Tangled Roots:
the Green and the Black
Presentation
by Mary Ann Mathews and Tom O'Brien, scholars and affiliates of the
Gilder
Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
The question of acceptance as an American is a complex challenge for
all who come to America. This research considers the similar aspects of
the journey to Americanization taken by both Irish and African Americans.
In different time periods, each group experienced involuntary displacement
from their land of origin and oppression by institutionalized systems.
Though there is no comparison to the chattel slavery endured by African
Americans, both groups suffered discrimination in the United States and
finally, often grudgingly, different degrees of acceptance by that
society.
How to become an American is a question that bewildered many Irish
immigrants. As Joseph P. Kennedy so well asked in the 1930s, "But
look, I was born here. My children were born here. What the hell do I have
to do to be called an American?" African Americans have continued to
consider the same question. James Baldwin went to Paris in search of an
answer. Toni Morrison stated simply in 1986, "At no point in my life
have I ever felt as though I was an American."
Irish and African Americans faced particular challenges often in shared
circumstances. Irish immigrants who arrived during the famine period were
penniless and ill and did not have the resources to join immigrants from
other Northern European nations as they moved away from urban areas to the
opportunities of Middle America. Instead, many Irish immigrants stayed in
Boston, New York and other eastern cities, sharing economic disadvantages
and social status with the urban poor, particularly the African American
population as it emerged from slavery.
Both groups were outsiders. Skin color and religion isolated each from the
rest of America. Both maintained a cultural identity and a strong separate
community while pushing into American society. Each gained a place in
military service, sports and literary achievement. Both cultures
influenced the larger American culture.
This historical linking of Irish and African Americans in American
society continues to the present. The Irish developed political clout in
America by street fighting and bloc voting. African-Americans organized
and marched for the same civil and political rights. In turn, the African-
American Civil Rights movement became the model for civil rights activity
in Northern Ireland. Yet as recently as this past summer, the Irish
shamrock became controversial as a perceived deterrent to multicultural
acceptance.
The history of Irish success in America is tangled with the struggle of
African-Americans for freedom and acceptance. How did one group move
toward acceptance more quickly than the other? Why didn’t the two groups
join together? What could we learn from knowing more about this shared
history?
