<p>a factoid from Spring Hill College in Mobile- a Jesuit college:</p>
<p>In 1957, in a once in a lifetime and never repeated occasion, the KKK tried to burn a cross on the campus of Spring Hill, in protest for their support for civil rights and letting a black student enroll there. It was during exam week and the mostly white male students were outraged to see the Klansmen on their campus…the campus, however, boasts an 18 hole golf course and most students had golf clubs. So they went outside and beat the ever living tar out of the Klan with their clubs, ran them off and took down the cross before it was set afire. True story.</p>
<p>I was doing some research on Jesuit colleges in the United States and came upon that amazing story.</p>
<p>My uncle went to Spring Hill and loved it. He got his master’s from Berkeley and said he was better-prepared than a lot of kids who went to much more reputable schools.</p>
<p>My family’s interracial, and I find nothing inspirational about this story. However vile the Klan was in 1957, I see nothing to cheer about in a story about beating them with metal clubs.</p>
<p>The story is told a little differently on Spring Hill’s web site:</p>
<p>On the night of January 21, 1957, a dozen or more darkened cars eased down the main avenue of the college. Several members of the KKK attempted to set up a kerosene-soaked cross outside Mobile Hall, a dormitory. The Klan made a tactical blunder, however, in visiting the campus during finals week. Most of the white, male residents were still awake, studying for exams, and several heard the hammering. Once alerted, students streamed from both ends of the building carrying whatever items were handy – golf clubs, tennis rackets, bricks, a softball bat – and put the panicked Klansmen to flight. To save face, the KKK returned the next night and succeeded in burning a cross at the gate of the College before students reacted. The following day, however, a group of students – male and female – hanged a Klansman in effigy at the College gate, with a sign reading, “KKKers ARE CHICKEN.”</p>
<p>There’s a big difference between 'putting to flight" and “beating the ever living tar” out of them. Martin Luther King praised Spring Hill for integrating, in his “Letters from the Birmingham Jail”. I doubt that a practitioner of non-violence would have found it praiseworthy to beat people with clubs.</p>
<p>OMG, I hate those KKK guys! They were so racist!</p>
<p>Well Greybeard, you can promote non violence all day long, which is fine. And you can recite the Spring Hill College website description. I sincerely doubt they would describe it as I did, however. And it strikes me as a bit disingenuous to suggest that college boys streaming out of dorms from both ends with golf clubs, to face off and “put to flight” violent racists (and terrorists really) dressed in white robes and hoods in 1957, when murders were taking place by the Klan against blacks and anyone who supported them (the Klan was also virulently anti-Catholic, by the way…and still is today), as a non violent confrontation.</p>
<p>I wasnt there, clearly. But I can’t imagine those brave boys with golf clubs asking the Klan to leave nicely. That wasnt the way the Klan operated. And in many cases the Klan was armed and dangerous (and sometimes included law enforcement officers under those sheets!). </p>
<p>Criticize my description if you will. But it wasnt a non violent demonstration by any stretch of the imagination. I dont believe Martin Luther King was referring to Spring Hill’s non violent demonstrations,if any. I think he was referring to their desegregation policies, admitting blacks as college students.</p>