Coordinates	35°0′41.69″N135°46′5.47″N
group	Irish Americans ''Gael-Mheiriceánaigh''
poptime	Self-identified "Irish" 36,278,332 1.2% of the US population
popplace	Throughout the entire Northeast, the West Coast, South and Midwest, cities of Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco
langs	American English, Irish
rels	Roman CatholicPresbyterianEpiscopalian (Anglicanism)BaptistMethodist| related Irish people, Irish British, Irish Canadians, Irish Mexicans, Scottish Americans, Welsh Americans, Cornish Americans, Scots-Irish Americans }}

Irish Americans () are citizens of the United States who can trace their ancestry to Ireland. A total of 36,278,332 Americans—estimated at 11.9% of the total population—reported Irish ancestry in the 2008 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Roughly another 3.5 million (or about another 1.2% of Americans) identified more specifically with Scotch-Irish ancestry.

The only self-reported ancestral group larger than Irish Americans is German Americans. The Irish are widely dispersed in terms of geography, and occupations. Irish American political leaders have played a major role in local and national politics since before the American Revolutionary War: eight Irish Americans signed the United States Declaration of Independence, and 22 American Presidents, from Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama, have been at least partly of Irish ancestry. (See "American Presidents with Irish ancestry" below.)

Irish immigration to America

18th to mid-19th century

According to the ''Dictionary of American History'', approximately "50,000 to 100,000 Irishmen, over 75 percent of them Catholic, came to America in the 1600s, while 100,000 more Irish Catholics arrived in the 1700s." Indentured servitude was an especially common way of affording migration, and in the 1740s the Irish made up nine out of ten indentured servants in some colonial regions.

Most colonial settlers of Ulster origin came to be known in America as the "Scotch-Irish". They were descendants of Scottish and English tenant farmers who had been settled in Ireland by the British government during the 17th-century Plantation of Ulster. An estimated 250,000 migrated to America during the colonial era. The Scotch-Irish settled mainly in the colonial "back country" of the Appalachian Mountain region, and became the prominent ethnic strain in the culture that developed there. The descendants of Scotch-Irish settlers had a great influence on the later culture of the United States through such contributions as American folk music, Country and Western music, and stock car racing, which became popular throughout the country in the late 20th century.

Irish immigrants of this period participated in significant numbers in the American Revolution, leading one British major general to testify at the House of Commons that "half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland." Irish Americans signed the foundational documents of the United States—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—and, beginning with Andrew Jackson, served as President.

The early Ulster immigrants and their descendants at first usually referred to themselves simply as "Irish," without the qualifier "Scotch." It was not until more than a century later, following the surge in Irish immigration after the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, that the descendants of the Protestant Irish began to refer to themselves as "Scotch-Irish" to distinguish them from the predominantly Catholic, and largely destitute, wave of immigrants from Ireland in that era. The two groups had little initial interaction in America, as the 18th century Ulster immigrants were predominantly Protestant and had become settled largely in upland regions of the American interior, while the huge wave of 19th-century Catholic immigrant families settled primarily in the Northeast and Midwest port cities such as Boston, New York, or Chicago. However, beginning in the early 19th century, many Irish migrated individually to the interior for work on large-scale infrastructure projects such as canals and, later in the century, railroads.

Irish settlement in the South

During the colonial period, the Scotch-Irish settled in the southern Appalachian backcountry and in the Carolina piedmont. They became the primary cultural group in these areas, and their descendants were in the vanguard of westward movement through Virginia into Tennessee and Kentucky, and thence into Arkansas, Missouri and Texas. By the 19th century, through intermarriage with settlers of English and German ancestry, the descendants of the Scotch-Irish lost their identification with Ireland. "This generation of pioneers...was a generation of Americans, not of Englishmen or Germans or Scotch-Irish."

Irish Catholics concentrated in a few medium-sized cities, where they were highly visible, especially in Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans. They became local leaders in the Democratic party, generally favored preserving the Union in 1860, but became staunch Confederates after secession in 1861.

In 1820 Irish-born John England became the first Catholic bishop in the mainly Protestant city of Charleston, South Carolina. During the 1820s and '30s, England defended the Catholic minority against Protestant prejudices. In 1831 and 1835, he established free schools for free African American children. Inflamed by the propaganda of the American Anti-Slavery Society, a mob raided the Charleston post office in 1835 and the next day turned its attention to England's school. England led Charleston's "Irish Volunteers" to defend the school. Soon after this, however, all schools for "free blacks" were closed in Charleston, and England acquiesced.

Beginning as unskilled laborers, Irish Catholics in the South achieved average or above average economic status by 1900. David T. Gleeson wrote:

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Mid-19th century and later

Irish immigration had greatly increased beginning in the 1820s due to the need for labor in canal building, lumbering, and civil construction works in the Northeast. The large Erie Canal project was one such example where Irishmen were many of the laborers. Small but tight communities developed in growing cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Providence.

From 1820 to 1860, 1,956,557 Irish arrived, 75% of these after the Great Irish Famine (or ''The Great Hunger'', ) of 1845–1852, struck. The Famine hurt Irish men and women alike, especially those poorest or without land. It altered the family structures of Ireland because fewer people could afford to marry and raise children, causing many to adopt a single lifestyle. Consequently, many Irish citizens were less bound to family obligations and could more easily migrate to the United States in the following decade.

Of the total Irish migrants to the U.S. from 1820 to 1860, many died crossing the ocean due to disease and dismal conditions of what became known as coffin ships.

Most Irish immigrants to the United States favored large cities because they could create their own communities for support and protection in a new environment. Another reason for this trend was that Irish immigrants could not afford to move inland and had to settle close to the ports at which they arrived. Cities with large numbers of Irish immigrants included Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, as well as Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In 1910, there were more people in New York City of Irish heritage than Dublin's whole population, and even today, many of these cities still retain a substantial Irish American community. Mill towns such as Lawrence, Lowell, and Pawtucket attracted many Irish women in particular. The best urban economic opportunities for unskilled Irish women and men included “factory and millwork, domestic service, and the physical labor of public work projects.”

Irish women’s initial experiences in the United States were largely shaped by the types of roles they fulfilled in their homeland. Although Irish culture gave more authority to husbands and fathers, it simultaneously recognized female power. In most cases in Ireland, wives handled money within the family, and a large number of them even worked in cities away from the home in domestic work or sales. Although older women asserted this kind of power, daughters were seen as less valuable than sons due to the patriarchal nature of society. As a result, young women had little hesitation in migrating, and their families saved money in order help finance the trip abroad. Limited social and economic opportunities for daughters in Ireland in the second half of the nineteenth century caused a wave of young women to search for better possibilities in the United States. The pull factors of the United States, especially job availability, caused Irish women to view their “journey with optimism, in a forward-looking assessment that in America they could achieve a status that they never could have at home.”

The female exodus of the mid-nineteenth century stands out in American history as the only major group of immigrants that was over fifty percent women. Because of the decrease in marriages in Ireland, single Irish women, called “unprovided-for ‘girls’”, traveled to the United States to find employment and/or start families of their own. Frustrated by the hardships of Irish farm life and alone in a new country without the help of other family members, female immigrants tended to settle in urban areas to find work. Occupational options, such as domestic work, white-collar work, nursing and teaching, granted more authority to young women in the United States than in Ireland. Recognizing their own successes as single women, most decided to postpone marriage and taught their daughters to do the same. In fact, the majority of the most successful Irish women in America never married, and a significant number of them were nuns.

Employment, not marriage, continued to be Irish women’s priority throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, and women outnumbered men in cities and mill towns where they worked in “factory jobs and millwork, domestic service and, later in the century, clerical and shop work.” However, Catholicism preached the centrality of women in the home, and Irish immigrants still respected the Church as the most important institution in their lives. Consequently, Irish women still pursued marriage and bore many children as long as they could meet economic needs. Couples that could not support large families often had many children regardless of their economic status, and due to discrimination against Irish men in the workplace and their tendency to desert their wives, women usually bore the brunt of family responsibility.

After 1860, Irish immigration continued, with another 1,916,547 arriving by 1900, mainly due to family reunification, mostly to the industrial town and cities where Irish American neighborhoods had previously been established. During the American Civil War, Irish Americans volunteered in high numbers for the Union army, and at least thirty-eight Union regiments had the word "Irish" in their title. However, conscription was resisted by the Irish and others as an imposition on liberty. When the conscription law was passed in 1863, draft riots erupted in New York. The New York draft coincided with the efforts of Tammany Hall to enroll Irish immigrants as citizens so they could vote in local elections. Many such immigrants suddenly discovered they were now expected to fight for their new country. The Irish, employed primarily as laborers, were usually unable to afford the $300 as a "commutation fee" to procure exemption from service, while more established New Yorkers receiving better pay were able to hire substitutes and avoid the draft. Many of the recent immigrants viewed freed slaves as competition for scarce jobs, and as the reason why the Civil War was being fought. African Americans who fell into the mob's hands were often beaten, tortured, or killed, including one man, William Jones, who was attacked by a crowd of 400 with clubs and paving stones, then hung from a tree and set alight. The Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue, which provided shelter for hundreds of children, was attacked by a mob, although the largely Irish-American police force was able to secure the orphanage for enough time to allow orphans to escape.

In 1871, New York's Orange Riots were incited by Irish Protestants celebrating the Battle of the Boyne with parades through predominantly Catholic neighborhoods. 63 citizens, mostly Irish Catholics, were massacred in the resulting police-action.

Language

Irish immigrants fell into three linguistic categories: monolingual Irish speakers, bilingual speakers of both Irish and English, and monolingual English speakers. Estimates indicate that there were around 400,000 Irish speakers in the United States in the 1890s, located primarily in New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Yonkers. The Irish speaking population of New York reached its height in this period, when speakers of Irish numbered between 70,000 and 80,000. This number declined during the early 20th century, dropping to 40,000 in 1939, 10,000 in 1979 and 5,000 in 1995. According to the latest census, the Irish language ranks 66th out of the 322 languages spoken today in the U.S., with over 25,000 speakers. New York State has the most Irish Gaelic speakers, and Massachusetts the highest percentage, of the 50 states. Daltaí na Gaeilge, a nonprofit Gaelic language advocacy group based in Elberon, New Jersey, estimated that about 30,000 speak the language as of 2006. This, the organization claimed, has seen an increase from only a few thousand at the time of its founding in 1981.

Occupations

Before 1800 Irish Protestant immigrants became farmers; many headed to the frontier where land was cheap or free and it was easier to start a farm or herding operation.

