COUGHLIN, CHARLES

Charles Coughlin (October 25, 1891–October 27, 1979) was a Roman Catholic priest and a radio pioneer who used the new medium to broadcast popular but anti-Semitic and isolationist views during the Depression. Coughlin was born in Hamilton, Ontario, to Thomas and Amelia Mahoney Coughlin, pious Catholics who immersed their son in the Church. Charles attended Saint Michael's College in Toronto, where he established himself as a strong student and a talented public speaker. The school was run by the Basilan Fathers, an order that stressed social action and justice. After graduating in 1911, Coughlin entered Saint Basil's Seminary in Toronto. He became an ordained priest in 1916.

After seven years teaching at Assumption College outside of Windsor, Ontario, Coughlin was assigned as a parish priest to the Archdiocese of Detroit, Michigan. He served as an assistant pastor in both Kalamazoo and Detroit before securing his own parish in North Branch, Michigan. After six months, Coughlin was moved to the growing community of Royal Oak, Michigan. Here, in 1926, Coughlin arranged for a loan of $79,000 and over-saw the building of a new church that would seat six hundred congregants. To bolster his new church, which was known as the Shrine of the Little Flower, Coughlin purchased radio time and began broadcasting, at times right from his pulpit. By 1928, Coughlin's popular shows had attracted numerous new congregants and pulled in enough money to fund the construction of a larger church with an 111-foot granite tower.

Detroit was one of the first cities to feel the effects of the Great Depression because the automobile industry, which was the city's main source of employment, was hit hard by the economic downturn. Coughlin's Sunday radio show, which by 1929 was broadcast by stations in Chicago and Cincinnati as well as Detroit, eased the pain of the Depression for many listeners. In 1930, Coughlin signed a deal with CBS to broadcast his Golden Hour of the Little Flower to a potential audience of up to forty million listeners. When Coughlin's increasingly controversial views caused CBS to refuse to renew his contract in 1931, he established contracts with individual radio stations and continued to reach millions of listeners. Coughlin's magazine, Social Justice, which was launched in 1936 and published until 1942, also claimed six hundred thousand subscribers.

Coughlin's early broadcasts were delivered in a mainstream rhetorical style. By 1930, however, Coughlin's style had changed, and he exhibited a growing obsession with the international banking industry, which he blamed for many of the nation's problems and which he considered the bastion of Jews. He initially supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt and considered himself, erroneously, to be one of Roosevelt's key advisors. But despite the efforts of Joseph Kennedy to bring the men together, the relationship was rocky at best. In 1934, Coughlin spearheaded the National Union for Social Justice, which was built around support of an annual living wage for workers, greater profit for farmers, and central control of the monetary system. Coughlin insisted the group was a lobbying organization only and not a third party. Yet in 1936, Coughlin, along with Dr. Francis E. Townsend and Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, founded the Union Party. The party was based on similar principles as the NUSJ and supported the presidential bid of William Lemke of North Dakota. The party pulled in only 2 percent of the national vote, greatly hurting Coughlin's credibility. By 1938, Coughlin's radio broadcasts had become blatantly isolationist and anti-Semitic in tone and content, and he expressed sympathy for Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Although he continued to attract millions of listeners, Coughlin bowed to church pressure and stopped broadcasting in 1940. Under the order of his bishop, Coughlin ceased all political activity by 1942, although he was allowed to continue serving as a parish priest until 1966. He died in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1979.

COUGHLIN, CHARLES

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