November 11, 1934: Father Charles Coughlin, the "Radio Priest" who had previously been a strong supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, completely turns coat, and begins opposing him, as strongly as anyone in the country does -- at least, publicly.
The things FDR's opponents said about him, and his wife, and his children, and eventually even his dog, in public were bad enough. What they said about him in private was well over the line.
Charles Edward Coughlin was born on October 25, 1891 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He became a priest in Toronto, and settled in Detroit. In 1926, he began his career as "The Radio Priest," with radio station WJR in Detroit, 760 on the AM dial, the station that would later become famous for broadcasting the games of baseball's Detroit Tigers, broadcasting his sermons from the National Shrine of the Little Flower, in suburban Royal Oak, Michigan.
His show was picked up by WGAR in Cleveland, which, like WJR -- and the NFL's Detroit Lions -- was owned by George A. Richards, under the banner of Goodwill Stations. By 1938, they had 58 affiliates. Regional networks like the Yankee Network and the Colonial Network in New England, the Mohawk Network in New York State, and the Quaker State Network in Pennsylvania, all in places with heavy Catholic populations, carried Coughlin's show.
At first, he seemed like a liberal. At the time, the Ku Klux Klan, at least in the North, were more interested in discriminating against Catholics than against black people. Father Coughlin took a stand against them. While denouncing Communism, as any good Catholic of the time would, he also denounced the predatory capitalists who had made Communism so attractive.
In 1932, he supported the Presidential campaign of the Democratic Party's nominee, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. In 1933, as FDR put his New Deal into place, Coughlin made a short film of one of his radio broadcasts, saying, "The New Deal is Christ's deal," and, "It is either Roosevelt or ruin." In January 1934, he testified before Congress, saying, "If Congress fails to back up the President in his monetary program, I predict a revolution in this country which will make the French Revolution look silly!"
But he began to turn. On November 11, 1934, he founded the National Union of Social Justice, which opposed FDR. It wasn't exactly consistent: In some areas, he thought Roosevelt went too far in his methods of alleviating poverty; in others, he thought Roosevelt didn't go far enough.
Because they were opposed to Communism, he supported the Fascist governments of Adolf Hitler in Germany, Benito Mussolini in Italy, and, from 1936 onward, Francisco Franco in Spain. At the time, Communism was widely seen to be a Jewish movement, and his broadcasts became more anti-Semitic in nature.
In one 1935 show, he said the Jews were their own worst enemies; in another that year, he said the Jews' 3 biggest enemies were Bernard Baruch, one of the world's leading financiers, and probably the most famous Jewish person in America at that point; Eddie Cantor, star Jewish entertainer; and the Hollywood studios, many run by Jews, including Louis B. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures.
(To be fair, Mayer was a dictator in his studio, and Cohn was so despised in the industry that, when Cohn was asked why he didn't name his son after himself, he said he didn't want his son to be known as "Son of a Bitch Junior.")
But Coughlin also believed that unregulated capitalism was a Jewish plot. And he came to believe that FDR's policies didn't regulate capitalism enough -- which would seem to fly in the face of his attacks on Communism. He began to call the President "Franklin Double-Crossing Roosevelt."
He was unable to help defeat Roosevelt in 1936. By 1938, he was frequently denying that he was anti-Semitic, because he was frequently being called that. On November 20, 1938, WMCA in New York broadcast a homily entitled "Persecution: Jewish and Christian." In it, Coughlin denounced Jews in language that might have been lifted from the Nazi publication Der Stürmer.
An announcer broke in to distance the station from Coughlin’s talk. "Unfortunately, Father Coughlin has uttered many misstatements of fact,: he informed listeners. Donald Flamm, the president of WMCA, later pledged "not to permit a repetition" of Coughlin’s inflammatory remarks, words that were "calculated to stir up religious and racial hatred and dissension in this country."
By 1939, and the dawn of World War II in Europe, Coughlin was no longer being taken seriously. In 1942, the Archbishop of Detroit ordered Coughlin to stop making political statements. By the time he retired from active preaching in 1966, he was a relic. He died in 1979, at age 88.
*
November 11, 1934 was a Sunday. These games were played in the NFL:
* The New York Giants beat the Green Bay Packers, 17-3 at the Polo Grounds.
* The football version of the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Eagles, 10-7 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia.
* The Chicago Bears beat the Boston Redskins, 21-0 at Fenway Park in Boston.
* The Detroit Lions beat the Chicago Cardinals, 17-13 at Wrigley Field in Chicago. I can find no reason for why the Cardinals weren't playing at their usual home, Comiskey Park.
* And the St. Louis Gunners beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-0 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. It was the Gunners' 1st game after the sale of the football version of the Cincinnati Reds was approved a delay. The Gunners would play 2 more games, losing them both, before folding.
Such was the state of the early NFL. In 1926, it had 22 teams. The next year, despite the country being in prosperity, they were down to 12. By 1932, they were down to 8. Of those 8, by 1937, 1 had folded, and 2 had moved.
Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was 1 game played in the NHL, and it was in Father Coughlin's adopted hometown: The Boston Bruins beat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-2 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.
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