BISMARCK, ND — Droning organ music filled the airwaves on Sunday, Feb. 4, 1940, the night 30 million Americans usually tuned their radios to Charles Coughlin, the Catholic “Radio Priest,” and his weekly show.

“Coughlin silence Sunday mystifies air listeners,” a headline in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead reported.

“Radio station charges Coughlin broke faith on inciting passages in speech, charging that Father Charles E. Coughlin had broken a promise to delete from his address last Sunday passages ‘calculated to incite religious and racial strife in America,’” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

The baroque melody on Coughlin’s final broadcast was interrupted three times with cryptic announcements, and then his radio career was over, leaving his followers stunned, shocked, and in som

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