Birmingham Catholics honor the memory of Father James Coyle – the victim of KKK violence

On Thursday, August 8 the Catholic Diocese of Birmingham will hold their Annual Memorial Mass and Reception to honor the life of Father James E. Coyle. The 103rd Memorial Mass is held each year at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Birmingham, Alabama. The 103rd Memorial Mass will take place at 10:00 AM CST, and will be celebrated by Bishop Steven J. Raica. A reception will follow in the Cathedral Life Center. Father Coyle was murdered in broad daylight in Birmingham by a Ku Klux Klan member on August 11, 1921.

The KKK was then at the ascendancy of their power in Alabama, so they hired famed defense counsel Hugo Black to defend Coyle's killer. Black successfully argued that Rev. Edwin R. Stephenson was justified in the killing of Coyle.

Fr. Coyle had earlier that day performed the wedding of Stephenson's daughter, Ruth – age 18, to Catholic migrant from Puerto Rico Pedro Gussman.

Stephenson, a Methodist minister, was virulently anti-Catholic. Upon learning of his daughter's marriage, Stephenson took his handgun and proceeded to the rectory at St. Paul's where he gunned down Fr. Coyle who was sitting on his front porch.

The KKK paid for Stephenson's legal defense.

1921 Alabama was a much darker place than it is today. The KKK had been founded in Tennessee immediately following the Civil War as an effort by former Confederates to regain control of the recently freed Black population and impose White supremacy while pushing back against the changes in the South that Reconstruction and Northern occupation was attempting to make. In 1877 those union troops were withdrawn and Southern Democrats were back in control of Southern Legislatures. They quickly implemented laws to disenfranchise the former slaves and reassert White supremacy. The KKK had begun as a covert quasi-military fraternity to reassert White Southern control. With that mission accomplished it has been disbanded. The KKK was reborn in 1918 in the wake of World War I. The new KKK was much more of a national movement. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia had spawned fears that communists were in our midst plotting to do the same thing here. A wave of anti-communist paranoia swept the nation. Immigrants were also targeted. The 1920s would see some of the strictest immigration laws in American history passed. Anti-Catholic hysteria also reached a fever pitch, There were fears that Catholics were plotting to overthrow the government. A number of state legislatures passed statutes allowing convents, seminaries, and even Catholic hospitals to be subject to warrantless searches to look for weapons stockpiles and Protestant women and children being held against their will there.

The reborn Klan combined anti-immigrant hysteria, anti-Black, anti-Catholic, and was more violent than ever. There are 347 documented lynchings in Alabama between 1882 and 1968 – 299 of these were Blacks and 48 were Whites and most were performed by KKK members and/or sympathizers. The 20 years following WWI were the worst period for this violence. The KKK didn't just kill people and their bodies disappear in some swamp. No, they wanted their victims found and seen as a message to any who would dare oppose them. It is impossible to accurately count the numbers of beatings that the KKK is responsible for in Alabama during this period -likely well into the thousands. Blacks, immigrants, Catholics, communists, even drunks were targeted in this period.

Coyle was a native of Ireland (then still under a brutal British occupation). After his ordination in Rome, he was sent to Alabama.

Coyle was eventually assigned to St. Paul's. Coyle was a fighter who was not afraid to speak out. Against the waves of anti-Catholic hysteria in the press, Coyle penned his own editorials slamming the false narratives of the time and defending the faith.

His outspoken stances made him a lightning rod in the Birmingham community. Federal agents warned Bishop Edward Allen of Mobile was warned that there were plans to murder Coyle and burn St. Paul's (in downtown Birmingham) down.

The veteran prosecutor spent weeks to convince a reluctant grand jury to even indict Stephenson.

The KKK openly ran a statewide effort to raise funds for Stephenson's legal defense. They chose Black to lead that defense.

Both the jury foreman and the presiding judge were members of the Klan. The trial was a national sensation with coverage across the country. Black argued that Stephenson was not guilty by reason of temporary insanity and was not responsible for his actions on that day. It took the jury just a few hours to return a not guilty verdict.

Catholics in Birmingham were furious at the verdict and continue to honor the memory of Fr. Coyle to the present day. There is even an ongoing effort to have Coyle officially sainted.

Black would eventually join the KKK, represent Alabama in the U.S. Senate and be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Coyle is especially venerated by the Knights of Columbus. He served as the chaplain of Birmingham (Ala.) Council 635 and was a charter member of the Mobile chapter Council 666. Over 50 Knights of Columbus members are expected to attend Fr. Coyle's memorial service in Birmingham.

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