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Bobby Kennedy Has Been Turned into an Impossibly Perfect Hero

By Brian Dooley

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He deserves a better judgment As Bobby Kennedy lay dying on a hotel kitchen floor, we’re told his last words were of concern for those around him who had also been shot. “Is everybody okay?” Kennedy asked. These noble, altruistic last conscious thoughts chime with how many people see him – a champion of the poor, “a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, … [Read more...] about Bobby Kennedy Has Been Turned into an Impossibly Perfect Hero

Black and Green Today

By Brian Dooley

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More than 20 years ago I wrote a book about the links between the U.S. civil rights movement and the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. Black and Green (published in 1998) did okay, reviewers were kind, and some schools and universities in the U.S. and Europe forced their students to read it. What’s surprised me is that two decades on it’s enjoying a mini-revival. Its … [Read more...] about Black and Green Today

The Amazing Role Gay Women Played in the 1916 Rising

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Historical accounts of the gay movement in Ireland usually omit women, yet they had a remarkable part to play in the 1916 Rising as just one example and as lifelong advocates for human rights as another example. Mary McAuliffe, a lecturer in women’s studies at University College Dublin, points out that Elizabeth O’Farrell, who was famously airbrushed out of the historic … [Read more...] about The Amazing Role Gay Women Played in the 1916 Rising

The Fighting Irish

By Robert Lyons, Contributor
March / April 2020

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When this year's postponed St. Patrick's Day parade is rescheduled, the New York Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion (the Fighting 69th Infantry Regiment), led by two Irish wolfhound mascots, will march up Fifth Avenue and mark its 169th year in the St. Patrick’s Day parade. The tradition began in New York City in 1762; when the … [Read more...] about The Fighting Irish

A Tale of Two Flags

By Irish America Staff
March / April 2020

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Back in 1974, City Council President Paul O’Dwyer introduced a bill that would change the date on the New York’s flag and seal from 1664 to 1625. The move was an effort to set history straight and to recognize the city’s Dutch heritage on the 700th anniversary of the founding of the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The Irish-born O’Dwyer noted that the only … [Read more...] about A Tale of Two Flags