Writing the Hyphen: The Recorder and the Formation of American-Irish Political Identity

Ella Rose Fingado

BA Candidate in History (Honors) and Politics, New York University

“America and Ireland, two Nations which are united in so many ways, will stand together, if they are so true to their heritages and their traditions, in denouncing wrongs whenever, wherever, however and by whomsoever perpetrated, and in protecting and enforcing rights.”^[1]

Introduction: Where New England Meets Ireland

The American Irish Historical Society (AIHS), founded in Boston in 1897 and later relocated to New York, developed along a geographic and intellectual corridor that shaped how it articulated Irish-American political identity. Scholars of regionalism increasingly emphasize that immigrant communities actively participated in defining regional identities in the United States. Literary and cultural historian Bluford Adams argues that regional affiliation was not, as is often assumed, simply imposed by the native-born but was “an object of contestation and sometimes even collaboration” in which immigrants often engaged energetically.^[2] As such, reading the early publications of AIHS showcases their historians as having a persistent regional orientation, thus having a stake in their regional identity, even if, as Adams notes, this interpretation runs “against the grain” of its official rhetoric.^[3]

Furthermore, ethnic historical societies themselves played a significant role in negotiating regional identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More so, Adams explains, such organizations shared a common goal of “demonstrating the essential Americanness of their respective peoples.”^[4] For AIHS historians, this meant linking New England’s revolutionary past to Ireland’s struggle against British rule, since studying the former “constantly reminded [them] of their ancestors' long history of suffering and resistance in the old country,” a narrative that allowed the Society to claim both regions as constitutive of Irish-American identity.^[5] 

Yet regional affiliation alone does not explain why The Recorder offers such rich insight into Irish American political identity, given that Irish-Americans occupied a notably distinct place in American political life. David Carroll Cochran, a political scientist who writes on ethnic diversity and democratic life, argues that political participation became one of the few viable pathways through which Irish immigrants could achieve social mobility, especially when discrimination limited access to economic advancement.^[6] As a result, political engagement became central to how Irish-Americans imagined themselves as citizens.

Importantly, analyzing Irish-American political identity does not require treating assimilation and ethnic distinctiveness as opposing forces. Cochran notes that groups can become deeply integrated in American institutions without abandoning significant aspects of their cultural identity; ethnic self-understanding often persists across generations.^[7] This dynamic is evident in The Recorder, which neither rejects assimilation nor simply embraces it, but instead shows how Irish-Americans constructed a political identity that was simultaneously rooted in ethnic history, aligned with regional narratives, and assertively American in its democratic commitments. In this sense, The Recorder spotlights how members of the Society understood the “inventing and defending [of] a regional identity” as integral to belonging within a hyphenated community in America.^[8]

Section 1: Pre-WWII Political Consciousness (1926–1941)

The earliest pieces examined, spanning the late 1920s through the eve of the Second World War, show a community still negotiating its civic standing yet already articulating a political identity grounded in a transatlantic understanding of freedom. In September 1926, the American Irish Historical Society adopted a formal resolution condemning the National Origins Act, criticizing the inequitable quotas it produced and the pseudo-scientific racial logic on which the law relied. The Recorder denounced the legislation as “grotesque,” “misleading,” and corrosive to “the unity of our American citizenship,” directing particular criticism at John B. Trevor, whose calculations underpinned the quota system.^[9] While The Recorder did not elaborate on Trevor’s ideological commitments, contemporary scholarship makes the Society’s alarm intelligible: as sociologists Dorothy Nelkin and Mark Michaels explain, early twentieth-century restrictionists increasingly invoked the language of genetics to portray their efforts as “rational and scientific,” a rhetorical strategy supported by institutions such as the Pioneer Fund, whose early backers included Trevor, remembered by historians as a Nazi sympathizer.^[10] Kristofer Allerfeldt similarly identifies the act as a pivotal moment in the institutionalization of American racial nativism.^[11]

Above Image: Excerpt from “Immigration Law.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 3, no. 6 (September 1926): 9. Source: The American Irish Historical Society Archives New York, NY.

