur coats. Her son William Murray disagreed with such claims, stating that her father, a carpenter, was only somewhat prosperous before he went broke in the stock market collapse of 1929.

The family suffered financial troubles during the Great Depression (1929–41), an economic crisis in which many people lost money in stocks and were unemployed. They had to leave Pittsburgh to find work. They lived briefly in Detroit and Chicago before settling near Akron, Ohio. Some historians note that John Mays was probably involved in bootlegging for a time. Bootleggers sold illegally produced alcohol. Eventually he landed a more stable job at a glass factory in Ohio.

O'Hair's family attended various churches during the early 1930s. It was at about the age of twelve or thirteen that O'Hair began to pay attention to the Bible. In The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O'Hair, author Bryan F. Le Beau quoted her reaction to the religious text: "[I was] completely appalled, totally turned off … [by] the hatred, the brutality, … the cruelty, the killing, the ugliness." She dated her complete denial in a supernatural power or God from this time. However, others who knew her claim that her atheism began later.

O'Hair graduated from high school in Rossford, Ohio. A bright student, she briefly attended the University of Toledo before returning to Pittsburgh with her family. She enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh but fell in love with and married John Henry Roths on October 9, 1941. Within two months, however, the United States entered World War II (1939–45). The conflict drew John into the Marines and Madalyn into the Women's Army Corps. O'Hair quickly gained high security clearances and assisted Allied staff in North Africa, France, and Italy. In Italy she met Captain William J. Murray Jr. The two had a brief affair and O'Hair became pregnant.

O'Hair returned to her family to give birth to her illegitimate child and to plan how to tell her husband the news of her betrayal. They divorced soon after. Amid this stress, she apparently had another of her dramatic realizations of her resistance to the idea of God. According to her son's autobiography, quoted by Ted Dracos in Ungodly: The Passions, Torments, and Murder of Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, she decided to stand outside in a terrific thunderstorm. There, she decided to "challenge God to strike [her] and this child dead with one of those lightning bolts." She survived this challenge, which caused her to continue her disbelief. On May 25, 1946, she gave birth to a son and named him William Murray.

Divorced, with a young son from a man she had never married, O'Hair was hardly a typical figure in post-war America. Society stressed the importance of marriage and family. O'Hair seemed to recognize that she would never fit in and developed a harsh attitude toward anyone who challenged her. She returned to school in 1948 attending Ashland College in Ohio. When her family moved to Texas to get construction work for her father, she attended South Texas College of Law. Although she finished her law degree, she was unable to pass the bar exam required to become a lawyer. So she found herself working a variety of jobs in Texas and later in Baltimore, Maryland. She never stayed at a job for long. Co-workers recalled her as a combative, disruptive person. In 1954 she once again became pregnant by a man who was not her husband and gave birth to a boy she named Jon Garth Murray. By this time she was also using Murray as her own last name.

The battle over prayer in schools

In 1959, O'Hair transferred her son William from a private school to the public Woodbourne Junior High School in West Baltimore. On the day that she arrived to enroll William in school, she saw students bowing their heads and reciting the Lord's Prayer, a prayer well known among Christians. O'Hair marched into the counselor's office and demanded to know why students were praying. She proclaimed that the practice was unconstitutional. The school defended the practice, saying that students had prayed in schools in Baltimore from its earliest days.

The Lord's Prayer

When Madalyn Murray O'Hair sought to drive prayer out of the public schools of Baltimore, Maryland, she targeted one of the most recited prayers in the Christian religion, the Lord's Prayer. Christians believe that the Lord's Prayer was originally given by Jesus to show his apostles how to pray. The prayer is recorded in the biblical book of Matthew 6:9–13, and a similar prayer is also recorded in Luke 11:2–4.

A version of the Lord's Prayer has been used by most Christian groups since the time of Christ. They believe that they can communicate directly with God through prayer. The Lord's Prayer is often the first prayer taught to children and the one prayer that every member of a Christian congregation can be expected to recite in unison. Although there are many minor variations on the Lord's Prayer, and the most-used Catholic version has an additional verse, the Lord's Prayer is as follows:

Our Father, who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come,
Thy Will be done,
On Earth, as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom
And the power
And the glory
Forever and ever.
Amen.

