Frederick Douglass Visits Cork, Ireland During Great Potato Famine

November 19, 2019

During the height of the great Potato Famine, Frederick Douglass visits Cork, Ireland, the city from where millions of Irish immigrated. He stays with the Jennings family whose daughter Isabel worked with the Cork Anti Slavery Society. It is here that Douglass feels like he is treated as a human being for the first time, at liberty to now travel on a train without segregated cars.

 

Father Theobald Mathew, a Capuchin priest, and leader of the Irish Temperance Movement also influenced Douglass during his Cork visit in 1845 as described by Ann Coughlin in this last of her four podcasts about the “Black O’Connell”.

A statue of Father Mathew on St. Patrick’s street in Cork, Ireland by J. H. Foley

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