From "Out of Bounds"

Her's an anecdotal retelling of the Klan story from Out of Bounds.

In the spring of 1924, May 17 to be exact, the KKK came to town.

The Ku Klux Klan was strong at the time in Indiana; the state's impressionable rural population was easy pickin's for the fear-mongers, the fat-bellied sheriffs and ferret-eyes politicians who realized -much as Hitler did a decade later- that there is strength in paranoia. Throughout the South and Middle West the Klan carried political clout -clout which often dominated local governments and which actually cost Catholic AI Smith the presidential election in 1928. .

The students weren't happy about the week-Iong convention scheduled by the KKK. They didn't see eye-to-hood with the Klan's virulently anti-Catholic ideals, and they did their damndest to subvert the visitors' stay in South Bend.

On the convention's opening day, students dressed as Klansmen stood at highway intersections South of town and shunted incoming KKK traffic onto side roads. Puzzled carloads of Dragons, Kleagles, and assorted half-wits wearing sheets spent the day backtracking through the hamlets of Crumstown, Teegarden and Nappanee.

Other students met arriving Klanners at the train station. When a conventioneer got off the train, a Notre Darner would take him politely by the arm and offer to escort him to his hotel. Down a side street. Into an alley. FOMP! RRRRIP! KOOSH! Waiting allies clobbered the Klanner, defrocked him, and sent him on his way with a swift kick. Production line mugging at its best.

Retaliation came two days later, on Monday, the nineteenth. An anonymous caller tipped off a freshman that a student was getting beaten to death downtown. Word spread across campus like a windswept fire. Soon, despite a directive against such actions from Father Walsh, Notre Dame's president, an angry mob had rallied and headed for town.

The phone call had been a hoax, and the Klan was waiting. South Bend's sheriff, himself a Klansman, had deputized his comrades, now armed with clubs and bottles which they wielded with violent efficiency. The youths from Notre Dame had a bad go of it. Several of them were injured seriously, and were taken to Hullie and Mike's Pool Hall where they rested on the tables, red blood staining the green felt until medical help arrived.

Now the malice was up-front. A riot-sized army of students regrouped back at the campus and marched toward South Bend, bent on croaking the convention, and maybe a few conventioneers in the bargain. They might have done it. More likely, another set of undergraduate heads would have been broken.

Nothing happened.

Father Walsh met the angry young men on the steps of City Hall and spoke the words that dampened their rage: " A single life of a Notre Dame student would be too great a price to pay." Walsh was right and the students knew it. Street-fighting was the Klan's game. The boys fell into neat ranks and trudged back to their dorms.

But Notre Dame administrators remained worried. The KKK would be in town for five more days, and there was no telling what kind of ruckus would hit the wind if some fellow whose hood shrouded a brain with a cantalope's intelligence tried burning a cross at the foot of the Golden Dome. The good Fathers hiked up their cassocks and went into action. Confiscating the hunting guns that many students brought to school, they took them to the fieldhouse, and redistributed them to members of the football and track teams. The athletes were paired into "border patrols."
 Working in shifts, they comprised a 24-hour guard around the campus perimeter .

Herb Eggert, an engineering student and tackle on the football team, was one of those on patrol. "As I recall, there was a threat to burn down the administration building. That was the main reason we were on those patrols.

"My partner was John Roach -'Cocky' Roach we called him. We were out real early one morning, just before sunrise, and we hadn't seen anything the least bit mysterious, so we were walking along, making small talk. Then we got out near old Cartier Field. The ticket booths were set out away from the stands in those days. As we passed one of them, we heard a noise inside. Somebody was moving around in there!"

Eggert shakes his head. "Let me tell you, we were scared. We were talking in whispers and waving our guns all over the place, trying to decide what to do. Cocky wanted to riddle the thing with bullets, then look inside. But we decided that I would yank open the door while he kept his gun aimed.

"Both of us," says Eggert, "were certain we'd see a fellow with a sheet and a shotgun."
Roach steadied his gun. Eggert jerked open the door. A crusty old wino, wrapped in newspapers, tumbled out! He had chosen the ticket booth as a secluded spot to sleep off a drunk, and now he awoke to the sight of two gun barrels aimed right between his bloodshot eyes. He must have thought this was a pretty severe penalty for vagrancy.

The week ended without further incident. It's no wonder the footballers had such a good season in 1924. After defensing the Ku Klux Klan, Princeton and Army were cakewalks.

Back to Irish Reveries