What Parish Are You From?

A Chicago Irish Community and Race Relations

Eileen M. McMahon

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813188720
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Urban Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

For Irish Americans as well as for Chicago's other ethnic groups, the local parish once formed the nucleus of daily life. Focusing on the parish of St. Sabina's in the southwest Chicago neighborhood of Auburn-Gresham, Eileen McMahon takes a penetrating look at the response of Catholic ethnics to life in twentieth-century America. She reveals the role the parish church played in achieving a cohesive and vital ethnic neighborhood and shows how ethno-religious distinctions gave way to racial differences as a central point of identity and conflict.

For most of this century the parish served as an important mechanism for helping Irish Catholics cope with a dominant Protestant-American culture. Anti-Catholicism in the society at large contributed to dependency on parishes and to a desire for separateness from the American mainstream. As much as Catholics may have wanted to insulate themselves in their parish communities, however, Chicago demographics and the fluid nature of the larger society made this ultimately impossible. Despite efforts at integration attempted by St. Sabina's liberal clergy, white parishioners viewed black migration into their neighborhood as a threat to their way of life and resisted it even as they relocated to the suburbs.

The transition from white to black neighborhoods and parishes is a major theme of twentieth-century urban history. The experience of St. Sabina's, which changed from a predominantly Irish parish to a vibrant African-American Catholic community, provides insights into this social trend and suggests how the interplay between faith and ethnicity contributes to a resistance to change.

1

The Making of the Irish Parish Community: A Historical Background

Chicago’s South Side Irish have played a prominent role in the city’s history. In the neighborhood of Bridgeport they established a political base and network that launched one of the strongest political machines in the country and gave Chicago several of its mayors. Another South Side establishment and tradition is the Chicago White Sox formed by Charles Comiskey, son of an Irish immigrant and city council alderman. In 1910 Comiskey laid a green cornerstone for his new ball park at 35th and Shields in the midst of an Irish neighborhood.

The South Side Irish community has been immortalized in the literary works of humorist Finley Peter Dunne and novelist James T. Farrell. Both writers were concerned with the Irish and their relationship to Chicago’s ethnic and racial communities. Competition over jobs and neighborhoods was a major theme in their work. Dunne introduced Mr. Dooley, his philosopher-bartender, to Chicago in 1893 in weekly Irish dialectal pieces for the Chicago Evening Post. Mr. Dooley’s mythical saloon on Archer Avenue served the Bridgeport Irish. The barkeeper freely dispensed his wit and wisdom on community happenings and Chicago issues. By 1894, Mr. Dooley had become the pride of Chicago. Gradually, Dunne expanded the scope of Mr. Dooley’s philosophizing to national issues, which earned him a place in national publications and made Mr. Dooley a national phenomenon.¹

Martin Dooley’s most poignant colloquies were on the Bridgeport Irish, whom he depicted with “objective realism and sympathetic understanding.”² What Dunne found inspiring about this Irish community was that, in the midst of an ugly and depressing section of industrial Chicago, their social intercourse was “philosophic, gentle, kindly, shrewd, and witty.” In addition, their parochial attachment to neighborhood and Church presented an interesting contrast to their fierce interest in worldly affairs.³

Dunne himself was a product of the Chicago Irish-Catholic world. The men of his family chose between two careers: either they went down to the riverfront to become ships carpenters or they went to the seminary and became priests. The Dunne family home was in St. Patrick’s parish at Adams and Desplaines Streets just west of the downtown business district. St. Patrick’s still remains a landmark to the Chicago Irish, yet, during Dunne’s formative years, its middle-class Irish character was gradually eroded by its close proximity to Chicago’s business district. This theme of neighborhood transformation was prominent in Mr. Dooley’s observations of the Bridgeport Irish.⁴

James T. Farrell saw himself as a writer of the city in the tradition of Theodore Dreiser, James Joyce, and Emile Zola. Some have called him one of the greatest realists in American letters. He was also influenced by the intellectually vital period of America’s Progressive Era, during which so much hope was pinned on the rational reform of society and the melting of ethnic groups into one people. The writings of John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and Thorstein Veblen were very influential in shaping his views of the city. Farrell’s literary work documents the evolution of Irish Catholics in urban America from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of the 1930s. His most noted novels are the Studs Lonigan trilogy and the Danny O’Neill pentalogy. These novels depict the “spatial, temporal, cultural, and emotional dimensions” of Chicago’s South Side Irish community.⁵

For Farrell the cultural diversity of Chicago and its promise of a common democratic community was a potentially liberating force which could lift the Irish from their ethnic and religious insularity. However, most of his characters refused to break out of their parochial world. Farrell portrayed the Irish sympathetically in their struggle with the disrupting effects of immigration and their poverty. He appreciated the spiritual needs met by parish Catholicism, yet he was impatient with and condemning of its narrow-minded quest for middle-class respectability at the expense of a more authentic humanity and empathy for others.⁶ The works of Dunne and Farrell provide a literary examination of Chicago’s South Side Irish-American community and provide many of the themes for this historical investigation.

