THIS EVENT IS IN-PERSON AT CCNY CWE (25 BROADWAY) | MUST RSVP

CCNY's Division of Interdisciplinary Studies
at the Center for Worker Education (CCNY CWE)
&
Frances S. Patai Program Lecture Series

Invites you to

Transatlantic Civil Rights Activism:
Linking the Civil Rights Movements in Northern Ireland and the United States in the 1960s

With Guest Speaker: Niall Ó Dochartaigh
University of Galway, Ireland

Monday, Feb 24 2025, 6:30 PM | In-Person


RSVP
 

The civil rights movement in the United States was a vital source of inspiration for civil rights campaigners in Northern Ireland from the 1950s onwards. Irish activists deployed the innovative protest tactics pioneered in the US, adopted some of the American movement’s slogans and songs and drew parallels between the discrimination faced by African-Americans and the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. When the civil rights campaign in Northern Ireland grew into a mass movement in the late 1960s key figures travelled to the US to seek support and build alliances. Direct links were established despite the hostility of many conservative Irish-Americans to the civil rights movement in the US.

This lecture examines the influence of the US civil rights campaign on the movement in Northern Ireland. It looks at the reasons why activists on both sides of the Atlantic drew parallels and sought to make connections and it examines the building of direct cooperative relationships between activists in Ireland and the United States. It concludes with reflections on the character and limits of this transnational civil rights mobilisation and the divergent trajectories that the two movements took as the 1970s began.

About Guest Speaker Niall Ó Dochartaigh

Niall Ó Dochartaigh is Professor of Political Science and Director of the MA in Public Policy at the University of Galway. He has published extensively on the Northern Ireland conflict, on peace negotiations and on political violence. His publications include Civil Rights to Armalites: Derry and the birth of the Irish Troubles and the co-edited books Political Violence in Context and Dynamics of Political Change in Ireland. His most recent book, Deniable Contact: Back-channel Negotiation in Northern Ireland, published by Oxford University Press in 2021, provides the first full-length study of the back-channels that were used in repeated efforts to end the Northern Ireland conflict. It was awarded the Brian Farrell book prize of the Political Studies Association of Ireland. He is currently a Fulbright Ireland Fellow at NYU researching US civil society connections to peacemaking efforts during the Northern Ireland conflict.

Monday, Feb 24 2025, 6:30 PM
In-Person (CCNY CWE Auditorium) 
FREE | Must RSVP at: https://www.ccny.cuny.edu/cwe/rsvp-transatlantic-civil-rights-activism-linking-civil-rights-movements-northern-ireland-and