1969: A crazy year for Irish America

The year that exploded myths and time-worn stereotypes

But 1969 was different. That became clear when 22-year-old Bernadette Devlin came to the U.S. in August.

The telegenic firebrand – the youngest person ever elected to British Parliament – seemed ready to woo Irish America with her reports of Catholic oppression in Northern Ireland. But Devlin wanted to speak out against all injustice – including the ongoing segregation of African Americans in the U.S. Devlin criticized the likes of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the Ancient Order of Hibernians and even the Catholic Church.

Devlin argued that Daley and many other Irish-American power brokers either ignored or contributed to social inequality in the U.S. Perhaps most shockingly, she compared many Irish-American leaders to the Orangemen in Northern Ireland who repressed Catholics.

Suffice it to say, traditional Irish Americans did not take this well. The AOH, which had raised money for Devlin, swiftly took the gift back, handing it instead to the Irish Catholic church.

This, however, did not change the fact that even on an issue that seemed simple – supporting Catholic rights in the North – Irish America was being challenged in ways it never had been before.

 

Breslin’s unlikely run

The same dynamic – traditional Irish Catholics disturbed by the more radical nature of younger Irish Catholics – was on display in New York City.

Author Norman Mailer decided to run for mayor. His running mate, hoping to become City Council president, was Jimmy Breslin, already a legendary newspaperman. Perhaps most famously, six years earlier, when John F. Kennedy was killed, Breslin wrote a famous column profiling the humble laborer who dug the first Irish Catholic president’s grave.

If Irish America grieved in unison in 1963, those days were gone in 1969. Breslin, though from a humble broken home in Queens, began to be seen by some blue collar Irish as just another egghead intellectual who sided with longhaired college kids and Vietnam protesters.

So, when Breslin showed up at the Bronx’s Gaelic Park one Sunday for a campaign stop, good feelings were hard to come by. Breslin was shouted at and threatened. When he left, he discovered that one of the tires on his car had been slashed.

“They are my people and they are waiting for me,” Breslin later wrote. “They are waiting to beat the hell out of me.”

As with the split over Bernadette Devlin, it appeared that there were two Irish Americas in 1969 – one traditional and satisfied with the status quo, the other progressive and seeking reform. Neither was willing to change. The very idea that one or the other should budge seemed only to harden their stances.

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Nster.com