This insistence on civic fairness resurfaced in 1931, when The Recorder drew on newly released Wickersham Commission statistics to counter the lingering myth of Irish criminality. The bulletin emphasized that Irish-born New Yorkers ranked among the lowest offenders across major immigrant groups, using federal data to dismantle narratives long fueled by British reporting during periods of nationalist agitation: “the legend that Irishmen were specially addicted to crime has long been assiduously circulated, and frequent dispatches from England during the various political agitations gave color to these assertions. It is plain that the Irish, while the English governed their country, never could or would have been ‘good citizens’ according to the English standards.”^[12] 

Protesting this picture, the Society aligned Irish identity with American respectability, presenting Irish immigrants as indeed, “model citizens.” This rhetorical strategy resonated with the broader political climate of the 1930s, as Irish-Americans played an increasingly visible role in national politics. Lawrence J. McCaffrey, a historian of Irish-America, notes that Franklin D. Roosevelt rewarded Irish Catholic loyalty with significant appointments, drawing on their political networks and support for New Deal reforms; in 1936, he enjoyed near-unanimous backing from the Irish Catholic hierarchy.^[13] 

As international tensions escalated toward war, The Recorder continued to position Irish perspectives within an American ideological frame. In February 1941, the bulletin reprinted remarks from the Irish Minister at the 1940 World’s Fair, who emphasized Ireland’s peaceful aspirations alongside its readiness to defend “every yard” of its territory if invaded.^[14] This articulation of sovereignty resonated strongly with American ideals of self-determination, allowing The Recorder to define Irish neutrality as principled adherence to the same ideals that Americans claimed as foundational.

Taken together, these prewar commentaries demonstrate that the AIHS was laying the groundwork for postwar rhetoric that increasingly framed Irish-Americans as ideal democratic citizens and whose historical experiences uniquely equipped them to articulate and safeguard American political ideals.

Section 2: Postwar Marriage of Irishness and Americanism (1946–1953)

The postwar years mark a decisive rhetorical shift in The Recorder. Where the prewar issues often defended Irish-Americans against nativism or linked Irish history to American ideals in parallel, the late 1940s and early 1950s present an increasingly confident marriage of Irishness and Americanness. In these decades, the hyphen ceased to signify tension and instead became a symbol of harmony, a claim that the values associated with Irish heritage aligned seamlessly with those of American democracy.

This transformation is vividly expressed in Cardinal Spellman’s April 1946 address, reprinted in The Recorder. Spellman declared that “what is Irish in us is completely absorbed in our Americanism,” insisting that this blending required “no reconciliation of differences.”^[15] The speech presented Irish identity as almost pre-configured for American democracy; love of liberty, devotion to democratic governance, and personal initiative were considered inherently Irish and therefore intrinsically American. Spellman even reclaimed the once-derogatory hyphen as evidence of a “complete absorption and union” between ethnic heritage and civic identity.^[16] 

Above Image: Excerpt from “Cardinal Spellman’s Historic Address.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 10, no. 9 (April 1946): 6. Source: The American Irish Historical Society Archives, New York, NY.

Two years later, Judge Brogan’s 1948 address placed Irish identity squarely within the moral architecture of the early Cold War. Brogan warned that communism posed a political threat and a spiritual one, describing the confrontation as a struggle between “the crucified redeemer of mankind” and an atheistic ideology.^[17] Invoking centuries of Irish religious endurance under British rule, Brogan cast Irish history as an educational prelude to American Cold War vigilance; where freedom of speech of religion were foundational rights to American self-understanding, they were also distinctively Irish legacies. In this framing, Irish-Americans reinforced American democratic culture’s moral backbone.

Above Image: Excerpt from “Fifty-First Annual Banquet Medal Presented to Joseph Scott: Judge Brogan’s Eloquent Address.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 11, no. 1 (December 1948): 6. Source: The American Irish Historical Society Archives, New York, NY.

This ideological convergence extended beyond questions of moral character into matters of global governance. Robert Patterson’s February 1950 address, also printed in The Recorder, marked an unambiguous embrace of the North Atlantic Treaty. Patterson rejected anxieties about American imperialism, interpreting the United States’ leadership in postwar Europe as the ethical duty of a nation whose civic ideals were shared by the free peoples of the West.^[18] NATO, in this telling, was the natural extension of a shared democratic heritage. Irish-Americans thus appeared as fully assimilated citizens, informed political advocates, embracing Atlanticism as a political expression compatible with Irish historical experience and contemporary America.

