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Four great stories about American journalists in Ireland

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Below are four recent stories about American journalists in Ireland. The six correspondents highlighted in these pieces visited the country between 1919 and 1925. Their work drew attention on both sides of the Atlantic. My research in this subject area continues. Suggestions and comments are welcome. MH  

Richard Lee Strout: A Young American Reporter In Revolutionary Ireland After spending a year interning at London newspapers, Strout stopped in Ireland on his way back to America. He arrived in Dublin a day before Bloody Sunday, 1920. Published in American Journalism, the peer-reviewed quarterly of the American Journalism Historians Association.

When three American journalists visited ‘Paddy the Cope’ in Dungloe, 1919-1922: Correspondents from the Chicago Tribune, Survey Graphic magazine (New York), and the San Francisco Examiner traveled to the northwest corner of County Donegal to write about Patrick Gallagher, a cooperative leader. Published in The Irish Story (Dublin).

When the Irish ‘exposed’ a New York Herald reporter In June 1919 the Irish American press praised Truman H. Talley for publicizing a report that criticized the British administration of Ireland. A few months later, the same papers called him a British propagandist.

Could Maine potatoes have relieved Irish hunger in 1925? Milton Bronner of the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicated a three-part series of stories and photos about privation and poverty in the rural west of Ireland.

Visit my American Reporting of Irish Independence page.

On a lonely road in Connemara, south of Westport, 2019.

When the Irish ‘exposed’ a New York Herald reporter

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In June 1919 the Irish American press praised New York Herald correspondent Truman H. Talley for publicizing a report that criticized the British administration of Ireland. Three months later, as the Herald published Talley’s own investigation of Ireland, the same papers called him a British propagandist. Irish nationalists on both sides of the Atlantic cited what they described as evidence of Talley’s bias. The episode demonstrated how these partisans kept a close watch on correspondents who visited Ireland and monitored their coverage in the foreign press.

Truman Talley’s 1918 passport photo.

Talley joined the ranks of American journalists in Europe at the end of the First World War. The 6-foot-tall, Rock Port, Missouri native had worked at the Herald since 1915. Now 27, Talley soon began to file cable dispatches from London and Paris.[1]National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; NARA Series: Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 – March 31, 1925; Roll #: 621; Volume #: Roll 0621 – … Continue reading He did not travel to Dublin in January 1919 to witness the opening of the separatist Dáil Éireann; the Herald used Associated Press coverage. Talley also remained in London in May when the American Commission on Irish Independence visited Ireland. His cables to New York were based on the British press, which Talley described as “deeply stirred” by the pro-independence speeches of the three Irish American visitors.[2]“Walsh Mission To Ireland Evokes London Protest”, New York Herald, May 5, 1919.

In June, when the American Commission’s Frank P. Walsh and Edward Dunne released their report on British coercion in Ireland,[3]Michael J. Ryan, the Commission’s third member, did not sign the report. Talley became the first journalist to “spread before the American people the full report on Irish conditions.”[4]“England Must Act,” from Harvey’s Weekly, June 21, 1919, republished in the Gaelic American, July 5, 1919. He laid out all seventeen of the report’s charges and quoted passages at length. Talley’s story began on the front page and filled an inside page of the Herald’s Sunday edition, its two hundred thousand copy circulation double the usual weekday distribution.[5]N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual & Directory (Philadelphia: N.W. Ayer & Son’s, 1919) New York City papers, 648-684.

Syndication increased the story’s readership across the country. The Irish World and American Industrial Liberator, and Gaelic American, both of New York, and the Irish Press of Philadelphia, republished Talley’s story.[6]“World Stunned By Atrocities In Ireland”, Irish World; “Horrors Of English Prisons In Ireland”, Gaelic American;  and “Savage British Atrocities Shown In Walsh-Dunne Report” , Irish … Continue reading Dr. Patrick McCartan, Sinn Féin’s envoy to America and editor of the Irish Press, recalled Talley’s “vivid picture of the British press eyeing the report malignantly.”[7]Patrick McCartan, With De Valera In America. [New York: Brentano, 1932], 118. Gaelic American editor John Devoy praised the Herald for its “feat of alert and enterprising journalism.”[8]“English Atrocities in Ireland,” Gaelic American, June 21, 1919.

Some pro-British readers criticized the Herald for publicizing the Walsh-Dunne report. In an editorial reply, the daily said it published Talley’s account “because it is news of the first importance” with serious implication for Anglo-American relations. The editorial emphasized the paper was not passing judgement on the merits of the allegations and “in view of the conflict of the evidence at hand … (was) having its own investigation made.”[9]“The Case of Ireland”, New York Herald, June 26, 1919.

With that, Talley finally headed across the Irish Sea.

Talley in Ireland

“I went to Ireland as an impartial American seeking the truth,” the correspondent told the Herald’s readers when his “Truth About Ireland” series debuted on Sept. 7, 1919.[10]“Full And Free Inquiry Shows Cruelty To Irish Political Prisoners False”, New York Herald, Sept. 7, 1919. He had spent about about four weeks in the country during July and August and “retraced the path followed by the Irish American delegation.” Talley portrayed the Walsh-Dunne report as false or exaggerated, especially regarding the treatment of political prisoners, and challenged Sinn Féin’s legitimacy to establish an Irish republic. His book-length series appeared almost daily, more than three dozen installments that stretched into November.

But Irish partisans were also at work—publicly and privately—to undermine Talley’s reporting from Ireland.

The Irish Independent of Aug. 1, 1919,—a month before Talley’s series debuted—reported the correspondent was “pursuing an ‘independent’ investigation in a government motor car, attended by military and police guardians.”[11]”U.S. Pressman On Ireland”, Irish Independent, Aug. 1, 1919. Placing “independent” in quotes is telling; it conveyed skepticism of Talley’s description of his work. US newspapers were doing the same thing at the same time with “President” and “Irish Republic” as Éamon de Valera made his tour of America.[12]See my post, “How Dev’s tour shifted U.S. press coverage of Ireland”, July 19, 2019.

Arthur Griffith

The Independent reported that Talley declared he would hardly have known there was any unrest in Ireland if not for the carbine-totting constable seated at his side in the car. “There is no military occupation or distinction,” Talley said. “The soldiers constitute a reserve force which may never be called upon unless the Sinn Féin  adherents attempt to effect a coup d’etat.”

Talley interviewed Sinn Féin’s Arthur Griffith in Dublin. Ireland’s acting leader told the visiting journalist that the country was “becoming the Mecca of American newspapermen.”[13]“ ‘Acting President’ of Ireland on ‘The Cause’”, New York Herald, Nov. 23, 1919. Quotation is Talley’s paraphrase of Griffith’s remarks, not a direct quote. Talley quoted Griffith … Continue reading Privately, Griffith wrote to de Valera in America to alert him of the conversation with Talley and a separate encounter with John Steel of the Chicago Tribune:[14]Steele was a Belfast native who began his newspaper career in the United States, including the New York Herald. He returned to Europe earlier in 1919 as the Chicago Tribune’s London bureau chief. … Continue reading

“I told Talley if he wanted to see the country fairly, he should go around independently. He said he would. He left Dublin and absolutely put himself in their hands and toured the country in government motors accompanied by English government officers. I don’t know what stuff he is writing, but whatever it is you may take it as Dublin Castle’s voice.”[15]Griffith to de Valera, Aug. 18, 1919. Similar language in Griffith to de Valera, Aug. 29, 1919. Éamon de Valera papers, University College Dublin, P150/727. Thanks to historian Daniel Carey of … Continue reading

Talley was not the first, and would not be the last, journalist to accept transportation from either side of the war between Irish separatists and British authorities. Fourteen London-based newspaper correspondents boarded a British naval destroyer that steamed to Dublin during the April 1916 Rising.[16]See my post, “When a boatload of reporters steamed to the Easter Rising”, Sept. 15, 2023. Several American correspondents in Ireland described being blindfolded by rebel foot soldiers and driven surreptitiously to rendezvous with leaders such de Valera and Michael Collins. Other reporters hired drivers of private motor cars or jaunting cars, navigated the Irish railways system, or simply walked to where they were going.

It is unclear whether Griffith learned about Talley from the Independent’s story, or if the well-connected Irish leader, himself a journalist, first tipped the paper about the American correspondent. By late August, the Gaelic American in New York also reported Talley’s touring in British military motor cars. Devoy’s paper cited the Independent as its source.

“Mr. Talley has been dined and wined by England’s satraps in Ireland and in return for this hospitality he has whitewashed martial law and militarism in Ireland,” the Gaelic American reported. “He is certainly trying to make himself worthy of his hire.”[17]“On His Majesty’s Service”, Gaelic American, Aug. 30, 1919.

John Devoy

In addition the chauffeur services, Devoy criticized Talley’s July 20 Herald story about a post-war “peace parade” in Dublin. The correspondent described the large turnout and cheering for the parading troops as “striking evidence of loyalty” to the London government. “…all Dublin was surprised and the Sinn Féin chagrined that such a demonstration and loyal outpouring would mark the event, especially since there were present all the elements to make trouble if the Sinn Féin wanted trouble. … (The) demonstration and spectacle bore eloquent witness that Ireland’s heart still is with the Empire.”[18]”Dublin Displays Her Loyalty At A Big Peace Parade”, New York Herald, July 20, 1919.

Attacks continue

As Talley’s “Truth About Ireland” series unspooled in the Herald, Devoy continued to attack it in the Gaelic American. An editorial headlined “The ‘Herald’s’ English Propaganda” circled back to Talley’s June coverage of the Walsh-Dunne report:

Talley is a trained newspaper man and if not under orders to lie and misrepresent would probably tell the truth. Some time ago he cabled to the Herald the substance of the report of Frank P. Walsh and Edward F. Dunne on British atrocities in Ireland and the paper published it full. It was a good stroke of journalism, because the English papers had suppressed it, the censor had forbidden its publication in Ireland, and therefore, up to the Herald’s publication, the American people had no knowledge of it. People began to look to the Herald for ‘scoops’ about Ireland and to regard Talley as an enterprising American journalist who could be depended upon to give them.[19]“The ‘Herald’s’ English Propaganda”, Gaelic American, Sept. 13, 1919.

