Cathedral murder: Birmingham priest shot dead in 1921 is remembered today

Kathleen Grimm of Yulee, Florida, remembers as a child hearing her father occasionally pull out a photograph of a priest who was murdered in 1921 in Alabama and talk about him.

“My father would pull out this card, tell the story and talk about how important faith is,” said Grimm, who is a first cousin of the Rev. James E. Coyle, who was pastor of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Birmingham from 1904 to 1921.

“You stick to what you believe in, no matter what,” Grimm said.

Grimm was a special guest on Thursday as St Paul’s Cathedral in Birmingham held its annual memorial service to remember its former pastor who was murdered 103 years ago near the front of the cathedral.

The memorial service was broadcast internationally by EWTN, the Irondale-based Catholic network.

Coyle was shot to death on the porch of the wood-frame rectory, the priest’s house next to the cathedral, on August 11, 1921. The congregation raised money and built a new brick rectory on the same site, adjacent to the cathedral.

“The current rectory was built in honor of Father Coyle after his death,” said the Rev. Bryan Jerabek, pastor of St. Paul’s Cathedral. “It’s a very important part of our history and we want to preserve it.”

Over the past year, the cathedral has raised money to renovate the 102-year-old rectory, which had a leaky roof and structural problems. “We want to do more work to preserve it, because it’s such an important part of our history here downtown,” Jerabek said. “It’s the last freestanding occupied residence in the business district. We still live in our home here.”

The works on the rectory are almost finished, he said.

The Coyle murder trial was historic, in part because of the role played by future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Black defended the defendant, the Rev. Edwin R. Stephenson, a Methodist minister who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan paid Stephenson’s legal fees, and he was acquitted by a jury that included several Klan members, including the jury foreman, according to Ohio State University law professor Sharon Davies, author of “Rising Road: A True Tale of Love, Race and Religion in America,” about the Coyle case.

Stephenson, who officiated weddings at the Jefferson County Courthouse, was charged with shooting Coyle to death after becoming angry that Coyle officiated the marriage of Stephenson’s daughter, Ruth, to a Puerto Rican, Pedro Gussman.

As defense attorney, Hugo Black summoned Gussman to the courtroom and questioned him about his curly hair and skin color. The lights were dimmed in the courtroom to accentuate Gussman’s dark complexion, according to an Oct. 20, 1921, newspaper article about the final day of the trial.

Davies said Black joined the Klan 18 months after the trial. Years later, Black renounced his Klan ties and became one of the most liberal members of the U.S. Supreme Court. After the acquittal, Stephenson again became a regular at the courthouse, performing weddings.

Jim Pinto, author of “Killed in the Line of Duty,” has collected contemporary accounts of Coyle’s murder. Pinto said there were other death threats from the Ku Klux Klan against Coyle before the killing because of his outspokenness. Anti-Catholicism was a key pillar of the Ku Klux Klan at the time.

Coyle, a staunch advocate for immigrants coming to the area, knew there was a chance he could be killed, but he sat on the porch the night after the wedding, reading his prayer book, as he did every night.

“He was the face of Catholicism (in Birmingham),” Pinto said. “He was a martyr for the faith.”

After his acquittal, Stephenson never reconciled with his daughter Ruth, his only child.

Gussman, the Puerto Rican who married Ruth, died on Valentine’s Day 1934 in a hit-and-run accident just steps from where Coyle died, in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

At the time of Coyle’s murder, anti-Catholic intolerance was widespread in the United States, Davies said.

The state Legislature enacted the Alabama Convent Inspection Act in 1919 to authorize officials to search convents without a warrant to see if any person found inside the convent was being “involuntarily confined” or “unlawfully detained,” according to Davies.

There were fears that Protestant girls were being kidnapped, forced to become Catholic nuns and held against their will, Davies said.

The Coyle case helped fuel those fears, as Ruth, an independent-minded 18-year-old, had converted to Catholicism against her father’s wishes. Coyle debated those who spread Ku Klux Klan attacks on Catholics, and at one point federal officials warned Coyle’s bishop that he had been the subject of death threats, Davies said.

“They wanted to kill him,” Pinto said.

Although the frame house where Coyle was shot was demolished and replaced with a brick house, the front porch of the brick rectory has the same flower boxes as the rectory where Coyle was shot.

There are plans to place a historical marker at the spot where Coyle was killed. “It’s a very important part of Birmingham’s history,” Jerabek said.