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The work also tackles the complex relationship between Ireland and the anti-slavery movement. Douglass’s hosts in Ireland were mostly Quakers, many of whom were shielded from – and sometimes complicit in – the famine that was gripping the countryside. Similarly, many Irish in America were willing participants in slavery. Douglass’s meeting with Daniel O’Connell spurred the Irish leader to encourage the Irish community in America to support African-Americans in their fight against oppression. But his overtures went largely unheeded by the Irish political and Catholic community in the US, eager to ensure that their own people secured opportunities in their adopted country. The irony is captured in Kinahan’s work. In an interaction between Douglass and an Irish woman about to leave Cork for America, he informs her that the Irish had not always treated his people well. She replies: “Well then they’ve forgotten who they are.”
But ultimately, the work is concerned with exploring this important moment in Douglass’s life and its role in his development as a thinker and activist. As Daugherty says, Douglass’s experience in Ireland widened his understanding of what civil rights could encompass. “Douglass was much more than an anti-slavery voice. He was also a suffragette, for example, an advocate for other oppressed groups.”
Douglass himself captured the impact of his Irish journey in a letter he wrote from Belfast as he was about to leave: “I can truly say I have spent some of the happiest moments of my life since landing in this country. I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life.”
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