Prayer had been practiced in Baltimore public schools for years. In fact, in 1960 Christian prayers were being said in many public schools across America. Although this practice might seem strange to students in the early twenty-first century, it reflected the cultural and political standards of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The religious roots of American history were an important element of the war of ideas that the United States was waging with the Soviet Union, a war known as the Cold War (1945–91). For some, the Cold War was a battle between the forces of religion: the Christianity of the United States versus the atheism of the communist Soviet Union. The enthusiasm for America's religious heritage was confirmed in several ways in the 1950s. Congress added the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969; served 1953–61) signed a law adding the phrase "In God We Trust" to the nation's currency in 1955. That phrase also became the national motto in 1956. With such widespread approval of references to God in civic life, most nonbelievers simply went along with the majority—but not Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

Beginning in the 1960 school year, O'Hair and her son William increased their conflict with the school district. The school insisted that William attend the home-room class where prayers were said. O'Hair withdrew her son until that demand was removed. But the conflict soon spilled beyond the school system as O'Hair began to write angry letters that drew attention to her cause. In a letter to the Baltimore Sun newspaper, quoted in Ungodly, she claimed to be asking questions on behalf of the sixty-eight million Americans she said did not go to church. "When we go to a public meeting why are we subjected to prayer, in the [power] of which we do not believe? When we handle money, why, since 1955, are we confronted with money minted with In God We Trust on it? Why should our mail be stamped 'Pray for Peace'?… Is your belief so thin that you must force it upon others?" Feature articles followed, and the clash soon became national news and was broadcast on all the major television networks. O'Hair courted the press, fixing them coffee and doughnuts, and doing everything she could to promote the story.

While the press buzzed with stories of the colorful woman who challenged prayer in schools, the legal case proceeded through the court system. The school district's attorneys, unable to see the legitimacy of O'Hair's charges, scarcely mounted a defense. However, the pro-prayer case was supported by the Maryland attorney general, who claimed that the children of Maryland "had the right and the duty to bow their heads in humility before the Supreme Being," according to The Atheist. Prayer was also supported by the Superior Court of Baltimore and finally by the Maryland Court of Appeals. On May 15, 1962, O'Hair and Leonard Kerpelman, the only attorney she could find who would take on her controversial case for free, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court agreed to hear the case, known in court records as Murray v.Curlett (the school board president), in conjunction with a similar case from Pennsylvania, Abington Township v. Schempp.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules

The members of the U.S. Supreme Court had long recognized that the First Amendment to the Constitution was open to widely varying interpretations. The clause relating to school prayer declared that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This clause, called the Establishment Clause, was widely believed to indicate that there would be a separation of church and state. Previous cases had confirmed this separation of church and state. For example, religious instruction was not allowed in public schools and religious tests could not be given to candidates for public office. Yet prior to the 1962 cases, there had been no definitive ruling on prayer in school. That would soon end.

Deliberations on the Murray case began on February 26, 1963. However, the court did not issue its ruling until June 17, 1963. The court ruled in favor of Murray by a vote of eight to one. Thus, prayer was officially removed from American public schools. Reaction to the ruling was swift and dramatic. Several groups formed to try to create constitutional amendments that would allow prayer in school, though these never got far. Preachers and politicians across the nation spoke out against the ruling. The nation's most prominent religious figure, the evangelist Billy Graham (1918–), proclaimed "I am shocked at the … decision.… In my opinion, it is the Supreme Court that is wrong.… At a time when moral decadence is evident on every hand, when race tension is mounting, when the threat of Communism is growing, when terrifying new weapons of destruction are being created, we need more religion, not less," as quoted by Le Beau.

"The most hated woman in America"

The Supreme Court ruling was a major victory for O'Hair, who had come to believe she was the champion of American atheists. She claimed nearly complete responsibility for this major change in policy, despite the fact that much of the legal work had been done by others. In fact, O'Hair had used her battle over school prayer as a platform for what amounted to her lifelong career as an advocate for atheist causes. During the course of the battle, she took control of a small newsletter titled The American Atheist to spread her views and to solicit financial support. O'Hair was featured in major profiles in Time, Newsweek, the Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines. A June 19, 1964 Life profile titled "The Most Hated Woman in America" labeled O'Hair "America's most outspoken and militant atheist." O'Hair did not dislike these labels; in fact she enjoyed them.

