Spring 2023 Travelearn
Ireland/Northern Ireland
How the US Civil Rights Movement Inspired the Irish Fight for Independence
Civil Rights Travelearn, March 3-11, 2023
For anyone who has visited the north of Ireland and spoken with those who participated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, the parallels to the US Civil Rights Movement are clear. In an interview with NPR, Brian Dooley, author of Black and Green: The Fight for Civil Rights on Northern Ireland and Black America, said:
As early as 1963, civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland had compared themselves to blacks in Alabama and Little Rock, and identified themselves as the 'Negroes' of Northern Ireland. They sang 'We Shall Overcome' at their marches and in early 1969 deliberately modeled a protest march on the lines of the Selma-Montgomery march. Oddly, perhaps, the Northern Ireland protesters identified more with black American protests than the myriad of protests in Europe that year — in Paris, Prague, Berlin, Rome and London. They saw their struggle as closer to that of African Americans in the U.S. (Tewksbury 2008)
As the second installment of the Kean Civil Rights Journey, the Human Rights Institute (HRI) will sponsor a travelearn to Ireland during Spring Break 2023 (March 3-11, 2023), offered as part of the HRI’s Justice-Based Learning and Research Community.
During this trip, students will meet with women and men who led the fight for civil rights in the north of Ireland, as well as former Loyalist and Republican prisoners who battled one another in the fight for Irish independence. Along the way, we will walk in Frederick Douglass's footsteps, recreating his visit to Ireland in 1846. Of that time, Douglass said, "Wherever else I feel myself to be a stranger, I will remember I have a home in Belfast."
