Urged by their mothers to pursue an education, the “one thing they can’t take away,” the American daughters of Irish-born mothers are the unsung heroines of Irish achievement in the United States. While immigrant mothers often became servants of the American rich, their educated daughters became servants of the poor in America’s public schools. By

Frederick Douglass is well known for his 1845 autobiography which described his life as a slave in Maryland and his escape to freedom in the North. The book, which bluntly recounted the abuse that he and other slaves endured at the hands of their masters, became a bestseller in the 1850s and is thought by

Born in Boston’s South End to Irish-immigrant parents, John Lawrence Sullivan (1858-1918) was the last of the bare-knuckle heavyweight boxing champions. He was the first American athlete to earn over one million dollars, the first American sports “superstar,” and an Irish-American hero during the Gilded Age. Writer Christopher Klein has published a new book on