The university of notre dame about how al smith and john kennedy dealt with the issue in their president ial campaigns. John mcgreevy from the university of notre dame, your book which came out a few years ago, whats the premise behind it . What did you learn . I wanted to look at how american ideas of freedom intersected with the catholic global tradition and what i learned is there were moments of conflict and moments of overlap. In the 19th century there was conflict over slavery. But lots of overlap in efforts to reform the economy. There was overlap in the 50s on ideas about americanization and mention over issues around sexuality, divorce, a lot of the kind of cultural issues of the last 30 years. More than 90 years ago, al smith ran for president. First catholic on the ticket. Why was that significant and who was al smith . Al smith was an immigrant kid from new york city. Irish and german. Never got beyond the eighth grade. By the 1920s, catholics are a significant percentage o
Captioning performed by vitac its a spy story, its a humanitarian story, its a political and diplomatic story. Hoover was not very diplomatic by nature. The interesting thing is lou said later on that he was never the same after belgium. What he saw particularly the children. Remember, he was an orphan. All his life, there was something about hoover, he was not naturally gifted in social interaction. But with children, there was a different person. And belgium stamped him, for better or worse. The other remarkable thing again, building on what we said earlier, it was all voluntary. He appealed to the American People. He said, again, the American People, if you tell them what you need, they will give you their shirt off their backs. And there is a you go to west branch, the records are there. It is its a remarkable story there was one group, i think there was a kansas club of new york, who were going to build a clubhouse. And instead of building the clubhouse, they gave hoover the 500,0
Now, on American History tv, look at challenges faced by catholic politicians. We will hear from a professor of notre dame about how our smith and john kennedy dealt with the issue in their president ial campaigns. Your book came out what is the premise behind . What did you learn . I wanted to look at how american ideas of freedom intersected with the catholic global tradition what i learned is there were moments of conflict and overlap. In the 19th century there was conflict over slavery. There is lots of overlap in the economy. There was overlap in the 50s on ideas about americanization. There were issues around sexuality, divorce, a lot of the cultural issues of the last 30 years. More than 90 years ago, al smith ran for president. First catholic on the ticket. Why was that significant . Al smith was an immigrant kid from new york city. He was irish. He never got beyond eighth grade. By the 1920s, he runs in 1928, catholics are pretty significant percent of the population. They fac