Black Legion, begining of ND - UofM rivalry?

[Bogtrotter07]

The Black Legion was founded in the mid-1920s as the Black Guards, a security force for the officers of the Ohio Ku Klux Klan. A Michigan regiment was established in 1931, with Arthur Lupp of Highland Park as its major general. Organized along military lines, the Michigan Legion had five brigades, 16 regiments, 64 batallions, and 256 companies. Although its members boasted that there were one million legionaires in Michigan, it probably had only between 20,000 and 30,000 members in the state in the 1930s, one third of whom lived in Detroit.

The legion had various fronts to cover its activities, such as the Wayne County Rifle and Pistol Club, whose members frequented a downtown Detroit sporting goods store with a backroom firing range. It also had a political front as well, the Wolverine Republican Club. The legion's political objectives were broad and, at the same time, narrowly specific. As one of its promotional pieces stated, "we will fight political Romanism [the Catholic Church], Judaism, Communism, and all 'isms' which our forefathers came to this country to avoid."

Some legionaires, more inclined toward outright violence for the sake of violence, went further in their plots to rid America of those they called undesirables than fearmongering and night riding. It was alleged, for instance, that Major General Lupp had explored ways to inject typhoid germs into milk and cheese delivered to specific undesirable neighborhoods in Detroit. The fact that Lupp was an inspector for the Detroit Department of Public Health lent some credence to this story, in the minds of many who heard it.

The above is a quote from an article in the Detroit News, August 5, 1997 about the murder of Charles Poole, a union organizer.

 

[ClausentoTate]

Are you asking if it was, saying that it is, or saying that it should be?

 

[nlroma1o]

Considering, ND and UM didnt play between 1908 and 1942, I dont think the black legion really fueled the rivalry between schools... I'm sure it helped many ND and UM patrons come to the realization that there was a group of crazies on the loose in the greater Detroit area. LOL

 

[Rhode Irish]

Considering, ND and UM didnt play between 1908 and 1942, I dont think the black legion really fueled the rivalry between schools... I'm sure it helped many ND and UM patrons come to the realization that there was a group of crazies on the loose in the greater Detroit area. LOL

Probably not, but it does provide some context for that period in the history between the two schools. The Black Legion and the University of Michigan's attitude towards Notre Dame at that time are different symptoms of the same disease.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Are you asking if it was, saying that it is, or saying that it should be?

Would think that it was the deep seated prejudice behind what lead to this article. One branch of my family landed at Grosse Ille through French Canada with the Ford family, and worked their way down to Gross Point Farms. The generation born in the 1850's recounts intollerable prejutices and indignities. It was until the generation born in the latter 1880's in my family, that being spit on in the street became a thing of the past.

I just documented the 1920' and 1930's version, (fifty years later), where it tied nicely to the Michigan area and identity of the football team. Someone can document better than I if the dustup that occurred happened as I have read 1) after ND (the upstart) first beat F Yost's victors; 2) After ND was handed the nickname "Fighting Irish"; 3) and for any reason other than the first two.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Considering, ND and UM didnt play between 1908 and 1942, I dont think the black legion really fueled the rivalry between schools... I'm sure it helped many ND and UM patrons come to the realization that there was a group of crazies on the loose in the greater Detroit area. LOL

Why was that that they didn't play? And 20 to 30k members isn't just crazies running around loose in the greater Detroit area. That is a substantial number of residents.

The point isn't about the Black Legion, it is the prejudice that fueled it, and what the actual history was between UofM and ND.

 

[ChiRish]

Why was that that they didn't play? And 20 to 30k members isn't just crazies running around loose in the greater Detroit area. That is a substantial number of residents.

The point isn't about the Black Legion, it is the prejudice that fueled it, and what the actual history was between UofM and ND.

Not to mention the probable amounts of regular civilians that supported their cause. For any upstart group to exist and survive like that, they need population support. So it was probably a common feeling amongst the population of certain areas...

 

[sfk324]

Would think that it was the deep seated prejudice behind what lead to this article. One branch of my family landed at Grosse Ille through French Canada with the Ford family, and worked their way down to Gross Point Farms. The generation born in the 1850's recounts intollerable prejutices and indignities. It was until the generation born in the latter 1880's in my family, that being spit on in the street became a thing of the past.

