Father Walsh also hoped that the large number of Irish Catholic New Yorkers would make the team their own. University President Father Matthew Walsh had recently added Princeton to the team’s schedule and moved the Army game to New York where many more Notre Dame alumni could attend. Fiery Cross, March 16, 1923, accessed Hoosier State Chronicles.īy 1923, Notre Dame football had made great strides towards becoming one of the most prestigious athletic programs in the country. In other words, the students of Notre Dame had to worry about facing such prejudice whenever they left campus – even for a football game. That is, its xenophobia, racism, anti-Catholicism, and antisemitism were the prevailing views of many white, Protestant, American-born Midwesterners. While the 1920s Klan was a hate group, it was not an extremist group. The Klan encouraged their membership not to do business with immigrants, worked to close Catholic schools, and most destructively, elected officials sympathetic to their racist position and lobbied them to impose immigration quotas. The hate-filled rhetoric they spewed through their newspaper, the Fiery Cross, as well as speeches and parades, created an atmosphere of fear and danger for Hoosiers of the Catholic faith or immigrant origin. The Indiana Klan was openly encouraging discrimination against immigrants, especially Catholics. For the students of predominately Catholic and of Irish immigrant origin, the Ku Klux Klan posed a real threat to their futures. In one Notre Dame Daily op-ed, for example, the writer condemned the Klan’s appropriation of the American flag in its propaganda while simultaneously “placing limitations upon the equality, the liberty, and the opportunity for which it has always stood.” “Class Orators Awarded Place,” Notre Dame Daily, May 20, 1923, 1, accessed University of Notre Dame Archives. Several students had also given speeches on “the Klan” and “Americanism.” The Klan’s use of patriotic imagery particularly bothered the young scholars. They played to give pride to thousands of Catholics enduring mistreatment and discrimination as the Klan rose to political power.īy 1923, the young scholars writing for the Notre Dame Daily, the student newspaper, expressed concern over the rise of the Klan. They played for the respect of a country poisoned by the bigoted, anti-Catholic rhetoric of the Klan. But these athletes fought for more than trophies. During the 1920s, renowned coach Knute Rockne led Notre Dame’s football team to greatness. University of Notre Dame leaders and officials understood that the only way to combat the xenophobia and anti-Catholicism of the Ku Klux Klan, while maintaining the school’s integrity, was to not play the Klan’s game. 1900s, Michiana Memory Digital Collection, St. While the Klan had gained political power and legitimacy in Indiana by the early 1920s, it had yet to find a foothold in South Bend or larger St. demographics brought by immigration and urbanization, those threats to equality and justice included rising nationalism, animosity toward Jews and Catholics, discrimination against immigrants and refugees, and even violence against those not considered “ 100% American.” No group represented these prejudices as completely as the Ku Klux Klan. The challenges and threats posed to Notre Dame in the 1920s, mirrored those periling Indiana, the United States, and in many ways, democracy. Starting as a persecuted minority, Irish Catholics integrated into the fabric of the American tapestry over the twentieth century. The history of the traditionally Irish-Catholic University of Notre Dame located in South Bend, Indiana, has paralleled the larger story of Catholic immigrants making their way in the United States. “Football Notre Dame (South Bend) by South Shore Line,” 1926, broadside, Indiana State Library Broadsides Collection, accessed Indiana State Library Digital Collections.

Kkk victory march