Anti-Aid Amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution is approved by voters.

Approved at a Constitutional convention after the Know-Nothing Party had won control of the Massachusetts legislature, it prohibits public funding to private or parochial schools. The oldest such amendment to a state constitution in the U.S., it states, “all moneys thus raised by taxation in town, or appropriated by the state, shall never be appropriated to any religious sect for the maintenance exclusively of its own schools.” It is reaffirmed by voter in 1917, in a move that Paula Kane subsequently calls, “rejected the legitimacy of Catholic private education,” and revised in 1974.