[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 85 (Thursday, May 16, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Page S3749]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Tribute to the Fighting Irish

  Mr. YOUNG. Madam President, 100 years ago this week, a legend was 
born. One hundred years ago, the champions of religious freedom refused 
to back down in the face of intolerance and hate. One hundred years ago 
today, the University of Notre Dame earned the moniker the ``Fighting 
Irish.''
  On May 17, 1924, thousands of members of the Indiana chapter of the 
Ku Klux Klan gathered in South Bend, IN, for a rally, a rally called by 
their infamous leader D.C. Stephenson. The target that day for their 
despicable and misguided message of ``true Americanism'' was the 
Catholic institution of the University of Notre Dame, the young men who 
attended the university, and the Holy Cross priests who taught at it.
  In the years that immediately preceded that fateful day, the KKK had 
watched with despair as Coach Knute Rockne and his football 
``Ramblers'' had barnstormed across the country, winning praise for 
their fighting spirit and the university.
  We can't forget that at the time, Catholics were a major target for 
the KKK in the Midwest, and Notre Dame's success on and off the field 
was an affront--an affront--to the Klan's false message of superiority.
  So the KKK gathered outside the Golden Dome for what was to be a 3-
day rally, complete with parades and speeches and dances and no small 
amount of overtly violent intimidation. You see, they weren't used to 
anyone standing up to them. They weren't expecting anyone to stand up 
to them. And little did they know that the mostly Irish Catholic 
student body across the street had no intention of being intimidated.
  Little did they know that the students were so animated that the 
university president, Father Matthew Walsh--a World War I veteran--had 
been trying in vain to tell his students to stay safe and to shelter in 
the school.
  Little did the KKK know that on that day, the intended aspersion that 
the student body had co-opted as their preferred nickname--the 
``Fighting Irish''--was about to reach a national audience.
  As the story goes--no doubt colored with some apocryphal additions 
over the years--the Klansmen began arriving in South Bend and hundreds 
of students marched out to meet them. At first, the students almost 
playfully offered to assist the Klansmen in finding lodging and food, 
sometimes leading them down allies, other times leading them back out 
of town.
  However, when one KKK leader evidently became wise to the ruse and 
pointed a pistol at a student who had intended to pull down the 
unsacred cross of lights hung in a downtown third-floor window, well, 
as they say, all hell broke loose. Klansmen who chose to fight quickly 
met their match and scrambled out of town. Students grabbed produce--
yes, even potatoes--from a local vegetable stand and hurled them at the 
cross, taking out all but the uppermost bulb.
  At that very moment, legendary ``Four Horsemen'' quarterback Harry 
Stuhldreher launched an impossible shot. He threw a potato 40 feet in 
the air at the bulb, successfully darkening the last unholy light.
  Moments later, the rest of the Klansmen were run out of town, tails 
between their legs. A subsequent exchange the next day led to another 
rout by Notre Dame running the record to 2 and 0 against the Klansmen 
that weekend.
  That weekend, in describing the Notre Dame student body's takedown of 
the most vaunted KKK chapter in the country, several national papers 
seized on the ``Fighting Irish'' moniker that had previously only been 
applied to the football team.
  If you are interested in more details about that fateful weekend, 
Notre Dame alum Todd Tucker has written an acclaimed book entitled, 
``Notre Dame vs. The Klan.''
  Events like the one that took place in South Bend, IN, often prove to 
be historical inflection points.
  In early 1924, intolerance and hatred were on the rise in the 
country, not just in Indiana but from coast to coast. For many, it was 
easier to give in to the fear of an uncertain future than to work to 
build a better community.
  But Indiana and the country were soon to turn a corner, and the 
timing couldn't have been more poetic. Rockne, Stuhldreher, and the 
rest of the ``Fighting Irish'' football team would pull off a perfect 
10-and-0 season later that year en route to the 1924 national 
championship. And the Indiana chapter of the KKK would quickly fizzle 
after the rape and murder conviction of its leader, D.C. Stephenson, 
the next year.
  As for the university itself and its brave and proud student body, it 
would be 3 more years before Father Walsh would reluctantly give in to 
the wave that started that May day in 1924 and officialize the nickname 
the ``Fighting Irish.''
  But make no mistake, it was 100 years ago this week, in an act of 
defiance against religious intolerance, that the ``Fighting Irish'' 
truly came into being.
  So on this day, we remember their bravery in exercising their most 
basic of American freedoms as we celebrate the day they put the fight 
in the University of Notre Dame ``Fighting Irish.''
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Booker). The Senator from California.