Anti-Catholic panic surged across the South and Midwest by 1920

Evidence

The following year the tide came in strongly. Tom Watson’s Senatorial campaign spread about Georgia an impression that President Wilson had become a tool of the Pope; Governor Sidney J. Catts stomped up and down Florida warning that the Pope planned to invade the state and transfer the Vatican there; an able journalist reported that anti-Catholicism had become “second only to the hatred of the Negro as the moving passion of entire Southern communities”; Michigan and Nebraska debated constitutional amendments banning parochial schools; and in Missouri the once-mighty anti- Catholic weekly, The Menace, revived under a new name, The Torch. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1760

Categorization

• CANDY: Governor Catts warning Florida that the Pope planned to invade the state and relocate the Vatican there is a strikingly absurd, tweetable detail.
• XREF: connects to: Nineteenth-century American anti-Catholic violence included deadly Orange Day riots — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 296; Catholic parochial schools grew rapidly from 1880 to 1920, fueling Protestant tensions — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 298; Anti-Catholic nativism required a specific religious crisis beyond general economic tension — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 352 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Catholic parochial schools grew rapidly from 1880 to 1920, fueling Protestant tensions #expands (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 298
• Anti-Catholic nativism required a specific religious crisis beyond general economic tension #qualifies (0.80) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 352
• Anti-Catholic secret societies multiplied in the 1880s across scattered localities. #expands (0.78) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 369
• Nineteenth-century American anti-Catholic violence included deadly Orange Day riots #expands (0.75) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 296
• Racial nativism supplanted anti-Catholicism because it fit the new immigrant threat #qualifies (0.75) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 567