After 1840 most Irish Catholic immigrants went directly to the cities, mill towns, and railroad or canal construction sites in the east coast. In upstate New York, the Great Lakes area, the Midwest and the Far West, many became farmers or ranchers. In the East, male Irish laborers were hired by Irish contractors to work on canals, railroads, streets, sewers and other construction projects, particularly in New York state and New England. Large numbers moved to New England mill towns, such as Holyoke, Lowell, Taunton, Brockton, Fall River, and Milford, Massachusetts, where owners of textile mills welcomed the new low-wage workers. They took the jobs previously held by Yankee women known as Lowell girls. A large fraction of Irish Catholic women took jobs as maids in hotels and private households.

Large numbers of unemployed or very poor Irish Catholics lived in squalid conditions in the new city slums and tenements. The Irish were the poorest of all immigrant groups that arrived in the United States in the nineteenth century, and many women especially suffered as a result of being abandoned or widowed. Consequently, there were many cases of mental and physical illnesses, as well as alcohol abuse and instances of crime, among women of Irish neighborhoods.

Single, Irish immigrant women quickly assumed jobs in high demand but for very low pay. The majority of them worked in mills, factories, and private households and were considered the bottommost group in the female job hierarchy, alongside African American women. Workers considered mill work in cotton textiles and needle trades the least desirable because of the dangerous and unpleasant conditions. Factory work was primarily a worst case scenario for widows or daughters of families already involved in the industry. Unlike many other immigrants, Irish women preferred domestic work because it was constantly in great demand among middle- and upper-class American households. Although wages differed across the country, they were consistently higher than those of the other occupations available to Irish women and could often be negotiated because of the lack of competition. Also, the working conditions in well-off households were significantly better than those of factories or mills, and free room and board allowed domestic servants to save money or send it back to their families in Ireland.

Despite some of the benefits of domestic work, Irish women’s job requirements were difficult and demeaning. Subject to their employers around the clock, Irish women cooked, cleaned, babysat and more. Because most servants lived in the home where they worked, they were separated from their communities. Most of all, the American stigma on domestic work suggested that Irish women were failures who had “about the same intelligence as that of an old grey-headed negro.” This quote illustrates how, in a period of extreme racism towards African Americans, society similarly viewed Irish immigrants as inferior beings.

Although the Irish Catholics started very low on the social status scale, by 1900, they had jobs and earnings about equal on average to their neighbors. After 1945, the Catholic Irish consistently ranked toward the top of the social hierarchy, thanks especially to their high rate of college attendance.

Police

After the early example of Charles Lynch, Irish immigrants quickly found employment in the police departments, fire departments and other public services of major cities, largely in the North East and around the Great Lakes. By 1855, according to New York Police Commissioner George W. Matsell, himself an Englishman having been born in Liverpool, England in 1806, almost 17 percent of the police department's officers were Irish-born (compared to 28.2 percent of the city) in a report to the Board of Alderman. In the 1860s more than half of those arrested in New York City were Irish born or of Irish descent but nearly half of the City's law enforcement officers were also Irish. By the turn of the 20th century, five out of six NYPD officers were Irish born or of Irish descent. As late as 1960s, even after minority hiring efforts, 42% of the NYPD were Irish Americans.

Irish Catholics continue to be prominent in the law enforcement community, especially in New England. When the Emerald Society of the Boston Police Department was formed in 1973, half of the city's police officers became members.

Teachers

Towards the end of the 19th century, schoolteaching became the most desirable occupation for the second generation of female Irish immigrants. Teaching was similar to domestic work for the first generation of Irish immigrants in that it was a popular job and one that relied on women’s decision to remain unmarried. The disproportionate number of Irish-American Catholic women who entered the job market as teachers in the late 19th century and early 20th century from Boston to San Francisco resulted from the Irish National school system. Irish schools prepared young single women to support themselves in a new country, which inspired them to instill the importance of education, college training, and a profession in their American-born daughters even more than in their sons. Evidence from schools in New York City illustrate the upward trend of Irish women as teachers; “as early as 1870, twenty percent of all schoolteachers were Irish women, and...by 1890 Irish females comprised two-thirds of those in the Sixth Ward schools.” Irish women attained admirable reputations as schoolteachers, which enabled some to pursue professions of even higher stature.

Nuns

Upon arrival in the United States, many Irish women became Catholic nuns and participated in the many American sisterhoods, especially those in St. Louis in Missouri, St. Paul in Minnesota, and Troy in New York. Additionally, the women who settled in these communities were often sent back to Ireland to recruit. This kind of religious lifestyle appealed to Irish female immigrants because they outnumbered their male counterparts and the Irish cultural tendency to postpone marriage often promoted gender separation and celibacy. Furthermore, “The Catholic church, clergy, and women religious were highly respected in Ireland,” making the sisterhoods particularly attractive to Irish immigrants. Nuns provided extensive support for Irish immigrants in large cities, especially in fields such as nursing and teaching but also through orphanages, widows’ homes, and housing for young, single women in domestic work. Although many Irish communities built parish schools run by nuns, the majority of Irish parents in large cities in the East enrolled their children in the public school system, where daughters or granddaughters of Irish immigrants had already established themselves as teachers.

Religion

Religion has been important to the Irish American identity in America, and continues to play a major role in their communities. Irish Americans today are both Catholic and Protestant. The Protestants' ancestors arrived primarily in the colonial era, while Catholics are primarily descended from immigrants of the 19th century. Irish leaders have been prominent in the Catholic Church in the United States for over 150 years. The Irish have been leaders in the Presbyterian and Methodist traditions, as well.

Surveys in the 1990s show that of Americans who identify themselves as "Irish", 51% said they were Protestant and 36% Catholic. In the South, Protestants account for 73% of those claiming Irish origins, while Catholics account for 19%. In the North, 45% of those claiming Irish origin are Catholic, while 39% are Protestant.

Irish Catholic and Irish Protestant relations

Between 1607 and 1820, the majority of emigrants from Ireland to America had been Protestants who were described simply as "Irish". The religious distinction became important after 1820, when large numbers of Irish Catholics began to emigrate to the United States. The descendants of the colonial Irish Protestant settlers from Ulster began thereafter to redefine themselves as "Scotch Irish", to stress their historic origins, and distanced themselves from Irish Catholics. By 1830, Irish diaspora demographics had changed rapidly, with over 60% of all Irish settlers in the US being Catholics from rural areas of Ireland.

Some Protestant Irish immigrants became active in explicitly anti-Catholic organizations such as the Orange Institution and the American Protective Association. However, participation in the Orange Institution was never as large in the United States as it was in Canada. In the early nineteenth century, the post-Revolutionary republican spirit of the new United States attracted exiled United Irishmen such as Theobald Wolf Tone and others. Most Protestant Irish immigrants in the first several decades of the nineteenth century were those who held to the republicanism of the 1790s, and who were unable to accept Orangeism. Loyalists and Orangemen made up a minority of Irish Protestant immigrants to the United States during this period. Most of the Irish loyalist emigration was bound for Upper Canada and the Canadian Maritime provinces, where Orange lodges were able to flourish under the British flag.

By 1870, when there were about 930 Orange lodges in the Canadian province of Ontario, there were only 43 in the entire eastern United States. These few American lodges were founded by newly arriving Protestant Irish immigrants in coastal cities such as Philadelphia and New York. These ventures were short-lived and of limited political and social impact, although there were specific instances of violence involving Orangemen between Catholic and Protestant Irish immigrants, such as the Orange Riots in New York City in 1824, 1870 and 1871.

The first "Orange riot" on record was in 1824, in Abingdon, NY, resulting from a 12 July march. Several Orangemen were arrested and found guilty of inciting the riot. According to the State prosecutor in the court record, "the Orange celebration was until then unknown in the country". The immigrants involved were admonished: "In the United States the oppressed of all nations find an asylum, and all that is asked in return is that they become law-abiding citizens. Orangemen, Ribbonmen, and United Irishmen are alike unknown. They are all entitled to protection by the laws of the country."

The later Orange riots of 1870 and 1871 killed nearly 70 people, and were fought out between Irish Protestant and Catholic immigrants. After this the activities of the Orange Order were banned for a time, the Order dissolved, and most members joined Masonic Orders. After 1871, there were no more riots between Irish Catholics and Protestants.

America offered a new beginning, and "...most descendents of the Ulster Presbyterians of the eighteenth century and even many new Protestant Irish immigrants turned their backs on all associations with Ireland and melted into the American Protestant mainstream."

Catholics

Irish priests (especially Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Capuchins) came to the large cities of the East in the 1790s, and when new dioceses were erected in 1808 the first bishop of New York was an Irishman in recognition of the contribution of the early Irish clergy.

In Boston 1810–40 there had been serious tensions between the bishop and the laity who wanted to control the local parishes. By 1845 the Catholic population in Boston had increased to 30,000 from around 5,000 in 1825, due to the influx of Irish immigrants. With the appointment of John B. Fitzpatrick as bishop in 1845 tensions subsided as the increasingly Irish Catholic community grew to support Fitzpatrick's assertion of the bishop's control of parish government.

In New York, Archbishop John Hughes (1797–1864), an Irish immigrant himself, was deeply involved in "the Irish question"—Irish independence from British rule. Hughes supported Daniel O'Connell's Catholic emancipation movement in Ireland, but rejected such radical and violent societies as the Young Irelanders and the National Brotherhood. Hughes also disapproved of American Irish radical fringe groups, urging immigrants to assimilate themselves into American life while remaining patriotic to Ireland 'only individually.' In Hughes's view, a large-scale movement to form Irish settlements in the western United States was too isolationist and ultimately detrimental to immigrants' success in the New World.

In the 1840s, Hughes crusaded for public funded Irish Schools modeled after the successful Irish Public School System in Lowell. Hughes denounced the Public School Society of New York as an extension of an Old-World struggle whose outcome was directed not by understanding of the basic problems but, rather, by mutual mistrust and violently inflamed emotions. For Irish Catholics, the motivation lay largely memory of British oppression, while their antagonists were dominated by the English Protestant historic phobia against papal interference in civil affairs. Because of the vehemence of this quarrel, the New York Legislature passed the Maclay Act in 1842, giving New York City an elective Board of Education empowered to build and supervise schools and distribute the education fund—but with the proviso that none of the money should go to the schools which taught religion. Hughes responded by building an elaborate parochial school system that stretched to the college level, setting a policy followed in other large cities. Efforts to get city or state funding failed because of vehement Protestant opposition to a system that rivaled the public schools.

Jesuits established a network of colleges in major cities, including Boston College, Fordham in New York, and Georgetown. Boston College was established in 1863 to appeal to urban Irish Catholics. It offered a rather limited intellectual curriculum, however, the priests at Boston College prioritizing spiritual and sacramental activities over intellectual pursuits. One consequence was that Harvard Law School would not admit Boston College graduates to its law school. Fordham, by contrast, was founded in 1841 and built a science building in 1886, lending more legitimacy to science in the curriculum there. In addition, a three-year bachelor of science degree was created. Modern Jesuit leadership in academia spread was not to became their hallmark across all institutions until the 20th century.

