Why Pastor James Coyle Was Murdered Over A Wedding

Posted by Sebrina Pilcher on Friday, May 3, 2024

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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