In 1875 The Irish World published an editorial condemning the organization of the White League in Louisiana. The White League pledged to do openly what the Ku Klux Klan had done clandestinely-block African Americans from having any power in the state.
The Irish World was an Irish American newspaper founded in 1870 by Union war veteran Patrick Ford of Galway. During the war he served with the Irish 9th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. After Appomattox, he worked in South Carolina to support that state’s newly freed slaves. He later moved to New York where he set up The Irish World as a progressive rival to the Boston Pilot, a racially reactionary Irish paper. The Irish World soon became the leading Irish immigrant newspaper in the United States.
I am posting the editorial as it appeared in The Louisianian. This Reconstruction Era newspaper was founded in New Orleans in 1870 by P. B. S. Pinchback (1837-1921), a black legislator who in 1872 briefly served as governor of Louisiana. The paper was read by Black and White alike. The Louisianan endorsed the slogan of The Irish World: “All men, of all races, creeds and colors should be politically equal, whether their own previous condition was one of servitude or not.”
