Jesuit vs. Nazis

"Hate Bus" riders couldn't keep Twomey from speaking out

I’ve been posting less frequently here due to needing to complete my Sacred Heart project by Easter, but I hope to have more time to focus on my biography of Father Louis J. Twomey, S.J., starting next month—that is, after the next leg of my Father Ed speaking tour. In the meantime, here’s another quick glimpse into the amazing things that I continue to uncover about that great-souled Jesuit.

One of my more exciting recent discoveries came via Father John Payne, S.J., who wrote his dissertation on Twomey in 1976. Father Payne sent me an interview he did about fifty years ago with Daniel Thompson, an African-American sociology professor at Dillard University in New Orleans who was good friends with Father Twomey and also knew Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In the interview, Thompson made reference to an NAACP event in New Orleans during the early 1960s where Father Twomey courageously stood up to “Nazis.” I thought at first that Thompson was using the term as a metonym for the White Citizens Council members who harassed integrationists. But then I searched the online newspaper archives to which your paid subscriptions help me subscribe, and I discovered that Father Twomey really did counter uniformed American Nazis. (If you’re a paid Matters Twomey subscriber, you’ll see the fruits of my archival research below; otherwise a paywall follows.)