OT: MGoBookReview
Thought I would throw out a midsummer book review opportunity. Just finished A Fever in the Heartland. Interesting and disturbing look at the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, especially for those that live here like me and recognize the places referenced. Had no idea such a significant trial occurred in Noblesville. Also a connection to one of our rivals. Apparently the nickname Fighting Irish comes from Notre Dame students getting after the Klan at a rally in South Bend. If true, grudging respect to the Figthings. Anyone else read this book and have thoughts?
no politics!
In a previous career, I worked for a company that supplied material for construction of the Hamilton County Jail, or might have been Hamilton County Juvenile Detention Center, in Noblesville.... That was nearly 30 years ago, but that's my connection to Noblesville.
Applies to Indiana Klan as well
The KKK hated Catholics. They burnt crosses on the lawns of Sal’s relatives in West Virginia. The Quattros would move to Struthers, Ohio,(a suburb of Youngstown) where Salvatore, crippled by illnesses caused by working in a coal mine would die in 1924. His brother preceded him death in 1923. He died from arsenic poisoning from working in a coal mine.
(My grandfather would go to school with a guy named Steve Belichick, Bill’s father.)
Notre Dame at that time had a huge Catholic fanbase because it was “their” team in a land of WASPs. I don’t know if Americans today can understand this as most white Americans have been assimilated out of their ancestor’s ethnic and religious identities.
My grandfather had to lie to my grandmother’s father( her dad was a child of English immigrants) in order to date my grandmother. He said he was a “German guy from Oklahoma”.🤣
Both my Irish grandfather(maternal) and Italian grandfather(paternal) were huge Notre Dame fans. It’s why I can’t “hate” ND as other Michigan fans do. That school meant something to my grandfathers. Something that today is alien to us.
PS: Michigan had a racist, anti-Catholic organization called the Black Legion. They assassinated and terrorized activists and civilians. In 1935 they infamously lured a black man named Silas Coleman to Pinckney with the promise of a job. They shot him to death after forcing him to run.
My dad openly wondered to me if his maternal grandfather was in the Legion because he was so hostile towards Italians and Catholic. A hate that dates from the 16th century would manifest itself four hundred years later is a sad commentary on human beings.
A good summary; they (ND) were the scrappy immigrant Catholic school playing the big established “WASP” schools (hence the national following) BEFORE they became the raging douche bags we know them as today.
My memory is that elements of the Know Nothings of the 19th century (heavily anti-immigrant anti-Catholic party) partially resurfaced in the 1920s into the KKK which has something like 100,000 people marching in WDC and had sizable open presence in various states including Indiana.
Wikipedia
Life and career[edit]
Charles Bowles was born on March 24, 1884, in Yale, Michigan, the son of Alfred and Mary Lutz Bowles.[2] He graduated from Ferris Institute (now Ferris State University) in 1904, received a law degree from the University of Michigan in 1908, and was admitted to the bar in 1909.[2] He married Ruth Davis in 1915; the couple had one daughter, Helen Ruth Bowles.[2]
Bowles entered politics from obscurity and to run for the mayor's office vacated by Frank Ellsworth Doremus's resignation in 1925.[3] He was openly supported by the Ku Klux Klan.[4] He ran third in the primary election behind John W. Smith and Joseph A. Martin, eliminating him from the ballot in the general election.[5] However, Bowles continued his campaign as a write-in candidate, and nearly won, losing only after 15,000 ballots were disqualified.[4] Bowles ran unsuccessfully for mayor once more the next year.[4][6] After his mayoral run, he obtained a position as judge on the recorder's court.[6] He was re-elected to his judgeship, but resigned to make one more run at the mayor's office in 1929.[6]
Bowles defeated John C. Lodge in the primary and John W. Smith in the general election to win office.[6] Bowles had campaigned as an anti-crime reformer, but when he fired Police Commissioner Harold Emmons after the latter had ordered a series of raids, he was accused of "tolerating lawlessness" and a recall election was instituted barely six months after he had entered office.[6][7] Multiple people campaigned for Bowles's recall, including radio commentator Jerry Buckley.[6] The recall was successful,[7] but on the morning after, Buckley was shot in a hotel lobby.[6] Although evidence later surfaced indicating the murder had more to do with underworld blackmail than politics, the murder of Buckley cast suspicion on Bowles.[6][8] Bowles ran in the mayoral election a month later, but lost to Frank Murphy.[9]
Later in his career he unsuccessfully ran for both the Michigan State House and U.S. House, as well as Detroit mayor.[10]
Charles Bowles died on July 30, 1957, and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery.[11]
Can you send me the plaque location? Have been in Pinckney for summers for decades without knowing this.
I thought I had read that there was one. Seems like I was mistaken.
