Catholics vs. Klan
A riot percolated at the South Bend train station in May 1924.
Four months ahead of the start of the final season of Notre Dame football’s iconic Four Horsemen, hundreds of Notre Dame students gathered to meet a train carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Born in the South after the Civil War to stifle black freedom and maintain white supremacy, the KKK had disintegrated by the mid-1870s, then resurged in 1915 with a fresh agenda of hate and a new stronghold – Indiana – where membership had exploded to nearly 250,000 adult white men.
By May 1924, the Klan’s wrath had settled on the Catholic Church, and their decision to hold a rally in South Bend was no accident. Notre Dame stood as a symbol of rising Catholic power in the country. Knute Rockne’s football teams were building a national sports institution. The Klan was out to intimidate the school, its faculty and students, and let them know that Notre Dame was not welcome in America’s Heartland.
Klan members arriving in trains, buses and cars were greeted by a crowd of 500 Notre Dame students. They ripped away hoods and robes, and chased the startled Klansmen into a downtown headquarters on the corner of Wayne and Michigan streets where the image of a fiery cross made from red light bulbs shined in the office’s third-floor window.
Students spotted a grocery store on the ground floor selling potatoes. Suddenly, potatoes were missiles breaking the window and most of the lights of the “cross.” When star quarterback and Four Horseman Harry Stuhldreher reared back with his cannon arm and fired a potato into the last shining light bulb setting off a shower of sparks, the crowd roared.
The weekend of clashes boiled over on May 19 when thousands of students crashed the rally aiming to destroy the local Klavern. But when Notre Dame president Father Matthew Walsh arrived, cooler heads prevailed and the violence was quashed. The following day, Coach Rockne gave perhaps the most important speech of his storied life. Students followed his decree to obey Father Walsh and refrain from instigating any further violence.
The following week, the KKK shut down its South Bend Klavern. 96 years later, it’s as if they never left.