When Philadelphia was the center of anti-Irish Catholic riots

Editor’s Note: Though known as the “City of Brotherly Love” and the home of this week’s Democratic National Convention, back in 1844 Philadelphia hosted one of the biggest ever anti Irish Catholic riots, known as the ”Bible Riots,” after rumors spread that Catholics were removing bibles from public schools. On Monday night at the DNC, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney (an Irish Catholic himself) used his time at the podium to take a look back at the days when the Know Nothings and Bible Riots darkened his city’s streets, and linked their attitudes and beliefs to those expressed last week at the Republican National Convention. "The Know-Nothings have returned, and last week, in Cleveland they vowed to take their country back this November," he said. "Whether our families came to this country in 1776 or 1976 or 2016, this country belongs to all of us.” The following is the history of the Bible Riots.

Zachary M. Schrag
July 27,2016 01:11 AM

In May and July 1844, Philadelphia suffered some of the bloodiest rioting of the antebellum period, as anti-immigrant mobs attacked Irish-American homes and Roman Catholic churches before being suppressed by the militia. The violence was part of a wave of riots that convulsed American cities starting in the 1830s. Yet even amid this tumult, they stand out for their duration, itself a product of nativist determination to use xenophobia for political gain. In the aftermath of the riots, shocked Philadelphians began debating new methods of maintaining order, a discussion that contributed to the consolidation of Philadelphia County in 1854.

Ethnic and religious antagonism had a long history in the city. Since the 1780s, Irish textile workers had come to Philadelphia after losing their jobs to mechanization in the British Isles. As early as 1828, when an off-duty watchman was killed after disparaging “bloody Irish transports,” Catholic presence had provoked anxiety among American- and Irish-born Protestants. In 1831, Irish Catholics battled along Fifth Street with Protestants celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne.

Anti-Catholic agitation increased in the early 1840s, organized in part around a perceived threat to the Bible in the public schools. Catholic Bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick (1796-1863), an Irish immigrant himself, objected to Protestant teachers’ leading students in singing Protestant hymns and requiring them to read from the King James Bible. Nativists used Kenrick’s complaints to gain followers. In 1842, dozens of Protestant clergymen formed the American Protestant Association to defend America from Romanism. In early 1843, editor Lewis Levin (1808-60) made the Daily Sun an organ for attacks against Catholicism and Catholic immigration, and in December of that year, he helped found a nativist political party called the American Republican Association.

Bible Reading as Flashpoint

In 1844, the Bible controversy intensified in the district of Kensington, a suburb to the northeast of Philadelphia City and home to many Irish immigrants, both Protestant and Catholic. In February, Hugh Clark (1796-1862), a Catholic school director there, suggested suspending Bible reading until the school board could devise a policy acceptable to Catholics and Protestants alike. Nativists saw this as a threat to their liberty and as a chance to mobilize voters, and they rallied by the thousands in Independence Square. On May 3, 1844 they rallied in Kensington itself but were chased away.

http://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/When-Philadelphia-was-the-center-of-anti-Irish-Catholic-riots.html