Fighting for…Tolerance

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

A few years ago, the University of Notre Dame commissioned an advertising campaign called “What would you fight for?” which aired during its NBC autumn football broadcasts. The award-winning series showcased the hard work, scholarly achievements, and global impact of Notre Dame Fighting Irish faculty, students, and alumni.

Some of the more recent stories involved students who submitted a federal report outlining government graft allegations in Malta and Angola (“Fighting to End Corruption”), a professor’s work to develop new technologies to control blood glucose (“Fighting to End Diabetes”), and alums working to save El Salvador refugees from forced gang membership (“Fighting to Protect the Innocent”).

I think there also are many wonderful “fighting for” stories, however, from Notre Dame’s past. One of my favorites—when the Fighting Irish took on the Ku Klux Klan—celebrated its 100th anniversary in May 2024.

I never knew about it until early 2024, when I read Timothy Egan’s book A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. ND alum Todd Tucker also tells the story in his 2004 book Notre Dame vs. the Klan.

Egan chronicles the rise of the Klan in Indiana and surrounding other states in the early 1900s. At its height, several hundred thousand persons belonged to the KKK in Indiana. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators there and across the country also all proudly proclaimed their membership.

The growth of the Klan was due largely to a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson. Stephenson was not so much an ideological adherent as a shrewd and avaricious businessman. He enriched himself with a cut of each new membership fee as people flocked to join what he had rebranded as an All-American Christian organization.

Despite his financial motivations and rebranding, Stephenson’s KKK still articulated the same hatred of blacks, immigrants, Jews, and Catholics as did the original Klan post-Civil War.

Others pushed back on the Klan’s hatred, often inspired by Indiana-born Patrick O’Donnell, an Irish Catholic lawyer from Chicago once described as second only to Clarence Darrow in terms of trial skills. Among other things, O’Donnell started a newspaper called Tolerance to expose and combat the Klan and gave a fiery speech opposing the KKK in Indianapolis on St. Patrick’s Day 1923. 

He quoted Abraham Lincoln’s words against the Know Nothings, a political party in the 1850s opposed to immigrants: “As a nation, we began by declaring that, ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it as ‘all men are created equal except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal except Negroes, and foreigners and Catholics.’”

O’Donnell also wrote to Notre Dame University President Father Matthew Walsh and warned the Holy Cross priest that the Klan had its sights set on ND too. O’Donnell indicated there were rumors about manufactured bombs and possible attempts to harm or disrupt the school.

In May 1924, the KKK tried to flex its newfound grip on Indiana politics by holding a parade in South Bend, the most Catholic area of the state. They underestimated the Fighting Irish, however, in their initial plans.

Notre Dame students stormed downtown and ripped the hoods and robes off some surprised Klan members and chased the rest to Klan headquarters downtown. A “fiery cross” of red light bulbs shined from the KKK’s third-floor window. 

A nearby store had barrels of potatoes outside. The students grabbed and launched them, breaking the Klan’s windows and all but the top lights on the red cross symbolizing hatred and intolerance. 

Unable to reach the last red bulb, the crowd summoned Harry Stuhldreher, the football team’s quarterback soon to be known as one of the immortal Four Horsemen. The crowd roared when his powerful and perfect potato toss decimated the last red bulb. 

A wild-eyed Klan member with a gun stopped the students’ subsequent charge into the headquarters and the crowd eventually dispersed and returned to campus. The Klan got a measure of revenge a day or so later.

Students rushed to town again when they heard the KKK had captured one student and was beating him mercilessly, but it was an ambush by the Klansmen, including members who were police and sheriff deputies. They greeted the students with bottles, rocks, bats, and clubs. The bloodied and bruised students retreated to regroup at the county courthouse.

Ever mindful of the safety of his charges, Father Walsh arrived and implored the students, “Whatever challenge may have been offered tonight to your patriotism, whatever insult may have been offered to your religion, you can show your loyalty to Notre Dame and to South Bend by ignoring all threats.”

Legendary football coach Knute Rockne, himself an immigrant hated by the Klan, echoed the Holy Cross priest’s message, “Father Walsh is your quarterback, and you are the great Notre Dame team.”

The Klan’s vow to return for revenge later petered out when its leader Stephenson was put in jail and convicted of the murder of a young woman. (A jury that included a Catholic rendered the verdict on the same weekend that Notre Dame won yet another football game.)

In addition to modeling non-violent resistance, Father Walsh also found other ways to address Klan threats. He embarked on a construction spree that changed ND life forever. He built the South Dining Hall and South Quad dorms so most students would live on campus, where Walsh felt he could better protect them.

A 2018 article about the confrontation with the Klan by the ND Office of Public Affairs concludes it was no coincidence that Walsh finally authorized the “Fighting Irish” as Notre Dame’s official nickname in 1927.

Years later, the story still lives on. United States Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) even honored the centennial of Notre Dame standing up to the Klan with remarks on the Senate floor in May 2024.

In its television commercials aired on NBC during football games, the University of Notre Dame often asks, “What would you fight for?” A century ago, several hundred ND students answered resoundingly, “Fighting for Tolerance.”

When I hear stories like this one it makes me proud—as a member of the Notre Dame Class of 1983—to also say…We are the Fighting Irish.

*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022.