Shamrocks against sheets.(Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan)(Book Review)

Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan By Todd Tucker Loyola Press, 261 pages, $24.95

Notre Dame university occupies a unique place in the American Catholic mind. It was founded at a time when many questioned whether there was such a thing as an American Catholic--that is, whether the masses of Catholic immigrants would ever become real Americans.

In Notre Dame vs. the Klan, Notre Dame alum Todd Tucker examines Catholic Americanism at a particularly important historical moment--the early part of the last century, when Catholics themselves were divided over how much to assimilate. Many opposed U.S. involvement in World War I because they didn't want to help the British--the source of Catholic oppression in Ireland. Church leaders favored new Catholic hospitals, schools, and orphanages because they felt the influence of American culture would distort their faith.

These attitudes seemed to feed the anti-Catholic sentiment already growing in the country. Like any ethnic or religious group whose ranks include many poor, unemployed, and sometimes violent men, Irish Catholics were increasingly seen as a threat. The leaders of the Ku Klux Klan saw this anti-Catholic sentiment as an opportunity to expand their influence. The Klan began to promote the idea that it was the enforcer of Prohibition and the defender of industry against labor unions (which it associated with communism). Its first target turned out to be Irish Catholics--those drunken factory workers causing all the problems.

Since Northerners had just recently fought a civil war against tribunes of white supremacy, there was no way they would join the Klan unless it was marketed as something other than anti-black. D. C. Stephenson turned out to be just the man to create a different image. More concerned with making money than killing anyone, Stephenson, the youngest son of a sharecropper from Houston, rose to the highest ranks in the Klan and grew ...