Such trust was misplaced, Devoy continued. The editorial repeated the same two sentences about Talley being “dined and wined by England’s satraps in Ireland” and the correspondent making himself “worthy of his hire” from the front page story a few weeks earlier. Devoy also said the Herald tried to buy advertising in his paper to promote Talley’s upcoming series, but he refused this because of the Independent’s story about Talley’s rides with the British authorities.

Opening installment of Talley’s “Truth About Ireland” series, including editor’s note, Sept. 7, 1919.

The Gaelic American’s broadside against Talley and the Herald continued for several weeks as Devoy refuted the reporting nearly point by point. The weekly highlighted correspondence from Griffith, who “exposed the hollowness of the pretensions” of Talley’s claim of being an “impartial investigator.” In addition to repeating the car story, Griffith alleged that during his meeting with Talley, the correspondent “frankly admitted to us that his paper was inimical and that he was ‘prejudiced against Sinn Féin.’ ”[20]See “New York Herald’s War On the Irish Cause”, Gaelic American, Sept. 20, 1919; “Talley Continues His Attacks on Ireland”, Gaelic American, Sept. 27, 1919; and “Talley Exposed by Arthur … Continue reading

The attacks by Devoy and Griffith are also notable for relitigating the Herald’s coverage of Charles Stewart Parnell’s 1880 visit to America, and the testimony of Herald correspondent Chester Ives during the “Parnellism and Crime” inquiry of 1889. Devoy was a reporter at the Herald in 1880, nine years after his exile to America for Fenian activities in Ireland. He worked among the press who covered Parnell’s visit and simultaneously maneuvered behind the scenes to assist the nationalist MP. Devoy accused the late Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. of working to undermine Parnell’s fundraising for the Land League in Ireland. The Herald, in its presentation of Talley’s series, recalled Bennett’s $100,000 relief fund for Ireland as proof the paper was not biased against the country.[21]”Herald’s Irish Relief Work Not Forgotten”, New York Herald, Sept. 21, 1919. I’ll explore this aspect in a future post.

More reaction

Talley’s series also drew the attention of Daniel T. O’Connell, director of the Irish National Bureau in Washington, D.C, the publicity arm of the Friends of Irish Freedom. In a letter to Walsh of the American Commission, he described Talley’s series as “a bold piece of British propaganda.” Walsh replied that he was “keeping track” of Talley’s series and, if he deemed it wise, would “make a concise reply after the appearance of his final article.”[22]From O’Connell to Walsh, Sept. 11, 1919; Walsh to O’Connell, Sept. 15, 1919, in Frank P. Walsh papers, MssCol 3211, New York Public Library.

Frank P. Walsh

O’Connell had no such restraint. The weekly News Letter he published warned readers that “Tally seeks to convince the American public the articles are without bias or prejudice. It is safe to assert, however, that a jury of any twelve well-trained newspaper correspondents, would, after reading the first five articles, convict Talley of gross prejudice toward Ireland.”[23]No headline, Irish National Bureau’s News Letter, Sept. 19, 1919.

The same jury, presumably, would also find the News Letter guilty of being an Irish propaganda organ.

Talley’s series had another problem. It trailed by the British government’s official denial of the Walsh-Dunne report. Walsh urged American newspapers and magazines to give “equal publicity” to his editorial replies to the British response.[24]To Chicago Examiner, Aug. 2, 1919; Harvey’s Weekly, Aug. 4, 1919, Walsh papers, NYPL. It does not appear that Walsh responded to Talley’s series, based on a review of the Herald through Dec. 31, 1919.

Other readers did respond to the series; more than 30 letters to the editor of the Herald, which in three issues filled up most of a page.[25]New York Herald, Sept. 21, Sept. 28, and Oct. 16, 1919. The opinions ranged from support to opposition of Talley’s work, or why the Herald was even bothering with the story. A sampling:

  • “To hell with England and you, also your opinion about Ireland …”
  • “I have twenty-three years been a reader of the Herald and always will be on account of Mr. Talley’s ‘truth and nothing but the truth.'”
  • “Surely we have enough domestic matters in our great country to occupy the attention of our politicians instead of their time being taken up by the discontent of a foreign corner of the earth, such as Ireland.”

The Herald circulated Talley’s series to newspapers across the US and Canada. Some of these papers edited the reporting into a single feature. The News Letter worried that “Talley’s articles will influence readers to blame the newspapers publishing his articles. Many will find it difficult to distinguish between the author and the medium of expressing his prejudiced views.”[26]News Letter, Sept. 19, 1919.

This is an important point. O’Connell wanted readers to disregard Talley’s anti-Irish reporting, but he did not want them to lose confidence in the papers that published it. Just as Griffith noted the rise of American correspondents to Ireland, O’Connell recognized many of these journalists would write stories that were helpful to Ireland in these same papers.

Devoy was less concerned. He predicted Talley’s series “will make no impression on the American public because their partisanship is not even disguised.”[27]“New York Herald’s War On the Irish Cause”, Gaelic American, Sept. 20, 1919.

Afterward

Talley’s series and the Walsh-Dunne report soon enough were left in the wake of ongoing developments in the Irish war of independence. Nearly a year after his series debuted, Talley wrote:

Events of the utmost significance are crowding upon one other so rapidly in Ireland at the present time that it is frequently difficult to assess any or all of them at their true relative value or to discern their precise cause and effect beyond, of course, the daily generalization that the situation is still more serious and nearer a calamitous climax. Every day the first pages of the newspapers contribute further complexities to this age-old and bitterest of modern political dramas. News, as such, coming from Ireland for weeks and months past has been anything but dull and desultory; it has bristled with violence and bulged with rumblings of impending bloodshed on a widespread scale.[28]“Sinn Féin’s Provocative Martyrdom”, New York Times, Aug. 29, 1920.

Irish separatists and the British government each kept a close eye on visiting correspondents and monitor foreign press coverage of Ireland. In January 1920 Dublin Castle authorities seized American newspapers shipped to the Irish capital because they contained coverage of the Irish bond drive in the United States, which was led by de Valera and Walsh. The British Embassy in Washington, D.C. regularly assessed the Irish news coverage and editorials in American papers. Officials there described the New York Herald as “friendly to us.”[29]Document 32, #11767, “The American Press”, from the British Embassy, Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 1921, p. 130 in Kenneth Bourne and D. Cameron Watt, general editors, British Documents on Foreign … Continue reading Irish-American organs such as the Gaelic American and News Letter continued to question the self-declared impartiality of American correspondents in Ireland. They criticized what they found objectionable, praised what supported the Irish cause.

Griffith died suddenly in August 1922, during the Irish Civil War. Devoy lived until 1928. Talley served as European manager of the New York Herald News Service and a special writer for the New York Times and national magazines such as World’s Work and McClure’s. In 1922 he joined Fox Movietone News, where he revolutionized newsreel production and distribution, “a new type of pictorial journalism designed to do away with the monotony and lack of personality of the old.”[30]”Truman Talley Dies; Movietone Executive”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 19, 1941. Talley died in 1941–22 years after Irish partisans exposed his ride through Ireland with the British military.

References

References
↑1 National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; NARA Series: Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 – March 31, 1925; Roll #: 621; Volume #: Roll 0621 – Certificates: 43500-43749, 05 Nov 1918-06 Nov 1918; Ancestry.com. U.S.
↑2 “Walsh Mission To Ireland Evokes London Protest”, New York Herald, May 5, 1919.
↑3 Michael J. Ryan, the Commission’s third member, did not sign the report.
↑4 “England Must Act,” from Harvey’s Weekly, June 21, 1919, republished in the Gaelic American, July 5, 1919.
↑5 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual & Directory (Philadelphia: N.W. Ayer & Son’s, 1919) New York City papers, 648-684.
↑6 “World Stunned By Atrocities In Ireland”, Irish World; “Horrors Of English Prisons In Ireland”, Gaelic American;  and “Savage British Atrocities Shown In Walsh-Dunne Report” , Irish Press, all on June 21, 1919.
↑7 Patrick McCartan, With De Valera In America. [New York: Brentano, 1932], 118.
↑8 “English Atrocities in Ireland,” Gaelic American, June 21, 1919.
↑9 “The Case of Ireland”, New York Herald, June 26, 1919.
↑10 “Full And Free Inquiry Shows Cruelty To Irish Political Prisoners False”, New York Herald, Sept. 7, 1919.
↑11 ”U.S. Pressman On Ireland”, Irish Independent, Aug. 1, 1919.
↑12 See my post, “How Dev’s tour shifted U.S. press coverage of Ireland”, July 19, 2019.
↑13 “ ‘Acting President’ of Ireland on ‘The Cause’”, New York Herald, Nov. 23, 1919. Quotation is Talley’s paraphrase of Griffith’s remarks, not a direct quote. Talley quoted Griffith elsewhere in this story.
↑14 Steele was a Belfast native who began his newspaper career in the United States, including the New York Herald. He returned to Europe earlier in 1919 as the Chicago Tribune’s London bureau chief. Griffith dismissed him as an “Ulster Protestant.” See Note 15. Steele later claimed credit for helping with the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. See my post, ” ‘The Republic of Ireland is dead; long live … ‘ “, Jan. 7, 2022. Steele reported on Ireland into the 1930s.
↑15 Griffith to de Valera, Aug. 18, 1919. Similar language in Griffith to de Valera, Aug. 29, 1919. Éamon de Valera papers, University College Dublin, P150/727. Thanks to historian Daniel Carey of Dublin for help deciphering Griffith’s penmanship.
↑16 See my post, “When a boatload of reporters steamed to the Easter Rising”, Sept. 15, 2023.
↑17 “On His Majesty’s Service”, Gaelic American, Aug. 30, 1919.
↑18 ”Dublin Displays Her Loyalty At A Big Peace Parade”, New York Herald, July 20, 1919.
↑19 “The ‘Herald’s’ English Propaganda”, Gaelic American, Sept. 13, 1919.
↑20 See “New York Herald’s War On the Irish Cause”, Gaelic American, Sept. 20, 1919; “Talley Continues His Attacks on Ireland”, Gaelic American, Sept. 27, 1919; and “Talley Exposed by Arthur Griffith”, Gaelic American, Oct. 11, 1919; and others.
↑21 ”Herald’s Irish Relief Work Not Forgotten”, New York Herald, Sept. 21, 1919. I’ll explore this aspect in a future post.
↑22 From O’Connell to Walsh, Sept. 11, 1919; Walsh to O’Connell, Sept. 15, 1919, in Frank P. Walsh papers, MssCol 3211, New York Public Library.
↑23 No headline, Irish National Bureau’s News Letter, Sept. 19, 1919.
↑24 To Chicago Examiner, Aug. 2, 1919; Harvey’s Weekly, Aug. 4, 1919, Walsh papers, NYPL.
↑25 New York Herald, Sept. 21, Sept. 28, and Oct. 16, 1919.
↑26 News Letter, Sept. 19, 1919.
↑27 “New York Herald’s War On the Irish Cause”, Gaelic American, Sept. 20, 1919.
↑28 “Sinn Féin’s Provocative Martyrdom”, New York Times, Aug. 29, 1920.
↑29 Document 32, #11767, “The American Press”, from the British Embassy, Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 1921, p. 130 in Kenneth Bourne and D. Cameron Watt, general editors, British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports And Papers From The Foreign Office Confidential Print. Part II, Series C, Vol. 1. [University Publications of America, Inc., 1986.]
↑30 ”Truman Talley Dies; Movietone Executive”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 19, 1941.

