James Edwin Coyle (March 23, 1873 – August 11, 1921) was a Catholic priest who was murdered in Birmingham, Alabama, by a Ku Klux Klan member for performing an interracial marriage.

In 1904 Bishop Allen appointed Coyle to succeed Patrick O'Reilly as pastor of St. Paul's Church (later Cathedral) in Birmingham, where he was well received and loved by the congregation.

[3] On August 11, 1921, Father Coyle was shot in the head on the porch of St. Paul's Rectory by E. R. Stephenson, a Southern Methodist Episcopal minister and a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

[9] The outcome of the murder trial of Father Coyle's assassin had a chilling impact on Catholics, who were the targets of Klan violence for many years to come.

After the trial, there followed such a strong feeling of revulsion among the right-minded who before had been bogged down in blindness and indifference that slowly and almost unnoticeably the Ku Klux Klan and their ilk began to lose favor among the people".