A Boy Ejected from School for Refusing to Take Part in the Religious Exercises
A fourteen-year-old Catholic orphan sued a Chicago public school for expelling him after he refused, on religious grounds, to join in its Protestant prayer exercises — an early skirmish in America's long fight over religion in public schools.
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Burlington Weekly Free Press · February 20, 1885 · Page 2
1 min readCHICAGO, Feb. 16.
Stephen Ferris, a fourteen-year-old orphan, filed a bill in the circuit court to-day, for an injunction to restrain the school directors and teacher, at Rivers Park, from expelling him from the public school for refusing to take part in the forms of prayer and worship in use there. He declares he and his family are all Roman Catholics and do not believe in the form of prayer and worship introduced in the school, that he refused to take part in them, but behaved himself with perfect propriety while the other scholars took part; and that on February 9, [the teacher], ordered him to take his books and leave the school and forbade him returning until he was willing to take part in their form of prayer and worship. The motion for a temporary injunction will probably be made next Monday.
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