Could Maine potatoes have relieved Irish hunger in 1925?

Milton Bronner’s “extensive trip up and down the western counties of Ireland” in February 1925 covered the most forlorn districts of the island at the bleakest time of the year. He came to investigate whether famine had also visited these remote parts of the three-year-old Irish Free State.[1]”Erin Revealed As Suffering Hunger’s Pangs”, Bangor (Maine) Daily Commercial, Feb. 24, 1925. Such a frightening possibility fell within the lifespan of those who remembered the mid-nineteenth century collapse of Ireland’s most important food staple, the potato.

Near Galway, the American journalist entered one of the “usual shanties of this coast—stone walls, badly thatched roof, one room 20 by 10 feet; its door open so light could penetrate; the floor bare, rocky earth.” There, he listened to the lament, “in curious sing-song English,” of Mrs. Bartley Connelly, the mother of eight children:

And the black rain fell. All day and every day. All spring it fell and all summer and all the rest of the year. Always the rain, the dull roar of it. Sorrow and sorrow’s sorrow. The potatoes were washed away or rotted. And the turf melted away with the wetness. No food for the pot. No turf for the fire. Emptiness and blackness in the house. And the children cryin’ because of the hunger and cold.[2]This passage was edited shorter in some newspaper presentations of the story. Bronner reported that Bartley Connelly, the 45-year-old husband and father, was working as a farm laborer and away from … Continue reading

This photo of a mother and two children–not the Connelly family–appeared in newspapers that syndicated Martin Bronner’s 1925 series about privation in the west of Ireland. Waco (Texas) News-Tribune, Feb. 23, 1925.

This was the scene-setter for the first installment of Bronner’s three-part series about privation and poverty in the rural west of Ireland. The Newspaper Enterprise Association (NEA) syndicated his stories to its more than 400 member publications in the US and Canada.[3]The 1925 Ayer & Son’s directory listed more than 22,000 periodicals in North America and US territories, including 2,465 daily newspapers. It is unclear how many NEA subscribers published … Continue reading February 1925 marked the peak of what has since come to be known as Ireland’s “forgotten famine,” an episode remembered today by a Wikipedia page. The entry cites Irish historian and podcaster Fin Dwyer’s 2014 piece in TheJournal.ie, among other sources.

Milton Bronner in 1922 newspaper advertisement.

Bronner had spent half of his 50 years as a newspaper man, working his way up from reporter to editor of the small daily in Covington, Kentucky, his native state, to NEA’s London-based correspondent since 1920.[4]”Milton Bronner, Reporter Retired Since ’42, Dies After Long Illness”, (Louisville, Ky.) Courier Journal, Jan. 7, 1959. He came to my attention in a 2023 RTÉ piece by Noel Carolan, which focused on international coverage of Ireland’s 1925 food crisis. Bronner’s series and other foreign press forced the Irish government to give more attention to the problem, which it earlier had minimized. It also prompted limited external support to the suffering residents, though nothing near the scale of the American Committee for Relief in Ireland effort of 1921.

As Carolan details, Bronner’s series was more impactful because of the “persuasive photojournalism” that accompanied the narrative. Lighter cameras with faster shutter speeds introduced in the 1920s were beginning to revolutionize news photography.[5]Library of Congress prints and photographs : an illustrated guide. [Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1994], 32. Images of faraway people and places were still a novelty to American newspaper readers a century ago. But the photographer who joined Bronner in the west of Ireland was not named in the newspapers that published these images, at least not those available for review in digital archives. Carolan did not address the mystery photographer. Nothing in Bronner’s 1959 news obituary suggests that he might have taken photos to support his reporting in Ireland or elsewhere. Readers are encouraged to provide information about the photographer’s identity—perhaps an Irish or British stringer hired for the job.

Bronner’s visit to Mrs. Connelly’s cabin was not his first trip to Ireland. In the summer of 1920 he reported on sectarian riots in Belfast and interviewed Arthur Griffith in Dublin as the war of independence approached a crescendo of violence. After the July 1921 truce he covered the London negotiations between Sinn Féin representatives and the British government that resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. Bronner was back in Ireland the following month for the handover of Dublin Castle and other government buildings from British authorities to the new Irish Free State. He interviewed Free State leader Timothy Healy for a series of dispatches at St. Patrick’s Day 1923 as the country struggled to end its civil war. Bronner interviewed Williams Cosgrave in December 1924, just two months before his trip to the western counties.[6]These stories appeared in various US and Canadian newspapers that published NEA’s syndicated content. Search results from Newspapers.com archive.

Bronner was certainly moved by the lilting brogues, “wretched” housing, and barefoot children of Mrs. Connelly and others he met and interviewed. But he was hardly a naïve young reporter, like some of the American correspondents who just a few years earlier had made their first trips to Ireland to cover the revolutionary period. Bronner reported that he had “not heard of a single authenticated death from starvation or from typhus fever” during his travels in the west. Still, he added: “I have marveled that the people survive the hardships of their lives.”

Maine potatoes

Delegation from Maine posed outside the White House on Jan. 31, 1925, after discussing the potato embargo. Library of Congress.

Bronner’s series had particular resonance on the pages of the Bangor (Maine) Daily Commercial. In a front-page sidebar to the correspondent’s first installment, the paper alleged that British government officials had conspired with Canadian growers to block shipments of abundant Maine potatoes from Ireland. The foreigners speciously charged that the Maine spuds were infected with a common potato bug. Shortly before Bronner’s series debuted, a delegation representing Maine potato farmers traveled to Washington to lobby US Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and President Calvin Coolidge for help to repeal the embargo.

In most newspapers that published Bronner’s series, the first installment opened with these two sentences:

Hunger sits down at table as an unwelcome and bitterly feared guest and Cold keeps him company in thousands of cabin homes today in western Ireland. That is what a partial potato crop failure and peat bog shortage mean for Galway and Donegal and Kerry and Mayo.

In the Daily Commercial, the opening text was amended to read:

Maine potatoes remain in Maine, while hunger sits down at table as an unwelcome and bitterly feared guest and cold keeps him company in thousands of cabin homes today in western Ireland. That is what a potato crop failure and peat bog shortage in Ireland, coupled with the embargo placed by Great Britain on American potatoes, mean for Galway and Donegal and Kerry and Mayo.

The Daily Commercial also denounced “the selfishness of the British government” in a separate editorial. “Our government has done all that it could and pointed out there are more beetles in the Canadian potatoes than in those of Aroostook (County, Maine), but England has persisted. And so there is unnecessary privation in Ireland, much suffering that might have been vastly alleviated.”[7]”Potato Embargo And Real Facts”, Bangor (Maine) Daily Commercial, Feb. 25, 1925.

The alleged embargo was actually part of wider and more longstanding trade problems between the United States, Great Britain and the Irish Free State; complicated in part by the 1920 partition of Northern Ireland. US officials “accepted that most members of the new (Irish) government were inexperienced both from a political and economic perspective, that the Free State was underdeveloped economically and that both industry and agriculture were in a depressed state.”[8]See the “Economic work” subsection, pp 503-526, in Chapter 12 of Bernadette Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913-29. [Dublin: Four Courts … Continue reading Most of these problems were resolved over the coming years, but not in time to feed Mrs. Connelly’s family and other desperate residents of Ireland’s impoverished west. The inability to ship Maine potatoes to Ireland does not appear to have gained traction beyond the New England state, based on my search of US and Irish digital newspaper archives.

Other coverage

The Irish government allocated £500,000 for relief and provided 6,000 tons of coal, as Bronner and other news sources reported. An official statement insisted, “The comparison with 1847 is extravagant, and there is no general famine.”[9]”Minimize Irish Famine”, New York Times, Feb. 3, 1925. Opposition leader Eamon de Valera blamed an “English press scare” for distorting the matter, adding that a republican government would have done a better job anticipating the crisis as conditions in the west worsened during the autumn of 1924. [10]”Irish Not Starving, Declare Cosgrave”, New York Times, Feb. 1, 1925. The Gaelic American, ever the watchdog of mainstream press coverage about Ireland, also criticized British papers for exaggerating the story to embarrass the Irish government, but said nothing about Bronner’s series.

This photo also accompanied Bronner’s series in many US newspapers. Note the NEA logo in the bottom right corner, but there is no individual photo credit. It is unclear whether the boy is missing his right leg, if it is in shadow, or bent against the wall behind him.

