Vashti McCollum (1912–2006)

Vashti Ruth Cromwell was raised in an atheist household. Her unusual first name came from that of a Persian queen, wife of King Xerxes I (also, ironically, the name of the king's first wife in the Old Testament Book of Esther). She attended the University of Illinois, where she earned degrees in liberal arts and mass communicationms. In 1933, she married John McCollum, an academic, with whom she had three sons. Mrs. McCollum became the plaintiff in an historic lawsuit to prevent religious instruction in public schools that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1948, the high court ruled in her favor in the landmark case known as McCollum v. Board of Education. Mrs. McCollum later wrote the book One Woman's Fight, and served as the president of the American Humanist Association. The McCollum case became the basis for a PBS documentary, The Lord Is Not on Trial Here Today (2011).