The Irish became prominent in the leadership of the Catholic Church in the U.S. by the 1850s—by 1890 there were 7.3 million Catholics in the U.S. and growing, and most bishops were Irish. As late as the 1970s, when Irish were 17% of American Catholics, they were 35% of the priests and 50% of the bishops, together with a similar proportion of presidents of Catholic colleges and hospitals.

Protestants

The Scotch-Irish who settled in the back country of colonial America were largely Presbyterians. The establishment of many settlements in the remote back-country put a strain on the ability of the Presbyterian Church to meet the new demand for qualified, college-educated clergy. Religious groups such as the Baptists and Methodists had no higher education requirement for their clergy to be ordained, and these groups readily provided ministers to meet the demand of the growing Scotch-Irish settlements. By about 1810, Baptist and Methodist churches were in the majority, and the descendants of the Scotch-Irish today remain predominantly Baptist or Methodist. They were avid participants in the revivals taking place during the Great Awakening from the 1740s to the 1840s. They take pride in their Irish heritage because they identify with the values ascribed to the Scotch-Irish who played a major role in the American Revolution and in the development of American culture. The strongly held religious beliefs of the Scotch-Irish led to the emergence of the Bible Belt, where evangelical Protestantism continues to play a large role today.

Presbyterians

New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton University, in 1746 in order to train ministers dedicated to their views. The college was the educational and religious capital of Scotch-Irish America. By 1808, loss of confidence in the college within the Presbyterian Church led to the establishment of the separate Princeton Theological Seminary, but deep Presbyterian influence at the college continued through the 1910s, as typified by university president Woodrow Wilson.

Out on the frontier, the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the Muskingum Valley in Ohio established the Muskingum College at New Concord in 1837. It was led by two clergymen, Samuel Wilson and Benjamin Waddle, who served as trustees, president, and professors during the first few years. During the 1840s and 1850s the college survived the rapid turnover of very young presidents who used the post as a stepping stone in their clerical careers, and in the late 1850s it weathered a storm of student protest. Under the leadership of L. B. W. Shryock during the Civil War, Muskingum gradually evolved from a local and locally controlled institution to one serving the entire Muskingum Valley. It is still affiliated with the Presbyterian church.

Brought up in a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian home, Cyrus McCormick of Chicago developed a strong sense of devotion to the Presbyterian Church. Throughout his later life he used the wealth gained through invention of the reaper to further the work of the church. His benefactions were responsible for the establishment in Chicago of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary of the Northwest (after his death renamed the McCormick Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church). He assisted the Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. He also supported a series of religious publications, beginning with the ''Presbyterian Expositor'' in 1857 and ending with the ''Interior'' (later called ''The Continent''), which his widow continued until her death.

Discrimination

Catholics and Protestants kept their distance; intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants was uncommon, and strongly discouraged by both ministers and priests.

After the large influx of Irish in the middle of the 19th century, many Catholic children were being educated in public schools. While officially nondenominational, the King James Version of the Bible was widely used in the classroom across the country, which Catholics were forbidden to read. Many Irish children complained that Catholicism was openly mocked in the classroom. In New York City the curriculum vividly portrayed Catholics, and specifically the Irish, as villainous. The Catholic clergyman John Hughes campaigned for public funding of Catholic education in response to the bigotry. While never successful in obtaining public money for private education, the debate with the city's Protestant elite spurred by Hughes' passionate campaign paved the way for the secularization of public education nationwide. In addition, Catholic higher education expanded during this period with colleges and universities that evolved into such institutions as Fordham University and Boston College providing alternatives to Irish who were not otherwise permitted to apply to other colleges.

Prejudice against Irish Catholics in the US reached a peak in the mid-1850s with the Know Nothing Movement, which tried to oust Catholics from public office. After a year of two of local success, the Know Nothing Party vanished.

After 1860—and well into the 20th century Protestants refused to hire them; "HELP WANTED - NO IRISH NEED APPLY" was in operation. They called these "the NINA signs". NINA signs were common in London in the early 19th century, and the memory of this discrimination in Britain was imported to the US. After 1860 the Irish sang songs (see illustration) about NINA signs. Some historians, however, maintain that actual job discrimination was minimal.

Many Irish work gangs were hired by contractors to build canals, railroads, city streets and sewers across the country. In the South they underbid slave labor. One result was that small cities that served as railroad centers came to have large Irish populations.

Stereotypes

Irish Catholics were popular targets for stereotyping in the 19th century. According to historian George Potter, the media often stereotyped the Irish in America as being boss-controlled, violent (both among themselves and with those of other ethnic groups), voting illegally, prone to alcoholism, and dependent on street gangs that were often violent or criminal. Potter quotes contemporary newspaper images:

The Irish had many humorists of their own, but were scathingly attacked in political cartoons, especially those in ''Puck'' magazine from the 1870s to 1900. In addition, the cartoons of Thomas Nast were especially hostile; for example, he depicted the Irish-dominated Tammany Hall machine in New York City as a ferocious tiger.

The stereotyope of the Irish as violent drunks has lasted well beyond its high point in the mid-19th century. For example, President Richard Nixon once told advisor Charles Colson that “[t]he Irish have certain — for example, the Irish can’t drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I’ve known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish.”

Discrimination of Irish Americans differed depending on gender. For example, Irish women were sometimes stereotyped as "reckless breeders" because of American Protestants' fears of the growing number of Irish Catholic babies. Many native-born Americans claimed that "their incessant childbearing [would] ensure an Irish political takeover of American cities [and that] Catholicism would become the reigning faith of the hitherto Protestant nation." Irish men were also targeted but in a different way than women were. The difference between the Irish female "Bridget" and the Irish male "Pat" was distinct; while she was impulsive but fairly harmless, he was "always drunk, eternally fighting, lazy, and shiftless." In contrast to the view that Irish women were shiftless, slovenly, and stupid (like their male counterparts), girls were said to be "industrious, willing, cheerful, and honest—they work hard, and they are very strictly moral."

Americans believed that Irish men, not women, were primarily responsible for any problems that arose in the family. Even Irish people themselves viewed Irish men as the cause of family disintegration while women were “pillars of strength” that could uplift their families out of poverty and into the middle class. In this sense, Irish women were similar to their American counterparts as mothers with moral authority.

Sense of heritage

Many people Irish descent retain a sense of their Irish heritage. A sense of exile, diaspora, and (in the case of songs) even nostalgia is a common theme. The term "Plastic Paddy", meaning someone who was not born in Ireland and who is separated from his closest Irish-born ancestor by several generations, but who still thinks of himself as "Irish," is occasionally used in a derogatory fashion towards Irish Americans. The term is freely applied to relevant people of all nationalities, not solely Irish Americans.

Many Irish Americans were enthusiastic supporters of Irish independence; the Fenian Brotherhood movement was based in the United States and in the late 1860s launched several unsuccessful attacks on British-controlled Canada known as the "Fenian Raids". The Provisional IRA received significant funding for its paramilitary activities from a group of Irish American supporters—in 1984, the US Department of Justice won a court case forcing the Irish American fund raising organization NORAID to acknowledge the Provisional IRA as its ''"foreign principal"''.

Cities

thumb|left|Population density of people born in Ireland, 1870; these were mostly Catholics; the older Scots Irish immigration is not shown.Irish Catholic Americans settled in large and small cities throughout the North, particularly railroad centers and mill towns. They became perhaps the most urbanized group in America, as few became farmers. Areas that retain a significant Irish American population include the metropolitan areas of Boston, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco, where most new arrivals of the 1830–1910 period settled. As a percentage of the population, Massachusetts is the most Irish state, with about a quarter of the population claiming Irish descent. The most Irish American towns in the United States are Scituate, Massachusetts with 47.5% of its residents being of Irish descent, Evergreen Park, Illinois, with 39.6% of its 19,236 residents being of Irish descent,Milton, Massachusetts, with 38% of its 26,000 being of Irish descent and Braintree, Massachusetts with 36% of its 34,000 being of Irish descent. Boston, New York, and Chicago have neighborhoods with higher percentages of Irish American residents. Regionally, the most Irish American states are Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. In consequence of its unique history as a mining center, Butte, Montana is also one of the country's most thoroughly Irish American cities. Greeley, Nebraska (population 527) has the highest percentage of Irish American residents (43%) of any town or city with a population of over 500 in the United States. The town was part of the Irish Catholic Colonization effort of Bishop O'Connor of New York in the 1880s.

Irish in politics and government

The United States Declaration of Independence contained fifty-six delegate signatures. Of the signers, eight were of Irish descent. Three signers, Matthew Thornton, George Taylor and James Smith were born in Ireland, the remaining five Irish Americans were the sons or grandsons of Irish immigrants: George Read, Thomas McKean, Thomas Lynch, Jr., Edward Rutledge and Charles Carroll. The secretary, also Irish American, though not a delegate signed as well: Charles Thompson. The Constitution of the United States was created by a convention of thirty-six delegates. Of these as least six were Irish American. George Read and Thomas McKean had already worked on the Declaration, and were joined by John Rutledge, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, and Thomas Fitzsimons. The Carrolls and Fitzsimmons were Catholic, the remainder Protestant denominations. After the early example of Charles Lynch, the Catholic Irish moved rapidly into law enforcement, built hundreds of schools, colleges, orphanages, hospitals, and asylums. Political opposition to the Catholic Irish climaxed in 1854 in the short-lived Know Nothing Party.

By the 1850s, the Irish Catholics were already a major presence in the police departments of large cities. In New York City in 1855, of the city's 1,149 policemen, 305 were natives of Ireland. Both Boston's police and fire departments provided many Irish immigrants with their first jobs. The creation of a unified police force in Philadelphia opened the door to the Irish in that city. By 1860 in Chicago, 49 of the 107 on the police force were Irish. Chief O'Leary headed the police force in New Orleans and Malachi Fallon was chief of police of San Francisco.

The Irish Catholic diaspora are very well organized, and, since 1850, have produced a majority of the leaders of the U.S. Catholic Church, labor unions, the Democratic Party in larger cities, and Catholic high schools, colleges and universities. John F. Kennedy was their greatest political hero. Al Smith, who lost to Herbert Hoover in the 1928 presidential election, was the first Irish Catholic to run for president. From the 1830s to the 1960s, Irish Catholics voted 80–95% Democratic, with occasional exceptions like the election of 1920. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who inspired the term "McCarthyism", is a very notable Republican exception to the Irish-American connection with the Democratic Party.

