Father James Coyle, an Irish born Catholic priest serving in Alabama, was shot in the head in front of his rectory on this day in Birmingham. His killer, E.R. Stephenson, was the father of the bride, a convert to Catholicism, who had married a Puerto Rican man earlier that day. Stephenson was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a Methodist minister.
The KKK was not only a terroristic opponent of blacks in the South, it should be remembered, but also of Catholics and Jews, and generally of anyone not of a British Isles or Northern European background. At the time, it was extremely powerful and not held in disrepute in the South.
Catholicism, for its part, was a distinctly minority religion throughout the South and still is. Today, only 7% of Alabamans are Catholic, and even fewer must have been at the time. Even as late as 1941 Time Magazine was able to report that an area as big as Ireland in the South had just ended the distinction of being completely without a Catholic Church. Oddly, however, the South has produced some notable Catholic literary figures, including Flannery O'Connor.
Future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, himself at that point a future member of the KKK, would defend Stephenson in court, who got off of the charge of murder based upon a plea of temporary insanity.
In Ireland, Eamon de Valera sent his reply to British peace proposals, rejecting them. The British had offered dominion status, which de Valera was not willing to accept for Ireland, wanting complete independence with no ties of that type to the UK, and a plebiscite for Northern Ireland to determine its fate.
In the Canadian dominion, Lord Byng took office as the Governor General.
South of the border, Franklin Roosevelt showed the first signs of paralysis from polio. A doctor misdiagnosed the condition, where he was vacationing in Maine, as a bad cold.
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