'The Most Hated Woman in America': The bitter legacy of Madalyn Murray O'Hair (2025)

The idea of "The Most Hated Woman in America" would likely suggest different names for readers today, depending on your political leanings: Perhaps Hillary Clinton for those on the right and maybe Betsy DeVos for observers on the left.

But in the 1960s there would have been little disagreement about pasting the label on Madalyn Murray O'Hair. A Baltimore social worker and civil rights activist, O'Hair relished the public animosity as she bullied her way in front of cameras, into newspapers, and onto talk shows to tout herself as America's leading atheist and the woman who had vanquished prayer from public schools.

It's amazing that O'Hair is all but forgotten today, especially given her high-profile life and mysterious disappearance. That turned out to be a kidnapping and extortion scheme that wouldn't be solved for six yearswhen the charred remains of the dismembered bodies of O'Hair and some family members were found on a remote ranch in southwest Texas.

It sounds like it should be the next season of "Fargo." It is, instead, an original Netflix movie that debuts Friday (March 24) with Melissa Leo as "The Most Hated Woman in America," the title coming from the headline of a 1964 Life magazine article.

O'Hair should not be forgotten, but neither should she be celebrated.

Many people would point to the "removal of God, religion, and prayer from schools" as a crucial turning point in the country's cultural death spiral. The issue still sparks and flares today with debate over prayer before football games and other extracurricular school activities and whether it is proper to display religious symbols -- the Ten Commandments, Nativity scenes -- on public property.

O'Hair had less to do with the court ruling than she did with inciting the hostile attitude that religious thought and action must be chased from the public square. Before there was Christopher Hitchens writing "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," and Richard Dawkins penning "The God Delusion," there was Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

At a time when very few people would publicly admit to not believing in God, O'Hair wanted to shove her atheism in your face, Voltaire for a new enlightenment.

She filed suit in December 1960, asking the Superior Court of Maryland to rule that required Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's Prayer was unconstitutional. She said her son William's First Amendment Rights were being violated and that he was being bullied and discriminated against because he refused to participate. Her case, Murray v. Curlett, was eventually folded into a similar case from Pennsylvania, Schempp v. School District of Abington Township.

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled June 17, 1963, in favor of the plaintiffs, O'Hair all but grabbed the microphones to take responsibility. The case likely would have been decided on the filing from Edward Schempp, but the family wanted to keep their role low key, ceding limelight to O'Hair, who was more than willing to seize it.

The ruling was right, although it angered much of the nation. But then O'Hair wanted more.

She regularly appeared on TV and radio shows, pushing to get the words "In God we Trust" removed from U.S. currency, suing NASA because Apollo 8 astronauts had read a passage from the book of Genesis as they orbited the Moon on Christmas Eve 1968 and trying to prevent the pope from holding mass on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

She founded the American Atheists, a national organization based in Austin, Texas. She was a guest on the first "Donahue Show," debating the Rev. Bob Harrington, known as "The Chaplain of Bourbon Street." She also landed a spot on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson and an interview in Playboy.

Her push for a secular society, often laced with wit and humor, was relentless.

"Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea," O'Hair said.

The irony is that some of her biggest enemies would come from within her own atheist movement. She was accused of running the kind of cult for profit that she had eviscerated televangelists for. And when she disappeared in 1995, a lot of people believed for months that she had fled the country with money from her organization.

It turned out she was kidnapped by a former employee she had outed for embezzling $54,000 from American Atheists.

Compulsory prayer, in schools or any other place, is not really prayer, so the courts were right to end the practice. But O'Hair's war against religion only degraded the conversation about the role of faith in public life.

Tim Morris is an opinions columnist at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. He can be reached at tmorris@nola.com. Follow him on Twitter @tmorris504.