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Hearing the Silence: The University of Dayton, the Ku Klux Klan, and Catholic Universities and Colleges in the 1920s

American Catholic Studies, Vol: 124
2013
  • 0
    Citations
  • 5,284
    Usage
  • 0
    Captures
  • 16
    Mentions
  • 26
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Usage
    5,284
  • Mentions
    16
    • News Mentions
      13
      • 13
    • Blog Mentions
      3
      • Blog
        3
  • Social Media
    26
    • Shares, Likes & Comments
      26
      • Facebook
        26

Most Recent News

100 years ago, the KKK planted bombs at a US university – part of the terror group’s crusade against American Catholics

It was Dec. 19, 1923 – 100 years ago. The first day of Christmas break at the University of Dayton, with fewer than 40 students

Article Description

The "second" Ku Klux Klan exploded into national prominence in the 1920s. While the original Klan was based in the South and concentrated its animus against the newly freed slaves, the second KKK was a national organization that expanded its list of social scapegoats to include Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. Ohio perhaps had more Klan members than any other state, and in the 1920s the Dayton KKK chapter targeted the local Catholic university – the University of Dayton (UD) – with crossburnings and a bombing. While the school's administration avoided confrontation, UD students and the UD football team aggressively challenged the Klan. But while similar events at Notre Dame have received extensive attention from historians, the Klan's attacks on the University of Dayton are absent from the school's institutional histories and are virtually non-existent in the school's institutional memory. A review of histories of Catholic universities in states where the Klan was active reveals a similar silence, even though there are good reasons to believe some of these schools were also targeted by the Klan. As the University of Dayton story indicates, just because institutions and institutional histories are silent does not mean nothing happened. In fact, the silence is deafening.

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