Today, Irish politicians are associated with both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Ronald Reagan boasted of his Irishness ). Historically, Irish Catholics controlled many city machines and often served as chairmen of the Democratic National Committee, including County Monaghan native Thomas Taggart, Vance McCormick, James Farley, Edward J. Flynn, Robert E. Hannegan, J. Howard McGrath, William H. Boyle, Jr., John Moran Bailey, Larry O'Brien, Christopher J. Dodd, Terry McAuliffe and Tim Kaine. Irish in Congress are represented in both parties; currently Susan Collins of Maine, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Pat Leahy of Vermont, and Maria Cantwell of Washington are Irish Americans serving in the United States Senate. Exit polls show that in recent presidential elections Irish Catholics have split about 50–50 for Democratic and Republican candidates; large majorities voted for Ronald Reagan. The pro-life faction in the Democratic party includes many Irish Catholic politicians, such as the former Boston mayor and ambassador to the Vatican Ray Flynn and senator Bob Casey, Jr., who defeated Senator Rick Santorum in a high visibility race in Pennsylvania in 2006.

In some states such as Connecticut, the most heavily Irish communities now tend to be in the outer suburbs and generally support Republican candidates, such as New Fairfield.

Many major cities have elected Irish American Catholic mayors. Indeed, Boston, Baltimore, Maryland, Cincinnati, Ohio, Houston, Texas, Newark, New York City, Omaha, Nebraska, Scranton, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Saint Louis, Missouri, Saint Paul, Minnesota, and San Francisco have all elected natives of Ireland as mayors. Chicago, Boston, and Jersey City, New Jersey have had more Irish American mayors than any other ethnic group. The cities of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Oakland, California, Omaha, St. Paul, Jersey City, Rochester, New York, Northampton, Massachusetts, Springfield, Massachusetts, Rockford, Illinois, San Francisco, Scranton, Seattle and Syracuse, New York currently () have Irish American mayors. Pittsburgh mayor Bob O'Connor died in office in 2006. New York City has had at least three Irish-born mayors and over eight Irish American mayors. The most recent one was County Mayo native William O'Dwyer, elected in 1949.

The Irish Protestant vote has not been studied nearly as much. Since the 1840s, it has been uncommon for a Protestant politician to be identified as Irish. In Canada, by contrast, Irish Protestants remained a cohesive political force well into the 20th century with many (but not all) belonging to the Orange Order. Throughout the 19th century, sectarian confrontation was commonplace between Protestant Irish and Catholic Irish in Canadian cities.

American Presidents with Irish ancestry

A number of the Presidents of the United States have Irish origins. The extent of Irish heritage varies. For example, Chester Arthur's father and both of Andrew Jackson's parents were Irish born, while George W. Bush has a rather distant Irish ancestry. Ronald Reagan's father was of Irish ancestry, while his mother also had some Irish ancestors. President Kennedy had Irish lineage on both sides. Within this group, only Kennedy was raised as a practicing Roman Catholic. Current President Barack Obama's Irish heritage originates from his Kansas-born mother, Ann Dunham, whose ancestry is Irish and English. His Vice President Joe Biden is also an Irish-American.

;Andrew Jackson : 7th President 1829–37: He was born in the predominantly Scotch-Irish Waxhaws area of South Carolina two years after his parents left Boneybefore, near Carrickfergus in County Antrim. A heritage centre in the village pays tribute to the legacy of 'Old Hickory', the People's President. Andrew Jackson then moved to Tennessee, where he served as Governor ;James Knox Polk :11th President, 1845–49: His ancestors were among the first Ulster-Scots settlers, emigrating from Coleraine in 1680 to become a powerful political family in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He moved to Tennessee and became its governor before winning the presidency. ;James Buchanan :15th President, 1857–61: Born in a log cabin (which has been relocated to his old school in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania). The Buchanans were originally from Deroran, near Omagh in County Tyrone where the ancestral home still stands. ;Andrew Johnson :17th President, 1865–69: His grandfather left Mounthill, near Larne in County Antrim around 1750 and settled in North Carolina. Andrew worked there as a tailor and ran a successful business in Greeneville, Tennessee, before being elected Vice President. He became President following Abraham Lincoln's assassination. ;Ulysses S. Grant :18th President, 1869–77: The home of his maternal great-grandfather, John Simpson, at Dergenagh, County Tyrone, is the location for an exhibition on the eventful life of the victorious Civil War commander who later served two terms as President. Grant visited his ancestral homeland in 1878. ;Chester A. Arthur :21st President, 1881–85: His election was the start of a quarter-century in which the White House was occupied by men of Ulster-Scots origins. His family left Dreen, near Cullybackey, County Antrim, in 1815. There is now an interpretive centre, alongside the Arthur Ancestral Home, devoted to his life and times. ;Grover Cleveland :22nd and 24th President, 1885–89 and 1893–97: Born in New Jersey, he was the maternal grandson of merchant Abner Neal, who emigrated from County Antrim in the 1790s. He is the only president to have served non-consecutive terms. ;Benjamin Harrison :23rd President, 1889–93: His mother, Elizabeth Irwin, had Ulster-Scots roots through her two great-grandfathers, James Irwin and William McDowell. Harrison was born in Ohio and served as a brigadier general in the Union Army before embarking on a career in Indiana politics which led to the White House. ;William McKinley :25th President, 1897–1901: Born in Ohio, the descendant of a farmer from Conagher, near Ballymoney, County Antrim, he was proud of his ancestry and addressed one of the national Scotch-Irish congresses held in the late 19th century. His second term as president was cut short by an assassin's bullet. ;Theodore Roosevelt :26th President, 1901–09: His mother, Mittie Bulloch, had Ulster Scots ancestors who emigrated from Glenoe, County Antrim, in May 1729. Roosevelt praised "Irish Presbyterians" as "a bold and hardy race." However, he is also the man who said: "But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts 'native' before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen." (*Roosevelt was referring to "nativists", not American Indians, in this context) ;William Howard Taft :27th President 1909–13 ;Woodrow Wilson :28th President, 1913–21: Of Ulster-Scot descent on both sides of the family, his roots were very strong and dear to him. He was grandson of a printer from Dergalt, near Strabane, County Tyrone, whose former home is open to visitors. ;Warren G. Harding :29th President 1921–23 ;Harry S. Truman :33rd President 1945–53 ;John F. Kennedy :35th President 1961–63, (County Wexford) ;Richard Nixon :37th President, 1969–74: The Nixon ancestors left Ulster in the mid-18th century; the Quaker Milhous family ties were with County Antrim and County Kildare. ;Jimmy Carter :39th President 1977–1981 (County Antrim and County Londonderry): One of his maternal ancestors, Brandon McCain, emigrated from County Londonderry to America in 1810. ;Ronald Reagan :40th President 1981–89: He was the great-grandson, on his father's side, of Irish migrants from County Tipperary who came to America via Canada and England in the 1840s. His mother was of Scottish and English ancestry. ;George H. W. Bush :41st President 1989–93 (County Wexford): historians have found that his now apparent ancestor, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke. Shunned by Henry II, he offered his services as a mercenary in the 12th-century Norman invasion of Wexford, Ireland in exchange for power and land. Strongbow married Aoife, daughter of Dermot MacMurrough, the Gaelic king of Leinster. ;Bill Clinton :42nd President 1993–2001: He claims Irish ancestry despite there being no documentation of any of his ancestors coming from Ireland ;George W. Bush :43rd President 2001–09: One of his five times great-grandfathers, William Holliday, was born in Rathfriland, County Down, about 1755, (a British merchant living in Ireland) and died in Kentucky about 1811–12. One of the President's seven times great-grandfathers, William Shannon, was apparently born somewhere in County Cork about 1730, and died in Pennsylvania in 1784. ;Barack Obama :44th President 2009–present: Some of his maternal ancestors came to America from a small village called Moneygall, in County Offaly. His ancestors lived in New England and the South and by the 1800s most were in the Midwest.

Vice Presidents of Irish descent

;Joe Biden :47th Vice President 2009–present

Other presidents of Irish descent

;Jefferson Davis :first and only President of the Confederate States of America. ;Sam Houston :President of Texas 1836–38 and 1841–44

Irish-American Justices of the Supreme Court

:* William Paterson: born in County Antrim, Ireland. :* Joseph McKenna :* Edward D. White :* Pierce Butler :* Frank Murphy :* James Francis Byrnes :* William J. Brennan :* Anthony Kennedy

Contributions to American culture and sport

The annual celebration of Saint Patrick's Day may be the most widely recognized symbol of the Irish presence in America. In cities throughout the United States, this traditional Irish religious holiday becomes an opportunity to celebrate all things Irish, or things believed to be "Irish". The largest celebration of the holiday takes place in New York, where the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade draws an average of two million people. The second-largest celebration is held in Boston. The South Boston Parade, is one the nation's oldest dating back to 1737. Savannah also holds one of the largest parades in the United States.

Since the arrival of nearly two million Irish immigrants in the 1840s, the urban Irish cop and firefighter have become virtual icons of American popular culture. In many large cities, the police and fire departments have been dominated by the Irish for over 100 years, even after the ethnic Irish residential populations in those cities dwindled to small minorities. Many police and fire departments maintain large and active "Emerald Societies", bagpipe marching groups, or other similar units demonstrating their members' pride in their Irish heritage.

While these archetypal images are especially well known, Irish Americans have contributed to U.S. culture in a wide variety of fields: the fine and performing arts, film, literature, politics, sports, and religion. The Irish-American contribution to popular entertainment is reflected in the careers of figures such as James Cagney, Bing Crosby, Walt Disney, John Ford, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Grace Kelly, Tyrone Power, Ada Rehan, and Spencer Tracy. Irish-born actress Maureen O'Hara, who became an American citizen, defined for U.S. audiences the archetypal, feisty Irish "colleen" in popular films such as ''The Quiet Man'' and ''The Long Gray Line''. More recently, the Irish-born Pierce Brosnan gained screen celebrity as James Bond. During the early years of television, popular figures with Irish roots included Gracie Allen, Art Carney, Joe Flynn, Jackie Gleason, and Ed Sullivan.

Since the early days of the film industry, celluloid representations of Irish Americans have been plentiful. Famous films with Irish-American themes include social dramas such as ''Little Nellie Kelly'' and ''The Cardinal'', labor epics like ''On the Waterfront'', and gangster movies such as ''Angels with Dirty Faces'', ''Gangs of New York'', and ''The Departed''. Irish-American characters have been featured in popular television series such as ''Ryan's Hope'' and ''Rescue Me''.

Prominent Irish-American literary figures include Pulitzer and Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, Jazz Age novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, social realist James T. Farrell, and Southern Gothic writer Flannery O'Connor. The 19th-century novelist Henry James was also of partly Irish descent. While Irish Americans have been underrepresented in the plastic arts, two well-known American painters claim Irish roots. 20th-century painter Georgia O'Keeffe was born to an Irish-American father, and 19th-century trompe-l'œil painter William Harnett emigrated from Ireland to the United States.

