This long-forgotten confrontation between the Ku Klux Klan and the University of Notre Dame was a watershed moment in American social and religious history. Before May 17, Catholics struggled to gain acceptance in a Protestant America riddled with anti-Catholic bigotry. Within months of the South Bend riots, the Indiana Klan was in rapid decline, and Notre Dame's national champion football team was the toast of an admiring nation. In this compellingly written narrative, Todd Tucker tells the tale of two strong institutions headed for a showdown. By 1924, the Ku Klux Klan was the most powerful organization in Indiana. It boasted 350,000 members -- one out of every three white men in the state. The Klansmen disliked and feared Catholics, whom they saw as aliens in a Protestant America. They especially loathed Notre Dame, the most renowned Catholic university in the nation and the symbol of American Catholic pride.
The clash between Notre Dame and the Klan was shaped by four brilliant and complex men: Fr. Edward Sorin, Notre Dame's legendary founder; Fr. Matthew Walsh, an intellectual and war hero who was president of Notre Dame at the time of the riots; Knute Rockne, the university's revered football coach who helped quell the street fighting; and Klan head D. C. Stephenson, an erratic genius whose sexual deviancy and murder conviction helped destroy the Klan organization that he had built. The dramatic events that unfolded during that violent weekend in May marked a powerful turning point for American Catholics as they continued to overcome widespread prejudice and take their place as accepted members of mainstream America.