I just documented the 1920' and 1930's version, (fifty years later), where it tied nicely to the Michigan area and identity of the football team. Someone can document better than I if the dustup that occurred happened as I have read 1) after ND (the upstart) first beat F Yost's victors; 2) After ND was handed the nickname "Fighting Irish"; 3) and for any reason other than the first two.

The problem with this assessment is that it requires that you ignore what was happening in the immediate vicinity of ND itself. These things weren't happening just in and around UM. South Bend was a hotbed of KKK activity at the time, and the area around ND continues to be a breeding ground for KKK activity to this day.

As for the 1920s era stuff, there is a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan that is a good read, if you're interested in this subject.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

The problem with this assessment is that it requires that you ignore what was happening in the immediate vicinity of ND itself. These things weren't happening just in and around UM. South Bend was a hotbed of KKK activity at the time, and the area around ND continues to be a breeding ground for KKK activity to this day.

As for the 1920s era stuff, there is a book titled Notre Dame vs. the Klan that is a good read, if you're interested in this subject.

Seems with a little research that the reborn Klan, sports the highest per capita membership in what state? Indiana.

But I want to hear from someone who knows the story of ND's ban from the Western conference engineered by Fielding Yost.

Murray Sperber's book Shake Down the Thunder places principal responsibility for the Big Ten blackballing and boycotting of Notre Dame on Yost, as well as the charge that this was motivated by anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant prejudice common in the early 20th century. Although John Kyrk's book Natural Enemies points out that there was a bitter feud between Yost and Knute Rockne, head coach of the Notre Dame football team.

 

[sfk324]

Seems with a little research that the reborn Klan, sports the highest per capita membership in what state? Indiana.

But I want to here from someone who knows the story of ND's ban from the Western conference engineered by Fielding Yost.

From what I remember of Sperber's book, Yost was definitely the main person in that regard, with help from Stagg at U of C. There was no shortage of anti-Catholic sentiment in the states at the time, and there continues to be to this day if you look in the right places.

As for the ND-UM stuff, the hiatus was likely a combination of two things: first, that a nobody team, which ND was in 1909, beat Yost at his home field, was embarassment enough; that the nobody team was a Catholic one surely only compounded the embarassment in his mind.

Not sure if you saw the article, but Maisel over at espn.com did a good write-up on the Yost-Rockne feud not too long ago.

Hate fueled football's great rivalries - ESPN

 

[Bogtrotter07]

From what I remember of Sperber's book, Yost was definitely the main person in that regard, with help from Stagg at U of C. There was no shortage of anti-Catholic sentiment in the states at the time, and there continues to be to this day if you look in the right places.

As for the ND-UM stuff, the hiatus was likely a combination of two things: first, that a nobody team, which ND was in 1909, beat Yost at his home field, was embarassment enough; that the nobody team was a Catholic one surely only compounded the embarassment in his mind.

Not sure if you saw the article, but Maisel over at espn.com did a good write-up on the Yost-Rockne feud not too long ago.

Hate fueled football's great rivalries - ESPN

Hate fueled one of the great rivalries


Originally Published: May 21, 2012
By Ivan Maisel | ESPN.com


Coaches are the human face of a college football team. Players come, players go, but coaches remain -- the successful ones, anyway. That permanence goes a long way toward describing why coaches provoke hate. To the fan who has invested heart and soul into a game only to have them crushed, the winning coach is the embodiment of that devastation.

But this story is not about the fan. This story is about two of the greatest coaches to ever walk a sideline. To say that Fielding Yost of Michigan and Knute Rockne of Notre Dame didn't care for each other, and to say that their feud altered the path of the sport, is an understatement the size of the Big House.

Yost coached the first dynasty of the 20th century. In 26 seasons in Ann Arbor (1901-23, 1925-26), he went 165-29-10 (.833). Rockne topped him and everyone else to this day, going 105-12-5 (.881, 1918-30). He also became a beloved figure of the Golden Age of Sport, as the Roaring Twenties are otherwise known.

The feud between the coaches had its roots in a game played nearly a decade before Rockne became head coach. When Yost became head coach in 1901, he transformed the Wolverines into the most dominant program in the nation. Michigan didn't lose a game under Yost until 1905. These were known as the "Point-A-Minute" teams, both for their margins of victory and to reflect the head coach's personality. Chicago sportswriter Hugh Fullerton would describe Yost's methods as "tramp on the injured and hurdle the dead."