The Irish-American contribution to politics spans the entire ideological spectrum. Socially conservative Irish immigrants generally recoiled from radical politics, and in the early 1950s, a disproportionate percentage of Irish Americans supported Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist "witchhunt". Two prominent American socialists, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, were Irish Americans. In the 1960s, Irish-American writer Michael Harrington became an influential advocate of social welfare programs. Harrington's views profoundly influenced President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy. Meanwhile, Irish-American political writer William F. Buckley emerged as a major intellectual force in American conservative politics in the latter half of the 20th century. Buckley's magazine, ''National Review'', proved an effective advocate of successful Republican candidates such as Ronald Reagan.

Notorious Irish Americans include the legendary New Mexico outlaw known as Billy the Kid, whose real name was supposedly Henry McCarty. Many historians believe McCarty was born in New York City to Famine-era immigrants from Ireland. Mary Mallon, also known as ''Typhoid Mary'' was an Irish immigrant, as was madam Josephine Airey, who also went by the name of "Chicago Joe" Hensley. New Orleans socialite and murderess Delphine LaLaurie, whose maiden name was Macarty, was of partial paternal Irish ancestry. Irish-American mobsters include, amongst others, George "Bugs" Moran, Dean O'Bannion, and Jack "Legs" Diamond. Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of John F. Kennedy had an Irish-born great-grandmother by the name of Mary Tonry. Colorful Irish Americans also include Margaret Tobin of ''RMS Titanic'' fame, scandalous model Evelyn Nesbit, dancer Isadora Duncan, San Francisco madam Tessie Wall, and Nellie Cashman, nurse and gold prospector in the American west.

The wide popularity of Celtic music has fostered the rise of Irish-American bands that draw heavily on traditional Irish themes and music. Such groups include New York City's ''Black 47'' founded in the late 1980s blending punk rock, rock and roll, Irish music, rap/hip-hop, reggae, and soul; and the Dropkick Murphys, a Celtic punk band formed in Quincy, Massachusetts nearly a decade later. The Decemberists, a band featuring Irish-American singer Colin Meloy, released ''Shankill Butchers'', a song that deals with the Ulster Loyalists the "Shankill Butchers". The song appears on their album ''The Crane Wife''. Flogging Molly, lead by Dublin-born Dave King, are relative newcomers building upon this new tradition.

The Irish brought their native games of handball, hurling and Gaelic football to America. Along with handball and ''camogie'', these sports are part of the Gaelic Athletic Association. The North American GAA organization is still very strong.

Irish Americans can be found among the earliest stars in professional baseball, including Michael “King” Kelly, Roger Connor (the home run king before Babe Ruth), Eddie Collins, Roger Bresnahan, Ed Walsh and NY Giants manager John McGraw. The large 1945 class of inductees enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York included nine Irish Americans.

Also of Irish descent, Walter O'Malley was a real estate businessman and majority team owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He moved the team to Los Angeles in 1958 in a deal to bring major league baseball to California, and he convinced the New York Giants (baseball) team owners move to San Francisco. The O'Malley family owned the Dodgers until they sold the team in 1998.

Irish-American communities

See also

Carroll family

69th Infantry Regiment (United States)

Irish American Athletic Club

Irish Brigade (U.S.)

Irish Canadian

Irish Whales

Irish American Athletic Club

Irish American Cultural Institute

Irish Mob

List of Americans of Irish descent

Saint Patrick's Battalion

University of Notre Dame

South Boston, Massachusetts

South Shore, Massachusetts

Irish Race Conventions

Scotch-Irish American

Notes

Further reading

General surveys

Fanning, Charles (1990/2000). ''The Irish Voice in America: 250 Years of Irish-American Fiction''. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press. ISBN 0-8131-0970-1

Glazier, Michael, ed. (1999). ''The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America''. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-02755-2

Glynn, Irial: Emigration Across the Atlantic: Irish, Italians and Swedes compared, 1800-1950, European History Online, Mainz: Institute of European History, 2011, retrieved: June 16, 2011.

McGee, Thomas D'Arcy (1852). ''A History of the Irish Settlers in North America from the Earliest Period to the Census of 1850''

Meagher, Timothy J. (2005). ''The Columbia Guide to Irish American History''. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-12070-8

Merryweather (née Green), Kath (2009). ''The Irish Rossiter: Ancestors and Their World Wide Descendents and Connections''. Bristol, UK: Irishancestors4u. ISBN 978-0-9562976-0-0

Miller, Kerby M. (1985). ''Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America''. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505187-4

Negra, Diane (ed.) (2006). ''The Irish in Us''. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3740-1

Quinlan, Kieran (2005). ''Strange Kin: Ireland and the American South''. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-2983-8

Quinlin, Michael P. (2004). ''Irish Boston: A Lively Look at Boston's Colorful Irish Past''. Gilford: Globe Pequot Press. ISBN 978-0-7627-2901-2

Catholic Irish

Anbinder, Tyler (2002). ''Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum''. New York: Plume ISBN 0-452-28361-2

Bayor, Ronald; Meagher, Timothy (eds.) (1997) ''The New York Irish''. Baltimore: University of Johns Hopkins Press. ISBN 0-8018-5764-3

Blessing, Patrick J. (1992). ''The Irish in America: A Guide to the Literature and the Manuscript Editions''. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. ISBN 0-8132-0731-2

Clark, Dennis (1982). ''The Irish in Philadelphia: Ten Generations of Urban Experience'' (2nd Ed.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ISBN 0-87722-227-4

Diner, Hasia R. (1983). ''Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-2872-4

English, T. J. (2005). ''Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster''. New York: ReganBooks. ISBN 0-06-059002-5

Erie, Steven P. (1988). ''Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840—1985''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07183-2

Ignatiev, Noel (1996). ''How the Irish Became White''. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-91825-1

McCaffrey, Lawrence J. (1976). ''The Irish Diaspora in America''. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America ISBN 0-8132-0896-3

Meagher, Timothy J. (2000). ''Inventing Irish America: Generation, Class, and Ethnic Identity in a New England City, 1880–1928''. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-03154-1

Mitchell, Brian C. (2006). ''The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell, 1821–61''. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-07338-X

Mulrooney, Margaret M. (ed.) (2003). ''Fleeing the Famine: North America and Irish Refugees, 1845–1851''. New York: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-97670-X

Noble, Dale T. (1986). ''Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and Nationality in Antebellum America''. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6167-3

O'Connor, Thomas H. (1995). ''The Boston Irish: A Political History''. Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky. ISBN 978-1-56852-620-1

O'Donnell, L. A. (1997). ''Irish Voice and Organized Labor in America: A Biographical Study''. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

Protestant Irish

Blaustein, Richard. '' The Thistle and the Brier: Historical Links and Cultural Parallels Between Scotland and Appalachia'' (2003).

Blethen, Tyler; Wood, Curtis W. Jr.; Blethen, H. Tyler (Eds.) (1997). ''Ulster and North America: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Scotch-Irish''. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0823-7

Cunningham, Roger (1991). ''Apples on the Flood: Minority Discourse and Appalachia''. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 0-87049-629-8

Fischer, David Hackett (1991). ''Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America''. New York: Oxford University Press USA. ISBN 0-19-506905-6

Ford, Henry Jones (1915). ''The Scotch-Irish in America''. Full text online.

Griffin, Patrick (2001). ''The People with No Name: Ireland's Ulster Scots, America's Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World, 1689–1764''. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-07462-3

Leyburn, James G. (1989). ''The Scotch-Irish: A Social History''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-4259-1

Lorle, Porter (1999). ''A People Set Apart: The Scotch-Irish in Eastern Ohio''. Zanesville, OH: Equine Graphics Publishing. ISBN 1-887932-75-5

McWhiney, Grady (1988). '' Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South''. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0328-6

Ray, Celeste. ''Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans in the American South'' (2001).

Webb, James H. (2004). ''Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America''. New York: Broadway. ISBN 0-7679-1688-3. A controversial interpretation by a novelist (who is now a senator).

External links

Irish America magazine—magazine for Irish Americans

Irish Voice—newspaper for Irish Americans

The Boston Irish Emigrant

The New York Irish Emigrant

Ancient Order of Hibernians

IMDb.com Irish-American

The Ireland Funds

The Eire Society of Boston

New York Irish Bars

FDNY Emerald Society

FDNY Emerald Society Pipes and Drums

National Conference of Law Enforcement Emerald Societies

Irish Expatriate Discussion Forum

Boston Irish Reporter

www.irishamericanmuseumdc.org

American Presidents with Irish Ancestors

IrishAmericanHistory.com—Irish American History

Irish American Story Project

News for Irish Americans

Winged Fist Organization

Communities

Buffalo's Irish Community

Detroit's Irish Community

Kansas City's Irish Community

Irish Community in Los Angeles

Omaha's Irish Community

Irish Philadelphia

Pittsburgh Irish Network

Boston Irish Tourism Association

Boston Irish Heritage Trail

Patrick S. Gilmore Society in Milton MA

Boston Irish Famine Memorial

Irish Pennsylvania

Irish American American Category:Irish genealogy Category:Fictional American people of Irish descent

de:Irisch-Amerikaner es:Irlandés estadounidense fr:Irlando-Américains ga:Gael-Mheiriceánaigh id:Orang Amerika Irlandia it:Irlando-americani la:Hibernus Americanus nl:Ierse Amerikanen ja:アイルランド系アメリカ人 fi:Amerikanirlantilaiset zh:愛爾蘭裔美國人

A businessperson (also businessman, business man, or businesswoman) is someone involved in a particular undertaking of activities for the purpose of generating revenue from a combination of human, financial, and physical capital. An entrepreneur is an example of a business person. Sometimes the term can mean someone who is involved in the management of a company, especially as an owner or an executive. Sometimes it can also mean someone employed in a (usually) profit-oriented enterprise. The term businessperson/man/woman almost always refers to someone with a "white collar" occupation.

See also

Business magnate

Entrepreneur

Financier

Investor

Category:Business and financial operations occupations Businessperson

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Coordinates	35°0′41.69″N135°46′5.47″N
name	Bill Flynn
birthname	William Flynn
birth date	December 13, 1948
birth place	Cape Town, South Africa
death date	July 11, 2007
death place	Johannesburg, South Africa
occupation	Actor
spouse	Anne Power (1st) and Jana Cilliers (2nd)
parent	Mary Flynn
children	}}

Bill Flynn (December 13, 1948 - July 11, 2007) was a South African actor and comedian. He was born in Cape Town and matriculated from Plumstead High School. He went to the UCT drama school and was a founder member of the Space theatre in Cape Town.

Overview

Bill was perhaps best known for his portrayal of Tjokkie, a character which Flynn portrayed as a wise cracking, beer drinking rugby union fan. Bill had won 13 best actor awards, including the ''Dublin Critics'' and ''Golden Entertainer Awards''. Among these were:

Best Supporting Actor for ''Doubles'' - Fleur du Cap - Cape Town - 1987

Best Actor for ''Saturday Night at the Palace''

Best Actor Award for ''Hello and Goodbye'' - Dublin

Best Actor Award for a Comedy ''Play It Again Sam''

Best Screenplay Award for ''Saturday Night at the Palace''

Best Actor Award for role of ''Willy Loman'' in ''Death of a Salesman''

His film writing also won him a Best Screenplay award for ''Saturday Night at the Palace''. His karate comedy movie Kill and Kill Again was a top box office hit in America. Bill's movie of ''Saturday Night at The Palace'' won several Vita Film Awards, a Best Actor award at the Italian Taormina Film festival as well as a Merit Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

He was a longtime friend and collaborator of the actor and playwright Paul Slabolepszy.

