Dennis J. Wieboldt III is a JD/PhD student in history at the University of Notre Dame, where he is a Richard and Peggy Notebaert Premier Fellow at the graduate school and Edward J. Murphy Fellow at the law school. This essay has been adapted from a longer academic article titled “‘Shall We Settle for Anything Less Than Complete Equality?’: Catholic Power and the First National Fight for Parental Rights in Education, 1947-1962,” which appears in volume thirty-four of Religion and American Culture.
