Mary Burke: The luck of the Irish has often evaded the Kennedy family
The Kennedy family on the beach in Hyannisport in 1931.
From article in The Conversation by Mary Burke
John F. Kennedy, whose ancestors left Ireland during the potato famine of the mid-19th century, was famously the first United States president of Catholic Irish descent.
When Americans narrowly elected Kennedy in 1960, anti-Catholic bias was still part of the mainstream culture.
I am a scholar of Irish literature and the author of “Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History,” a new book that describes how the Irish were long excluded in America.
So when Kennedy accepted shamrocks from the Irish ambassador to the U.S. on his first St. Patrick’s Day in the White House in 1961, it signaled the social and political arrival of the Irish American elite. It also was a pivotal moment, marking Irish Americans’ fulfilled dream of full assimilation into the U.S.
The dream soured when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963. That tragedy – and the many others that followed for the Kennedy family – began to be told by others in the Gothic story tradition, which hinges on nightmarish scenarios and the abuse of power.