Back in the early days of the 20th century, Jim Crow was alive and well in parts of the U.S. In the South, the Ku Klux Klan had enjoyed a resurgence, and the organization didn't reserve its hate for just Black people: According to the Knights of Columbus, the Klan also hated Catholics, Jews, and foreigners. Irish-born Father James Coyle checked off two of those boxes.
On Aug. 11, 1921, Coyle did what Catholic priests do and performed a marriage. Specifically, he wedded Ruth Stephenson to Pedro Gussman. It seems a mundane thing for a priest to do, but there were several problems with this marriage. First, it was done in Birmingham, Alabama; second, Gussman was a Puerto-Rican, Catholic immigrant; and third, the bride's father was a knight of the Ku Klux Klan. Though Coyle performed the marriage in secret, Stephenson's father found out about it, walked up to Coyle's home with a loaded gun, and shot him dead in cold blood.
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