For more than forty years, parents, teachers, veterans, and community activists have engaged in grassroots resistance to the military's presence in schools. The historical study of campaigns against militarism in schools remains underdeveloped. This is a glaring omission, given the breadth and history of this activism. Militarism in the educational sphere is what happens when the presence of military recruiters on school campuses becomes a matter of routine, or when "military science" is taught alongside the three R's. In the United States context, the militarization of education sparked widespread debate following World War I. Since counter-recruiters depend on access to schools to do their work, it is significant that starting in 1982, a series of legal challenges established that activists had constitutional rights to the same level of school access given to military recruiters. One of the landmark cases in this fight over "equal access" was "Clergy and Laity Concerned vs. Chicago Board of Education" (1984). This article makes a much-needed contribution to the literature on this subject. After demonstrating how the dawning of an all-volunteer force in 1973 introduced new levels of militarism into public high schools, the author outlines a brief history of counter-recruitment. The article introduces the key actors in "Clergy and Laity Concerned" and shows how their legal battle for equal access helped make possible a national movement to demilitarize schools.