Yost married an infectious enthusiasm with sanctimony and an absolute inability to concede defeat or give an inch to any man. He talked and talked and talked. Sportswriter Grantland Rice once asked colleague Ring Lardner if he ever had had a conversation with Yost.

"No," Lardner said. "My parents taught me never to interrupt."

However, in 1909, Michigan lost at home to an upstart Catholic university visiting from South Bend, Ind. Yost responded to the 11-3 defeat by describing it as an exhibition game that the Wolverines approached "caring little whether we won or lost," according to "Shake Down the Thunder," the 1993 history of Notre Dame football written by Murray Sperber.


A year later, Yost canceled a game between the two schools shortly before it was to be played, claiming that Notre Dame had ineligible players on its roster. He then blackballed the Irish, keeping them off the Wolverines' schedule throughout his tenure as head coach and athletic director. He retired in 1941.

So many schools blackballed Notre Dame that the school adopted a nationwide schedule just to survive. As Rockne drove the Fighting Irish to succeed, the university came to represent the millions of Catholic immigrants from Europe who saw in the team a piece of themselves. Rockne became a national figure and his renown carried college football along for the ride. Legendary sportswriter Paul Gallico captured the allure of Rockne in his 1965 book, "The Golden People."

"It was during that decade from 1920 to 1930 that football underwent possibly its greatest transition from old-fashioned to modern," Gallico wrote. "… It developed a nationwide emotion that before the decade was out had become almost religious in its nature, and Knute Rockne was its high priest."

Rockne had a way of making people feel good about themselves. He sold Notre Dame to the New York sportswriters. He sold the university to everyone he met, including talented high school players in the Midwest, many of them the sons of those immigrants who identified with the university.

Rockne's competitors and his detractors -- many one and the same -- spread tales of perfidy committed by Rockne and by Notre Dame. Yost, Sperber wrote, spread the story that when Irish star George Gipp died at the end of the 1920 season, the university refused to pay his medical bills or for his funeral.

Yost believed Rockne cut corners in recruiting, promising employment and scholarship aid that the rules did not allow and looking the other way when Irish players participated in pro football games on the side. Rockne believed Yost to be a hypocrite and grew to despise him. As a reform movement swept the Big Ten in the 1920s, Yost not only led the opposition to Notre Dame's membership, he pressured Minnesota to end a series of games with the Catholic institution.

When Yost attempted to institute some reforms through the American Football Coaches Association at its 1927-28 convention, Sperber wrote, Rockne led the opposition that overwhelmed him.

Rockne attributed some of Yost's feeling against Notre Dame to the native West Virginian's religious discrimination. After the 1929 season, when Yost quashed yet another attempt to arrange a game between the schools, Rockne responded to a fan's letter by calling Yost "the Senator [Tom] Heflin of Middlewestern athletics." Heflin, from Alabama, was so anti-Catholic that it cost him his Senate seat in a 1930 election.

"He has lost all influence among all athletic men," Rockne continued regarding Yost, "and, as far as this letter is concerned, I don't care to whom you show it."

Rockne's sudden death in a plane crash in March 1931 ended any chance that the two legendary coaches might set aside their differences. Amid the outpouring of national grief for Rockne, Yost put out a statement after the crash recognizing his adversary's place in the game.

At the 1940 Heisman Trophy dinner honoring the winner, Tom Harmon of Michigan, New York Daily News writer Francis Wallace told a story about the former coach and then-Michigan athletic director, with whom he shared the dais. Some years after Rockne's death, Wallace said, Yost finally visited the Notre Dame campus and came upon a bronze bust of Rockne. Wallace watched as Yost communed with the bust.

"I made bold to say publicly that I thought the famous feud had ended," Wallace later wrote of his Heisman remarks. "It was a delicate subject, but after the dinner Yost sought me out and thanked me for saying it."

Yost retired from his four-plus decades at Michigan a few months later. In 1942, with Michigan and Notre Dame hampered by wartime travel restrictions, the schools agreed to play a two-game series. Another 35 years would pass before, in 1978, the schools began to play each other on a regular basis.

Today, Michigan and Notre Dame are rivals in the best sense of the word. A relationship once dipped in ill will between two coaches has blossomed. And it's given fans plenty of fodder.

Seems like there was a lot to it.