1969: A crazy year for Irish America

The year that exploded myths and time-worn stereotypes

 

A divisive figure

Another divisive political figure in Irish America was Ted Kennedy. Many felt sympathy for the young brother of the slain president and aspiring senator. They believed Ted was the heir apparent to the kind of noble progressivism JFK and RFK embodied.

For some, that changed following the events of July 18, 1969. Kennedy was attending a party on Massachusetts’ Chappaquiddick Island. After leaving, he lost control of his car and drove off a bridge. It turned out Kennedy had a passenger, a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy survived the crash. Kopechne did not.

Kennedy did not report the incident to police until the next day. In his memoir True Compass, completed right before his death, Kennedy called his behavior “inexusable.”

Then, on November 18 – four months after Chappaquiddick – Joseph Kennedy Sr. died at the age of 81. He suffered a stroke in 1961 and had been partially paralyzed since. Some wondered if the very public events surrounding Chappaquiddick hastened Joe Sr.’s death. Either way, for Irish America, it was clearly the end of an era.

 

A new era?

But if a new era was beginning, what would it consist of? Sure, everyone used the term fighting Irish. But that seemed far too literal in 1969. It seemed as if the Irish – like much of America – was split into two warring camps.

One camp was represented by agents of change such as Bernadette Devlin. The other was represented by unapologetic conservative John Wayne, who finally won an Oscar in 1969 for True Grit. Wayne was an outspoken critic of what he saw as the radical turn many Americans were taking. Many Irish Americans agreed wholeheartedly with Wayne.

But if Irish America bent severely in 1969, it never quite broke.

True, divisions remained. In his book, An American Requiem, the writer James Carroll (ordained a priest in 1969) eloquently explored many of the issues that divided Irish Catholic Americans through the 1970s.

Following Bernadette Devlin’s notorious tour of the U.S. in 1969, some activists abhorred the IRA while others funneled guns and cash to the nationalist cause. Ultimately, however, the so-called Four Horsemen of Irish-American politics – Ted Kennedy, Hugh Carey, Tip O’Neill and Daniel Patrick Moynihan – forged a consensus that would eventually help the U.S. play a major role in bringing peace to the North.

Finally, 1969 saw another important development. For the first time in over four decades, Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish football team played a post-season bowl game. Since the 1930s, the school had decided not to participate in bowl games, even as their prominence and popularity grew.

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Nster.com