Relatives of Obama’s hero, Fredrick Douglass, lay a wreath at O’Connell’s Dublin crypt

I meant to add, rstorch is right--there's too much anti-Obama venting, and it shows that some people like to make us look like troglodytes. The article is about O'Connell and Douglass and why they are both important to the American President. No "hero" is perfect, and probably few are free from the kind of contradictions pointed out by woundedknee in Sheridan's case, but the O'Connell/ Douglass relationship is still an interesting meeting point in Irish and American history. Both men's lives can still tell us about freedom and oppression. What do you think about experiences "shared between black slaves and Irish immigrants in the Antebellum era"? I remember that in 1853, less than a generation after NYS outlawed slavery, my Irish immigrant great-grandfather bought a house a short distance from the ruins of a mill that the Dutch settlers had built and staffed with slaves they brought from Curacau. I wonder whether he read Mary Prince's slave narrative, published 1831, about her life as a slave in the West Indies and England. In any case, I doubt that my ancestor could have had a simple-minded idea of the kind of freedom offered by his adopted country.

Obama is not a descendant of American slaves, but he has lived the core lesson of the slave narratives: freedom and education are forever linked. The ex-slave William Moore wrote, "I got married and had three chillen, cute, fetchin' l'il chillen, and they went to school. Wasn't no trouble 'bout school then, but was when emancipation come. My brother Ed was in school then, and the Ku Klux come and drove the Yankes lady and gen'man out and closed the school" (from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-38, on the internet). People who know their own history can be threatening to those who like to ignore it or, like Michelle Bachmann, foolishly try to "revise" it. Because we have the slave narratives, however, their era of US history cannot be whitewashed. By 1865, more than 100 narratives were published by ex-slaves, often with the help of editors who worked for publishers in London or the US. Douglass' "Life" is one of the most eloquent and detailed about masters and overseers, slave families, escapes, survival tactics, and work. Each slave narrative that you read burns some part of the writer's life into your mind. The Federal Writers' Project recorded more than 2,300 narratives of ex-slaves. Henry Louis Gates estimates that by 1944, 6,000 ex-slaves had recorded their experiences.

sansantiago appears to think Obama sucks because he mentions that Frederick Douglass was a hero and most everyone else think that too. That's making a point, about um what? And Obama thinks this way, even though he is white, according to longislander1940. Please you guys, stop making America look stupid. Americans these days seem to be proud of not thinking. As an American, I am asking you to stop this, please.

OÇonnell may have opposed slavery but he turned his back on the lousy conditions enforced on tenant farmers. Remember he was a Free Mason,captain of the yeomanry and a staunch royalist and a traitor to Ireland.

Nettie should read up on Obama before placing wreaths around Dublin. He never talks about being white. He is playing for the Irish voters. Next he will come back to the USA and work it.

slainte9: Very nice of Mr Sheridan to "free the slaves". Pity that a few years later he was murdering Indians from Oklahoma to Montana. Less of your sanctimonious admiration for a mass murderer, please.

Another "brilliant" remark concerning Obama by another "brilliant" commentator here.

Interesting but don't forget that the Irish-American generals who led the Union army that freed the slaves -- Phil Sheridan, George Gordon Meade, John Reynolds, and William Tecumseh who was raised by and married into an Irish family. Never mind that even Grant had a Kelly in his family tree.

Who cares that Douglass was a hero to Obama, Douglass is a hero to many in the USA. Obama is irrelevant, Obama sucks.

Obama sucks.