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Learn
more about our featured books:
The Immigrants
Historical Reader
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The Irish Americans
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Ireland has been sending her sons and daughters to America for 500 years.
Some arrived as educated and assertive men and women, well trained craftsmen,
and industrious merchants. Many others came as illiterate and indentured
servants, unskilled laborers and famine refugees. During the 19th Century,
when the Irish came by the hundreds of thousands, they were the original
"huddled masses". Forced into exile, an overwhelmingly rural
people became the "wretched refuse" of America's first urban
slums. From the very bottom of society, Irish men dug their way upward,
building our sewers, canals, roads and bridges, while Irish women climbed
up from being laundresses, servants, and maids to become mill and office
workers.
The culture, heritage, and history of Irish Americans are the subject
of this reader. This collection:
- presents key documents and memoirs
- offers a glimpse of Irish Americans through their own voices
- documents the history of Irish Americans in print and photographs
- historical overview of the struggle for equality
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