Father James Edwin Coyle, an Irish immigrant priest, was assissinated in 1921 in Birmingham, Alabama, at a time when the Ku Klux Klan was as rabidly Nativist and anti-Catholic as it was racist.
Coyle had committed the sin of marrying a white woman to a black man (in fact a dark-skinned Hispanic). The assassin was freed by a temporary insanity defense: wouldn't having your daughter married to a black man drive anyone crazy.
The incident is particularly notable because then Ku Klux Klan member Hugo Black used his successful defense of assassin E.R. Stephenson, a Methodist preacher, as a stepping stone to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although Black later regretted his Klan membership, he never apologized for his anti-Catholicism and his involvement with the Coyle assassination.
Not until 2012 did Alabama Protestants apologize for the acts of Stephenson.
http://www.northalabamaumc.org/news/detail/1089
