Notre Dame fights prejudice in 1924

I recently visited the university archives at the Hesburgh Library and was delighted to find an exhibit titled “Notre Dame Football Kills Prejudice: Citizenship and Faith in 1924.” The exhibit is on display through January. Here is a bit of what I learned:

It was May 1924, and the Ku Klux Klan wanted to showcase its power and cement its sudden grip on Indiana politics by holding a picnic and parade in South Bend, the most Catholic area in the state.

“About 500 University of Notre Dame students showed their objections by storming downtown and ripping the hoods and robes off surprised Klan members. As the Klan arrived in trains, buses and cars, the students roughed members up in alleys and stole their regalia for battle trophies. They chased the rest to the Klan headquarters downtown at the corner of Wayne and Michigan streets.”

After the riot, Klan supporters directed their anger at school administrators. The Klan newspaper pictured below with its handwritten threat was delivered to university president Father Matthew Walsh. It reads. “You dirty un-American degenerate skunks will pay for your mob actions at South Bend.”

Father Walsh also received a threatening postcard: “Mr. Walsh, Dear Sir, please keep your Hoodlums on the campuss (sic) and away from South Bend and there will be no trouble. Fair Warning there will be hot lead for you.”

The political scene in 1924 was complicated and in the fall the football team “confronted a dangerous and divisive political moment,” as explained below:

You can read more about the exhibit here.

You can read more about the 1924 riot here.

This is another example of the importance of archives, archivists, and the preservation of historical documents.

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Looking into this further I found the riot mentioned in Timothy Egan’s recently published A Fever in the Heartland (Penguin Books, 2024). Egan includes some interesting anecdotes about the riot.

Before the Klansmen could get much further (at the start of their parade) “a flying wedge of Notre Dame students sliced into them, causing panic and knocking dozens to the ground. Fistfights broke out. The students tore off Klan robes and waved them high as trophies.

“The panicked Klansman dashed to their headquarters … at the corner of Michigan and Wayne.

“The Klan had planned to force Notre Dame into submission, to let these Catholics know that even here, in the safety of their campus, they had much to fear and nowhere to hide. The opposite had happened. It was said by those in the crowd that Notre Dame quarterback, Harry Stuhldreher, one of the vaunted Four Horsemen, lobbed a perfect strike upward, his potato scoring a direct hit on one of the bulbs lighting the Klan cross. A roar followed. A group of Notre Dame men broke through the door of the building and charged upstairs. Only when met by a Klansmen with a drawn gun did the students retreat. By dusk, police had had made eight arrests and dispersed most of the crowd.”