Flynn was also involved in the music world. He was a co-founder and band member of ''The Rock Rebels'' (1998–2007) and the lead singer for ''Vinnie and the Viscounts'' (1987–1997).

At the time of his death Flynn was married to actress Jana Cilliers, his second wife.

Flynn died in Johannesburg, South Africa on July 11, 2007, of an apparent heart attack. He was 58 at the time of his death. His highly successful career includes leading roles in over 140 stage plays, musicals, 42 films, dozens of TV shows and thousands of radio and TV commercials.

Filmography

House of the Living Dead, 1973

Hello and Goodbye, 1979

Kill and Kill Again, 1981

City Lovers, 1982

Prisoners of the Lost Universe, 1983

Funny People II, 1983

Magic Is Alive, My Friend, 1985

Senor Smith, 1986

Saturday Night at the Palace, 1987

Kwagga Strikes Back, 1990

Die Prince van Pretoria, 1993

Kalahari Harry, 1994

Guns of Honor, 1994

Marie s'en va t-en guerre, 1994

Treasure at Elephant Ridge, 1995

Human Timebomb, 1996

Heel Against the Head, 1999

The Carruthers Brothers, 2000

Oh Schuks... I'm Gatvol, 2004

Jozi Streets, 2004

Krakatoa - The Last Days, 2006

Running Riot, 2006

Music

CD as singer

''Toyi Kaka'' - 1995

''I Don't Like Cricket, I Love It'' - 1996

''B.O.K.K.E.'' - 1999

''Gees''

''Gooi My A Tenor''

''Tenors Racket''

''Rainbow Worrior''

CD as group

''Get Vrot'' - Vinnie & The Viscounts

''Rock & Roll Party'' - Vinnie & The Viscounts

''Get This'' - The Rock Rebels

''Gooi Mielies'' - The Rock Rebels

References

External links

IOL: Flynn's death leaves gap in industry

allAfrica.com: Bill Flynn Obituary

Indepdencent Online: Flynn brought laughter - DA

Online: Talent and utter niceness Flynn's trademarks

Variety Magazine: Bill Flynn, 58, South African actor; Veteran thesp won 13 best actor awards

SABC News: Arts community shocked at Flynn's untimely death

The Times: Bill Flynn: A seriously funny man

Shock as actor Bill Flynn dies

Baxter Theatre Stills

"Living Together" with Jana Cilliers (1979)

"Saturday Night at the Palace" with Fats Dibeco and Paul Slabolepszy (1983)

Paul Slabolepszy's "Pale Natives" (1994)

As Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" (2001)

"Running Riot" with Paul Slabolepszy (2002)

Category:1948 births Category:2007 deaths Category:South African actors Category:University of Cape Town alumni Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction

af:Bill Flynn id:Bill Flynn

Coordinates	35°0′41.69″N135°46′5.47″N
name	Martin McGuinness
Honorific-suffix	MP MLA
office	deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland
term start	8 May 2007
firstminister	Ian PaisleyPeter RobinsonArlene Foster (acting)
predecessor	Mark Durkan
office2	Minister of Education
term start2	November 1998
term end2	8 May 2007
firstminister2	David Trimble
deputy firstminister2	Seamus Mallon
predecessor2	''Position created''
successor2	Caitríona Ruane
office3	Member of Parliament for Mid Ulster
term start3	1 May 1997
majority3	10,976 (24.2%)
predecessor3	William McCrea
office4	Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Mid Ulster
term start4	25 June 1998
predecessor4	Constituency Created
birth date	May 23, 1950
birth place	Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland
blank1	Other organizations
data1	Official Irish Republican Army volunteer (formerly),Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer (formerly),Pioneer Total Abstinence Association member
party	Sinn Féin
nationality	Irish
religion	Roman Catholic
spouse	Bernadette Canning
children	2 boys and 2 girls
website	Martin McGuinness MP MLA }}

James Martin Pacelli McGuinness (; born 23 May, 1950) is an Irish Sinn Féin politician and the current deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. He was born in Derry, Northern Ireland.

A former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) leader, McGuinness is the MP for the Mid Ulster constituency. Like all Sinn Féin MPs, McGuinness practises abstentionism in relation to the Westminster parliament. He is also a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for the same constituency.

Following the St Andrews Agreement and the Assembly election in 2007, he became deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley becoming First Minister on 8 May 2007. On 5 June 2008 he was re-appointed as deputy First Minister to serve alongside Peter Robinson, who succeeded Paisley as First Minister on that date. McGuinness previously served as Minister of Education in the Northern Ireland Executive between 1999 and 2002.

Provisional IRA activity

McGuinness joined the IRA around 1970 at the age of 20, after the Troubles broke out. McGuinness has admitted to being a member of the IRA during the 1970s as violence broke out following the failure of the Irish nationalist-led civil- rights movement. He originally joined the Official IRA, unaware of the split at the December 1969 Army Convention. He shortly switched to the Provisional IRA. By the start of 1972, at the age of 21, he was second-in-command of the IRA in Derry, a position he held at the time of Bloody Sunday. A claim was made at the Saville Inquiry that McGuinness was responsible for supplying detonators for nail bombs on Bloody Sunday, when 14 civil rights marchers were killed by British soldiers in Derry. Paddy Ward claimed he was the leader of the Fianna, the youth wing of the IRA in January 1972. He claimed McGuinness, the second-in-command of the IRA in the city at the time, and another anonymous member gave him bomb parts on the morning of 30 January, the date planned for the civil rights march. He said his organisation intended to attack city-centre premises in Derry on the day when civilians were shot dead by British soldiers. In response, McGuinness said the claims were "fantasy", while Gerry O’Hara, a Derry Sinn Féin councillor, stated that he and not Ward was the Fianna leader at the time.

Ultimately, the Saville Inquiry was inconclusive on McGuiness' role due to contradictory testimony over his movements, concluding that while he was "engaged in paramilitary activity" during Bloody Sunday, and had probably been armed with a Thompson submachine gun, there was insufficient evidence to make any finding other than they were "sure that he did not engage in any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire".

McGuinness negotiated alongside Gerry Adams with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Willie Whitelaw, in 1972. He was convicted by the Republic of Ireland's Special Criminal Court in 1973, after being caught with a car containing 250 lb (113 kg) of explosives and nearly 5,000 rounds of ammunition. He refused to recognise the court, and was sentenced to six months imprisonment. In the court, he declared his membership of the Provisional Irish Republican Army without equivocation: 'We have fought against the killing of our people... I am a member of Óglaigh na hÉireann and very, very proud of it'.

After his release, and another conviction in the Republic for IRA membership, he became increasingly prominent in Sinn Féin, the political wing of the republican movement. He was in indirect contact with British intelligence during the hunger strikes in the early 1980s, and again in the early 1990s. He was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont in 1982, representing Londonderry. He was the second candidate elected after John Hume. As with all elected members of Sinn Féin and the SDLP, he did not take up his seat. On 9 December 1982, McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison were banned from entering Great Britain under the Prevention of Terrorism Act by British Home Secretary William Whitelaw.

In August 1993, he was the subject of a two part special by ''The Cook Report'', a Central TV investigative documentary series presented by Roger Cook. It accused him of continuing involvement in IRA activity, of attending an interrogation and of encouraging Frank Hegarty, an informer, to return to Derry from a safe house in England. Hegarty's mother Rose appeared on the programme to tell of telephone calls to McGuinness and of Hegarty's subsequent murder. McGuinness denied her account and denounced the programme saying "I have never been in the IRA. I don't have any sway over the IRA".

In 2005, Michael McDowell, the Irish Tánaiste, claimed McGuinness, along with Gerry Adams and Martin Ferris, were members of the seven-man IRA Army Council. McGuinness denied the claims, saying he was no longer an IRA member.

Experienced "Troubles" journalist Peter Taylor presented further apparent evidence of McGuinness's role in the IRA in his documentary ''Age of Terror'', shown in April 2008. In his documentary, Taylor alleges that McGuinness was the head of the IRA's Northern Command and had advance knowledge of the IRA's 1987 Enniskillen bombing, which left 11 civilians dead.

Chief negotiator and Minister of Education

He became Sinn Féin's chief negotiator in the time leading to the Good Friday Agreement. He was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum in 1996 representing Foyle. Having contested Foyle unsuccessfully at the 1983, 1987 and 1992 Westminster elections, he became MP for Mid Ulster in 1997 and after the Agreement was concluded, was returned as a member of the Assembly for the same constituency, and nominated by his party for a ministerial position in the power-sharing executive, where he became Minister of Education. One of his controversial acts as Minister of Education was his decision to scrap the 11-plus exam, which he himself had failed as a schoolchild. He was re-elected to the Westminster Parliament in 2001, 2005 and 2010.

In May 2003, transcripts of telephone calls between McGuinness and British officials including Mo Mowlam, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's Chief of Staff, were published in a biography of McGuinness entitled ''From Guns to Government''. The tapes had been made by MI5 and the authors of the book were arrested under the Official Secrets Act. The conversations showed an easy and friendly relationship between McGuinness and Powell. He joked with Powell about Unionist MPs while Mowlam referred to him as "babe" and discussed her difficulties with Blair. In another transcript, he praised Bill Clinton to Gerry Adams.

St Andrews Agreement

In the weeks following the St Andrews Agreement between Paisley and Adams, the four parties — the DUP, Sinn Féin, the UUP and the SDLP — indicated their choice of ministries in the Executive and nominated members to fill them. The Assembly met on 8 May 2007 and Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness were nominated as First Minister and Deputy First Minister. On 12 May the Sinn Féin Ard Chomhairle agreed to take up three places on the Policing Board, and nominated three MLAs to take them.

On 8 December 2007, while visiting President Bush in the White House with the Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley, Martin McGuinness, said to the press "Up until the 26 March this year, Ian Paisley and I never had a conversation about anything – not even about the weather – and now we have worked very closely together over the last seven months and there's been no angry words between us. ... This shows we are set for a new course."

Personal life

He married Bernadette Canning in 1974. They have four children, two girls and two boys McGuinness is a fan of the Derry Gaelic football and hurling teams and played both sports when he was younger. He grew up just 50 yards from Celtic Park, the home of Derry GAA. His brother Tom played Gaelic football for Derry and is regarded as one of the county's best ever players. Among his honours are three Ulster Senior Football Championship medals, as well as Ulster Under 21 and All-Ireland Under 21 Championship medals.

