Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas (PDF)

Winner, 2017 Ragsdale AwardA timely study that puts current issues-religious intolerance, immigration, the separation of church and state, race relations, and politics-in historical context.The masthead of the Liberator, an anti-Catholic newspaper published in Magnolia, Arkansas, displayed from 1912 to 1915 an image of the Whore of Babylon. She was an immoral woman sitting on a seven-headed beast, holding a golden cup "e;full of her abominations,"e; and intended to represent the Catholic Church.Propaganda of this type was common during a nationwide surge in antipathy to Catholicism in the early twentieth century. This hostility was especially intense in largely Protestant Arkansas, where for example a 1915 law required the inspection of convents to ensure that priests could not keep nuns as sexual slaves.Later in the decade, anti-Catholic prejudice attached itself to the campaign against liquor, and when the United States went to war in 1917, suspicion arose against German speakers-most of whom, in Arkansas, were Roman Catholics.In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan portrayed Catholics as "e;inauthentic"e; Americans and claimed that the Roman church was trying to take over the country's public schools, institutions, and the government itself. In 1928 a Methodist senator from Arkansas, Joe T. Robinson, was chosen as the running mate to balance the ticket in the presidential campaign of Al Smith, a Catholic, which brought further attention.Although public expressions of anti-Catholicism eventually lessened, prejudice was once again visible with the 1960 presidential campaign, won by John F. Kennedy.Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas illustrates how the dominant Protestant majority portrayed Catholics as a feared or despised "e;other,"e; a phenomenon that was particularly strong in Arkansas.