The Lessons of The Great Hunger

The Great Hunger recalls the struggle and pain of Irish people who fled their homeland during a catastrophic hunger, honors their courage in opening the door for others, and traces how a story rooted in a dark period of Ireland’s history helped change American life and forge an enduring link between Ireland and America. America remains a hopeful refuge from suffering and injustice, and the Irish experience, with its traumas and triumphs, offers a model from which others can learn and grow, as Dennis Clark observed in noting that the Irish, as the first and largest urban minority group with which American society had to deal, became an example for later immigrants by working their way into the general society. In 1994, at the site of a quarantine station at Grosse Isle, Quebec, where 5,300 Irish died in 1847, President of Ireland Mary Robinson urged her listeners to be participants in history rather than spectators, saying that there are no inevitable victims if people engage with the present in terms of the past. The generations descended from the Hunger immigrants have for the most part prospered and are grateful for the blessings of America, yet prejudice still exists, especially toward newly arrived immigrants, and the Irish story calls for mindfulness, hope, and welcome: Céad míle fáilte, one hundred thousand welcomes.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · United States