The Irish began their “exile” to the United States in large numbers in the 1820s. Ireland’s population had been increasing. Young men and women who had no hope of attaining their own farms saw no reason to put off acquiring the few comforts available to them, namely, marriage and family. Only a small plot of land was necessary to cultivate enough potatoes to feed a growing family, and a family could be sustained on a diet of primarily potatoes and milk. There was little alternative industry in Ireland to relieve the overburdened agricultural sector. Therefore, emigration became the one choice left for those who did not want to sink further into misery and poverty. At the same time, the United States was embarking on an era of tremendous economic and geographic expansion and needed immigrant workers.

The Irish were first drawn to the South Side of Chicago in 1836, when work began on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, an endeavor to connect Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River. They had gained experience on the Erie Canal and followed what seemed to be their “national occupation” westward when the new canal project began. Once the project was completed in 1848, many Irish made their home at the canal’s terminus just outside the city in Bridgeport.⁷ For many decades this was the premier Irish community in the Midwest.⁸

In the 1840s and 1850s, just as Chicago was making its bid for economic pre-eminence in the Midwest as the region’s transportation center, the Great Famine struck Ireland. Many famine refugees escaped to Chicago, where they could find jobs. By 1850 the Irish made up 20 percent of the city’s population, which for a time made them the largest ethnic group.⁹ Employment opportunities in this prairie boomtown opened up just when the Irish desperately needed the work. The employment they qualified for was primarily unskilled work in the industrial sectors of the South Side. After the completion of the I & M Canal, obnoxious industries near the expanding downtown commercial district moved to the South Branch of the River and the Canal area. Slaughterhouses found the waterways useful for the processing of livestock. Cattle driven up from the south and west were more easily corralled there. The coming of the railroads made Bridgeport and the South Side destined for further industrialization. In the 1860s a large steel mill began operation at Archer and Ashland Avenues. Brickyards and breweries added to the productivity of the area. On Christmas Day 1865 the Union Stock Yards opened through the joint effort of meatpacking companies and railroad lines. The Yards would become the principal industrial employer in the area.¹⁰

Almost from the beginning of their settlement in the Chicago area, the Irish plunged into the political arena. By the close of the Civil War the Irish were the dominant ethnic group in Chicago politics. Irish aldermen were a significant block in the city council and influenced the Democratic party as ward committeemen. Their ability to speak English and their knowledge of Anglo-Saxon political institutions were special skills they used to gain political clout. The arrival of other immigrants eclipsed Irish numbers in the city, but this did not hamper Irish power. Many newcomers were Catholic, which helped make Chicago the largest diocese in Roman Catholicism. Building on this common religious bond, Irish politicians enhanced their position by acting as power-brokers among the various national groups.¹¹

The desire for economic gain was a crucial factor in the Irish-American quest for political power. Poor and unskilled, the Irish had few career opportunities that could provide them with a more comfortable and secure life. Politics brought city patronage jobs and other economic benefits. Irish politicians granted city franchises and contracts to companies willing to pay kickbacks. They enriched themselves and secured jobs for the Irish with companies doing business with the city. Because the nineteenth century was the age of rugged individualism, national and local governments did not believe that they had an obligation to care for the welfare of their citizens regardless of their situation. Irish politicians filled this void for their impoverished constituents with aid such as food and coal baskets, albeit in exchange for votes.¹²

Corrupt “boodle” alderman penetrated the workings of the entire city. The Irish worked on streetcar lines, on the construction of sidewalks and sewers, and on the installation of gas, electric, and telephone lines. Since Chicago was one of the fastest growing cities in the country, the demand for city workers increased. More police officers and firemen were needed to monitor the rambunctious city. Irish political connections allowed them to solidify control over both city departments. By 1900 48 percent of the Irish were engaged in city service occupations such as law enforcement and fire fighting. In 1890 six times more policemen were Irish than the next largest ethnic group. Although the city’s labor force was only 14 percent Irish, 58 percent of gasworks employees in Chicago were either first or second generation Irish.¹³

Irish economic mobility came about in part from their political clout, which they were able to wield at a time when Chicago was undergoing rapid expansion. By the 1870s a small but significant Irish middle class began to appear. By 1920 their improved economic situation gave most Irish the option to leave behind inner city industrial areas for better apartments and houses in Chicago’s newer neighborhoods south and west.¹⁴

