A century later, Fr. Coyle's story still told

Father James E. Coyle died on August 11, 1921, in Birmingham, Alabama. It is more correct to say that he was murdered. It is perhaps even more correct to say that he was martyred.
Father Coyle was born in County Roscommon, Ireland. After being ordained a priest in 1896, he came to serve in the Diocese of Mobile. He was appointed the first Rector (President) of McGill Institute for Boys, a Catholic school for boys in Mobile now known as McGill-Toolen Catholic High School. (I was privileged to commission a portrait of him which now is displayed in the foyer of the school.)
In 1906 Bishop Allen assigned Fr. Coyle to be the Pastor of St. Paul Parish in Birmingham, which was then a part of the Diocese of Mobile. In those days, the need for workers in the steel industry attracted many people to Birmingham, among them were immigrants from Europe, many of whom were Catholics.
After the horrors of World War I, there was a strong anti-immigrant sentiment in this country. People did not want to be involved in another European war and feared that European immigrants would cause the US to become involved in yet another European conflict. The Ku Klux Klan was revived. Unlike the Klan of the 1800s which was a resistance movement to reconstruction government and military occupation, the Klan of the 1920s was a potent national movement against immigrants. The Klan was powerful throughout the country and perhaps much more powerful outside the South than within it. The Klan often attracted some of the most respected members of the community into its membership. Since many immigrants were Catholics, the Klan tended to be vehemently anti-Catholic.
Fr. Coyle was outspoken in his defense of the Church and immigrants. He responded to newspaper attacks on Catholics and wrote letters to the newspapers defending Catholicism and attacking the venomous ignorance of anti-Catholics. He was warned by both Bishop Allen and the FBI to tone down his remarks as there were often death threats made against him, but Fr. Coyle refused to be intimidated by these threats.
There was a young woman in Birmingham named Ruth Stephenson. Her father was a Methodist clergyman and may have been a member of the Klan. Ruth became a Catholic which angered her father. Later, Ruth decided to marry an immigrant man from Puerto Rico. This infuriated her father. The couple asked Fr. Coyle to marry them. He agreed but he knew that he was placing his life in danger. While preparing to begin the wedding he told people that, “They will kill me for this.”
The next day, as Fr. Coyle sat on the front porch of the rectory praying his Breviary, Reverend Stephenson came up the front walk and shot and killed Fr. Coyle. Stephenson was immediately apprehended and tried for murder. Reportedly, the judge was a member of the Klan as were some of the members of the jury. The lawyer who represented Stephenson was despicable in his conduct of the case. The defense was simple: if your daughter became a Catholic and married an immigrant you would kill the priest too. To make a long story short, the jury agreed and found Stephenson not guilty due to temporary insanity.
The lawyer who represented the murderer went on to become a US Senator from Alabama and was appointed by President Roosevelt as a member of the US Supreme Court. His name was Hugo Black. Later, as a Supreme Court Justice, he authored the Court decision declaring miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Many historians do not think that this was a coincidence but rather a way of apologizing for his representation of Stephenson.
I give to each newly ordained priest of our archdiocese a copy of Sharon Davies' well-written account of Fr. Coyle’s murder, "Rising Road." It recalls a priest whose love of God impelled him to proclaim the faith and champion the cause of others. His memory and his example blesses our archdiocese and cannot be forgotten. On this centennial of his death we continue to tell his story.