Nativist rhetoric in the
United States, culled from a
“We do not accept Jews,
because they reject Christ!” the fictionalized character Clayton Townley ranted
in Alan Parker’s 1988 film Mississippi
Burning. “We do not accept Papists, because they bow to a Roman dictator!
We do not accept Turks, Mongrels, Tartars, Orientals nor Negroes because we are
here to protect Anglo-Saxon democracy and the American way!”
Parker’s film dramatized
the deaths of the three Civil Rights workers killed in Neshoba County, Mississippi,
on the night of June 21, 1964. The bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and
Michael Schwerner remained undiscovered until early August 1964. Their efforts to
register African Americans as voters during “Freedom Summer” led to their
murders.
Eighty-seven years before
to the day, on June 21, 1877, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hanged the first
eleven of an eventual twenty-one Irish Catholic men for alleged “Molly Maguire”
crimes. Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) officer Patrick Hester died on the
gallows in March 1878.
Before his arrest Hester,
a grandfather and former school director, township supervisor, tax collector,
and overseer of the poor, had worked for the naturalization and enfranchisement
of Irish Catholic mineworkers. An editor, horrified at Hester’s efforts toward suffrage at the
local courthouse, described Hester as “one of the acknowledged
leaders of what is called the Democratic party in the Coal region, who with a
number of his countrymen … just arrived from the temple of Justice, where they
had been invested with the rights of citizenship …”
The editor warned: “Let
native and Protestant American citizens ponder before they surrender their
dearest rights to the rule of the Pope, or to the aggressions of the agents of
foreign potentates.”
In Mississippi in 1964,
the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan drove the murders of Civil Rights
workers. During the “Molly” trials in the mid-1870s, nativist lodges
honeycombed Pennsylvania’s hard coal region. They went under cover of
patriotic-sounding names.
A few weeks after the June
21 executions, a correspondent from Mahanoy City, a heavily Irish area, wrote
to the Boston Pilot: “… we have got
the ‘Junior Sons of America,’ ‘Mechanics,’ and many other secret societies,
calling themselves Young Americans. The ‘Junior’ boys tell their fathers that they
have not the same right here as [their sons] have, because they were not born in
this country.”
Two Pinkerton agents who
drove the “Molly” caseload, James McParlan and Robert Linden, took up residence
in towns that housed prominent nativist factions. McParlan lodged in
Shenandoah, home to Washington Camp No. 112 of the Patriotic Order Sons of
America. The year
after McParlan entered the region, Shenandoah formed a secret society under this disturbing name: “Sons of America, Shenandoah Commandery No. 14, Master Americans.”
Linden, McParlan’s
supervisor, lodged in Ashland, home to Ashland Camp No. 84 of the Patriotic
Order Sons of America. The Ashland division housed a subdivision with another troubling name: the “White Degree council.” The
possible influence of McParlan and Linden with these groups has never been investigated.
At the issuance of the
“Molly” death warrants in May 1877, the Shenandoah
Herald published a column under the jocular heading “Girardville Giblets.” It carried a bald nativist taunt: “All our peace and order loving citizens were made happy this
evening on the appearance of the Herald, containing the information that a
beginning was to be made at disposing of the ‘Mollie’ murderers. All were happy
to know that Governor Hartranft had determined to enforce the law, and that in
the future, as at the present, ‘Mollieism’ has got to take a back seat, while white men say what shall be done.”
A half-decade before, the
editor who so feared the enfranchisement of regional Irish Catholics had urged: “Every
opponent of the Irish supremacy in this county should make it a point to
examine the list and see if he is registered. … If the full vote is brought out
the result will be a complete overthrow of that faction which is attempting to
bind our county hand and foot to the Irish power.”
Within eight years of that
publication, nativist rhetoric had helped destroy the power of “that faction.” The AOH in Pennsylvania’s hard coal
region was broken. Its leaders had died on gallows in five counties, sat
serving long prison sentences, or had long since fled the region.
To further explore the history of Pennsylvania’s
Hibernians prosecuted as “Molly Maguires,” visit www.kehoefoundation.org.
