Jehovah's Witnesses await message of leader
Permanent ID:
299Call number:
V7: 446Date:
June 24 1939Image Description:
This photograph depicts Jehovah’s Witnesses marching through downtown Los Angeles on Grand Avenue in the late 1930s. The group was advertising the upcoming broadcast of Jehovah’s Witness leader Joseph Franklin Rutherford.The 1930s and 1940s saw a massive discrimination of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States. Stemming from U.S. Supreme Court cases contesting the mandatory flag salute, draft law, and literature distribution, the Jehovah’s Witness community was perceived as against the war effort during World War II and anti-American for neglecting to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance. Jehovah’s Witnesses were harassed and attacked across the United States, property was destroyed, and boycotts on both ends ensued. Following the end of World War II and the rulings on various Supreme Court cases, the Jehovah’s Witness community saw a decline in vigilante violence against them and was able to establish the right to refrain from acts that go against their beliefs.
Inscription:
JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES AWAIT MESSAGE OF LEADER (Cults)Los Angeles, Calif., With "Government and Peace" their slogan, this band of Jehovah's Witnesses paraded about the city streets of Los Angeles with their sandwich boards to impress the populace with the importance of the international broadcast of their leader, Judge J. F. Rutherford, from Madison Square Garden in New York on June 25. According to Fred E. Fox, secretary of the Los Angeles Company of Jehovah's Witnesses, his group is not composed of "religionists," but aims at personal and social betterment. (Below photograph)