The 1830s and 1840s were arguably the lowest moment for Irish Catholics in American history. Michael Feldberg will recall those difficult years by recounting the attacks by xenophobic Protestants (including some Orangemen) on two Irish Catholic churches in Philadelphia, one of which was burned to the ground. The immigrant Irish Catholics fought back, and several

Irish immigrants faced a punishing arrival in our state, and their forward progress over the years was not much kinder. By the end of the 1800s, Rhode Island Irish had at least progressed from “shanty” Irish to “lace curtain” status in some quarters. Prof. Molloy will discuss the conditions in Providence’s Irish-dominated Fifth Ward (Newport

Oscar Handlin, the eminent Harvard historian, argued that immigration was and is the key to understanding American history. For Newport, the arrival of large numbers of Irish immigrants in the late 1840s and 1850s shaped the history of the city to present times. One question that arises is the degree of upward mobility: To what