Sport and Irish-American identity in the early Twentieth Century

Editor's Note: The following piece has been shared with IrishCentral from the American Irish Historical Society's (AIHS) Treasures of Time, stories from the collections and archives of the American Irish Historical Society in New York City.

This article is a shortened version of a longer paper that can be found in our journal of undergraduate research, An Cartlann Gael-Mheiriceánach. This paper was created by an AIHS intern during a semester-long research project.

On Saturday, September 7th, 1907, the Irish-American Advocate published a poem to promote the Monaghan Men’s Annual Field Day, to be held on September 8th. Entitled “Monaghan’s Great Day at Celtic Park,” the article presented the field day as an opportunity for Irish emigrants to reconnect with the sports and pastimes of their youth in Ireland, which they had grown distant from in the diaspora.

On that day those thousands of exiles from home /

Whom fate has made wanderers far o’er the foam /

Will meet with a welcome both hearty and grand /

And with loud ringing cheers for the sports of our land.

In the early twentieth century, Gaelic sports were frequently invoked as a way for Irish immigrants and their descendants to maintain a connection to Ireland while living in New York City. This expression was often along nationalistic lines, particularly in the 1910s, as republicanism gained greater popular support both in Ireland and across the diaspora. Accordingly, an analysis of sport in the Irish-American community can illuminate the powerful role ascribed to athletics as Irish immigrants made lives for themselves in the United States without fully distancing themselves from Ireland.

To understand how these complex dynamics played out within New York City’s Irish-American community, the sports pages of the Irish-American Advocate (IAA) are particularly illuminating. The IAA was a weekly Irish-American newspaper that published news from Ireland and kept readers up to date with Irish-American happenings in New York City, such as county society meetings and, frequently in the spring and summer months, athletic events. Martin Hurley, the sports editor at the IAA in the first three decades of the twentieth century, ran a sports column under the pseudonym Liam O’Shea in which he discussed various athletes and competitions, and gave his opinions on all manner of sporting endeavors. The games most frequently covered by the IAA were Gaelic football and hurling, with matches every Sunday from May to September at Celtic Park, a prominent Irish athletic venue owned by the Irish American Athletics Club (IAAC) located in what was then Laurel Hill, Long Island, and is now part of Queens. These grand athletic weekends at Celtic Park served several purposes over the years, as they could be simple gatherings of county associations promoting friendly competition, or, later, fundraisers for Irish republicans.

While the assimilatory potential of sport for Irish-Americans has been studied by several historians at length, a close reading of the pages of the IAA in the first quarter of the twentieth century reveals that sport was primarily conceived of at the time as a way to remain connected with Ireland. During this internship, I looked at microfilmed issues of the IAA from 1907 to 1919, held in the archives of the American Irish Historical Society.

A microfilm of the Irish American Advocate (IAA) held in the archives of the American Irish Historical Society.

These collections clearly show how sport, particularly Gaelic football, played a significant role in connecting Irish immigrants and their descendants across the diaspora. The Irish-American press consistently reported recaps of games back in Ireland, allowing immigrants to feel connected to what was going on back home, and the IAA also used recaps of games in New York to solidify the connection between Irish immigrants and Ireland itself. This effort is made particularly clear in an article from May 25th, 1907, entitled “Kerry’s Great Day at Celtic Park.” Among his efforts to describe the Kerry county team’s success on the field, the writer also sought to capture the atmosphere in the crowd. As he wrote,

In many of those faces as one glanced up at the great throng in the grand stand, while the martial strains were wafted on the breezer, could be noted that pensive far-off expression so inalienably characteristic of the true child of poetic Erin. Perhaps, because many were exiles, they lived again in fancy and their imaginative minds roamed once more through the wildwoods of Bamba.

For this author, the football game offered these spectators the chance to live “again in fancy” as their imaginations ran wild. The explicit connection drawn here between sport and the Irish in exile represents a common trend in the early twentieth century Irish-American press, where sport was invoked as a way to reconnect to the land and culture of Ireland that was lost for many through emigration. This idea of building a connection to Ireland through sport may be seen within the context of the broader Gaelic Revival, the period of increased interest in the Irish language and Gaelic culture that emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century. The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) was founded in 1884 as the preservation of Gaelic culture and identity gained broader popularity in Ireland, and Gaelic sports like hurling and football were codified by the GAA.

The power of sport in building connections across the diaspora was made even more apparent during Olympic years, particularly in 1908 and 1912, when Irish-American athletes made up a large proportion of the American team. Ireland was not able to field an independent team, and many Irish athletes competed for the American, Canadian, and—sparking significant grumbling in the IAA—British teams. Several prominent Irish-American athletes, including the weight throwers known as the “Irish Whales” found great success at the 1912 Stockholm games, and the Irish-American press viewed their athletic prowess as a victory not just for America or Ireland, but specifically for Irish-America as well. As Martin Hurley wrote in his column in July 1912,         

When the boys return a big day is promised, for Americans will show their appreciation to the world’s greatest by giving them a rousing welcome. Irish-America will also be in the van with the rooters, for I may add with apologies to John Bull that the Irish-American A.C. won more points at Stockholm than any other club in the United States—yes, the world.

