By Joshua Short
Published: May. 17, 2024 at 7:00 PM EDT|Updated: 3 hours ago
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) - A hundred years ago this week, the KKK attempted to make inroads in a part of Indiana they had yet to truly galvanize.
We’re talking about South Bend. Its growing Catholic population is why the Klan decided to hold a parade and rally here.
But the plans didn’t go as planned for the group, with students battling Klan members in the street of downtown to defend their religion and place in a country where social and religious ideals were changing rapidly.
READ PART ONE: 100 Years Later: Notre Dame’s clash with the Klan
May 17, 1924, marked a turning point for two rising institutions: Notre Dame and the KKK.
The KKK hoped a rally in South Bend, a catholic stronghold at the time, would be beneficial to expanding its anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant grip of power in the state of Indiana while also spreading its native, white, Protestant supremacy.
But for Notre Dame students, which were all male and mostly Catholic at the time, this was a battle for something deeper.
“It was a time when, when Notre Dame was growing in its reputation — in part because of football, but also because of its academic reputation,” explained Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a professor of American studies and history at Notre Dame. “And here was an organization that was saying very explicitly that because Notre Dame students were mostly Catholic, they couldn’t be considered good Americans. And so, students were upset about that and wanted to challenge that.”
Cummings teaches courses explaining the interplay between the University of Notre Dame, the Catholic Church, and the United States.
“Anti-Catholicism was, was very much on the rise, but it also had to do with the fact that Catholics were becoming more powerful,” Cummings said. “They were, in the case of the Irish, farther removed from that immigrant generation. So, they were making inroads and claiming political power and claiming power in the economy and in other ways, too. So, it was also a reaction against Catholics taking power away from real Americans in the eyes of Klan members.”
Notre Dame looked a whole lot different back then, before the fighting. In fact, a lot changed after the fighting — especially because most students lived off campus.
“The events of May of 1924, that really provided an impetus for a building boom on campus to say, ‘Let’s build more dorms and let’s build a dining hall,’” Cummings said.
In fact, some of the fighting involved the use of a particular food item one might find in a dining hall.
“The students started to throw potatoes, actually, at the Klan headquarters at the corner of Michigan and Wayne. There was a grocery store right underneath that,” Cummings said. “So of course, throwing potatoes — the Irish associated with potatoes — it was a way to kind of take what had been used against them and to assert themselves as Americans.”
The ascendancy of the two very different institutions in America came face to face at the corner of S. Michigan Street and E. Wayne Street. It has been said, “History shows us a window into our past.” That mantra couldn’t be truer here.
Brian Harding, the executive director of The History Museum in South Bend, is overseeing an exhibit, showcasing what happened 100 years ago. It’s on display in Buter Kernan Hall in the Community Learning Center of St. Joseph County Public Library — just feet away from the most important windows in downtown South Bend.
“I think our, our primary mission is to educate and educating individuals on what did happen, on the processes that that individuals felt was right at the time, understood what they felt was best practices or the best way of understanding,” Harding said.
It’s a moment in time inextricably linked to Catholics and a certain term you may have heard before.
“And the Notre Dame students fighting that intolerance, which was not the first time the ‘Fighting Irish’ term was actually utilized,” Harding said. “But it was one of those that helped begin to solidify that reputation of Notre Dame of fighting intolerance.”
It’s an almost uneasy reality when looking into the archive room here at WNDU to find images not from 100 years ago, but from the early 2000s in St. Joseph County — from cross burnings on Ash Road, to a peaceful Klan march on a city block in town, which our own Mark Peterson covered at the time.
WNDU 16 News Now reached out to who we believe to be relatives of former known KKK leaders in St. Joseph County. They declined to speak to us.
Back at Notre Dame, Professor Cummings took me to the World War I Memorial Doors on campus — the entrance into the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.
“Today we know those as the ‘God, Country, Notre Dame Doors’ because that inscription is right over the doors. but there’s also plaques on which the name of Notre Dame students who died in World War I are inscribed,” Cummings explained. “The official dedication was on Memorial Day 1924, just two weeks after the Klan rally. I get a chill just thinking about it. Can you imagine having this very moving ceremony that is linking religion — this is in the Basilica — to patriotism, our war dead? Can you imagine what that dedication ceremony must’ve been like? Many of the students who would’ve gone down to South Bend to fight off the Klan would’ve been attending that. And President (Father Matthew) Walsh would’ve said, again, how important it was and to the Catholic story and the American story, and how important Notre Dame was.”
And now, the university we know today is ever-growing. A symbol of “God, Country, Notre Dame,” and “Home of the Fighting Irish.”
Meanwhile, this entire story is being depicted as part of a new exhibit, which just opened Friday. Once again, it’s inside the Community Learning Center of the St. Joseph County Public Library in downtown South Bend.
Artifacts from The History Museum archives will provide local evidence of KKK activity, both at the time of the 1924 clash and in more modern times.
Also included in the exhibit is a multimedia experience telling the story of the confrontation, as visitors will also see a dynamic moving background showing what happened, along with the perspective of four different characters.
For more information on the exhibit, click here.
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