IrishAmerica250
Who better to quote than John Fitzgerald Kennedy as we celebrate America’s Semi quincentennial. JFK, speaking to the Irish Parliament in June of 1963, just five months before that Texas trip, shared this observation of the ties between Ireland and The United States of America:
“And so it is that our two nations, divided by distance, have been united by history. No people ever believed more deeply in the cause of Irish freedom than the people of the United States. And no country contributed more to building my own than your sons and daughters. They came to our shores in a mixture of hope and agony, and I would not underrate the difficulties of their course once they arrived in the United States. They left behind hearts, fields, and a nation yearning to be free. It is no wonder that James Joyce described the Atlantic as a bowl of bitter tears. And an earlier poet wrote: ‘They are going, going, going, and we cannot bid them stay’.”
Irish America has considerable and profound reasons to be humbled and proud of our role at every stage and every level of American history. Irish Americans are an immigrant community, people of an immigrant Nation.
We Were There at the Beginning
IrishAmerica250.org, an organization formed and dedicated to celebrating America’s 250th birthday and to honor Irish contributions to the world’s oldest ongoing democracy, and an indispensable member of the community of Nations, took a truly Irish step by commissioning a poem to honor this seminal occasion. They engaged, what many consider the finest living Irish poet, Micheal O’Siadhail (mee-hawl o’sheel) to put pen to paper to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Most will be tempted to skip over this, but in honor of our nation’s celebration, give it a read, it is comprehensive. The poem is entitled: Irish America:
“On that July Fourth we too were there deeply braided in this country’s weave through two fifty years we now can share pride in all our crowd came to achieve rising from outsiders demimonde toast how children’s children would in turn journey to acceptance and beyond dreams for which our forebearers had to yearn. Yes, we know the turn of fortunes wheel, pains and glory by our slow ascent, misbegotten wounds of dark O’Neill, famines great grandson a President. Vibrant wept in our New World’s brocade. Honour now what role our people played. Some two hundred thousand, maybe more. Curbed by Penal Laws or Anne’s Test Acts. Fled our island, hived years before colonists, at Lexington attacked firing shots that rang the world around, bent on independence they had lacked. Some of ours, recruits still duty bound to the British troops, but few compared with our early settlers who had found Catholic and dissenter both here shared common ground in fighting England’s Anne. We salute our heroes, those who dared. Generals John Stark and Sullivan, Mulligan, New Yorks shrewd tailor mole, Commodore John Barry, Wexford man. England’s parliament learn of our role-their America was lost to immigrants. We now share this country’s restless soul. From Portrush, Belfast, Newry or Coleraine, weary of the established church disdain, Ulster’s Presbyterian’s we’ll sail, seek religious Freedom’s holy grail, dream through dangerous months at sea of where, we a border folk with blitz warfare in our genes will settle buffer zones. Kirk democracy too in our bones, we’ll obey our leaders, but we spurn all aristocrats, who also then in turn branded us as rednecks, or as white trash. Stubborn, self-reliant, seldom rash, we are Wilsons, Smiths, Montgomery’s, Adams, Webbs, Buchanan’s, McAfee’s. Feelings in New England we intrude-first in Philadelphia but imbued with a warrior’s competitiveness it’s the wagon road, the wilderness road, we’ll push then South and West from Virginia on our tireless quest. We will be frontiersmen who’re bred to use a gun, aggressively we’ll spread-Carolina’s, Georgia, Tennessee, rout the Choctaw, Creek and Cherokee. Fighting red sticks or Brits at New Orleans, orphaned Jackson, soldier in his teens, warring hero with populist descent, our first democratic president., privilege curber, cancellor of debt, savior of the Union, yes and yet brutal driver of the Trail of Tears. In the South we Ulstermen become over time strong Baptists also some Methodists, who too will understand we’ll be the keepers of this Bible Land. Even now our Kirk and Frontier kind, still will hue a southern cast of mind. Come Black Forty-Sevens tuber blight starving and evicted, hollow eyed, crammed in ships sick holds a million came, hoping for no more than to survive. In New York or Boston most remain-better squalor than that fickly soil, who would trust to crops that so betray? By design or by default we stay to endure the poverty and toil, nursing fears such famine still ingrain. Here the lucky millions still alive, Micks and Bridgets nativist nickname, shanty Irish Wasps and snobs deride. In slum tenements a living plight. So God be with the failed potato ridge, we’ll dig the subways, build the Brooklyn Bridge, we’ll shovel and we’ll swing the pick and axe we’ll cut canals or lay the railroad tracks, we’ll be the city’s firemen or the cop, in craft unions back the tight closed shop. Young single girls as maids will find their feet, work for the Boston or New York elite who otherwise would never wish to mix with immigrants who are Irish Catholics. In parishes a counter world where we’ll create again a village life and feel. Nuns will see the seeds of welfare sown, build schools and hospitals first for their own. The Priests run dances in the parish hall while we’ll seek the old stocks downfall-the bosses and ward healers, the machine, whose good turns in saloons or the shebeen will garner votes, and so will circumvent the denizens of the establishment and induce a mindset out of date to let all immigrate now integrate. Then when the age of Tammany Hall is gone we’ll enter the professions and move on. In all fields are gifts and honor badge. Mayors, governors, those who move and shake. Presidents seek Irish lineage, kinships though far back and now opaque. What once signaled Famine immigrant has become a a take for granted name, mainstream, now secure and confident. Ours are roots that millions want to claim. Watch with joy the bright screens credits scroll: Cagney, Clooney, Kelly, Power, O’Brien-on they come to snatch a title role: Neeson, Brosnan, Ronan, Farrell, Ryan. Woven in this history’s dreamscape, celebrate a land that we still shape.”
