-Caveat Lector- http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/075/sunday/Fighting_words%2B.shtml
Fighting words A historian challenges the `No Irish' myth By Sean Lyons, 3/16/2003 NOTHING SYMBOLIZES the hatred faced by Irish immigrants during their first century in America as strongly as the signs that used to hang outside factories and in shop windows: ''Help Wanted-No Irish Need Apply.'' The late Tip O'Neill recalled seeing them as a boy in Boston, as has Senator Edward Kennedy. In a 1996 speech on the Senate floor, Kennedy said, ''I remember `Help Wanted' signs in stores when I was growing up saying `No Irish Need Apply.' Thankfully, we have made a great deal of progress in ending that kind of... bigotry.'' The signs, which some have likened to the ''Whites Only'' signs of the South before the civil-rights era, have been used to illustrate not just native- born Americans' bitter opposition to the Irish, but how the Irish managed to surmount that opposition in order to achieve the American Dream. There's only one problem with this story: The signs may have hardly existed. In the December 2002 issue of the Journal of Social History, Richard J. Jensen of the University of Illinois at Chicago claims that there is scant evidence of the ''No Irish'' signs in the historical record. An electronic search of several hundred thousand pages of newspapers, magazines, and books yielded only a handful of ads that included ''No Irish'' phrases. As for signs in store windows, he writes, ''There are no contemporary or retrospective accounts of a specific sign at a specific location.... No historian, archivist, or museum curator has ever located one; no photograph or drawing exists.'' The signs available on eBay and elsewhere, he states, are ''modern fakes.'' In the 19th century, Jensen adds, studies show that the Irish received job promotions at the same rate as others, and they were no more segregated into one particular industry than immigrant Germans or British were. So why the legendary stories of discrimination? While other groups followed ''individualistic'' paths to economic and social success, the Irish specialized in politics, unionized labor, and other activities where they benefited from group solidarity-a solidarity, according to Jensen, which stories of the ''No Irish Need Apply'' signs only served to strengthen. In a recent interview, Jensen said the Irish ''didn't face that much'' discrimination in the New World. The signs, he says, are simply another ''myth of victimization.'' Jensen's paper is stirring up a donnybrook among his fellow historians. Although some allow that there may not have been all that many ''No Irish'' signs, they cite numerous other examples of 19th-century anti-Irish bigotry, including the rise of the nativist Know Nothing movement, convent burnings in Charlestown and Baltimore, and the numerous political cartoons depicting the Irish as apelike. Timothy Meagher, a history professor at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., calls the ''No Irish'' signs ''a bogus issue.'' ''I would dispute the notion that the Irish belief that they faced prejudice was based only on a cultural paranoia,'' said Meagher, a Worcester native. ''They weren't inventing enemies.'' Jensen, who received his bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame, argues that the signs are a historical memory that the Irish brought over from the Old World. The phrase was first popularized in a song called ''No Irish Need Apply,'' printed in Philadelphia in 1862 and adapted from a British songsheet. The song, originally the lament of an Irish girl in London who'd been turned back from a job as a housekeeper, in America became the defiant cry of a new immigrant Irish man scanning the help- wanted ads in the New York Tribune. (The newspaper itself became a target of Irish mobs in the draft riots of 1863, Jensen notes.) Thin I felt my dandher rising, and I'd like to black his eye? T o tell an Irish Gintleman: No Irish Need Apply. I couldn't stand it longer: so hoult of him I took: A nd I gave him such a welting as he'd get at a Donnybrook. Jensen maintains that the few ''No Irish'' ads he did find were mostly ads from the 1850s seeking maids and nannies-and that Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics. ''It was a sentiment shared by a small number of people for a brief moment in time,'' he says. ''That's all.'' Jensen roundly dismisses the claim that ''No Irish'' signs could still be found in the 20th century. Imagine somebody hanging a sign in Boston during the 1920s, he says: ''The Irish make up more than a third of the city. How long do you think it will take for someone to throw a rock through that window? But there are no reports of anyone ever causing a fight, a riot, or having any other sort of protest.'' (A spokesman for Senator Kennedy did not return calls requesting comment on his own recollections of the signs.) Most historians agree that the signs have been exaggerated in the Irish- American consciousness, but they contest Jensen's larger conclusions. ''Victimhood always has its political benefits,'' says Kevin Kenny, a professor of history and Irish studies at Boston College. But Jensen, in his view, has written a ''deliberately pugnacious paper'' that ''carries his conclusions too far.'' According to Kenny, ''`No Irish' is a symbol of something real, the prejudice the Irish faced, that we don't want to discount.'' Jensen won't back down. ''I think historians have bought into this myth that seriously affects and influences their interpretation of Irish and American social history,'' he said. ''This is a leprechaun and I'm saying the leprechaun didn't exist. The good news for the Irish is that people didn't hate them that much.'' Sean Lyons teaches journalism at the Scripps Howard School of Journalism at Hampton University in Virginia. This story ran on page D4 of the Boston Globe on 3/16/2003. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company. Forwarded for your information. The text and intent of the article have to stand on their own merits. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many genera- tions. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of teachers, elders or wise men. 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