Dressing up like fiendish characters such as Michael Myers or Art the Clown might scare trick-or-treaters this Halloween, but it’s most likely not going to run someone afoul with the law.

But there is one type of costume in Alabama that is technically illegal and has been for over 59 years.

Fraudulently pretending “by garb or outward array” to be a priest, nun, rabbi or minister or any member of the clergy in Alabama can lead to a $500 fine, and even jail time. But while the law sometimes gets attention online every October in “did you know about this quirky law in your state” stories, its origins have nothing to do with preventing Halloween tomfoolery.

It originated from something more nefarious than that.

Introduced and approved in the spring of 1965, the state law provides a glimpse of the turmoil in Alabama surrounding civil rights, the Catholic church’s opposition to the Selma-to-Montgomery marches and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s involvement, and state government’s almost universal allegiance to famed segregationist Gov. George Wallace and his unwillingness to protect protesters including members of the clergy.

“Almost certainly it was the times that explain the story,” said Wayne Flynt, a historian of Alabama state political history, adding that “1965 was perhaps the peak of the George Wallace vs. the USA epoch. At a time when part of his mantra was the North’s assault on southern folk ways and conservative traditions, this would have given him a relatively simple way of defending Southern religion from parody and ridicule.”

Origins of a costume ban

The original legislation that led to the clergy costume ban was introduced as H. 221 on March 22, 1965, according to that year’s Alabama House Journal. It was sponsored by a host of Mobile’s state lawmakers at the time led by main sponsor Rep. Maurice “Casey” Downing, a staunch Catholic who was best known for his efforts to bring parimutuel greyhound racing to Mobile in the early 1970s.

The legislation surfaced during the first of two special sessions called by Wallace that year. The primary focus during the spring legislative session was to focus on educational funding, and Wallace’s proposal to provide free textbooks.

In the background, however, was the Selma-to-Montgomery marches occurring throughout the month of March and the national attention coursing through Alabama.

Three days after H. 221 was introduced, the Legislature went into recess because 4,000 marchers or otherwise known as foot soldiers, along with King, descended on the Alabama State Capitol following a five-day, 54-mile non-violent protest march from Selma. The march occurred a few weeks after the “Bloody Sunday” encounter hundreds of marchers had with Alabama State Troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

King addressed the crowd in Montgomery by saying, “there never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes.”

Among those marching with the Black protesters were priests and nuns, and the attention from religious figures joining King drew the ire of the Mobile-Birmingham Catholic Diocese and then-Archbishop Thomas Toolen.

Toolen, then 79, expressed his disapproval during a March 19, 1965, speech during a St. Patrick’s Day banquet at the Hotel Admiral Semmes over the priests and nuns from outside Alabama participating in the civil rights demonstrations. He also charged King of “trying to divide our people” and said what was occurring in Alabama is “a great injustice,” according to Mobile Register articles.

The Rev. Thomas Weiss, an 88-year-old retired Catholic priest who was an assistant director of Catholic Charities and a youth director in Birmingham in 1965, said he suspects Toolen likely approached Downing about having the law adopted.

“Toolen was a politician,” Weiss said about the archbishop who presided over the Catholic Church in Mobile until 1969. “He knew how to get things done politically.”

Archbishop’s role

Toolen’s opposition to the civil rights demonstrations was a bit of a reversal from his support of integration and civil rights. He is often credited for opening churches, orphanages and hospitals that were meant to minister exclusively to Black residents. In 1950, he oversaw construction of St. Martin de Porres Hospital in Mobile, which was the first hospital in Alabama where African American doctors could work alongside their white colleagues.

“He opened the first three hospitals (in Alabama) where Black doctors could practice surgery,” Weiss said, referring to Holy Family Hospital in Birmingham, once the Magic City’s center only hospital where Black doctors could practice during Jim Crow, St. Jude Hospital in Montgomery, and St. Martin de Porres.

Toolen backed an ending of racial segregation at Catholic schools in Alabama in 1964, the year before the Selma-to-Montgomery demonstrations and the eventual passage of the Voting Rights Act.

But Toolen’s views about the civil rights marchers was more aligned with Wallace and his legislative supporters. Universally, they were opposed to the demonstrations that were engulfing Alabama at the time. Wallace, himself, was accused by President Lyndon Johnson for not taking the responsibility to guarantee protection for the foot soldiers.

“They ask me,” Toolen is quoted in a front-page article of the March 18, 1965, Mobile Register. “Why do these priests and sisters come from other states and Canada to take part in these demonstrations? Certainly, the sisters are out of place in these demonstrations; their place is at home, doing God’s work. I would say the same thing is true of the priests.”