“The Irish press gives the situation its true proportions and recognizes the efficiency of the government’s effort to meet it,” Chicago Daily News foreign correspondent William H. Brayden reported in a Feb. 7 story syndicated to other US papers. “That the situation is not regarded in Ireland with the same apprehension as abroad is evident from the fact that when the Dáil met this week and the ministers were interrogated on many subjects, no deputy raised any questions about conditions in the west.”[11]”Leader Familiar With Situation”, The Scranton (Pa.) Republican, Feb. 9, 1925.

The Armagh-born Brayden began his career at the Dublin-based Freeman’s Journal, which had folded in December 1924.[12]Felix M. Larkin, “Brayden, William John Henry“, in the online Dictionary of Irish Biography. Later in 1925 he published the pro-government booklet, The Irish Free State: a survey of the newly constructed institutions of the self-governing Irish people, together with a report on Ulster. There, Brayden wrote:

I had heard that this year the farmers were exceptionally hard hit. The cry of famine in Ireland has been uttered in America. I went to Kilkenny expecting to learn something that might confirm these tales of distress.[13]Brayden, Irish Free State … Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925], 28. 

Kilkenny was hardly the place to look for food distress in 1925, as Brayden surely knew. Like the government, he downplayed the alleged famine. By summer 1925 improved weather and crop yields had largely resolved the crisis. Brayden wrote of conditions in County Clare:

A few months ago the rain had driven the people to despair of this year’s harvest and to dread another winter as bad as the last. Now the fine weather has completely altered the situation. It is declared in the county that the prospects of a successful season for the farmers have rarely been so bright. In several districts the turf supply was secured and haymaking started by the middle of June on a good crop, while the potato fields are described as in excellent condition.[14]Brayden, Irish Free State, 35.

Ireland’s “famine” of 1925 was soon forgotten.

Brayden died in 1933. Bronner remained in Europe with NEA until 1942. He interviewed George Bernard Shaw on his 80th birthday in 1936. The Irish writer told the correspondent: “Why should I let you pick my brain for nothing, when in 10 minutes I can write down what I tell you, sign it, send it to (an editor in America), and get a check for $1,000?”[15]”An 80th Birthday Message From George Bernard Shaw Who Says Proudly ‘Americans Adore Me’ “, The Helena (Mont.) Independent, July 26, 1936. A year later Bronner interviewed de Valera about the Irish Constitution. Bronner retired to his native Louisville, Kentucky.

References

References
↑1 ”Erin Revealed As Suffering Hunger’s Pangs”, Bangor (Maine) Daily Commercial, Feb. 24, 1925.
↑2 This passage was edited shorter in some newspaper presentations of the story. Bronner reported that Bartley Connelly, the 45-year-old husband and father, was working as a farm laborer and away from the home at the time of his visit.
↑3 The 1925 Ayer & Son’s directory listed more than 22,000 periodicals in North America and US territories, including 2,465 daily newspapers. It is unclear how many NEA subscribers published Bronner’s series.
↑4 ”Milton Bronner, Reporter Retired Since ’42, Dies After Long Illness”, (Louisville, Ky.) Courier Journal, Jan. 7, 1959.
↑5 Library of Congress prints and photographs : an illustrated guide. [Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1994], 32.
↑6 These stories appeared in various US and Canadian newspapers that published NEA’s syndicated content. Search results from Newspapers.com archive.
↑7 ”Potato Embargo And Real Facts”, Bangor (Maine) Daily Commercial, Feb. 25, 1925.
↑8 See the “Economic work” subsection, pp 503-526, in Chapter 12 of Bernadette Whelan, United States Foreign Policy and Ireland: From Empire to Independence, 1913-29. [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006].
↑9 ”Minimize Irish Famine”, New York Times, Feb. 3, 1925.
↑10 ”Irish Not Starving, Declare Cosgrave”, New York Times, Feb. 1, 1925.
↑11 ”Leader Familiar With Situation”, The Scranton (Pa.) Republican, Feb. 9, 1925.
↑12 Felix M. Larkin, “Brayden, William John Henry“, in the online Dictionary of Irish Biography.
↑13 Brayden, Irish Free State … Ulster. [Chicago: Chicago Daily News, 1925], 28.
↑14 Brayden, Irish Free State, 35.
↑15 ”An 80th Birthday Message From George Bernard Shaw Who Says Proudly ‘Americans Adore Me’ “, The Helena (Mont.) Independent, July 26, 1936.

When three American journalists visited Donegal, 1919-1922

At least three American journalists trekked to the Dungloe village in remote northwest County Donegal during Ireland’s dangerous revolutionary period. They came to interview Patrick Gallagher, who had organized a successful cooperative agricultural society. It was a hopeful news story in the middle of Ireland’s war of independence and civil war.

My story about these three journalists–Ruth Russell of the Chicago Daily News; Savel Zimand of Survey Graphic magazine; and Redfern Mason of the San Francisco Examiner–has just been published at The Irish Story website.

Image from November 1921 issue of Survey Graphic.

When a US magazine devoted a full issue to Ireland

Thirty-five months after the January 1919 opening of the Irish separatist parliament, and a week before the December 1921 announcement of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the New York-based Survey Graphic published a special issue devoted to Ireland. “Here for the first time in an American national magazine will be presented a complete survey of the Irish situation as it is today, as well as the plans which many of the prominent Irish thinkers have in mind for the Ireland of tomorrow,” the periodical’s business manager, John Kenderdine, wrote to Irish American activist Frank P. Walsh.[1]Kenderdine to Walsh, Nov. 15, 1921, in Walsh papers, New York Public Library.

Kenderdine offered to discount the magazine’s regular newsstand price of 30 cents per copy by a third to a half, depending on how many extra copies were ordered. He provided Walsh with “rough proofs of the content” subject to final layout and other editorial adjustments.

Walsh, chairman of the American Commission on Irish Independence, replied two days later from his Washington, D.C. office: “I think the idea most timely and the edition a very fine one.” He promised to alert the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic, which Eamon de Valera founded a year earlier in a split with the Friends of Irish Freedom. Walsh said he also would notify Irish leaders but told Kenderdine that he had no role in “the distribution of literature of this character.”[2]Walsh to Kenderdine, Nov. 17, 1921, Walsh papers.

(Continues below image)

Cover of the November 1921 issue of The Survey.

The cover of the magazine posed the question: “What Would the Irish Do With Ireland?” The answers were supplied over 68 pages by nearly a score of writers and artists in the form of essays, poems, drawings, paintings, and photographs. Each name in this alphabetical list of contributors is linked to their page in the issue:

The Survey was first published in 1909 as a journal for social workers and a broader audience of concerned citizens. Paul Underwood Kellogg, the editor, had spent the previous few years leading a groundbreaking investigation of “life and labor” in the Pittsburgh steel district. The Survey Graphic emerged from a series of reconstruction-themed issues published during and after the First World War. These focused on industrial relations, health, education, international relations, housing, race relations, consumer education, and related fields.[3]University of Minnesota Archival Collection Guides, Social Welfare History Archives, Survey Associates records, SW0001.

By 1921, the magazine’s influence among progressive thinkers probably surpassed its reported nationwide circulation of about 13,700 copies. But it hardly competed with giants of the day such as Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly, with 498,000 circulation, or McClure’s monthly, with 440,000.[4]N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual & Directory (Philadelphia, N.W. Ayer & Son’s, 1921). A few mainstream newspapers republished some of Survey Graphic’s guest essays on their opinion pages. One editorial endorsement said the Irish issue was “well worth the perusal of every person interested in the Irish cause.[5]Editorial in The Catholic Bulletin, St. Paul, Minn., Dec. 31, 1921.

In an overly optimistic and ultimately inaccurate editorial, Survey Graphic concluded the answer to the question it posed on the issue’s cover–“What would the Irish do with Ireland?–was that the Irish would give the world a new form of “rural civilization” and fraternity. It continued:

This is one of the most encouraging signs of the times—development of rural communities on a cooperative basis; each community to have so far as possible its own general store for supplies of common need; each community to manufacture what it can do advantageously with a common mill, creamery, bacon factory, electric plant, buying the commodities that can not be supplied at home and selling its products; each community to establish schools, recreation halls and libraries, organize community pageants and games; each community to have its town council where common problems and new plans may be discussed. … The old and the very young nations are struggling in Europe for their rights. England by its bloodless revolution gave to the world a new conception of liberty, France by the great revolution, equality. Ireland has the qualifications to give us something as precious: fraternity.

It did not work work out that way. Political partition and sectarianism were major problems in Ireland for most the twentieth century. Agricultural cooperatives were replaced by corporate agriculture. Ireland retains its beautiful countryside, but most of its people live in urban districts, working in an economy that was unimaginable in 1921.

Advertisement in The New Republic, Dec. 7, 1921.

References

References
↑1 Kenderdine to Walsh, Nov. 15, 1921, in Walsh papers, New York Public Library.
↑2 Walsh to Kenderdine, Nov. 17, 1921, Walsh papers.
↑3 University of Minnesota Archival Collection Guides, Social Welfare History Archives, Survey Associates records, SW0001.
↑4 N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual & Directory (Philadelphia, N.W. Ayer & Son’s, 1921).
↑5 Editorial in The Catholic Bulletin, St. Paul, Minn., Dec. 31, 1921.

American Irish Historical Society leader on first anniversary

County Kerry native Elizabeth Stack became executive director of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City in February 2024. The previous six years she was executive director of the Irish American Heritage Museum in Albany, N.Y. Before 2018, Stack taught Irish and Irish American History and was an associate director at Fordham University’s Institute of Irish Studies. She completed her PhD at Fordham, a Jesuit research university in the Bronx, N.Y. This Q & A was conducted by email as Stack approached her upcoming first anniversary of leading the 127-year-old organization. MH

***

AIHS was closed for several years due to financial and legal problems, in addition to the COVID pandemic. New York Attorney General Letitia James appointed you and others to an interim board to right the foundering organization. Since your appointment as executive director AIHS’s has reopened its Fifth Avenue building and hosted many events. Give us your assessment of your first year. What are your successes? What still needs to be done?

Elizabeth Stack

ES: My first year as executive director has been an exciting and rewarding experience, though not without its challenges! The primary goal has been to re-establish the Society as a vital resource for the New York public, and I am proud to say that we are making significant strides toward that. In our first year, I hosted 63 events, both in-person and virtually, covering a diverse range of topics. These events have not only sparked enriching conversations but have also helped us begin to build a thriving community around the Society.

