NARRATOR: Today, Irish Americans
are just considered, Americans.
But when they first came
to the country as refugees
they were seen as an
infestation, a plague.
Here's why Americans hated
but now love the Irish.
It all started with
potatoes, or a lack thereof.
By the mid 1840s, the
average adult in Ireland
ate over 10 pounds
of potatoes per day.
They didn't have
much of a choice.
After centuries of
oppressive British rule,
most Irish lived in poverty.
Potatoes were easy to grow,
packed with nutrition,
and, most importantly, cheap.
But in 1845, a fungus, phyto--
a fungus began to eat
its way through Ireland's
precious crops.
The potato plants
started to shrivel,
and Ireland's British
overlords didn't seem to care.
The great hunger
lasted until 1852.
By the time the famine ended,
some 1 million Irish had died
from starvation and disease.
By 1855, nearly 2 million
had fled, the majority
of them to the United States.
The Irish encountered
much resistance in the US
for several reasons,
including religion.
Most of the Irish immigrants
in the US were Roman Catholic,
and there had long been bad
blood between Protestants
and Catholics.
Some Protestants believed this
exodus of Irish immigrants
was a papal army seeking to
overthrow the US government
and establish a new
Vatican in Cincinnati.
Others just worried
that these newcomers
would take their jobs.
As with every wave
of new immigrants,
most of the Irish who came
to the US during this time
ended up taking dangerous,
low-paying work.
Irish Catholics also brought
their love of the drink.
Irish-owned pubs popped
up across the country,
giving the new immigrants
a foothold in the economy
but also leading to an ugly
stereotype, the Irish as
job-stealing, junk cretins.
Discrimination was rampant.
Entire political parties
sprung up to fight
this perceived Irish menace.
Members of the
so-called American Party
referred to themselves
as Know Nothings
because when questioned
about their membership
they claimed to know nothing.
But they had a very active
agenda and vowed to only
elect native-born Americans--
no, not them, just the
non-Catholic whites.
They also started violent riots
and picked street fights in
Irish-Catholic neighborhoods.
But after years
of discrimination,
the Irish fought back,
not in the streets
but at the ballot box.
Their sheer numbers
gave them strength.
They voted Irish Catholics into
powerful political positions
across major East Coast cities.
At the same time,
non-Irish Americans
also started to come around
to the whole Irish pub thing.
And as the Irish moved
up the social ladder,
nativists, like
the Know Nothings,
shifted their prejudices to
the next wave of immigrants
from China and Eastern Europe.
The Irish became
Irish Americans,
and non-Irish Americans
started to act
more Irish, or at least how
they thought the Irish acted.
Today, Irish traditions,
including music, dance,
and drink, have been woven into
the fabric of American society.
So the next time you fly an
Irish flag on St. Paddy's Day,
remember what Americans
once hated and feared
is now a staple of our culture.
