Posted: Monday, 08 March 2010 11:06AM
No Women Need Apply
Steve Corbett Reporting
Monday, March 08, 2010
Do men and women stand equal under the sky?
Not in Lackawanna County we don’t.
At the annual Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner, powerful political men still exclude women from access, the equal rights they deserve and a seat at the table.
As this year’s dinner approaches, again I take a public stand against the invidious and insidious discrimination that separates us from our sacred national vision of liberty and justice for all. Again I recruit supporters to stand with me against the segregationists who call discrimination a tradition of which they are proud.
Lackawanna County’s most powerful Irish-Americans drawn from the rosters of business and politics stand united in this cause of oppression. And I stand with a small band of suffragettes with whom I want to cast my vote for equality.
That fierce desire for freedom motivates my fight.
When business and political bosses discriminated against Irish men and Irish women in Northeastern Pennsylvania, civil rights warriors battled against the notion that “No Irish need apply” for work or any other right afforded to the lords of the manor and their privileged circle of family and friends.
Now, powerful men with Irish blood in their veins have become the oppressor – the very enemies of freedom that countless Irish and Irish-American martyrs died to face down.
This time, though, rather than us vs. them, it’s us against us
Today more than ever, I think about my grandmother on my father’s side and wonder what she might think of my fight.
Born in Scranton to a family that came to America from Ireland around the Civil War, she met my grandfather when he arrived from Ireland at the turn of the last century. They fell in love and married. And she promptly lost her American citizenship.
This citizenship purge of native-born females, all American citizens punished for marrying men from foreign lands, is not discussed in the pompous gatherings of lace-curtain men and women of Irish descent.
Yet this travesty must be highlighted across the land.
How many good, strong, proud women like my grandmother winced beneath the lash of punishment and humiliation? How many powerful men in political positions cracked the whip and endorsed the beating? How many stood by without so much as raising a whisper to oppose the degradation of their countrywomen that leaves scars to this day?
The powerful descendants of some those men now walk among us.
They, too, stand with their whip.
And they must be disarmed.
The only way to do that is by standing firm against their tyranny the way true Irish rebels and patriots have always stood against injustice.
My grandmother had still not regained her citizenship in 1920 when women battled successfully for the right to vote. She was denied equality even when other women finally fought their way into the “democracy.”
“Mame’s” right to vote came only after my grandfather became a citizen and she finally reclaimed what was rightfully hers.
Have you ever heard a speaker tell the tale of this wholesale abuse of women at the Friendly Sons dinner? Do Irish-American professors teach this scandal in their classes at the University of Scranton or Marywood? Do members of the Society of Irish Women ever address this shocking matter when they sit down for tea to giggle and plan their own dinner after being shunned and shut out by their men? Do these women even know about this tragic chapter of bigoted history against their own female ancestors?
I dare say that most of them do not know. But now that they do, what action will they take?
They should fight for entry to the male-only dinner.
Yes, it’s a painfully dull gathering. Yet the formal dinner offers a chance to do business and politics with a handshake and a slap on the back the way that men have done business in the coal fields for years.
The fight is about access and that fight must continue. If discrimination is traditional in America – and it is – I want nothing to do with the practice. Neither should you.
That includes the three well-known and well-respected federal judges who have affiliated themselves for years with the dinner.
I’ll tell you more about these lads later.
For now, all I can say is “No Women need Apply.”
That war cry should be enough to send you charging to the front lines of this fight.
Sadly, I doubt that it will.
But at least I’ll know I’ve tried.
My grandmother’s legacy deserves that much and more.
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Corbett
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