We had to almost start from scratch – we have a new website and are undergoing a new membership drive. We post daily on social media, and have answered queries from researchers, while also opening the building for tours. It was necessary to hit the ground running, and also try to assess the archives, do necessary maintenance on the building, and get the infrastructure back up. But I felt it was important that the Society was seen to be active again as quickly as we could be.

We are committed to making the AIHS a place where people feel welcome to learn, share, and connect. Our goal is to ensure that our doors are always open, and that the Society serves as a space for both education and community engagement. While we’ve accomplished a great deal in our first year, there’s still work to be done. This year we will continue to expand our programming, strengthen our partnerships, and build on the foundation we laid in 2024.

Some specific plans or scheduled events for 2025?

ES: We are kicking off 2025 with a talk on ‘The Rise and Rule of Eamon De Valera’ with David McCullagh, RTE journalist, on Jan. 14. De Valera’s personal and political connection to New York makes it a fantastic discussion to kick off the new year.

We’re also excited to host a fantastic exhibition from Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield at the Society from January to May. The exhibition showcases a powerful mix of historical and contemporary artworks that dive into the lasting impact of the Irish Famine. It’s a great opportunity for visitors to connect with themes of loss, cultural erosion, and the devastation of that time. Plus, we’ll be holding several talks throughout the five months, exploring both the exhibition and the broader history of the Great Hunger.

We’ve also got some exciting events coming up in collaboration with Irish universities and cultural organizations. These events will help strengthen the academic and historical connections between Ireland and the United States, offering a great opportunity to deepen our shared understanding.

We intend to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby in April as well as the 1916 Rising. I am hoping that this year we can utilize more of our own archives when telling these stories, and I plan to host more talks on the history of the Society and its holdings.

Any surprises from your first year at AIHS that you can share with our readers?

ES: The most unexpected challenge I’ve encountered during my first year at AIHS is the complexity of managing such an iconic building. While the grandeur of our mansion on 5th Avenue, right across from the Met, is truly breathtaking, it comes with its fair share of obstacles. The size and age of the building brings significant operational costs, and the maintenance required to preserve its historical integrity is no small task. Our technology is subpar and there are various physical limitations to what we can do here. It’s been a constant balancing act.

The American Irish Historical Society mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

There have been numerous columns written on both sides of the Atlantic about the “end of an era” for traditional U.S.-Irish relations and Irish American identity. These pieces are usually pegged to the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, the secularization and modernization of Ireland, the growing diversity of Ireland and Irish America. As an historian as well as AIHS director, what are your thoughts about the transatlantic relationship (political, social, etc.). How would you describe contemporary Irish America? What is the role for the AIHS in the twenty-first century compared to its founding in the late nineteenth century?

ES: Irish American relations have always evolved, and while it’s true that we’re seeing some shifts today, these changes are part of a long history of adaptation and growth. The AIHS has always played an important role in this dynamic relationship, from being involved with the Irish independence movement in the early 20th century, through to collaborating with Irish and Irish American academics and artists, and we continue to do so today. We have strong ties with key organizations like the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Emerald Guild, the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, the Emerald Isle and other immigration centers, and the Irish Repertory Theater, which serve as pillars of the community and help preserve our cultural heritage – and we are supported by the Irish Consulate too.

Despite the decline in emigration, Irish America remains vibrant and influential. Our membership demographic is probably mostly among the older generation, but I do want the Society to also engage with younger Irish Americans and recent immigrants. Many of today’s immigrants are educated and working in business or finance and technology, and they come from a different Ireland, so the old touchstones of the Irish story are maybe not as relevant for them. Ireland has undergone a remarkable transformation, and this shift is undeniably positive, although I think there is sometimes a sense of sorrow among the Irish Americans about how much Ireland has changed in the last twenty years or so.

The image of the poor Irish is firmly in the past. Today, Ireland’s global standing has strengthened, with over 500 Irish companies thriving in the U.S. alone and Ireland ranking as the 9th largest investor in the country. This reflects the nation’s newfound prominence on the international stage, particularly in sectors like business, technology, and culture. And in a post-Brexit world as the entire island of Ireland interacts with Europe and America, we are very proud to partner with Queen’s University and Ulster University on various talks and seminars.

In the arts, we’re seeing exciting developments too. Irish actors, musicians, and artists continue to make waves, and one of the most compelling examples is the success of Irish rap, especially groups like Kneecap. We also celebrate the global reach of Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, which was adapted into a TV series. As a historical institution, this is something we are especially proud of, as it brings attention to critical chapters of Irish history and culture. Academics and journalists are tackling complicated subjects like the Magdalene Homes and adoption out of Ireland, and how Ireland is dealing with its own immigration experience, so the conversations we are having are dynamic and inclusive.

All of these developments suggest that the relationship between Ireland and the U.S. is not only changing but thriving, and it’s for the better. As we move forward, the AIHS must adapt and embrace these changes, helping to forge a new identity for Irish America in the 21st century. We’re here to celebrate that evolving relationship, while also carving out our own place in it—preserving the rich history of Irish immigration while embracing the future of Irish American cultural exchange.

Do you have any time for your own research? What topics of Irish or Irish American history most interest you these days?

ES: My primary research interest centers around immigration, particularly Irish emigration patterns. I am deeply interested in exploring how Irish emigrants shaped American society, both during their initial arrival and in the long-term. One of the key aspects I wrote about is the Immigration Act of 1924, which imposed strict quotas based on national origins and had a lasting impact on Irish immigration. The law drastically changed the landscape of U.S. immigration policy and is crucial to understanding the Irish experience in America during the early 20th century.

The Great Hunger is another area I’m still really interested in, especially having read recent works by Cian McMahon, Tyler Anbinder, and Anelise Strout. I’m particularly focused on how the famine and the resulting wave of emigration profoundly impacted the Irish American community. Charity, particularly how it was mobilized by Irish American communities to support both new immigrants and the broader social fabric, is another area of interest. I’m exploring how the Irish American community’s experiences as immigrants led them to advocate for others, and how attitudes toward immigrants in American society have evolved over time. I’m fascinated by the anti-Catholic rhetoric of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but also, I want to look at Irish American attitudes to other immigrants in more recent years. Lastly, American support for Irish independence is another area I would like to concentrate on, especially given the archives we hold here on De Valera’s visit in 1920 and the Friends of Irish Freedom.

Through my work at the AIHS, I’ve been able to rekindle my passion for these topics, and I look forward to continuing to explore the historical and contemporary impact of Irish immigration on both sides of the Atlantic.

Library inside the AIHS mansion in New York.

Best of the blog, 2024

It’s been a good year. My work included two public presentations, publication of my first entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, and a trip to Ireland. I reviewed important archival collections at University College Dublin and the New York Public Library. I donated archival material to the University of Galway. The site surpassed its 1,000th post on the way to this 12th annual roundup of the year’s news and content.

In April I presented “The American Press and the Irish Revolution” at the American Irish Historical Society in New York City. The one-hour talk highlighted my ongoing research on this topic. In October I presented my paper, “Ireland’s ‘Bloody Sundays’ and The Pittsburgh Catholic, 1920 & 1972,” at the American Journalism Historians Association’s annual conference in Pittsburgh, my native city. This paper and my other work are found in the American Reporting of Irish Independence section.

The DIB published my entry on Michael Joseph O’Brien. The Irish Catholic (Dublin) published my essay on “The ever-changing American Irish.” I have two longform pieces queued for 2025 publication in scholarly journals. One is a non-Irish subject. Detail once published.

1953 letter & shamrocks.

During my November trip to Ireland I donated some 50 family letters to Imicre, The Kerby A. Miller Collection, Irish Emigrant Letters and Memoirs from North America at the University of Galway. The database of scanned and transcribed letters went online in March 2024.

The letters I donated are primary between a daughter of my Kerry-born maternal grandparents (my aunt) and several cousins in Ireland. They are dated from the 1970s and 1980s. A few older letters between other correspondents are dated from January 1921 through St. Patrick’s Day 1953. I have been told the material will be uploaded to the public database sometime in 2025.

More highlights:

–Most popular post of the year: United Ireland in 2024? Fiction and fact

–Voters in the Republic of Ireland this year decided a constitutional referendum as well as local and European Union elections. The electorate there and in Northern Ireland also decided national elections with historical and contemporary implications. See:

–I toured Flanders fields in Belgium, including the Island of Ireland Peace Park (Photo below), and heard Fergal Keane “On war reporting and trauma, then and now” at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy.

–I have visited more than two dozen St. Patrick’s churches in four countries. This year I finally walked inside the Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. (Photo below)

–Guest posts: Mark Bulik contributed an excerpt from his book, Ambush at Central Park: When the IRA Came to New York; Felix Larkin provided John Bruton (1947-2024), an appreciation.

***

My work often requires the assistance of librarians and archivists. Special thanks to the staff at the New York Public Library for their assistance in reviewing the Maloney collection of Irish historical papers and Frank P. Walsh papers; and at UCD with the Eamon de Valera papers and Desmond FitzGerald papers. Here in DC, I am grateful for the personal assistance and access to materials at the Library of Congress, Georgetown University Library, and Catholic University of American Library. This year I also received virtual help from the Kansas City (Mo.) Public Library; Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse (N.Y.) University; the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota; and Iona University in New Rochelle, N.Y.

I am grateful to all visitors to this site, especially my email subscribers. Wishing happy holidays to all my readers.

Basilica of Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Round tower at Island of Ireland Peace Park in Belgium.

