Description
As they entered their 600th year of British occupation, the Irish looked to America.
By the 1840s, America was the oasis that the Irish sought during a decade of both famine and revolution, and New York City was the main destination. The city would never be the same.
Refugees of the famine found leadership in Archbishop “Dagger” John Hughes, who built an Irish-Catholic infrastructure of churches, schools, hospitals, and orphanages that challenged the Protestant power structure of the city. Revolutionaries found a home in NYC, too: Thomas Francis Meagher would later become Lincoln’s favorite Irish war general; John Devoy and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa continued their fight from the city after the failed Rising of 1867; two men killed in the Easter Rising, Tom Clarke and James Connolly, spent substantial time in New York.
From there, the Irish rose and helped shape New York politics, labor, social activism, entertainment, and art. W.
