After the public school burned in 1938 in the predominantly German Catholic community of Johnsburg in McHenry County, a nearby parochial school effectively became the public school, with state support and little local fanfare. National media paid attention in 1953, however, when a Lutheran woman with two sons at the school brought a lawsuit with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing that the arrangement was a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state. The nuns who had run the school resigned and organized a new parochial school, taking most of the students with them, and the suit was eventually dismissed.

Creator: Woodstock Daily Sentinel
Source: Woodstock Public Library