McGuinness is also a fan of Derry City FC, and a keen fisherman.

McGuiness is a member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association, meaning that he does not drink alcohol.

See also

Northern Ireland peace process

Operation Taurus

Sinn Féin

References

External links

Age Of Terror

30 May 1972: Official IRA declares ceasefire. A young Martin McGuinness gives the PIRA's reaction - VIDEO

Martin McGuinness interviewed by James Macintyre on NewStatesman

Category:Sinn Féin politicians Category:Irish socialists Category:UK MPs 1997–2001 Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Northern Irish constituencies Category:Northern Ireland MPAs 1982–1986 Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 1998–2003 Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 2003–2007 Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 2007–2011 Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 2011– Category:Northern Ireland Government ministers Category:Members of the Northern Ireland Forum Category:Official Irish Republican Army members Category:Provisional Irish Republican Army members Category:People from Derry Category:1950 births Category:Living people Category:Republicans imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by non-jury courts Category:People of the Year Awards winners Category:UK MPs 2010– Category:People educated at St Joseph's Boys' School

ca:Martin McGuinness cy:Martin McGuinness de:Martin McGuinness es:Martin McGuinness eu:Martin McGuinness fr:Martin McGuinness ga:Máirtín Mag Aonghusa it:Martin McGuinness la:Martinus McGuinness hu:Martin McGuinness nl:Martin McGuinness pl:Martin McGuinness ru:Макгиннесс, Мартин simple:Martin McGuinness fi:Martin McGuinness sv:Martin McGuinness zh:马丁·麦吉尼斯

Coordinates	35°0′41.69″N135°46′5.47″N
Name	Gerry Adams TD Gearóid Mac Ádhaimh
Office	President of Sinn Féin
Term start	13 November 1983
Predecessor	Ruairí Ó Brádaigh
Office2	Teachta Dála
Term start2	February 2011
Constituency2	Louth
Predecessor2	Arthur Morgan
Office3	Member of Parliament for Belfast West
Term start3	1 May 1997
Term end3	26 January 2011
Predecessor3	Joe Hendron
Successor3	Paul Maskey
Majority3	17,759 (54.7%)
Term start4	9 June 1983
Term end4	9 April 1992
Predecessor4	Gerry Fitt
Successor4	Joe Hendron
Majority4	16,862 (41.1%)
Office5	Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast West
Term start5	25 June 1998
Term end5	7 December 2010
Predecessor5	Constituency Created
Successor5	Pat Sheehan
Birth date	October 06, 1948
Birth place	Belfast, Northern Ireland
Party	Sinn Féin
Spouse	Collette McArdle
Nationality	Irish
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Website	Official website }}

Gerry Adams (; born 6 October 1948 in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is an Irish republican politician and Teachta Dála (TD) for the constituency of Louth. From 1983 to 1992 and from 1997 to 2011, he was an abstentionist Westminster Member of Parliament for Belfast West. He is the president of Sinn Féin, the second largest political party in Northern Ireland and the largest nationalist party. From the late 1980s onwards, Adams was an important figure in the Northern Ireland peace process, initially following contact by the then Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume and subsequently with the Irish and British governments and then other parties. In 2005, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) indicated that its armed campaign was over and that it is now exclusively committed to democratic politics. Under Adams, Sinn Féin changed its traditional policy of abstentionism towards Oireachtas Éireann, the parliament of the Republic of Ireland, in 1986 and later took seats in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly. However, Sinn Féin retains a policy of abstentionism towards the Westminster Parliament, but since 2002, receives allowances for staff and takes up offices in the House of Commons.

Ancestry and early life

Adams' parents, Gerry Adams Sr. and Annie Hannaway came from republican backgrounds. Adams' grandfather, also called Gerry Adams, had been a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) during the Irish War of Independence. Two of Adams' uncles, Dominic and Patrick Adams, had been interned by the governments in Belfast and Dublin. Although it is reported that his uncle Dominic was a one-time IRA chief of staff, J. Bowyer Bell states in his book, ''The Secret Army: The IRA 1916'' (Irish Academy Press), that Dominic Adams was a senior figure in the IRA of the mid-1940s. Gerry Sr. joined the IRA at age sixteen. In 1942, he participated in an IRA ambush on a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) patrol but was himself shot, arrested and sentenced to eight years imprisonment.

Adams' maternal great-grandfather, Michael Hannaway, was a member of the Fenians during their dynamiting campaign in England in the 1860s and 1870s. Michael's son, Billy, was election agent for Éamon de Valera in 1918 in West Belfast but refused to follow de Valera into democratic and constitutional politics upon the formation of Fianna Fáil.

Annie Hannaway was a member of Cumann na mBan, the women's branch of the IRA. Three of her brothers (Alfie, Liam and Tommy) were known IRA members.

Adams attended St Finian's Primary School on the Falls Road where he was taught by De La Salle brothers. Having passed the eleven-plus exam in 1960, he attended St Mary's Christian Brothers Grammar School. He left St. Mary's with six O-levels and became a barman. He was increasingly involved in the Irish republican movement, joining Sinn Féin and Fianna Éireann in 1964, after being radicalised by the Divis Street riots during that years general election campaign.

In 1971, Adams married Collette McArdle, with whom he has three children.

Early political career

In the late 1960s, a civil rights campaign developed in Northern Ireland. Adams was an active supporter and joined the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in 1967. However, the civil rights movement was met with protests from loyalist counter-demonstrators. In August 1969, Northern Ireland cities like Belfast and Derry erupted in major rioting and British troops were called in at the request of the Government of Northern Ireland (see 1969 Northern Ireland Riots).

Adams was active in Sinn Féin at this time, siding with the Provisionals in the split of 1970. In August 1971, internment was reintroduced to Northern Ireland under the Special Powers Act 1922. Adams was interned in March 1972, on , but was released in June to take part in secret, but abortive talks in London. The IRA negotiated a short-lived truce with the British government and an IRA delegation met with the British Home Secretary, William Whitelaw at Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. The delegation included Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Sean Mac Stiofain (IRA Chief of Staff), Daithi O'Conaill, Seamus Twomey, Ivor Bell and Dublin solicitor Myles Shevlin. The IRA insisted Adams be included in the meeting and he was released from internment to participate. Following the failure of the talks, he played a central role in planning the bomb blitz on Belfast known as Bloody Friday. He was re-arrested in July 1973 and interned at the Long Kesh internment camp. After taking part in an IRA-organised escape attempt, he was sentenced to a period of imprisonment. During this time, he wrote articles in the paper ''An Phoblacht'' under the by-line "Brownie", where he criticized the strategy and policy of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Billy McKee. He was also highly critical of a decision taken in Belfast by McKee to assassinate members of the rival Official IRA, who had been on ceasefire since 1972. After his release in 1976, he was again arrested in 1978 for alleged IRA membership, the charges were subsequently dismissed.

During the 1981 hunger strike, Adams played an important policy-making role, which saw the emergence of his party as a political force. In 1983, he was elected president of Sinn Féin and became the first Sinn Féin MP elected to the British House of Commons since Phil Clarke and Tom Mitchell in the mid-1950s. Following his election as MP for Belfast West, the British government lifted a ban on him travelling to Great Britain. In line with Sinn Féin policy, he refused to take his seat in the House of Commons.

On 14 March 1984 in central Belfast, Adams was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt when several Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) gunmen fired about 20 shots into the car in which he was travelling. He was hit in the neck, shoulder and arm. After the shooting, he was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove the three bullets which had entered his body. Under-cover plain clothes police officers seized three suspects who were later convicted and sentenced. One of the three was John Gregg, who would be killed by Loyalists in 2003. Adams claimed that the British army had prior knowledge of the attack and allowed it to go ahead.

Allegations of IRA membership

Adams has stated repeatedly that he has never been a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). However, authors such as Ed Moloney, Peter Taylor, Mark Urban and historian Richard English have all named Adams as part of the IRA leadership since the 1970s. Adams has denied Moloney's claims, calling them "libellous".

President of Sinn Féin

In 1978, Gerry Adams became joint vice-president of Sinn Féin and a key figure in directing a challenge to the Sinn Féin leadership of President Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and joint vice- president Dáithí Ó Conaill.

The 1975 IRA-British truce is often viewed as the event that began the challenge to the original Provisional Sinn Féin leadership, which was said to be Southern-based and dominated by southerners like Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill. However, the Chief of Staff of the IRA at the time, Seamus Twomey, was a senior figure from Belfast. Others in the leadership were also Northern based, including Billy McKee from Belfast. Adams (allegedly) rose to become the most senior figure in the IRA Northern Command on the basis of his absolute rejection of anything but military action, but this conflicts with the fact that during his time in prison, Adams came to reassess his approach and became more political.

One of the reasons that the Provisional IRA and provisional Sinn Féin were founded, in December 1969 and January 1970, respectively, was that people like Ó Brádaigh, O'Connell and McKee opposed participation in constitutional politics. The other reason was the failure of the Goulding leadership to provide for the defence of nationalist areas. When, at the December 1969 IRA convention and the January 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis the delegates voted to participate in the Dublin (Leinster House), Belfast (Stormont) and London (Westminster) parliaments, the organizations split. Gerry Adams, who had joined the Republican Movement in the early 1960s, sided with the Provisionals.

In The Empire of Great Kesh in the mid-1970s, and writing under the pseudonym "Brownie" in ''Republican News'', Adams called on Republicans for increased political activity, especially at a local level. The call resonated with younger Northern people, many of whom had been active in the Provisional IRA but had not necessarily been highly active in Sinn Féin. In 1977, Adams and Danny Morrison drafted the address of Jimmy Drumm at the Annual Wolfe Tone Commemoration at Bodenstown. The address was viewed as watershed in that Drumm acknowledged that the war would be a long one and that success depended on political activity that would complement the IRA's armed campaign. For some, this wedding of politics and armed struggle culminated in Danny Morrison's statement at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in which he asked "Who here really believes we can win the war through the Ballot box? But will anyone here object if, with a ballot paper in one hand and the Armalite in the other, we take power in Ireland". For others, however, the call to link political activity with armed struggle had been clearly defined in Sinn Féin policy and in the Presidential Addresses of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, but it had not resonated with the young Northerners.

Even after the election of Bobby Sands as MP for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, a part of the mass mobilization associated with the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike by republican prisoners in the ''H blocks'' of the Maze prison (known as Long Kesh by Republicans), Adams was cautious about the level of political involvement by Sinn Féin. Charles Haughey, the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, called an election for June 1981. At an Ard Chomhairle meeting, Adams recommended that they contest only four constituencies which were in border counties. Instead, H-Block/Armagh Candidates contested nine constituencies and elected two TDs. This, along with the election of Bobby Sands, was a precursor to a big electoral breakthrough in elections in 1982 to the Northern Ireland Assembly. Adams, Danny Morrison, Martin McGuinness, Jim McAllister, and Owen Carron were elected as abstentionists. The Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) had announced before the election that it would not take any seats and so its 14 elected representatives also abstained from participating in the Assembly and it was a failure. The 1982 election was followed by the 1983 Westminster election, in which Sinn Féin's vote increased and Gerry Adams was elected, as an abstentionist, as MP for Belfast West. It was in 1983 that Ruairí Ó Brádaigh resigned as President of Sinn Féin and was succeeded by Gerry Adams.

