The Students and the Klan

In nineteen twenty-two, the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in South Bend. By nineteen twenty-three, the organization had recruited tens of thousands of members across Indiana, which would become the Klan's most powerful state north of the Mason-Dixon line. By nineteen twenty-five, over a quarter million Hoosiers had joined. The governor, the mayor of Indianapolis, and more than half the state legislature had Klan backing. Indiana was, for a few years in the nineteen twenties, Klan territory.

South Bend was different. South Bend had Notre Dame.

In the spring of nineteen twenty-three, an African American man held in the South Bend jail received death threats signed by the Klan. Over a thousand Black residents of South Bend fled the city within days. The city felt the fear directly.

Then, in May of nineteen twenty-four, the Klan planned a large parade and rally in downtown South Bend. Notre Dame students, most of them Catholic and many of them Irish or Eastern European, took it personally. The Klan had been explicit in its targets: Catholics, Jews, Black Americans, and immigrants were all on the list.

When the Klan organizers arrived at the train station, students were waiting. The confrontation spread into the streets over two days. Students reportedly tore hoods from Klan members who were directing traffic, threw objects at Klan headquarters windows, and disrupted the parade. No one was killed. The Klan rally did not go as planned.

South Bend's confrontation was not the reason the Indiana Klan collapsed, but it was part of it. The larger blow came in nineteen twenty-five, when D.C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of Indiana, was convicted of the rape and murder of a state official named Madge Oberholtzer. The organization that had claimed to defend morality crumbled under the weight of its own leader's crimes. Membership fell from a quarter million to roughly four thousand by decade's end.