Anyways, Coleman was killed in the Mill Pond near St. Mary’s cemetery if you want to see the area where he was murdered.
That sounds interesting. Thanks for the suggestion.
FYI if you ever see A.Y.A.K. written somewhere, you got a rat in the nest trying to recruit. I googled AYAK when I saw it written on a bathroom stall at the factory I worked in rural Ohio right after high school. I knew who did it and had the pleasure of watching them get thrown out on their ass.
The Klan often targets fraternal lodges and protestant churches for bloc recruitment as well. They'll give the pastor chaplain status and they will get a $200/head commission for new recruits.
Luckily, their membership has waned into a shadow of what they once were. Now it's just the weirdo khaki & facemask guys hopping around in fields with homemade riot gear.
When I worked at McDonalds in high school there was this kid from Brittain, MI who had a racial tattooed on his knuckles. He would have to hide his hand whenever he had a black customer.
I read this book on vacation last week. Scary as hell. Lots of parallels between Stephenson and the last president
I will pick this one up, thank you for the recommendation.
That was a crazy era. From The Atlantic:
The Black Justice League, in protests on Princeton University’s campus, has drawn wider attention to an inconvenient truth about the university’s ultimate star: Woodrow Wilson. The Virginia native was racist, a trait largely overshadowed by his works as Princeton’s president, as New Jersey’s governor, and, most notably, as the 28th president of the United States.
As president, Wilson oversaw unprecedented segregation in federal offices. It’s a shameful side to his legacy that came to a head one fall afternoon in 1914 when he threw the civil-rights leader William Monroe Trotter out of the Oval Office.
Thanks for the heads up; this gives me some real appreciation for a school that I have come to see through the fairly narrow prism of privileged Catholicism and Amy Coney Barrett. :)
I have heard that Harvard students, firmly aware of their own class allegiances, mustered and rode out to help suppress Shay's Rebellion--an uprising by Western Mass. farmers long seen as early stirrings of organized working class consciousness--in 1786. All kinds of stuff goes on in the crucible of class striving and (mostly) upward mobility that is the American university.
The war was fought and won by classes working together.
More on KKK anti-Catholicism.
I am for accurate history, warts and all. Supreme Court justice Hugo Black:
The murder trial of Fr. James Coyle in the deep south during the early twenties provided an ideal setting for the men who formed the core of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan to further disseminate their message of hate and intolerance against some of their main targets of the time: immigrants and Catholics. The trial transcripts, particularly the closing statements delivered by the leader of the defense team and active Klan member, future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, reveal that they sought not only to achieve an acquittal for their client, but also to prove that the agenda of the Klan reigned supreme in Alabama. The Klan worked hard in the lead up to the trial to “pack the courthouse”. In addition to the defense team, at least seven of the jurors and the judge presiding over the proceedings were all active Klansmen. The rallying of the Klan around the defendant, Edwin Stephenson, should come as no surprise. The trial offered an opportunity for them to address several of their key issues; miscegenation, nativism, spread of Catholicism, and the denunciation of protestant dogma. From the very beginning, Black set the tone of his argument by attacking the only two witnesses that came forward for the prosecution, calling them “brothers in falsehood, as well as in faith”, reminding the jurors that they were both practicing Catholics. Black posited, in a thinly veiled rant, that the testimony of these two men could not be trusted simply because of their affiliation with the Church. From this point, Black moves to attacking the actions of Fr. Coyle himself, effectively blaming him for his own murder. Referring to Father Coyle’s presiding over the wedding of Stephenson’s daughter to a Catholic man of Puerto Rican descent, Black argues that “Neither did he (Fr. Coyle) nor any of his friends have the right to tamper with another man’s home”. It is plain to see that this simple sentence betrays the Klan’s deep seated disapproval of miscegenation. Black reinforces the Klan’s seemingly noble belief that the right of a protestant man to defend the honor and integrity of his family at any cost should not only be tolerated, but also defended. He says of Fr. Coyle; “because a man becomes a priest does not mean that he is divine... He has no more right to protection than a Protestant minister.” Finally, Black sums up his argument by condemning Fr. Coyle for what was perhaps the most damning charge of them all; converting a member of the Protestant community to Catholicism. He phrases the accusation cleverly, implying that this “crime” against Stephenson and his daughter was so severe, that it required swift and certain retaliation. Black had this to say, regarding Fr. Coyle’s actions: “There is such a thing as imprisonment of the human will by influence, vice and persuasion. When you find a girl who has been reared well persuaded from her parents by some cause or person, that cause or person is wrong.”
I haven't read that yet but will add it to my list if the library has it.
If you haven't run Sundown Towns by James Loewen (who just passed away somewhat recently) it's quite thorough and has a lot of focus on Indiana and Michigan. If you want something similar but with a bit more positive spin on the future The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee was excellent.