Some Irish books for holiday gift giving, or ‘yourshelf’

A Christmas tree sprouted in the lobby of my Dublin hotel during a mid-November visit to the Irish capital. In the U.S., the arrival of the Thanksgiving signals the start of the year-end holidays. Since books are a great gift to give others–or ourselves–below I provide details of a dozen titles that have found their way to my reading chair or caught my attention in the press this year. There is an emphasis on books that explore aspects of the Irish in America, or journalism. Descriptions are taken from publisher promotions and modified, as appropriate, by my own assessments. Books are listed in alphabetical order by author’s surname. Remember to support your local bookseller. Enjoy. MH

  • Atlas series, multiple editors, Atlas of the Irish Civil War. [Cork University Press, 2024] This title joins Atlas of the Great Irish Famine 1845-52, published in 2012, and Atlas of the Irish Revolution, 2017. With contributions from over 90 scholars, this book is a key resource for historians or casual readers and a must-mention for this list.
  • Mark Bulik, Ambush at Central Park: When the IRA Came to New York. [Fordham, 2023] The author provided this Guest Post excerpt in January.
  • Mary Cogan, Moments of Reflection, Mindful Thoughts and Photographs. [Crannsilini Publishing, 2024.] Mary publishes the popular Listowel Connection website. Her book is not available online, but she welcomes email at listowelconnection@gmail.com. “We’ll sort something out,” she told me.
  • Gessica Cosi, Reshaping’ Atlantic Connections: Ireland and Irish America 1917-1921. [Edward Everett Root, 2024] Uses U.S.-born Irish leader Eamon de Valera’s June 1919 to December 1920 tour of America to explore the varieties of Irish American identities and nationalist ideologies. Also probes the larger question of what it meant to be “ethnic” in the U.S. during and after its entry into the Great War.
  • Seán Creagh, The Wolfhounds of Irish-American Nationalism: A History of Clan na Gael, 1867-Present. [Peter Lang, 2023] Claims to be “the first book covering the entire history of Clan na Gael,” the U.S.-based revolutionary group supporting Irish independence and unification since the mid-19th century. The author also asserts there is “an academic bias in Ireland against the study and recognition of groups like Clan na Gael in the overall struggle for Irish independence.” Hmm. Kudos for Creagh’s effort, but his writing is awkward and the lack of an index reduces the book’s usefulness.  
  • Hasia R. Diner, Opening Doors: The Unlikely Alliance Between the Irish and the Jews in America. [St. Martin Press, 2024] Despite contrary popular belief, Diner insists the prevailing relationships between Jewish and Irish Americans were overwhelmingly cooperative, and the two groups were dependent upon one another to secure stable and upwardly mobile lives in their new home.
  • Myles Dungan, Land Is All That Matters: The Struggle That Shaped Irish History [Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024] Examines two hundred years of agrarian conflict from the famine of 1741 to the eve of World War Two. Some great stuff for those of us with an interest in this niche topic, but at over 600 pages, this tome is probably not for casual readers. I found Dungan’s overuse of French and Latin phrases annoying.   
  • Diarmaid Ferriter, The Revelation of Ireland, 1995-2020, [Profile Books, 2024] In what might be considered a sequel or addendum to The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000, his 2005 overview, Ferriter explores the quarter century of developments on the island from the eve of the Good Friday Agreement to COVID.
  • Eamonn Mallie, Eyewitness to War & Peace. [Merrion Press, 2024] The Northern Ireland journalist details his experiences of covering the Troubles, from street violence to exclusive interviews with key figures such as Gerry Adams, Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, John Hume, Ian Paisley, and Margaret Thatcher.
  • Timothy J. Meagher, Becoming Irish American: The Making and Remaking of a People From Roanoke to JFK [Yale University Press, 2023] Reveals how Irish American identity was forged, how it has transformed, and how it has held lasting influence on American culture. See my Irish Catholic essay on this book and William V. Shannon’s The American Irish, a foundational study of Irish America from 1963.
  • Thomas J. Rowland, Patriotism is a Catholic Virtue: Irish-American Catholics and the Church in the Era of the Great War, 1900-1918. [The Catholic University of America Press, 2023] How Hibernian Romanists combated U.S. nativists’ religious and social attacks, proved themselves as loyal Americans during the First World War, and directed the course of Irish American nationalism in the cause of their motherland’s fight for freedom. Rowland provides some good background details about Irish influence on the U.S. Catholic press.
  • David Tereshchuk, A Question of Paternity, My Life as an Unaffiliated Reporter. [Envelope Books, 2024] I attended a conversation between Tereshchuk and Irish activist and journalist Don Mullan in September at the American Irish Historical Society in New York. They shared their experiences of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972, which Tereshchuk covered as a broadcast journalist. Tereshchuk revisits the event and other aspects of his life beyond Ireland in this memoir.

    Some of the books listed above.

Revisiting O’Brien’s ‘Irish Pioneers in American Journalism’

On April 12, 1924, the Gaelic American newspaper of New York City published the first installment of a series titled “Irish Pioneers in American Journalism.” It was written by Michael J. O’Brien, a County Cork immigrant and historiographer at the American Irish Historical Society, also based in the city.

Michael J. O’Brien, circa mid 1910s.

“While the fact is generally recognized that for many years men of Irish blood have occupied a conspicuous place in American journalism, few are aware that in this field Irishmen were engaged more than a century ago, and that they exerted a certain influence in moulding the public opinion of their time time,” O’Brien wrote in his introduction. He acknowledged the “meager sketches” of 18th century Irish journalists were based mostly on information from their respective newspapers.

O’Brien’s series appeared weekly in the Gaelic American through the end of July. This was the same period the paper’s editor, exiled Fenian John Devoy, made his triumphant return to Ireland as the fledgling Free State government recovered from the civil war. Each date below is linked to the corresponding installment of O’Brien’s series. (Thanks to Villanova University’s Digital Library, which provides online access to the Gaelic American from 1903 to 1928.)

April 12 * April 19 * April 26

May 3 * May 10 * May 17 * May 24 * May 31

June 7 * June 14 * June 21 * June 28

July 5 * July 12 * July 19 * July 26.

O’Brien apparently had more to say about Irish contributions to American journalism. At the end of the July 26 installment, the Gaelic American published two conflicting notes: One said, “To Be Continued Next Week.” The other, “As Mr. O’Brien is now on his vacation, this most interesting series of articles will be discontinued for the present.” But the series did not return in subsequent issues.

More about O’Brien (1870-1960) can be found in my new profile of him for the online Dictionary of Irish Bibliography. I’m delighted to make this first contribution to the DIB, flagship research project of the the Royal Irish Academy.

O’Brien’s series debuted on the front page of the April 12, 1924, issue of the Gaelic American.

Ireland’s ‘Bloody Sundays’ and The Pittsburgh Catholic, Part 2

This two-part post explores how the weekly Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper reported—or ignored—two of the most violent episodes in twentieth century Irish history. Both events—in November 1920 in Dublin, and in January 1972 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland—came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Pittsburgh, and the Catholic, had strong ties to Ireland through immigration. These two posts are revised from a paper I wrote for the American Journalism Historians Association. I presented a 10-minute overview of the research at AJHA’s annual conference, Oct. 3-5, 2024, in Pittsburgh. READ PART 1. MH

Bloody Sunday, 1972

The Northern Ireland “Troubles,” 1969-1998, began as a civil rights struggle by the province’s Catholic minority, long denied fair access to housing, jobs, and other services by the majority Protestant-led government and business sectors. Many of the discriminatory practices were abolished before the end of the conflict, which renewed Irish republican calls for reunification with the south. Most of the violence occurred within Northern Ireland, but some episodes spilled into the Republic of Ireland and England. More than 3,500 people—civilians, police, sectarian paramilitaries, and the British Army—were killed over the three decades. The 1998 peace deal, brokered with U.S. help, established a new nationalist-unionist power-sharing government in the province and cross-border institutions; renamed and reorganized the police force to integrate more Catholics; and initiated the withdrawal of British troops as paramilitary groups simultaneously decommissioned their weapons.

On Sunday, January 30, 1972, British troops opened fire on an estimated 15,000 people, predominantly Catholics, protesting internment-without-trial in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. (Irish nationalists call the city “Derry.”) The Northern Ireland government had earlier outlawed such mass marches. In an echo of Croke Park in 1920, military officials claimed there was sniper fire from the crowd. Thirteen civilians were killed that day, a fourteenth victim died later.

Thomas O’Neil became editor of the Pittsburgh Catholic in November 1970, 14 months before Bloody Sunday. While his surname certainly suggests Irish heritage, both he and his parents were natives of Pennsylvania. This author did not pursue deeper genealogy. A graduate of Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University, a Catholic institution, O’Neil rose through the ranks of local newspapers, from reporter to religion news and feature editor at the daily Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.[1]Birthplaces from National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: Arnold, Westmoreland, Pennsylvania; Roll: 399; … Continue reading

By 1972, the Catholic’s circulation had reached 62,150, nearly quadruple the 1920 figure.[2]Ayer Directory of Publications, 1972. [Philadelphia: Ayer Press, 1972], 992. Six other religious papers were published in Pittsburgh, mostly monthlies, each with circulations of less the 2,000. The reference to Bishop Michael O’Conner under the front-page name plate was now replaced with, “America’s Oldest Catholic Newspaper in Continuous Publication.” There was no editorial page endorsement by the diocesan leader, Bishop Vincent M. Leonard, a Pittsburgh native born to late nineteenth century Irish immigrants.[3]Year: 1920; Census Place: Pittsburgh Ward 3, Allegheny, Pennsylvania; Roll: T625_1519; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 357. He shepherded 921,000 adherents among a population of 2.3 million—40 percent—in a now smaller six-county territory.[4]Official Catholic Directory. [New York, N.Y.: P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1972]. 662. In 1951, four counties of the Pittsburgh diocese were removed to form the new Diocese of Greensburg, Pa.

The Catholic began publishing a five-part series of reports about Northern Ireland in its second issue of 1972, three weeks before Bloody Sunday.[5]“Ulster violence: how it all came about”, January 14, 1972; “Day and night difference between Dublin, Belfast”, January 21, 1970; “How Northern Ireland Protestants view the situation”, … Continue reading The series was written by Gerard E. Sherry, managing editor of the Central California Register, the Catholic diocesan paper in Fresno. According to an editor’s note, he had spent most of December 1971 on both sides of the Irish border. What the note didn’t say is that Sherry also was a former British Army major who had emigrated from England in 1949 and become a naturalized U.S. citizen. He had edited four Catholic diocesan newspapers since the mid-1950s, winning nearly four dozen first prizes for editorials, layout, and general excellence.[6]“New Catholic Monitor Editor Revamps Paper”, The Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, August 20, 1972. Sherry’s articles were distributed through NC News, a later iteration of the NCWC News Service launched in 1920.