Irish political influence also helps explain why The Recorder became a forum for articulating postwar democratic ideals. Timothy Meagher, historian and archivist, reinforces that Irish-Americans occupied a distinctive niche in American politics unlike Irish immigrant communities elsewhere, since “the poorest Irish immigrant man had a piece of political capital—a vote—that might be invested in earning material benefits for himself and his family.”^[19] By the mid-twentieth century, this early political foothold had expanded into substantial influence via the visibility of Catholic institutions and how, as McCaffrey notes, World War II “lifted the Irish American image.”^[20]

Across these postwar years, The Recorder charts the ideological consolidation of an Irish-American identity fully intertwined with American political values. In this period, therefore, the hyphen linked Irish and American identities in a mutually reinforcing way; being Irish affirmed one’s Americaness, and claiming American democratic ideals affirmed the meaning of Irishness.

Section 3: Cold War Vigilance and Cultural Belonging (1953–1956)

​​By the mid-1950s, The Recorder showcases a community confidently articulating mainstream national concerns with an ease that signals their full incorporation into American political culture. Senator Patrick McCarran’s address, printed in the 1953 Recorder, exemplifies this posture. Warning that threats to liberty existed not only abroad but also “under the guise of democracy” within the United States, McCarran evoked the era’s fears of infiltration and ideological deception.^[21] His rhetoric echoed the broader conservative anxieties of the period, with Irish-Americans of AIHS endorsing and amplifying the dominant political vocabulary of Cold War vigilance through the mode of The Recorder.

The following years reveal a similar alignment with mainstream American ideological currents. James McNally’s 1955 address, printed in The Recorder, crystallizes mid-century ambivalence about atomic power. He insisted that the United States must maintain its “world atomic superiority,” invoking the logic of deterrence central to early Cold War strategy.^[22] The following year, James A. Farley embraced an almost celebratory vision of nuclear technology, describing the atomic age as “another of man’s bright dawns.”^[23] 

The confidence underlying these commentaries reflects profound socioeconomic changes in Irish-American life. As David Carroll Cochran notes, Irish-Americans “moved into middle and upper-middle class American life” in the years following World War II.^[24] Furthermore, Lawrence McCaffrey notes that while assimilation “eliminated much of the colorful uniqueness of Irish America,” it also broadened its tolerance for other groups.^[25] This shift potentially colors why The Recorder’s postwar discourse reads less as the voice of a semi-marginal ethnic group and more as that of a confident and established participant in American political life.

Changing relationships to Ireland further shaped this transformation. McCaffrey observes that after the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, Irish-American attention to Ireland “receded,” and by mid-century many Irish-Americans increasingly focused on their “United States future rather than their Old World past.”^[26] As emigration patterns redirected Irish migrants toward Britain rather than America, and as successive generations of Irish-Americans grew further removed from the immigrant experience, the emotional and political ties that once animated Irish-American nationalism softened. By the 1950s, Irish identity, McCaffrey argues, became “more recreational than integral, expressed through cultural practices, genealogical exploration, and nostalgic imaginings.^[27] 

Nonetheless, this potential cultural softening did not emerge from the decline of Irish-American nationalism. Timothy Meagher notes an important paradox: despite assumptions that nationalism would impede assimilation, “Irish American nationalism facilitated rather than hindered Irish assimilation into American life.”^[28] This ideological compatibility made it possible for Irish-Americans to interpret their Irish heritage as a resource for American democratic citizenship rather than as a competing loyalty.

This sense of belonging extended beyond domestic politics to the international sphere. When Ireland was admitted to the United Nations, The Recorder framed the moment as a recognition of national sovereignty and the defense of freedom. The bulletin declared that “there must have been rejoicing among the peoples of the world who are free or who long for freedom.”^[29] In celebrating Ireland’s entry into the UN, the Society suggested that Irish-Americans’ historical attachments effectively reinforced their place within a greater democratic world.

