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“TANGLED
ROOTS” aptly describes the shared history of African Americans and
Irish Americans. The relationship has ebbed and flowed from common cause
to violent clash and back again. Two rich cultures born in oppression
and mixed in cauldrons like New York City’s Seneca Village and Five
Points sometimes fused as a result of the contact; sometimes exploded
apart.
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| Daniel
O’Connell in court, 1844 |
From the correspondence of U.S. abolitionist Frederick
Douglass and Ireland’s “Great Emancipator” Daniel O’Connell,
which noted their similar struggles; to the Civil War-era riots in which the
Irish-American underclass unleashed its frustrations on New York’s
black population (recently depicted in "The Gangs of New
York"); to mutual bonds of the struggles for civil rights in
20th-Century America and Northern Ireland, the interaction has been
dramatic.
Personal stories from the intersection of these cultures
heighten the drama. The shared ancestry of such well-documented
historical figures like Coast Guard legend Captain Michael Healy to that
of the contemporary writer James McGowan both enrich this history and
underscore the complex nature of the questions it poses.
These interactions in all their manifestations open a window
to new understandings of race and ethnicity in
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| Urias
McGill, Baltimore 1854 |
America. As the nation
faces new waves of immigration and the melding and clash of new
cultures, raising the level of this understanding becomes a paramount
public goal.
The “TANGLED ROOTS” Project grows from the mission of the
Gilder
Lehrman Center for the Study of Abolition, Resistance and Slavery at
Yale University. “TANGLED
ROOTS,” a one-hour documentary for public television, will
serve as the video component of an already developing
multi-media
project. A companion DVD
will blend both the broadcast documentary and existing materials to
serve as a strong, visual educational component to the ongoing project.
The documentary will tell this very visual story in a way that
supplements evolving materials, including a book of the same name. The
Gilder Lehrman project was
researched and written by MaryAnn Matthews, who will also collaborate on
the documentary component.
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| Four
Fellows with James McGowan (top right) |
James McGowan, author, leading scholar on Harriet Tubman and
a 1950s recording artist, embodies both the shared culture and shared
heritage of the project. “TANGLED
ROOTS,” the documentary, will follow McGowan as he traces his
Irish roots and his developing notion of racial identity. Says McGowan:
“I'm a ‘Black American’ with an Irish paternal grandfather. I've
been in contact with a family of McGowans in Ireland and we believe
their great uncle, Thomas McGowan, and my grandfather is one and the
same person. There are resemblances (in spite of different skin
colors).” This very personal story – with such a telling visual
impact – is most dramatically told through television.
In addition to filming in Ireland, “TANGLED
ROOTS” revisits the racial “salad bowl” of Brooklyn, New
York, where McGowan grew up from the 1930s to the 1950s. “Many of my
friends, like myself, were multiracial,” says McGowan. These
multiracial street-corner friends gave birth to the doo-wop sound
popularized by McGowan and his generation – the foundation of the
multi-cultural, multi-ethnic American popular music that now dominates
world entertainment culture.
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| Capt.
Michael Healy |
The contemporary exploration of James McGowan is mirrored in
the examination of the Healy clan. An Irish immigrant and a mixed-race
domestic slave raised children who became accomplished adults, including
priests (the first African-American Bishop in the United States was a
Healy), a President of Georgetown University, a religious sister and a
legendary Coast Guard officer. The documentary will bring to life the
voluminous academic materials and archival photographs on the question
of race and the Healy family.
Among others to be interviewed with personal stories of
shared heritage are writer Toni Morrison and the poet
Michael Harper. Writer Frank McCourt will also contribute his insights. In “All Souls,” Michael Patrick McDonald chronicled
his journey from South Boston racist to conciliation. He, too, will take
a film crew on a walk through neighborhoods where race and ethnic
tensions ran high for decades. Noel Ignatiev, author of “How the Irish
Became White,” adds sociological weight to the origin of these
tensions.
Two
other sections of New York City have given birth to a wealth of “TANGLED
ROOTS” material and will also provide dynamic backdrops for
filming.
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| Five
Points in 1827 |
Five
Points is a 19th-Century working class neighborhood, where African and Irish
Americans lived worked and intermarried. On-site interviews with
archaeologists who are rediscovering the area and its history will bring
the research to life.
Archaeologists, such as Diana Wall, associate professor of
anthropology at City College, and Nan Rothschild, professor of
anthropology at Barnard College, are unearthing the history of Seneca
Village, another 19th-Century neighborhood of African, Irish and German
Americans.
The
documentary will include interviews with these scholars and build on
research developed through the staff of the Education Department at the
New York Historical Society based on “The
Park and the People: A History of Central Park” by Roy
Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, and New York Historical Society’s
exhibition called “Before Central Park: The Life and Death of Seneca
Village” co-curated by Grady T. Turner and Cynthia R. Copeland.
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| Irish
freedom demonstration, 1920 |
The
story of shared struggles comes full circle in an interview with Brian
Dooley, author of “Black and Green.” Dooley connects the 1960s civil
rights struggle of African Americans to the Irish struggle in Northern
Ireland. Archival film footage shows Irish protestors in Derry singing
freedom songs like “We Shall Overcome” and ultimately Prime Minister
John Hume receiving the Martin Luther King Peace Prize in Atlanta. |