The fourth installment of Sherry’s series appeared inside the February 4, 1972, issue of the Catholic, which featured three front-page stories about Bloody Sunday. There would be no repeat of the paper’s 1920 silence. This time the day-after NC News Service dispatch to its U.S. Catholic newspaper clients contained a 700-word story about the event.[7]“Cardinal Calls For Impartial Inquiry Of Londonderry Slayings” NC New Service, January 31, 1972. This was clearly the foundation of the Catholic’s 40-paragraph lead story, which did not name a news source. The piece quoted a mix of people touched by the event, including Catholic hierarchy, nationalist and unionist politicians, and a British Army major general, who said there was “absolutely no doubt” that his troops were fired upon first. The story noted the march was illegal and it used the official place name of Londonderry.[8]“‘Impartial Inquiry’ Sought In Londonderry Slaying”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 4, 1972.

The Catholic’s first sidebar from the Religion News Service (RNS) noted that the official Vatican Radio expressed “profound grief” about the event. But the story added that Pope Paul VI would need to “tread very gingerly” about any public statements, lest he “rupture relations with Britain and possibly fire up the Catholics in both the North and the South (of Ireland) to new and even more costly bloodshed.”[9]“Strong Papal Statement Expected”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 4, 1972. RNS was founded in 1934 by journalist Louis Minsky (1909-1957) as an independent, nonprofit affiliate of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.[10]From “About RNS”.

The second sidebar was written by William McClinton, the Catholic’s associate editor. It featured an interview with Pittsburgh resident Joseph Clark, who was “just back from Ireland.” Clark was identified as head of the Committee for Peace and Justice for Ireland, founded four months earlier at one of the city’s Catholic churches. He also had been interviewed by the Post-Gazette.[11]“Peace Plan For Ireland”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 22, 1971. “U.S. Concern Over Irish Woes Urged”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 1, 1971. McClinton reported Clark as saying that money raised in America, including Pittsburgh, was being funneled to Ireland to pay for guns that perpetuated violence, which otherwise would recede. Clark was not quoted directly in the 12-paragraph story.[12]“American Funds Are Buying Irish Guns”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 4, 1972.

Stories and photo about Northern Ireland at top of the jump page, February 11, 1972, issue of the Pittsburgh Catholic. Note Gerard E. Sherry’s byline at top left.

Secular coverage

Many changes occurred in the U.S. media landscape between the two Bloody Sundays. Commercial radio—led by KDKA in Pittsburgh—was just coming on the air in 1920. By 1972, radio newscasts were regularly heard inside homes, businesses, and automobiles. The black-and-white newsreels once viewed by theater audiences were replaced by the color images of network television, which broadcast Northern Ireland violence directly into private homes. And Pittsburgh lost five daily newspapers.

The Press, still owned by Scripps Howard, was Pittsburgh’s only daily surviving from 1920 and still the city’s largest paper. The Post-Gazette was created from the late 1920s merger of other titles. In 1961, the Press and Post-Gazette entered a joint operating agreement. The Post-Gazette published Monday through Saturday mornings; the Press published Monday through Saturday afternoons, and on Sunday mornings.

Bloody Sunday topped the front pages of both papers on January 31, 1972. The Post-Gazette used Associated Press coverage and the Press relied on United Press International.[13]“13 Slain at Rally in Ulster”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 31, 1972. “Irish Catholics Riot, Strike After British Troops Kill 13”, Pittsburgh Press, January 31, 1972. The Press also used Scripps Howard reporting over the coming days. Like the Catholic, the Press bolstered its coverage of developments with a four-part background series, “Ireland in Torment,” which began the week after Bloody Sunday.[14]“Irish Cheer For British Turns To Curse”, February 6, 1972; “Catholics’ Drive For Civil Rights Detours Into Guerilla Warfare”, February 7. 1972; “Orangemen Vow To Fight If Independence … Continue reading The first three installments were written by UPI’s Donal O’Higgins, a Republic of Ireland native who had been with the wire service since 1946 and reported the earliest clashes of the Troubles.[15]“Donal O’Higgins, for 37 years a correspondent and editor…” Online obituary from UPI. Joseph W. Grigg, UPI’s chief European correspondent, wrote the concluding story.

The series focused on contemporary events leading to Bloody Sunday but also acknowledged key episodes in the long history of animosity between Catholics and Protestants, nationalists and unionists, in Ireland, including the early twentieth century revolutionary period. “Ever since a separate Northern Ireland state was set up in 1920 by an act of the British Parliament, (Catholics) have felt themselves to be arbitrarily cut off from their coreligionists in the south; to be second class citizens in a state where the Protestant majority wielded virtually exclusive power.”[16]“Catholics’ Drive …”, Pittsburgh Press, February 7, 1972. The series did not mention the November 1920 Bloody Sunday. Grigg made the contemporary situation instantly relatable to U.S. readers: “Northern Ireland has become Britain’s Vietnam.”[17]“Internment Without Trial …”, Pittsburgh Press, February 9, 1972.

Catholics and the IRA were framed by modifiers such as “militants” and “terrorists,” respectively, throughout the coverage. Such adjectives were rarely applied to the British Army or Protestant paramilitaries. For example: “The death toll was the worst in more than three years of communal strife pitting Roman Catholic militants against Protestants and the British soldiers sent to restore order in Ulster.”[18]“13 Slain…”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 31, 1972 Bernadette Devlin was introduced in the fourth paragraph of a UPI story as a “Catholic militant” but not identified as a member of the British Parliament until the thirteenth paragraph.[19]“Tense Ulster Fears New Riots”, Pittsburgh Press, February 1, 1972. In the NC News Service/Catholic story, Devlin is identified as an MP on first reference, and never as a militant. O’Higgins described the Ulster Volunteer Force, which participated in illegal and violent actions, like the IRA, as a “well-equipped Protestant fighting force.”[20]“Orangemen Vow…”, Pittsburgh Press, February 8, 1972.

On the other hand, the secular coverage of 1972 was generally less deferential to the British military and government than in 1920. It quoted Irish Catholic nationalists, such as Devlin, in addition to church officials. And it included American sources, such as U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers.

Unlike the first Bloody Sunday, the Press in 1972 quickly weighed in with an editorial about the bloodshed. “Another Irish Tragedy” suggested three possible solutions: give Catholics “full civil and economic rights”; draw new border lines with Catholic areas incorporated into the Republic of Ireland; or end partition entirely, reunite the island, and encourage Protestants “who could not bear living in a Catholic-dominated Ireland” to emigrate to Britain, America, or elsewhere.[21]“Another Irish Tragedy”, Pittsburgh Press, February 1, 1972.

On the same page, an editorial cartoon headlined “Murderer!” showed an IRA gunman and British soldier with weapons pointed at each other as they stood over several dead bodies. In the background, a sign atop a hotel was labeled with the double-entendre, “The Ulster Arms.” The 1972 reports included more news photographs than in 1920, when access to images was still very limited. Efforts to encourage Washington to help end Irish violence also quickly became part of the ongoing coverage.

Pittsburgh Press, Feb. 1, 1972.

Catholic’s next issue

The Catholic continued its Bloody Sunday coverage the following week. A front-page piece by RNS described the New York City press conference of Father Edward Daly[22] RNS used the Irish forename Eamon, but Edward was more common. He became a bishop in 1974., the Catholic priest who “became famous overnight after a BBC television camera pictured him standing over a dying youth waving a blood-stained handkerchief at British troops.” Fifty-two years later, the video and photos of Daly (1933-2016) remain an iconic image of Bloody Sunday. He called the attack by British troops “complete and unprovoked murder.”[23]“‘Unprovoked murder,’ priest charges”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972.

Daly’s observations were corroborated by the American journalist Gail Sheehy (1936-2020), then a correspondent for New York Magazine, four years before she became famous with her book, Passages. Sheehy had family ties to Northern Ireland and had gone there to report on the role of women in the Catholic civil rights movement.[24]See Sheehy, Gail, Daring: My Passages. [New York: William Marrow/Harper Collins, 2014]. She told the press conference she witnessed four marchers being killed but did not see any civilian shooters.

A second RNS story inside the Catholic reported that Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York City had called for civil rights reform in Northern Ireland and launched an emergency relief fund for the region.[25]“Card. Cooke launches Irish emergency fund”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972. An op-ed by Monsignor Charles Owen Rice of the Pittsburgh diocese, vice-president of Clark’s Peace and Justice for Ireland committee, suggested the Irish diaspora in American had been “uninvolved” in the Northern Ireland crisis until Bloody Sunday.[26]“Irish Are Aroused”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972. “Now it is changed, changed almost as utterly as it was fifty years ago,” he wrote, a paraphrase of the William Butler Yeats poem about the earlier revolutionary period.[27]“All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.” From “Easter, 1916”.

Rice suggested that the “Derry massacre” (he did not use the full Londonderry name throughout his column) “invites comparison with our Kent State” University, a reference to the May 4, 1970, shooting death of four student protestors by the Ohio National Guard. “In a way Kent State was worse because it was fratricidal. American killing American, but on the other hand, the Kent State killers were unseasoned National Guardsmen not disciplined regular soldiers, whereas, the British paratroopers are the most professional and reliable that England has.” The British Army’s tactics, Rice concluded “make new friends and recruits for the IRA and push peace further and further back.”

The final installment of Sherry’s series reported on the Compton Report, a November 1971 government enquiry that detailed British military brutality against Northern Ireland citizens and prisoners. The story was packaged with a photo from a post-Bloody Sunday protest in Newry, Northern Ireland. “Thousands of Roman Catholics march silently through the street here,” the caption said. Another NC News brief reported that Pope Paul had indeed made a statement about Northern Ireland, delivered from the balcony of the papal apartment to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square. “We desire that any form of violence be avoided by the parties concerned …” he said in Italian, then added, in English, “from any side.”[28]“Internment in Ulster…”, “March Through Newry”, and “Avoid violence from any side, Pope advises”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972.