He added, “What do they know about conditions in the South? I am afraid they are only ‘eager beavers’ who feel there is a holy cause.”

Toolen’s statements during the banquet in Mobile resonated among the pro-Wallace lawmakers who dominated Montgomery. A few days later, members of the Alabama Senate adopted a resolution praising the archbishop for demonstrating in a “realistic way … his profound understanding of the root causes of a tragic time.”

Other lawmakers also jumped on board with blasting the out-of-state clergy who were joining King and the marchers. The Alabama Legislature, also in March 1965, adopted a resolution criticizing the conduct of “some out-of-state ministers taking part in Alabama civil rights demonstrations,” a Mobile Register story states. It was introduced by Rep. Guy Young, a 47-year-old Missionary Baptist preacher and the only ordained minister in the Legislature at the time, according to accounts in the Mobile Register. The resolution was adopted without opposition in both the House and Senate.

Catholic connections

Very little was written about H. 221, and Downing’s papers at the University of South Alabama contain no references to the legislation. None of the Mobile area lawmakers who sponsored the legislation are still living.

Downing did introduce to the House Journal a letter written by Rev. H. A. Lipscomb, an associate chancellor of the Mobile-Birmingham Catholic Diocese at the time, who was critical of “nuns and priests in the civil rights activities in Alabama.”

The letter, according to an article in the Mobile Register, was published in Catholic Week, the official publication of the archdiocese for Alabama and Northwest Florida. It accuses the Catholic priests and nuns who have appeared in the demonstrations of having “insulted, embarrassed, and humiliated our beloved archbishop,” who was Toolen.

Lipscomb, according to the article, demanded an apology from the “outside priests and nuns who he contends have come to Alabama to be ‘religious heroes,’” the newspaper article states.

Wallace signed the legislation into law on April 30, 1965, to little fanfare, on the final day of the first special session.

The law has remained in the books since then, though few are even aware of it including the Archdiocese of Mobile.

“I am certainly unaware of the law and have known many children who have dressed as priests, nuns or other religious figures on Halloween,” said Monsignor William Skoneki, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Mobile. “To my knowledge, none of them have been arrested. In fact, as Halloween takes place on the night before All Saints Day, many children will also dress as Catholic saints on November 1, and doing so is a wonderful way to celebrate our Catholic faith.”

‘Outdated’ law

Priest, nun, and rabbi outfits can be bought at costume shops throughout Alabama, including at Wicked Halloween LLC in Boaz, a year-round store that also sells clergy outfits.

“It’s obviously outdated,” said Robyn Brown, owner of Wicked Halloween, about the state law. “I have churches purchasing religious costumes. Vacation Bible schools come in and purchase outfits every year, for plays and events. We sell them at Easter time, Christmas.”

Jess Brown, a retired political science professor at Athens State University and a longtime observer of state politics, said the approval of the 1965 law underscores a problem that continues to exist nearly six decades later in the Alabama Legislature: A haste response by elected officials to adopt something too quickly.

“It’s in response to a small group, and is put into code, and sometimes unfortunately into the criminal code, and these things remain dormant forever until there is a situation where there is an attempted enforcement, and it’s viewed as laughable,” Brown said.

Alabama, like many states, criminalizes impersonating a police officer. But the law doesn’t prohibit dressing up like one, unlike the state law prohibiting people who dress up as a member of the clergy.

Michele Ramsey, an associate professor of communication arts and sciences and women’s studies at Penn State Berks in Reading, Penn., said she would be surprised if anyone ever was arrested or ticketed for wearing a clergy costume. It’s unclear if any tickets, after 1965, were ever issued for doing so.

“There’s a decent argument to be made that the law protects religion, which shouldn’t be ruled as Constitutional, in my view,” said Ramsey, a Halloween aficionado who has taught a course called “The Rhetoric of American Horror Films.”

She, like other Halloween experts, was unaware of the Alabama law.

“There are a number of tests the courts can apply to test laws in the area of the First Amendment, but generally speaking, the state would need to prove that, on balance, the harm caused by what happens when people dress up as clergy outweighs the harm in taking away this one area of protected speech,” Ramsey said.

It’s unlikely to ever get to that point, Brown said. The state law, while on the books, is probably another testimonial to the opposition of Civil Rights in 1965, and support for Wallace whose authority in Alabama was at its strongest, and whose national profile was continuing to climb before his third-party presidential run in 1968.

“George was at his heyday,” Brown said.