Sentiments surrounding Irish-American patriotism evolved further in the 1910s, particularly with the shifting political winds in Ireland and the conditions of the First World War. As Paul Darby has argued, “the broader practice of linking Gaelic games with politicized expressions of Irish nationalism in New York was largely dependent on the ebb and flow of the nationalist struggle in Ireland,” and as such, the 1910s are an especially fruitful period for analysis. The decade was a critical period for Ireland, and the April 1916 Easter Rising, in which Irish nationalists declared a republic and fought, primarily in Dublin, to end British rule in Ireland, sparked intense discourse in the Irish-American community in New York. The sports pages of the IAA weren’t exempt from the political discussions that swept over the Irish-American community, and Martin Hurley’s writings—including his column under the name Liam O’Shea—were intensely political in the weeks and months following the Rising. Hurley sought to explicitly connect the Rising with the GAA, writing on May 13th that “hundreds of gallant hurlers and football players went down to death before desperate odds, while fighting to restore Ireland to nationhood,” through the Rising. Here, Hurley presents athletes as the ideal Irishmen who are willing to go down fighting for their country in its time of need, indicating a deep rooted connection between athletics and the nation. He was correct in his assertion that the GAA had connections to the Rising, although not as a formal organization: three hundred members of the Dublin GAA were active in the Rising, and it contributed to the radicalization of the athletic body as the British government clamped down on its activities significantly in the weeks and months that followed.

Hurley developed this connection between Gaelic sport and Irish nationalism even further in a later column, writing that “The gallant Volunteers who defied England were almost entirely composed of men who have been connected with Gaelic pastimes.” Here, his use of the phrase “Gaelic pastimes” is particularly striking, because it invokes imagery of the Gaelic Revival. The preservation of Gaelic culture through sport was a way of asserting a specifically Irish identity, and by seemingly harkening back to an earlier period in Irish history, Hurley invites his readers to connect these twentieth century figures with ancient Ireland, placing them within a longer trajectory of Irish nationalism.

The connection between Irish nationalism and Irish-American athletics persisted throughout the later 1910s, and grew stronger during the Irish War of Independence from 1919 to 1921. In May 1919, Hurley sought to convince Irish-Americans to attend a Decoration Day game at Celtic Park. As he wrote,

Every red-blooded Gael who is worthy of Ireland’s love in this critical hour should answer this call, for his presence will show that the ideals which brave men were murdered for have not pershed [sic.]. Decoration day will be kept by Irishmen in the fullest sense; for where is the Irishman who has not offered the biggest measure of devotion to the stars and stripes. And Ireland’s day of achievement, spelling victory ‘neath the tricolor of the Irish Republic will also be remembered.

Here, Hurley strengthens the association between Irish nationalism and American patriotism by referencing how Irishmen served in the United States military during World War I, and argues that Decoration Day was a means of remembering those who fought for the Irish Republic as well. By linking these causes, he legitimizes the Irish fight by placing it in direct conversation with the First World War. Further, he takes a rather intense emotional approach in his appeal, particularly with his assertion that those who are “worthy of Ireland’s love” should answer the call to Celtic Park. The timing of this article is pertinent here, with the Irish War of Independence raging in May of 1919, and this imbues a sense of urgency into Hurley’s words. The role of the diaspora must be acknowledged here. The people that Hurley is calling to show their support on Decoration Day are unable to contribute to the fight for an independent Ireland with their lives, as they are an ocean away, and Hurley appeals to the Irish-American community’s need to do something to prove their support for Ireland at the “critical hour” he writes of. In this environment, sport offers a way of maintaining both emotional and political attachments to their home country, despite the geographical distance. This sense is further demonstrated in a column in the next week’s edition of the IAA, in which Hurley invites spectators to come to Celtic Park for the Irish Victory games, writing that

…there is no better way of showing your loyalty to the Dail Eireann than to attend today’s (Friday) games at Celtic Park. Come on, people—show those English porpagandists [sic.] that are proving a scourge to American institutions—that there ARE legions of good Sinn Feiners and incidentally good Americans in this great city. COME ON!

His statement that “there is no better way” to demonstrate one’s loyalty to an independent Ireland than by attending these matches at Celtic Park is a bold claim, and it reflects the very high place that sport occupied within assertions of Irish identity. Beyond the activities on the field themselves, thousands of spectators attending a Gaelic sporting event was significant for its illustration that Irish culture persevered, refusing to succumb to colonial pressures in Ireland or through total assimilation into American culture.

Through archived writing like Martin Hurley’s column, we see how Irish-Americans made a claim to American identity through their Irishness and the values it stood for, rather than pushing their ancestry to the side in an effort to Americanize themselves. Sport offers one way of understanding these complex dynamics, and is particularly useful in that it breaks away from a level of analysis that only considers “official” history or elite perspectives. By critically examining the Irish-American press, we can gain insight into how everyday individuals went about their lives in the Irish diaspora, and how they saw themselves fitting into the world around them.

*Jillian Prunty is a senior at Barnard College of Columbia University, studying history with a concentration in wars and revolutions. She is broadly interested in sports history and the social history of war, and wrote her senior thesis on the role of class and masculinity in shaping British attitudes toward football during the Second World War. She plans to pursue her master’s in Library and Information Science at the University of South Carolina in the fall.

This column is adapted from the blog of the American Irish Historical Society (AIHS). Read the full stories at AIHSNY.org/blog.

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