As if to underscore Catholic Pittsburgh’s historical ties to Ireland, this issue of the Catholic also contained a nearly full-page (five of six columns) advertisement promoting the sale of the “First Annual St. Patrick’s Day Medal,” which commemorated the 432 A.D. arrival of Ireland’s patron saint. The medals, “made of pure Irish silver,” were produced in America by the Franklin Mint and sold for $15 each. This appears to have been strictly a commercial venture, as no church or charitable causes are mentioned. Irish leader Jack Lynch endorsed the enterprise as “a worthy memento of the homeland which they can always cherish.”[29]“Orders For The First Annual St. Patrick’s Day Medal Must Be Postmarked By February 17, 1972.” Advertisement in Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972.

An iconic image of Dr. Edward Daly, bent over at right, on Bloody Sunday in January 1972.

Conclusions

The Pittsburgh Catholic’s support of Irish nationalism and the Catholic clergy and other coreligionists is hardly surprising, given the paper’s history and readership. Despite the strong affinity, however, the paper’s main editorial mission was not to provide news about Ireland, either in 1920 or in 1972. But the Catholic’s mission to cover the Catholic faith left wide discretion about what did or did not appear on its pages.

The first Bloody Sunday was not cast as a sectarian attack by either the Catholic or secular press. Even Cardinal Logue did not suggest a religious dynamic to the violence of that day. The lack of a clear Catholic element could be why the Pittsburgh Catholic and the NCWC avoided the story, even as other Catholic press reported it. Errors in sectarian and secular press accounts demonstrated the challenges of verifying overseas news, especially an event as chaotic as Bloody Sunday. As an NCWC story published in the Catholic a few weeks later put it, reporting Irish news was “somewhat risky for any journalist” … since “more often than not by the time the words are read in America a new and appalling blunder had been committed …”[30]“Irish Bishops’ Suggestion Finds Favor In England”, Catholic News Service Newsfeed, The N.C.W.C. News Sheet, December 13, 1920. Same headline, Pittsburgh Catholic, December 16, 1920.

But the weeks-long absence of Bloody Sunday news in the Catholic remains troubling for a journalism enterprise that claimed to be “in service to the cause of truth and morality.” Whether editor Smith or Bishop Canevin made the decision, either from caution or another reason, the Catholic’s initial avoidance of the Dublin bloodshed came undone once it reported the cardinal’s letter. By then the paper had missed the opportunity to make its own editorial statement about the event, as it had done many times previously regarding Ireland.[31]The Catholic editorialized about British violence against the Irish in July 1914, April 1916, and September 1920. See my “‘Luminous In Its Presentation’: The Pittsburgh Catholic and … Continue reading It could have criticized the assassinations, as the cardinal did. Or it could have argued that the IRA’s killing of military personnel, compared to the military’s attacks on civilians, was justified by centuries of religious and political persecution. Either way, the Catholic then could have focused attention on the stadium slaughter.

The second Bloody Sunday was more clearly sectarian. And it was easier for the Catholic to report since the military action was not prompted by an initial Irish attack. In 2010, a U.K. government inquiry of the event—the second since 1972—ruled the British Army not only had fired the first shot, but also had fired on fleeing, unarmed civilians. British Prime Minister David Cameron, in a public apology, said the civilian deaths were “unjustified and unjustifiable.”[32]See the Saville Inquiry, issued June 15, 2010. Cameron’s statement made the same day.

The Catholic’s coverage in 1972 was more aligned with the standards of contemporary journalism. It holds up on inspection more than 50 years later. The news stories did not shy from quoting sources that conflicted with the paper’s prevailing pro-Irish Catholic views. Through the Pittsburgh peace activist, it alerted readers that their money might contribute to nationalist violence in Northern Ireland. Yet the coverage leaves no reason for the Catholic’s readers to doubt the paper’s support for its Irish coreligionists.

Sensitivity to nineteenth century anti-Catholic and nativist forces in the United States are prominent in the Catholic’s pages from the time of the first Bloody Sunday. These threats would flare again during the 1920s. That bigotry had receded, but not vanished, by the second Bloody Sunday, as often symbolized by the election of John F. Kennedy as the first Catholic elected U.S. president. But some cohort of the faithful were almost always being oppressed or in danger somewhere in the world, including Ireland, and thus relevant to the Catholic’s readers.

The Catholic avoided sectarian finger pointing during both Bloody Sundays. Protestants were not the enemy as much as the British Army and government. As Sherry explained in the first installment of his 1972 series: “While on the surface the problem appears to be a Catholic-Protestant conflict, its roots are not religious but political and economic. The Catholic minority is not fighting for religious liberty, but for equal political representation, equal opportunity in employment and housing, and an end to military harassment.”[33]“Ulster violence …”, Pittsburgh Catholic, January 14, 1972.

The research discussed in this project could be expanded to include how the Pittsburgh Catholic and other sectarian newspapers, both Catholic and Protestant, covered the entirety of either or both twentieth-century conflicts in Ireland. Exploring how that coverage compared with the secular press provides important context. How media outlets with stated religious or nationalist identities cover violent conflicts remains relevant today, as seen with the Israel-Hamas War. The original paper was submitted to AJHA in late May 2024, not long after Israeli officials ordered the Arab network Al Jazeera to leave the Jewish state.

A final note: the Pittsburgh Catholic weekly ceased publication in March 2020—one hundred and seventy-six years after its first issue—due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It resumed online-only operations later that year. As of 2024, the Catholic existed as a bimonthly print and digital magazine under the auspices of the Pittsburgh diocese.

References

References
↑1 Birthplaces from National Archives at Washington, DC; Washington, D.C.; Seventeenth Census of the United States, 1950; Year: 1950; Census Place: Arnold, Westmoreland, Pennsylvania; Roll: 399; Page: 7; Enumeration District: 65-17; career from “O’Neil Named Editor Of Pittsburgh Catholic”, Pittsburgh Catholic, October 23, 1970.
↑2 Ayer Directory of Publications, 1972. [Philadelphia: Ayer Press, 1972], 992. Six other religious papers were published in Pittsburgh, mostly monthlies, each with circulations of less the 2,000.
↑3 Year: 1920; Census Place: Pittsburgh Ward 3, Allegheny, Pennsylvania; Roll: T625_1519; Page: 7A; Enumeration District: 357.
↑4 Official Catholic Directory. [New York, N.Y.: P.J. Kenedy and Sons, 1972]. 662. In 1951, four counties of the Pittsburgh diocese were removed to form the new Diocese of Greensburg, Pa.
↑5 “Ulster violence: how it all came about”, January 14, 1972; “Day and night difference between Dublin, Belfast”, January 21, 1970; “How Northern Ireland Protestants view the situation”, January 28, 1972; “Militant wing of IRA pledges a united republic”, February 4, 1972; “Internment in Ulster—charges and countercharges”, February 11, 1972.
↑6 “New Catholic Monitor Editor Revamps Paper”, The Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, August 20, 1972.
↑7 “Cardinal Calls For Impartial Inquiry Of Londonderry Slayings” NC New Service, January 31, 1972.
↑8 “‘Impartial Inquiry’ Sought In Londonderry Slaying”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 4, 1972.
↑9 “Strong Papal Statement Expected”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 4, 1972.
↑10 From “About RNS”.
↑11 “Peace Plan For Ireland”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 22, 1971. “U.S. Concern Over Irish Woes Urged”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 1, 1971.
↑12 “American Funds Are Buying Irish Guns”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 4, 1972.
↑13 “13 Slain at Rally in Ulster”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 31, 1972. “Irish Catholics Riot, Strike After British Troops Kill 13”, Pittsburgh Press, January 31, 1972.
↑14 “Irish Cheer For British Turns To Curse”, February 6, 1972; “Catholics’ Drive For Civil Rights Detours Into Guerilla Warfare”, February 7. 1972; “Orangemen Vow To Fight If Independence Threatened”, February 8, 1972; and “Internment Without Trial Shatters British Commitment To Keep Ulster”, February 9, 1972.
↑15 “Donal O’Higgins, for 37 years a correspondent and editor…” Online obituary from UPI.
↑16 “Catholics’ Drive …”, Pittsburgh Press, February 7, 1972.
↑17 “Internment Without Trial …”, Pittsburgh Press, February 9, 1972.
↑18 “13 Slain…”, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 31, 1972
↑19 “Tense Ulster Fears New Riots”, Pittsburgh Press, February 1, 1972.
↑20 “Orangemen Vow…”, Pittsburgh Press, February 8, 1972.
↑21 “Another Irish Tragedy”, Pittsburgh Press, February 1, 1972.
↑22 RNS used the Irish forename Eamon, but Edward was more common. He became a bishop in 1974.
↑23 “‘Unprovoked murder,’ priest charges”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972.
↑24 See Sheehy, Gail, Daring: My Passages. [New York: William Marrow/Harper Collins, 2014].
↑25 “Card. Cooke launches Irish emergency fund”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972.
↑26 “Irish Are Aroused”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972.
↑27 “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.” From “Easter, 1916”.
↑28 “Internment in Ulster…”, “March Through Newry”, and “Avoid violence from any side, Pope advises”, Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972.
↑29 “Orders For The First Annual St. Patrick’s Day Medal Must Be Postmarked By February 17, 1972.” Advertisement in Pittsburgh Catholic, February 11, 1972.
↑30 “Irish Bishops’ Suggestion Finds Favor In England”, Catholic News Service Newsfeed, The N.C.W.C. News Sheet, December 13, 1920. Same headline, Pittsburgh Catholic, December 16, 1920.
↑31 The Catholic editorialized about British violence against the Irish in July 1914, April 1916, and September 1920. See my “‘Luminous In Its Presentation’: The Pittsburgh Catholic and Revolutionary Ireland, 1912-1923” in Gathered Fragments, Catholic Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, Vol. XXXII, Fall 2022, 4-19.
↑32 See the Saville Inquiry, issued June 15, 2010. Cameron’s statement made the same day.
↑33 “Ulster violence …”, Pittsburgh Catholic, January 14, 1972.