Politics provided the Irish with power and jobs. It also reinforced ethnic cohesiveness. Nationalist causes also brought unity to the Irish in Chicago by providing social occasions and the lure of a job or the enhancement of a political career. In his influential study of Irish-American nationalism, Thomas Brown argues that besides an intense hatred of Britain, the driving motive behind this crusade for Ireland’s freedom was a deep-seated sense of inferiority and a longing of the Irish for respectability. In Ireland, the British had shown little regard for the native Irish and their way of life. Many Irish emigrants blamed British misrule for their exile. Once in America, the Irish found the same Anglo disdain for their religion, culture, and poverty. Irish Americans thought that if Ireland were a free, self-determining nation, the condition of the Irish would be elevated not only in Ireland but in America as well.¹⁵

While the motivations behind Irish nationalism were fairly universal in America, the nature of the movement varied from city to city and region to region. Chicago Irish nationalism was different from that in the East, especially in New York and New England, in that it never exhibited the bitter conflict between advocates of constitutional methods and of physical force. In the East, bishops and clergy generally followed the standard Church position that revolutionary movements were contrary to the Catholic teachings of a just war and that the secret oaths members were obliged to take also violated primary loyalties to God and country. The eastern Irish community was divided on this issue. Some nationalists became even greater advocates of physical force, while others followed the dictates of the clergy and supported constitutional means to achieve Ireland’s freedom.¹⁶

In Chicago, however, Archbishop Patrick A. Feehan sided with the “liberal” elements in the Church that thought it best not to antagonize Catholics who were essentially loyal church members but who were attracted to nationalist organizations. Feehan himself was one with his diocese in his nationalist feelings toward Britain and was reluctant to make an issue out of which nationalist organization one of his charges belonged to. The Chicago Irish community, then, never experienced the pressure to polarize their nationalist aspirations, although as time went on constitutional methods became dominant. From the days of the Fenian Brotherhood of the 1860s through those of the Clan-na-Gael, Chicago had a vital nationalist movement. The first organization of the Clan-na-Gael was established in Bridgeport in 1869. The Irish in this section of town also supported the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Hibernian Rifles, and the Irish Land League. They were also enthusiastic devotees of picnics sponsored by the United Irish Societies of Chicago. These picnics did not pass the notice of Mr. Dooley who commented, “if Ireland could be freed be a picnic, it’d not on’y be free, but an impire.” Nationalism was a vital part of the Chicago Irish community until the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923 when at least most of Ireland won its independence.¹⁷

Many issues and causes bonded the nineteenth-century Chicago Irish community. Historians have concluded, however, that “in spite of their intense interest in things Gaelic, the Irish failed to build lasting monuments that manifested their nationalism—their churches sufficed.”¹⁸

Why was religion the glue of the Irish community? The answer requires a look back into Ireland’s history. Catholicism has been a major component to Irish national identity and sense of social cohesion since the Reformation in England in the sixteenth century. In previous centuries the English colonized Ireland and gradually expropriated the land while adopting Irish culture. Anglo presence in Ireland was somewhat obscured by their cultural assimilation. When England converted to Protestantism, however, religion became an obvious mark of difference between colonizer and colony. The Irish refused to acquiesce to further cultural annihilation, and lines of resistance were drawn. In the seventeenth century Irish Catholics tried to take advantage of English political turmoil during the years of the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution. Their rebellions, however, were put down and the Irish paid a heavy price for them. Anti-Catholic legislation passed through Parliament from the reigns of William and Mary to George II. Bishops and members of religious orders were banished from the country. Secular priests from the continent were expected to register, pay a fee, and take an oath of loyalty. Catholics were excluded from political participation in Parliament and any aspect of the legal profession. They could not vote. They could not establish schools or send their children out of the country for education. Laws also sought to reduce Catholic property holding.¹⁹

This anti-Catholic legislation also applied to Britain and British North America, although its application was harshest in Ireland. British penal laws were not only out of step with eighteenth-century Enlightenment ideals of religious toleration, but were also more oppressive than any laws Protestants suffered in Catholic countries. These penal laws, however, failed to wipe out Catholicism and make the country Protestant. What they did do was terrorize, humiliate, and pacify the Irish people. The lines between Protestant and Catholic were more rigidly drawn between the Anglo-Irish Protestant minority who owned 90 percent of the land and controlled Ireland’s political and legal system and the impoverished Catholic majority. Irish Catholic peasants were the most impoverished in Europe. They were illiterate, and, though nominally Catholic, their lack of access to religious instruction left them ignorant of the basic tenets of their religion.²⁰

By the end of the eighteenth century rising feelings of Irish nationalism combined with Enlightenment ideals of the universal brotherhood of humanity led to brief overtures of toleration toward the Catholic community. Many penal laws that inhibited the practice of Catholicism were lifted. Maynooth Catholic Seminary was founded in 1795, and the young priests who emer...