Hotel Rwanda

Hall of Fame: Academy Award-Winning Director Terry George

By Cahir O'Doherty, Contributor
March / April 2019

March 1, 2019 by 1 Comment

There is a thread that links each of Terry George’s films, and it comes directly from his life. “I’m talking about ordinary people struggling against oppression,” he tells Irish America. “That’s always been my kind of guiding light.” Whether it’s the true-to-life tale of the late Gerry Conlon (the Belfast man who spent 15 years in an English prison having been wrongly accused) … [Read more...] about Hall of Fame: Academy Award-Winning Director Terry George

March 23, 1847

On this day in 1847, the Choctaw Native American tribe collected money to help starving victims of the Irish potato famine. Several years before, in 1831, President Andrew Jackson seized Choctaw territory in what is now southeastern Mississippi and parts of Alabama, forcing the Choctaw to travel five hundred miles along the “Trail of Tears” to reserved Indian Territory in Oklahoma. The Choctaw people sympathized with Ireland’s forced submission to Britain, and with the starvation and disease that plagued them. A group of Choctaws gathered in Scullyville, Oklahoma and raised $170, which they then forwarded to a U.S. famine relief organization. Though U.S. contribution in aid to Ireland totaled in the millions, the Choctaw donation was by far the most generous.

Hall of Fame: Academy Award-Winning Director Terry George

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