{"id":44870,"date":"2015-12-29T03:58:26","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T03:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44870"},"modified":"2015-12-29T04:14:17","modified_gmt":"2015-12-29T04:14:17","slug":"how-green-was-my-surname-via-ireland-a-chapter-in-the-story-of-black-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44870","title":{"rendered":"How Green Was My Surname; Via Ireland, a Chapter in the Story of Black America"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Green Was My Surname; Via Ireland, a Chapter in the Story of Black America<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2003-03-17<\/p>\n

S. Lee Jamison<\/strong><\/p>\n

Happy St. Patrick’s Day<\/a>, Shaquille O’Neal<\/a>!<\/p>\n

So many African-Americans have Irish-sounding last names\u2014Eddie Murphy<\/a>, Isaac Hayes<\/a>, Mariah Carey<\/a>, Dizzy Gillespie<\/a>, Toni Morrison<\/a>, H. Carl McCall<\/a>\u2014that you would think that the long story of blacks and Irish coming together would be well documented. You would be wrong.<\/p>\n

Randall Kennedy<\/a>, a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of ”Interracial Intimacies; Sex, Marriage, Identity and Adoption<\/a>,” said that when it comes to written historical exploration of black-Irish sexual encounters, ”there are little mentions, but not much.”<\/p>\n

And most African-Americans do not know a lot about their family names.<\/p>\n

“Quite frankly, I always thought my name was Scotch, not Irish.” said Mr. McCall, the former New York State comptroller<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the Irish names almost certainly do not come from Southern slaveholders with names like Scarlett O’Hara<\/a>. Most Irish were too poor to own land. And some blacks, even before the Civil War<\/a>, were not slaves.<\/p>\n

…Elizabeth Shown Mills, who recently retired as the editor of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly<\/em><\/a>, said that unlike native-born whites, “Irish were more willing to accept and acknowledge interracial allegiances.”<\/p>\n

Before the Civil War, she said, “the free mulatto<\/a> population had the same number of black moms as white moms.”<\/p>\n

Ms. Mills said that mixed-race children would have been given Irish surnames when their Irish fathers married their black mothers, or when their unmarried Irish mothers named children after themselves.<\/p>\n

The Irish ended up in the Caribbean<\/a>, too. Britain<\/a> sent hundreds of Irish people to penal colonies in the West Indies<\/a> in the mid-1600’s, and more went over as indentured servants.<\/p>\n

Mr. [Charles L.] Blockson<\/a> noted that “Lord Oliver Cromwell’s<\/a> boatloads of men and women” sent to Barbados<\/a> and Jamaica <\/a>intermingled with the African slaves already there.<\/p>\n

Montserrat<\/a> ended up with the largest Irish community in the West Indies…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Green Was My Surname; Via Ireland, a Chapter in the Story of Black America The New York Times 2003-03-17 S. Lee Jamison Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Shaquille O’Neal! So many African-Americans have Irish-sounding last names\u2014Eddie Murphy, Isaac Hayes, Mariah Carey, Dizzy Gillespie, Toni Morrison, H. Carl McCall\u2014that you would think that the long story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,28,459,8,6940,20],"tags":[22478,22479,882,246,22477,2640,724,22476,2327],"class_list":["post-44870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latincarib","category-europe","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","tag-charles-blockson","tag-charles-l-blockson","tag-elizabeth-shown-mills","tag-ireland","tag-montserrat","tag-new-york-times","tag-randall-kennedy","tag-s-lee-jamison","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44871,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44870\/revisions\/44871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}