After some 1,200 Witnesses had been imprisoned in Germany early in the Nazi era for refusal to give the Nazi salute and to violate their Christian neutrality, thousands were physically abused in the United States because they refrained from saluting the American flag. During the week of November 4, 1935, a number of schoolchildren in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, were taken to the school boiler room and whipped for refusal to salute. Grace Estep, a teacher, was discharged from her position in that school for the same reason. On November 6, William and Lillian Gobitas refused to salute the flag and were expelled from school at Minersville, Pennsylvania. Their father sued to have his children readmitted. Both the federal district court and the circuit court of appeals decided the case in favor of Jehovah’s Witnesses. However, in 1940, with the nation on the brink of war, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, by an 8-to-1 decision, upheld compulsory flag saluting in public schools. This led to a nationwide outburst of violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses.

There were so many violent attacks upon Jehovah’s Witnesses that Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt (wife of President F. D. Roosevelt) pleaded with the public to desist. On June 16, 1940, the U.S. solicitor general, Francis Biddle, in a coast-to-coast radio broadcast, made specific reference to the atrocities committed against the Witnesses and said these would not be tolerated. But this did not stem the tide.

Under every conceivable circumstance—on the streets, at places of employment, when Witnesses called at homes in their ministry—flags were thrust in front of them, with the demand that they salute—or else! At the end of 1940, the Yearbook of Jehovah’s Witnesses reported: “The Hierarchy and the American Legion, through such mobs that have taken the law into their own hands, violently worked havoc indescribable. Jehovah’s witnesses have been assaulted, beaten, kidnapped, driven out of towns, counties and states, tarred and feathered, forced to drink castor oil, tied together and chased like dumb beasts through the streets, castrated and maimed, taunted and insulted by demonized crowds, jailed by the hundreds without charge and held incommunicado and denied the privilege of conferring with relatives, friends or lawyers. Many other hundreds have been jailed and held in so-called ‘protective custody’; some have been shot in the nighttime; some threatened with hanging and beaten into unconsciousness. Numerous varieties of mob violence have occurred. Many have had their clothes torn from them, their Bibles and other literature seized and publicly burned; their automobiles, trailers, homes and assembly places wrecked and fired . . . In numerous instances where trials have been held in mob-ruled communities, lawyers as well as witnesses have been mobbed and beaten while attending court. In almost every case where there has been mob violence the public officials have stood idly by and refused to give protection, and in scores of instances the officers of the law have participated in the mobs and sometimes actually led the mobs.” From 1940 to 1944, more than 2,500 violent mobs assaulted Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States.

Because of the wholesale expulsion of the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses from school, for a time during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s it was necessary for them to operate their own schools in the United States and Canada in order to provide education for their children. These were called Kingdom Schools.

Not everyone has agreed with such repressive measures against people who, for reasons of conscience, respectfully refrain from participating in patriotic ceremonies. The Open Forum, published by the Southern California Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, stated in 1941: “It is high time that we came to our senses regarding this matter of flag-saluting. Jehovah’s Witnesses are not disloyal Americans. . . . They are not given to law-breaking in general, but lead decent, orderly lives, contributing their share to the common good.” In 1976 a newspaper columnist in Argentina, in the Buenos Aires Herald, frankly observed that Witness “beliefs are only offensive to those who think patriotism is chiefly a matter of flag-waving and anthem-singing, not a matter of the heart.” He added: “Hitler and Stalin found [the Witnesses] indigestible, and treated them abominably. Lots of other dictators yearning for conformity have tried to suppress them. And failed.”