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What role did Irish Americans in the Midwest play in expanding America’s conception of labor rights?

In the early twentieth century, Irish American labor activists in Chicago and the wider Midwest – especially Mary Harris ‘Mother’ Jones – played an important role in promoting the connections between civil rights and labor rights, drawing from international, Irish, and American doctrines to imagine a landscape for a new kind of freedom and democracy.

Join us to mark Labor Day weekend at Ireland House with a talk on the Irish community’s role in Chicago’s labor movement from the past to the present. The event forms part of the Consulate’s programme of events to mark USA 250 and will feature a lecture from labor historian Professor Rosemary Feurer of Northern Illinois University and reflections from Mike Lafferty of the Chicago Roofers Union Local 11. Mike Lafferty, whose ancestors hail from County Cork, was raised in a traditional Irish American community on the Southwest Side and continues this tradition, having learned about Mother Jones as an apprentice roofer and being inspired to become a leader in the Roofers Union.