Middle Tennessee State University article on Jehovah's Witnesses

[Jwanon]

https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1366/jehovah-s-witnesses

 

it showcasees the history of how JWs have influenced the American constitution concerning freedom of religion

[GeordieGirl]

Great article.  Thanks for sharing.

[minister159]

If you would like some further insight into our fight for freedom during the WWII era, this book is very good reading and referenced in the Awake! article citied below.

 

Armed With the Constitution

 

"In 1995, Merlin Owen Newton wrote Armed With the Constitution, a book that documents the role of Jehovah’s Witnesses in clarifying the application of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. At the time, Mrs. Newton was associate professor of history and political science at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama. Her thoroughly researched and well-documented book reviews two Alabama court cases that were carried all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

One of these Supreme Court cases involved Grace Marsh, whose first-person story appears in the accompanying article. The other case, Jones v. City of Opelika, dealt with the right to disseminate religious beliefs through distribution of literature. Rosco and Thelma Jones, a black married couple, were full-time ministers of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

 

In preparing her book, Professor Newton used contemporary periodicals and legal journals, Witnesses’ memoirs and letters, interviews with and material published by the Witnesses themselves, and scholarly studies of Witness activities. The fascinating details and personal reflections provided by the defendants, attorneys, and judges in Armed With the Constitution have brought a piece of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ legal history to life." --- g98 4/22 p. 24

 

 

[Old]

Another good source is Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution Paperback – April 11, 2000