‘Labor & Dignity – James Connolly in America’ Exhibition Launch
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The Trinity Long Room Hub is delighted to host ‘Labor & Dignity - James Connolly in America', an exhibition by New York University's Glucksman Ireland House, funded by the Government of Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The exhibition explores the time that James Connolly, one of Ireland’s national icons, spent in the United States between 1903 and 1910, where he witnessed the successes and failures of labor radicalism and unionisation, and of working class conditions resulting from unregulated corporate expansion.Despite major advances made by Irish labor activists in the 19th century, Connolly found that employers still had the advantage when he arrived in Ireland in 1902. Over the next eight years, he was among an influential second generation of Irish American leaders in the United States who rallied immigrants from all over Europe to press for the dignity of labour. Turning homeward, he insisted that the fight for Irish nationalism was inseparable from the battle for the rights of all workers, in factories as well as on farms. Connolly's experiences in the US influenced his actions during the Dublin Lockout of 1913, which was part of a larger transatlantic effort to secure the rights of the working class in the years before World War I. The 'Labor & Dignity' exhibition is Glucksman Ireland House's first contribution to Ireland's Decade of Commemorations, which was announced in 2012 by the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny. It is also part of a year-long series of special academic initiatives to mark the twentieth anniversary of Glucksman Ireland House, established as the Center for Irish and Irish American Studies at New York University in 1993. Professor Marion R. Casey, a faculty member at Glucksman Ireland House, and Daphne Dyer Wolf, a PhD candidate in History and Culture at Drew University, curated the exhibition, which was designed by Hilary J. Sweeney. Download the exhibit program. (2MB)
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