Republicans had long claimed that the only legitimate Irish state was the Irish Republic declared in the Proclamation of the Republic of 1916, which they considered to be still in existence. In their view, the legitimate government was the IRA Army Council, which had been vested with the authority of that Republic in 1938 (prior to the Second World War) by the last remaining anti-Treaty deputies of the Second Dáil. Adams continued to adhere to this claim of republican political legitimacy until quite recently — however, in his 2005 speech to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis he explicitly rejected it.

As a result of this non-recognition, Sinn Féin had abstained from taking any of the seats they won in the British or Irish parliaments. At its 1986 Ard Fheis, Sinn Féin delegates passed a resolution to amend the rules and constitution that would allow its members to sit in the Dublin parliament (Leinster House/Dáil Éireann). At this, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh led a small walkout, just as he and Sean Mac Stiofain had done sixteen years earlier with the creation of Provisional Sinn Féin. This minority, which rejected dropping the policy of abstentionism, now nominally distinguishes itself from Provisional Sinn Féin by using the name Republican Sinn Féin (or Sinn Féin Poblachtach), and maintains that they are the true Sinn Féin republicans.

Adams' leadership of Sinn Féin was supported by a Northern-based cadre that included people like Danny Morrison and Martin McGuinness. Over time, Adams and others pointed to Republican electoral successes in the early and mid-1980s, when hunger strikers Bobby Sands and Kieran Doherty were elected to the British House of Commons and Dáil Éireann respectively, and they advocated that Sinn Féin become increasingly political and base its influence on electoral politics rather than paramilitarism. The electoral effects of this strategy were shown later by the election of Adams and McGuinness to the House of Commons.

Voice ban

Adams's prominence as an Irish Republican leader was increased by the ban on the media broadcast of his voice (the ban actually covered eleven republican and loyalist organisations, but in practice Adams was the only one prominent enough to appear regularly on TV). This ban was imposed by the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher on 19 October 1988, the reason given being to "starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend" after the BBC interviewed Martin McGuinness and Adams had been the focus of a row over an edition of ''After Dark'', an intended Channel 4 discussion programme which was never made.

A similar ban, known as Section 31, had been law in the Republic of Ireland since the 1970s. However, media outlets soon found ways around the ban, initially by the use of subtitles, but later and more commonly by the use of an actor reading his words over the images of him speaking. One actor who voiced Adams was Paul Loughran.

This ban was lampooned in cartoons and satirical TV shows, such as ''Spitting Image'', and in ''The Day Today'' and was criticised by freedom of speech organisations and British media personalities, including BBC Director General John Birt and BBC foreign editor John Simpson. The ban was lifted by British Prime Minister John Major on 17 September 1994.

Moving into mainstream politics

Sinn Féin continued its policy of refusing to sit in the Westminster Parliament even after Adams won the Belfast West constituency. He lost his seat to Joe Hendron of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) in the 1992 general election, regaining it at the next election five years later.

Under Adams, Sinn Féin appeared to move away from being a political voice of the Provisional IRA to becoming a professionally organised political party in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

SDLP leader John Hume, MP, identified the possibility that a negotiated settlement might be possible and began secret talks with Adams in 1988. These discussions led to unofficial contacts with the British Northern Ireland Office under the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, and with the government of the Republic under Charles Haughey – although both governments maintained in public that they would not negotiate with "terrorists".

These talks provided the groundwork for what was later to be the Belfast Agreement, as well as the milestone Downing Street Declaration and the Joint Framework Document.

These negotiations led to the IRA ceasefire in August 1994. Irish Taoiseach Albert Reynolds, who had replaced Haughey and who had played a key role in the Hume/Adams dialogue through his Special Advisor Martin Mansergh, regarded the ceasefire as permanent. However, the slow pace of developments contributed in part to the (wider) political difficulties of the British government of John Major and the consequent reliance on Ulster Unionist Party votes in the House of Commons, led the IRA to end its ceasefire and resume the campaign.

A re-instituted ceasefire later followed as part of the negotiations strategy, which saw teams from the British and Irish governments, the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP, Sinn Féin and representatives of loyalist paramilitary organizations, under the chairmanship of former United States Senator George Mitchell, produced the Belfast Agreement (also called the ''Good Friday Agreement'' as it was signed on Good Friday, 1998). Under the agreement, structures were created reflecting the Irish and British identities of the people of Ireland, with a British-Irish Council and a Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly created.

Articles 2 and 3 of the Republic's constitution, ''Bunreacht na hÉireann'', which claimed sovereignty over all of Ireland, were reworded, and a power-sharing Executive Committee was provided for. As part of their deal, Sinn Féin agreed to abandon its abstentionist policy regarding a "six-county parliament", as a result taking seats in the new Stormont-based Assembly and running the education and health and social services ministries in the power-sharing government.

On 15 August 1998, four months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the Real IRA exploded a car bomb in Omagh, County Tyrone, killing 31 people and injuring 220, from many communities. Breaking with tradition, Adams said in reaction to the bombing "I am totally horrified by this action. I condemn it without any equivocation whatsoever." Prior to this, Adams had maintained a policy of refusing to condemn IRA or their splinter groups' actions.

Opponents in Republican Sinn Féin accused Sinn Féin of "selling out" by agreeing to participate in what it called "partitionist assemblies" in the Republic and Northern Ireland. However, Gerry Adams insisted that the Belfast Agreement provided a mechanism to deliver a united Ireland by non-violent and constitutional means, much as Michael Collins had said of the Anglo-Irish Treaty nearly 80 years earlier.

When Sinn Féin came to nominate its two ministers to the Northern Ireland Executive, for tactical reasons the party, like the SDLP and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), chose not to include its leader among its ministers. (When later the SDLP chose a new leader, it selected one of its ministers, Mark Durkan, who then opted to remain in the Committee.)

Adams remains the President of Sinn Féin. In 2011 he succeeded Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin as Sinn Féin parliamentary leader in Dáil Éireann. Daithí McKay is the head of the Sinn Féin group in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Adams was re-elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly on 8 March 2007, and on 26 March 2007, he met with DUP leader Ian Paisley face-to-face for the first time, and the two came to an agreement regarding the return of the power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland.

In January 2009, Adams attended the United States presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama as a guest of US Congressman Richard Neal.

On 6 May 2010, Adams was re-elected as MP for West Belfast garnering 71.1% of the vote. In 2011 the Chancellor appointed Adams to the British title of Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead to allow him to resign from the House of Commons and to stand for election in the Dáil. Initially it was claimed by David Cameron that Adams had accepted the title but Downing Street has since apologized for this and Adams has publicly rejected the title stating, "I have had no truck whatsoever with these antiquated and quite bizarre aspects of the British parliamentary system".

Dáil Éireann Election

In 2010, Adams announced that he would be seeking election as a TD (member of Irish Parliament) for the constituency of Louth at the 2011 Irish general election. He subsequently resigned his West Belfast Assembly seat on 7 December 2010.

Following the announcement of the Irish general election, 2011, Adams wrote to the House of Commons to resign his seat. This was treated as an application for the position of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, an office of profit under the Crown, the traditional method of leaving Westminster as plain resignation is not possible, and granted as such even though Adams had not explicitly made the request.

He was elected to the Dáil, topping the Louth constituency poll with 15,072 (21.7%) first preference votes.

Gerry Adams in film and fiction

The character of Gerry Adams has been portrayed in a number of films, TV programmes or in fiction:

2004 film ''Omagh'' by actor Jonathan Ryan. It is a dramatisation of the 1998 Omagh bombing and its aftermath.

2010 TV film ''Mo'' by actor John Lynch; the story of Mo Mowlam and the Good Friday Agreement.

Novel ''The Marching Season''; a spy fiction novel by Daniel Silva.

1996 Novel Eureka Street by Robert McLiam Wilson, as the character Jimmy Eve.

Published works

''Falls Memories'', 1982

''The Politics of Irish Freedom'', 1986

''A Pathway to Peace'', 1988

''An Irish Voice''

''Cage Eleven'', 1990, Brandon Books, ISBN 9780863221149

''The Street and Other Stories'', 1993, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-293-1

''Free Ireland: Towards a Lasting Peace'', 1995

''Before the Dawn'', 1996, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-434-00341-9

''Selected Writings''

''Who Fears to Speak...?'', 2001(Original Edition 1991), Beyond the Pale Publications, ISBN 978-1-900960-13-7

''An Irish Journal'', 2001, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-282-5

''Hope and History'', 2003, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-330-3

''A Farther Shore'', 2005, Random House

"The New Ireland: A Vision For The Future", 2005, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0-86322-344-0

''An Irish Eye'', 2007, Brandon Books, ISBN 978-0863223709

Further reading

Allen Randolph, Jody. "Gerry Adams, August 2009." ''Close to the Next Moment: Interviews from a Changing Ireland.'' Manchester: Carcanet, 2010.

Keena, Colm. ''Biography of Gerry Adams.'' Cork: Mercier Press, 1990

See also

Adams family abuse controversy

Resignation from the British House of Commons

References

External links

Léargas blog by Gerry Adams MP

Column archive at ''The Guardian''

Gerry Adams Sinn Féin profile

Gerry Adams TD Louth election candidate

Special Report at ''The Guardian''

Gerry Adams Profile at ''New Statesman''

Gerry Adams Man Of War and Man Of Peace? Anthony McIntyre, ''The Blanket'', 28 April 2004

Interview with Gerry Adams February 2006

{{s-ttl | title = Member of Parliament for Belfast West | years = 1997–2011}} {{s-ttl | title = Member of the Legislative Assembly for Belfast West | years = 1998–2010 }} {{s-ttl | title = Teachta Dála for Louth | years = 2011–present }}

Category:Leaders of Sinn Féin Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Belfast constituencies Category:Sinn Fein MPs (UK) Category:Northern Ireland MPAs 1982–1986 Category:Members of the Northern Ireland Forum Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 1998–2003 Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 2003–2007 Category:Northern Ireland MLAs 2007–2011 Category:UK MPs 1983–1987 Category:UK MPs 1987–1992 Category:UK MPs 1997–2001 Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:People from Belfast Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:People educated at St. Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School, Belfast Category:Attempted assassination survivors Category:Irish republicans interned without trial Category:Irish socialists Category:Shooting survivors Category:UK MPs 2010– Category:Members of the 31st Dáil Category:Teachtaí Dála

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