Marathon Strike

In tiny (pop. 500) Bradfordsville, Ky., one morning last week, Principal B. H. Crowe of the town's combined elementary-high school sat in his office, trying his best to look busy. Elsewhere in the building, five teachers puttered about their empty classrooms or gathered in the corridor for leisurely chats. As the entire staff knew, its presence was a mere formality. Not a single pupil has come to school in the last eleven weeks.

In those eleven weeks, Bradfordsville's marathon school strike has turned into a full-fledged civic crusade and a major religious ruckus. It began when the Marion County school board decided to shut down the Bradfordsville high school and to transfer its students to Lebanon, ten miles away. The board tried to explain that it had only one motive for its action: it merely wanted to provide better facilities through consolidation. But to the citizens of Bradfordsville. the whole scheme seemed some sort of plot.

While other schools in the county have been getting special favors, they claim, the board has been steadily whittling away at Bradfordsville. It has refused to allow such courses as home economics, has been so parsimonious that it would not even give the school a new typewriter. But even more important is the fact that while Bradfordsville is almost entirely Protestant, the rest of Marion County is heavily Roman Catholic. The County school board has a Catholic majority; the superintendent is Catholic; and 43 of the 92 public-school teachers are nuns. Bradfordsville's fear: once its own high school is gone, its students will fall under too much Catholic influence.

To show how they felt, the town's parents pulled all 360 pupils out of the school. They staged some 35 demonstrations, paraded around with signs reading WE WANT JUSTICE; LET EVERYBODY PRAY: WE WANT OUR HIGH SCHOOL BACK. Last year retired Methodist Minister James C. Rawlings decided to go to court, asked that nuns be barred from teaching in the public schools. This fall 460 citizens filed another suit, charged that the school board was discriminating against Bradfordsville "to promote the policies and purposes of the Roman Catholic Church." Governor Lawrence Wetherby tried to suggest a compromise. But when he urged that the school be kept open pending a decision from the courts, the school board answered no.

Last week, as the strike wore on, Principal Crowe and his teachers--all Protestants--reported for duty as usual. But no one in Kentucky could tell them when, if ever, their pupils would finally show up.

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