Niagara Gazette
NIAGARA FALLS — I am ever fascinated by the study of history, cultural heritage and literature. Once known, it is much easier to understand the present and to some degree, what to expect in the future.
Otherwise seemingly irrelevant details when accurately combined can sometimes reveal patterns of human behavior which can help us more clearly comprehend just how much alike we are and how massively insignificant are our differences.
Such is the case today as we celebrate St. Patrick and our beloved city’s birthday.
I am reminded often as I traverse the neighborhoods where I roamed the streets as a young boy, of my amazing multicultural childhood.
As a student at Our Lady of the Rosary Roman Catholic Church’s elementary school I was immersed in the cultures of European immigrants who had arrived here to work in the factories and in the construction of the huge power project as well as the sons and daughters of those who came before them to dig the tunnels and the few who had escaped the horrors of war abroad including my own family who sought a better life than the post Civil War Jim Crow segregated South could offer.
A microcosm of much of the rest of the city and to some extent, a large part of America, the school was deeply engaged, perhaps subconsciously in the “Americanization” of the Europeans, a deliberate process intended to strip away the extremes, including the languages and customs of the immigrants, but some habits die hard, and others never die at all as we inherently cling to the familiar.
My neighborhood was replete with tongues; dialects, recipes and customs of all sorts were common. In fact, in many homes English was a second language; the aromas of Italian sauces, Polish sausages, Irish stews and Southern fried anything wafted day and night through the air so much so that I could find my way home or to just about all of my playmates’ homes with my eyes closed.
At school, no matter what the season, or the reason; we celebrated everything all the way. We joined all the parades, danced all the dances, and jigged all the jigs.
Our mothers dressed us in costumes, our teachers decorated our classrooms and we drew brightly crayon-colored pictures of oversized cardboard shamrocks to take home to our moms to be hung proudly on the refrigerator doors.
For Columbus Day, we were the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, and for Thanksgiving, we were the Pilgrims. We were Columbus in October, Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the Three Kings every Christmas; we were cowboys and Indians on weekends, and on St. Patrick’s Day we were leprechauns.
In my neighborhood for a while anyway, everybody lived pretty closely together mostly because they had to, either because they could not afford to live elsewhere or were not allowed to, but for a few years as I recall, we all seemed to get along quite well.
Eventually, as people accumulated wealth and, or became more “Americanized” they began to leave, some clinging together and settling in their own neighborhoods carrying their cultures with them.
But unlike other parts of the country which were beleaguered with extreme cultural isolationism, Niagara Falls did not have a pronounced “Irish Town” or “Shanty Town” that I am aware of.
I doubt that we ever saw many “NO IRISH NEED APPLY” signs as were fairly common for a while in New York City where historians say the Irish were “forced to live in cellars and shanties, partly because of poverty but also because they were considered bad for the neighborhood ... they were unfamiliar with plumbing and running water. These living conditions bred sickness and early death. It was estimated that 80 percent of all infants born to Irish immigrants in New York City died. Their brogue and dress provoked ridicule; their poverty and illiteracy provoked scorn.
According to one historian, the Chicago Post wrote, "The Irish fill our prisons, our poor houses...Scratch a convict or a pauper, and the chances are that you tickle the skin of an Irish Catholic. Putting them on a boat and sending them home would end crime in this country."
The Irish were here in July 1848 when what came to be known as Niagara Falls was originally called Schlosser and later Manchester and they were here at the crest of the Potato Famine in 1850 at the same time the Fugitive Slave Act was signed into law by Buffalo’s Millard Fillmore.
And they were here in March 1892 when Governor Roswell P. Flower was persuaded by T.V. Welch to delay by one day the official signing of the bill that would incorporate the new City of Niagara Falls, New York until March 17, St. Patrick’s Day.
As fierce warriors, they fought and died as the famous Irish Brigade which originally consisted of the 63rd New York Infantry, the 69th New York Infantry, and the 88th New York Infantry in the Civil War suffering their most severe casualties at the Battle of Fredericksburg where their force was decimated.
Like almost everyone else, the Irish have had to confront bigotry and prejudice and have taken their once lowly station in life from the cruelty of discrimination, to the oval office and widespread acceptance and approval, integrating so completely that all of us can proudly boast to be Irish for the day.
As poet Countee Cullen (1903-1946), born Countee LeRoy Porter, raised in New York City’s Harlem and educated at Harvard put it in one of his most acclaimed works, Heritage ... “The tree, budding yearly must forget how its past arose or set” alluding perhaps to the fact that just as the trees have adapted to seasonal change, so too must human society also realize that we are all part of one big cyclical pattern; that in the interests of our own survival we’d best learn how to get along by respecting our differences and appreciating what we have in common.
Contact Bill Bradberry at bill.bradberry@yahoo.com.
