{"id":12249,"date":"2025-03-21T08:58:32","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T12:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aoh.com\/?p=12249"},"modified":"2025-03-21T08:59:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T12:59:02","slug":"from-priest-to-martyr-from-klan-robes-to-justices-robes-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aoh.com\/2025\/03\/21\/from-priest-to-martyr-from-klan-robes-to-justices-robes-2\/","title":{"rendered":"From Priest to Martyr, From Klan Robes to Justice Robes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The 1920s marks one of the darkest and least discussed chapters in American history. \u00a0During this period, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a resurgence, propelled by various factors, including D. W. Griffith’s controversial portrayal of the Klan in “Birth of a Nation” (originally titled “The Klansman”), a complex mix of patriotism and isolationism following World War I, and the adoption of modern marketing techniques. \u00a0As a result, the Klan transcended its Southern roots, evolving into a nationwide movement with a staggering membership of six million. \u00a0To sustain its rapid growth and appeal to a broader audience, the Klan expanded its platform of hate. Anti-Catholicism, along with racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, became central to its national identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the countless victims and perpetrators of this shameful campaign of bigotry and violence, two names stand out: Fr. James Coyle, a martyr for his faith, and Hugo Black, a man who would wear both the robes of a Klansman and a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. James Coyle was born in Drum, County Roscommon.  He attended Mungret College in Limerick and the Pontifical North American College in Rome and was ordained a priest at age 23 on May 30, 1896.  Fr. Coyle would leave his homeland forever, sailing to Mobile, Alabama, whose mines and industry were fueling explosive growth and attracting many Catholic immigrants, including the Irish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After an initial assignment as an instructor and rector at the McGill Institute for Boys, Fr. Coyle was appointed the pastor of St. Paul’s Church in Birmingham, where he became beloved by his congregation and respected by many of the non-Catholic community.  Fr. Coyle quickly became known as a champion for fair treatment for the poor and marginalized of all communities; his personal mantra was “Give, give till it hurts- then and only then is there sacrifice<\/em>.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the growing Catholic community of Birmingham coincided with growing prejudice and the resurgence of the Klan.  Fr. Coyle was quick to respond to newspaper attacks on Catholicism with his own letters deriding the misinformation and ignorance of bigots.  Fr. Coyle was often the recipient of anonymous death threats, but that did not dissuade him from publicly defending and espousing his faith.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Self-Confessed Murderer Edwin Stephenson<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Klan’s anti-Catholicism was epitomized by another local clergyman. \u00a0Edwin Stephenson.\u00a0\u00a0 Stephenson was an ordained Methodist deacon but styled himself as a minister for his occupation of being a “marrying parson” at the Jefferson County Courthouse, which was on the same block as Fr. Coyle’s St. Paul’s.\u00a0 Stephenson was also a member of Robert E. Lee Klavern No. 1, the first Alabama chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.\u00a0 Stephenson described Fr. Coyle as ‘one of humanity’s biggest enemies.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephenson had a daughter, Ruth, who often rebelled against her Father’s rigid rules.  Living merely a block from St. Paul’s, Ruth became fascinated by Catholic traditions despite her Father’s vehement criticisms of the faith.  When she turned 18,  she started secretly attending classes on the Catholic faith and was eventually baptized as a Catholic.  When Edwin Stephenson discovered her conversion, he threatened to kill his daughter.  Ruth fled her Father’s threat to live with a local Catholic couple.  Stephenson went to the Birmingham police chief, a fellow Klansman, to report that Ruth had been “kidnapped by Catholics.”   Still considered underage, the police returned her to her Father, where she was beaten with a leather strap after her mother stuffed a rag in her mouth to muffle her screams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Stephenson’s aim was breaking Ruth’s independent nature, it failed.  Ruth had been hiding another secret: she was engaged to a Puerto Rico man named Pedro Gussman.  The couple secretly obtained a marriage license in another town, but finding no priest there, they returned to Birmingham and Fr. Coyle.  After carefully inspecting the license, Fr. Coyle performed the ceremony.  After the ceremony, Fr. Coyle told Ruth that the first thing she must do is inform her parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three hours after the ceremony,  Fr. Coyle was sitting on the porch of his rectory praying his breviary; Edwin Stephenson calmly walked up to the porch, pulled a gun, and shot Fr. Coyle at point blank range in the head, killing him.  Stephenson then walked calmly to the courthouse and surrendered to police, saying, ‘It’s all right, gentlemen, I know what I’m doing.<\/em>‘<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What followed was one of the greatest travesties of American justice.  Despite the brutality of the murder and the clear evidence of Stephenson’s act, it took weeks for the state to indict him.  In response, the Klan hired and paid for his lawyer – future U.S. Senator and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephenson’s original defense team had pleaded not guilty because of temporary insanity.  Black entered an additional plea of self-defense even though it was clear that Stephenson had no gun.  It soon became apparent that Black’s defense would rest on the Klan’s platform, that Catholics were a threat, and that Stephenson was defending his family.  In doing so, Black transformed a murder case that had drawn national attention into a soapbox for the Klan’s anti-Catholic agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Klansman and future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The resulting trial was a farce.  The judge, the jury foreman, several jurors, and the key witness, the police chief, were all Klan members.  Throughout the trial, Black and the defense team portrayed Gussman as African American, even going so far as to draw the blinds to make him appear darker.  When the prosecution described Gussman as being of “proud Castilian descent<\/em>,” the defense responded, “he has descended a long way<\/em>.”  Hugo Black attacked  the only two witnesses that came forward for the prosecution, asking them if they were Catholic (they were) and then  calling them “brothers in falsehood, as well as in faith,<\/em>”   <\/p>\n\n\n

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The Hugo Black Federal Courthouse<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Stephenson was acquitted after the jury deliberated less than a day.  For weeks after, he was toasted as a hero, and he lived as a free man in the Birmingham area for another 35 years before dying in 1956.  The murder of Fr. Coyle, like the persecution of Catholics by the Ku Klux Klan, is little remembered.  Hugo Black would later become a member of the Ku Klux Klan himself, only renouncing his membership when he aspired to a career as a U.S. Senator (but then thanked the Klan for their support when he was elected).  Black was later appointed to the Supreme Court, where he is now lionized for his ‘support of civil rights,’ while his lifelong anti-Catholic bigotry is dismissed as ‘a sign of his times,’ his Klan membership as mere political pragmatism, and his bigotry-laden defense of a murderer airbrushed from history. In his biography of his father, Hugo Black Jr. confirmed that Justice Black never renounced his hostility toward the Catholic Church. Yet, a federal courthouse bearing Black\u2019s name stands less than half a mile from where Fr. Coyle was murdered, and in 2022, a monument to Black was erected in his hometown of Ashland, Alabama, attended by many government officials.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The murder of Fr. Coyle is a story of compassion met with cruelty, and of justice denied. We must ask: Why do we continue to honor Hugo Black without reckoning with this history? What does it say about whose stories we remember\u2014and whose we erase? <\/p>\n

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