Today, Louisville, Ky., has three private agencies that actively help refugees get out of troubled lands, and the the city has gained national attention for interfaith endeavors like its annual Festival of Faiths.
But it wasn’t always this way in Louisville. On Aug. 6, 1855, anti-immigrant riots against both Irish and German immigrants broke out in an event known as Bloody Monday. Members of the American Know-Nothing Party planned these riots on Election Day in Irish neighborhoods.
By the end of the day, nearly two dozen Irish and German were dead and a row of frame houses off of West Main Street, owned by a Patrick Quinn, were burned. The local Ancient Order of Hibernians marks the event each year on St. Patrick’s Day, as well as on the anniversary of Bloody Monday.
The Cause of Bloody Monday Still Debated
“We don’t argue about what happened in the earthquakes of 1811-12,” said historian and former Louisville Metro Councilman Tom Owen, according to the LouisvilleIrish.com.
We don’t argue about what happened in the 1937 flood or the tornado of 1890. But professionals debate both the causation and the result of Bloody Monday.”
George Prentice, then editor of the Louisville Daily Journal newspaper, a predecessor of today’s Courier-Journal, was accused of inflaming the mobs in his editorials in the days leading up to the riots. He denounced the “most pestilent influence of the foreign swarms” loyal to the pope.
Prentice has literary achievements and there is a statue of him outside the Louisville Free Public Library downtown.
Did the Media Incite Bloody Monday Rioting?
Some argue that Prentice gets too much blame, and it was poor public safety planning at overcrowded voting places that created a climate for riots.
Periodic campaigns to remove Prentice’s statue led to a plaque being added that described his role in Bloody Monday.
He is “part of the past that we have to live with, but I don’t think that’s our legacy,” said Courier-Journal Forum editor Keith Runyon, who edited a historical supplement on the newspaper’s 125th anniversary in 1993. The publication as it was in 1855 “was about as far as you can get from The Courier-Journal of 2005,” Runyon said, noting that the paper’s concerns on its 125th included minority rights, assimilation and fair treatment of immigrants.
What Remains of Bloody Monday
Bloody Monday leaves an indelible mark on Louisville, and its leaders are left with only sketchy, partisan accounts of what appeared in 19th century newspapers and official records.
Despite the historic disagreements, the Irish beyond Louisville have also not forgotten that ominous day. Former Taoiseach Enda Kenney asked President Donald Trump about the status of his country’s 50,000 undocumented immigrants living and working in the U.S. on his 2017 pre-St. Patrick’s Day visit.