In the years following the ruling, O'Hair set about building an empire around her crusade to achieve the complete separation of church and state in American life. She launched legal cases to remove religious mottoes from the currency and to remove any religious references from vows taken to attain public office. Over the years she created a string of atheist organizations, including American Atheists, the Society of Separationists, and a variety of smaller groups. She also formed a radio broadcasting network called the American Atheists Radio Series, and she published numerous books spelling out her philosophies about atheism.

O'Hair proved clever at keeping herself in the public eye. She was a guest on the premier of the Phil Donahue Show, a national television talk show. Donahue's show was the first of what would become the exploitative talk shows of the 1990s, such as the Jerry Springer Show. While the television cameras were on, O'Hair adopted the role of a combative but lovable matron. As soon as the cameras stopped rolling, she spewed curses and challenges to the audience, churning them up in anger against her. She challenged prominent evangelists such as Billy Graham to debates, and she organized boycotts when the Pope, the Catholics' top cleric, made appearances in the United States in the late 1970s. In the mid-1970s she joined with the Reverend Bob Harrington of New Orleans in a traveling debate show. The shows enjoyed some popularity—and earned O'Hair about $5,000 per show—until they were exposed by newspapers as a thinly disguised scam to raise money.

The decline of the atheist empire

As O'Hair rose to prominence and built her national network of atheist organizations, her personal life grew increasingly bizarre. Shortly after the Supreme Court ruling, O'Hair and her son were charged with assaulting police officers who had visited their home on a domestic violence call. The pair fled the state, resettling first in Hawaii and then later in Mexico. In Mexico, O'Hair fought to take control of an experimental school called Blake College, where the teachers and students found her so controlling and offensive that they eventually pushed her out. Also, in Mexico, O'Hair met Richard O'Hair, a hard-drinking American who was either a retired artist or a former CIA agent discharged from service and serving as an FBI informant. The pair married in October 1965. When the assault charges against Madalyn were finally dismissed late in 1965, the O'Hairs settled near Austin, Texas.

Austin became the home base for O'Hair's atheist empire. As early as the late 1960s, according to biographers, O'Hair, her son Jon Garth Murray, and her granddaughter Robin Murray began using the various organizations for their personal enrichment. Sympathetic atheists channeled money into the organizations. Much of that money was used to build a lavish national headquarters building, which included a library of atheist literature valued in the millions. But more and more of the money was directed into the pockets of O'Hair and Jon Garth Murray. In 1980, son William Murray, who as a teen had sided with his mother during the battle to end school prayer in Baltimore, converted to Christianity. He spoke out against the work of his mother. O'Hair voiced her displeasure at her son. She told the national media that "One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times.… He is beyond human forgiveness," according to Dracos.

By the late 1980s, O'Hair and her family were said to be worth millions, but they no longer had much influence on public life. American cultural life had grown to include more diversity since the early 1960s. People with minority religious viewpoints were not discriminated against in public life. The movements to gain civil rights for African Americans, women, and gays had helped make America a more tolerant place. O'Hair had largely disappeared from public life in the early 1990s. However, she again gained media attention when she, Jon Garth Murray, and Robin Murray all vanished in September 1995. There was much speculation that she had again fled the country. It was rumored that she left to escape the Internal Revenue Service, which was prosecuting her for tax evasion. However, a reporter looked into the story and helped police uncover what had happened. A former business associate of O'Hair's, mindful of her hidden money, kidnapped and killed all three of the atheists. Before murdering the trio, the killer forced them to channel $600,000 of their money to him and his accomplices. After a lengthy investigation, the killer led detectives to the bodies, hacked to pieces and buried in a shallow grave in the Texas hills. Police later determined that the murders must have occurred sometime between September 25 and 29, 1995.

For More Information

Books

Dracos, Ted. Ungodly: The Passions, Torments, and Murder of Atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair. New York: Free Press, 2003.

Le Beau, Bryan F. The Atheist: Madalyn Murray O'Hair. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

Murray, William. My Life Without God. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1983.

O'Hair, Madalyn Murray. An Atheist Epic: The Complete Unexpurgated Story of How Bible and Prayers Were Removed from the Public Schools of the United States. Austin, TX: American Atheist Press, 1970.

Wright, Lawrence. Saints and Sinners: Walker Railey, Jimmy Swaggart, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Anton LaVey, Will Campbell, Matthew Fox. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.