• Date: March 23, 2006
• Time: 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
• Location: National Archives and Records Administration, Northeast Region, Waltham, MA
• Address and Directions
• Register

Primary Resources

• Kevin Kenny
• Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies
• Boston College
• Ph.D.,Columbia University, 1994


• Professor Kenny's principal area of research and teaching is the history of American immigration and labor, with an emphasis on Irish transatlantic migration and popular protest in the Atlantic world since 1700. His first book, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (1998), examines how traditions of agrarian protest in nineteenth-century Ireland were translated into an American industrial setting. His second book, The American Irish: A History (2000), examines the Irish migration to North America from 1700 to the present, including the Irish preconditions to mass emigration and questions of labor, social mobility, religion, race, gender, politics, and nationalism among the Irish in the United States. He is also editor of Ireland and the British Empire: The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (2004). His current research focuses on popular protest in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Bibliography

Specific Ethnic Groups

• Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. Oxford University Press, 1985.



• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Special Sorrows: The Diasporic Imagination of Irish, Polish, and Jewish Immigrants in the United States. Harvard University Press, 1995.



• Kevin Kenny, The American Irish: A History. Longman Press, 2000.



• Thomas O’Connor, The Boston Irish: A Political History. Northeastern University Press, 1995.

General Texts


• Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation, 1790-1880. Belknap Press, 1991.



• Walter Nugent, Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870-1914. Indiana University Press, 1992.



• John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America. Indiana University Press, 1987.

Race and Ethnicity

• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign People at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917. Hill & Wang, 2001.



• Marilyn Halter, Between Race and Ethnicity: Cape Verdean American Immigrants 1860-1965. Illini Books, 1993.



• David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. Verso, 1999.

Oral History Collections

• Gordon Hutner, Immigrant Voices: Twenty-Four Voices on Becoming an American. Signet Classics, 1999.



• James Hoopes, Oral History: An Introduction for Students. University of North Carolina Press, 1979.



• Hamilton Holt, The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans as Told by Themselves. Routledge (2nd. Edition) 1989.

Discussion Questions

1. Why did so many Irish people come to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century?
2. What was their impact on American urban life?
3. Why did the Irish initially suffer such poverty and deprivation?
4. What resources did they have to improve their condition?
5. Why did so many Americans initially dislike the Irish?
6. How important was religion to Irish identity and to the hostility of the native-born to the Irish?
7. Why did the Irish dislike other Americans, especially African Americans and Chinese Americans?
8. Did the Irish experience actual racism?
9. If so, how did it compare to the racism experiences by African Americans and Chinese Americans?
10. If not, how do we explain and the forms of prejudice the Irish did experience? What terms are available to us for this purpose.
11. How do we distinguish between the degrees of prejudice directed at these different groups?
12. Can we distinguish between cultural prejudice and racial subordination? Does the distinction matter? If so, does it help answer some of the questions were are considering?
13. What does the Irish case tell us about American history more generally?

Digitized Images

• "The American River Ganges," Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly, September 30, 1871.
• "The Chinese Question," Harper's Weekly, February 18, 1871.
• "The Most Recently Discovered Wild Beast," Judy, August 3, 1881.
• Paddy and donkey, Harper's Monthly, September 1852.
• "The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things," Harper's Weekly, September 2, 1871.
• "The Day We Celebrate," Harper's Weekly, April 6, 1867.
• "Contrasted Faces," in Samuel R. Wells, New Physiognomy (New York, 1866).

Address and Directions

• Frederick C. Murphy Federal Center
  380 Trapelo Road
  Waltham, Massachusetts 02452-6399 Phone: (781) 663-0130


• By car from Boston
  Take Massachusetts Turnpike west to Route 128/I-95, Exit 15. Take Route 128/I-95 north to Trapelo Road, Exit 28A - Belmont. Follow Trapelo Road for 2.8 miles. The facility is on the right. For an alternate route, take Storrow Drive, Boston, to Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, to Belmont Street, Watertown. Continue on Belmont Street to Trapelo Road. The facility is on the left.
• By car from west of Boston
  Take the Massachusetts Turnpike to Route 128/I-95. Go north on Route 128/I-95 to Trapelo Road, Exit 28A - Belmont. Follow Trapelo Road for 2.8 miles. The facility is on the right.
• By public transportation
  From the Park Street station, take the MBTA bus to Harvard Square. From Harvard Square, take the MBTA bus to Waverly Square in Belmont (bus runs every 15 minutes). Walk or take a taxi 1.5 miles west on Trapelo Road to the facility.