Section 4: In the Archives

Researching The Recorder from within the American Irish Historical Society’s archives has highlighted the distinct methodological experience of working with institutional and membership-based collections, where the Society’s holdings reflect the intellectual and political aspirations of the community that created them.  

As a bulletin and platform, it functioned as a site of internal communication and as a somewhat public-facing expression of the Society’s political worldview. Ergo, the surviving issues (some digitized, others accessible only in pamphlet form) allow researchers to trace the evolution of their ideological commitments and self-representation across the twentieth century.

Working with these materials also clarifies the affordances and constraints of the bulletin genre. Unlike newspapers, The Recorder privileges economy: its pieces are brief and its arguments are tightly framed. This brevity demands contextual reading, since each statement requires situating within broader national and transnational events. Even so, it is precisely this compression that makes The Recorder so fascinating, preserving flashes of political imagination that might otherwise vanish from the archival record.

For scholars of diaspora, the bulletin offers an especially rich window into processes of identity formation, exhibiting how a community wished to see itself, how it wished to be seen, and how it actively wrote the hyphen between Irish and American.

“We of Irish blood, whose forebears suffered–even in this free land–from the open hostility as well as from the cold indifference of a misguided majority, surely, we, of all people, should be the first to demand that freedom complete, rights of the fullest, dignity of the highest, be accorded to the humblest person in our land, irrespective of race, creed or color.”^[30]

Author Bio:

Ella Rose is an archives intern at the American Irish Historical Society and an Honors History and Politics student at NYU. Her research focuses on Irish political identity, diaspora communities, and state formation, with particular interest in how Irish and Jewish diasporas articulate Americanness.

The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society:

Listed in Order of Appearance

The American Irish Historical Society. “Immigration Law.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 3, no. 6 (September 1926): 9–10.

The American Irish Historical Society. “Crime in the United States.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 5, no. 1 (October 1931): 3–4.

The American Irish Historical Society. “Ireland at the Fair.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 10, no. 5 (February 1941): 5–6.

The American Irish Historical Society. “Cardinal Spellman’s Historic Address.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 10, no. 9 (April 1946): 4–7.

The American Irish Historical Society. “Fifty-First Annual Banquet Medal Presented to Joseph Scott: Judge Brogan’s Eloquent Address.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 11, no. 1 (December 1948): 2–7.

The American Irish Historical Society. “Address of Honorable Robert P. Patterson.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 12, no. 1 (February 1950): 5–8.

The American Irish Historical Society. “Fifty-Fifth Annual Banquet Medal Presented to Hon. Patrick A. McCarran.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 15 (April 1953): 3–6.

The American Irish Historical Society. “Presentation Address of Hon. James B. McNally.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 18 (December 1955): 4–5.

The American Irish Historical Society. “Mr. Farely’s Address Accepting the Award.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 19, no. 9 (December 1956): 4–7.

The American Irish Historical Society. “Two United Nations: Address of Hon. John F. Brosnan.” The Recorder, Bulletin of the American Irish Historical Society 19, no. 9 (December 1956): 8–12.

Secondary Sources

Adams, Bluford. “New Ireland: The Place of Immigrants in American Regionalism.” Journal of American Ethnic History 24, no. 2 (2005): 3–33.

Allerfeldt, Kristofer. “‘And We Got Here First’: Albert Johnson, National Origins and Self-Interest in the Immigration Debate of the 1920s.” Journal of Contemporary History 45, no. 1 (2010): 7–26.

Cochran, David Carroll. “Ethnic Diversity and Democratic Stability: The Case of Irish Americans.” Political Science Quarterly 110, no. 4 (1995): 587–604.

McCaffrey, Lawrence. “Ireland and Irish America: Connections and Disconnections.” U.S. Catholic Historian 22, no. 3 (2004): 1–18.

Meagher, Timothy. “Irish Americans in Politics.” In The Columbia Guide to Irish American History. Columbia University Press, 2005.

Nelkin, Dorothy and Mark Michaels. "Biological Categories and Border Controls: The Revival of Eugenics in Anti-Immigration Rhetoric." The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 18, no. 5 (1998): 35-63.