Meanwhile, decades before Jane Addams and Hull House became synonymous with Chicago charity, Carlow native Agatha O’Brien and nuns from the Mercy Sisters worked in hospitals, schools and asylums caring for victims of cholera and other diseases.īy the 1870s, the Irish-born population of Chicago was approaching 70,000 – over 25 percent of the people. Patrick’s Day parade in 1843 – and was still doing so five decades later, in the 1890s. In this city which would lead the nation in meat production, Lane is said to have opened Chicago’s first meat market in 1836. Bradford, another example of Chicago’s Irish rising class was Cork native James Lane. Patrick’s church at Adams and Desplaines Streets in the mid-1850s.īesides Dr. This came even as Irish laborers worked feverishly to complete Chicago’s stately St. “Who does not know that the most depraved, debased, worthless and irredeemable drunkards and sots which curse the community are Irish Catholics?” the Tribune sneered. The Chicago Tribune, edited by Joseph Medill (a descendant of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians), regularly dismissed the Irish as lazy and shiftless. It also meant that when the Great Hunger struck Ireland, some Chicago laborers were able to send money, food and other materials back to Ireland.Īlthough Chicago was spared the anti-Irish violence of other large American cities, there was no lack of rabid anti-Irish sentiment. Bradford, a physician, was also one of Chicago’s earliest successful real estate speculators.Ĭanal work brought hordes of additional laborers – as well as class tension and cries for unionization. William Bradford was among the earliest boosters of Chicago and the opportunities presented by the canal’s construction. The completion of the canal in 1848 coincided with the mass emigration from Ireland caused by the Great Famine.” “The construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which would connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, began in 1836, drawing Irish laborers. “For the Irish, Chicago’s emergence as the nascent city on the prairie was timely,” writes John Gerard McLaughlin in his book Irish Chicago.
This also allowed early Irish immigrants to, in a sense, get in on the ground floor of Chicago. So the Chicago Irish did not face the worst kind of anti-Catholic, anti-Irish bigotry from established, native-born elites. Unlike Boston, New York or Philadelphia, Chicago was not settled until the 1800s. O’Leary’s infamous cow to Comiskey Park and O’Hare International Airport, the Irish have left a deep impression upon Chicago. Often, they did so successfully, though other times, the result was tension and violence.Įither way, from Studs Lonigan, Michael Flatley and Mrs. Furthermore, the Irish have always had to build coalitions among other racial, ethnic and religious groups.
First, the Irish have been playing a crucial political role in Chicago for over 150 years. Obama’s loss illustrates key facts about the Chicago Irish experience. Obama (himself Irish on his mother’s side) was ultimately trounced in the South Side race, and learned that when it came to Windy City politics, he still had some dues to pay.
Meanwhile, though it’s true that the district that Obama hoped to win was 65 percent black, it also had “several relatively affluent Irish-American neighborhoods,” as The New York Times noted recently. In fact, for all the changes in Chicago, the same rules have always applied when it comes to politics: you have to pay your dues before you challenge a veteran.
Farrell recreated in his famous Studs Lonigan trilogy of novels from the 1930s. Rush, a legend in the working-class African-American wards of Chicago’s South Side.ĭecades earlier, the South Side was heavily Irish. Obama, a state senator, announced he was going to challenge Congressman Bobby L. Before he was president, Barack Obama was an ambitious young politician who learned a valuable lesson thanks to the Chicago Irish.
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