By A. Flaherty
A Noontime Presentation
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n November 17, 2016, in the Atrium
Lobby at Bucknell University’s Weis Center, an event took place as part of the
university’s “Coal Collections” series that may help change the way a chapter of U.S. history is interpreted.
Early visitors to the program titled
“Molly
Maguires in the Pennsylvania Coal Region” found an array of sofas arranged
before a mounted display. A large blow-up, a number of feet high, of a
black-and-white photo taken of alleged “Molly” leader John Kehoe shortly before
his execution gave a hint as to how the event might proceed.
Presenters
had evidently expected a small group. As the minutes ticked by, more and more
attendees appeared. Helpers rolled forward carts loaded with folding chairs to
seat the crowd that eventually numbered more than two hundred. Older community
members commingled with students who came to hear the presentation. The scent
of onions from the “hand pies” offered as a sample of coal region food lingered
in the glass-enclosed room. It seemed almost impossible that this gracious
setting would host a civil discussion of events that had so convulsed the
commonwealth a century and a half before.
English professor and Joyce scholar
John Rickard, a possible relative of alleged “Molly Maguire” Michael Lawler
(also spelled Lawlor), opened the program. Rickard distributed a handout with
samples of nineteenth-century nativist cartoons. These included Thomas Nast’s
“The Usual Way of Doing Things,” with its ape-faced Irishman astride a keg of
gunpowder, brandishing a whiskey bottle in one hand and a shillelagh in the
other.
The remarks of Rickard and
co-presenter Adrian Mulligan, chair of the Geography Department, took up the
better part of the program. Both offered cogent assessments of this
fantastically complex and controversial slice of U.S. and Irish American history.
In his opening remarks, Rickard recommended the work of Kevin Kenny, the most
recent academic scholar to address Pennsylvania’s “Molly Maguire” conflict.
Rickard’s description of Irish
immigration to the United States included a discussion of both nineteenth-century
nativist attitudes and the dangers suffered by Irish American laborers that led
to eventual unionization, a logical outcome of historical Irish resistance.
Rickard, whose ancestor Lawler had served as delegate to both 1871 Grand
Council union arbitration proceedings at Mauch Chunk and 1875 anti-monopoly
efforts at Harrisburg, spoke of the infiltration by Pinkerton detectives of the
Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) in the Pennsylvania coalfields, and the
resulting prosecution and execution of many AOH men as alleged “Mollies.”
Rickard also addressed the Pinkerton influence on the writing of this history.
Mulligan, a native of Ireland, detailed
the challenges shared by ethnic groups from different parts of the globe,
including Chinese laborers and Irish American immigrants. The geography
professor also spoke of the need for current scholars to learn from past
history, in particular from the echoes of nineteenth-century inequities on
current growing economic disparity.
From John Kehoe’s Cell
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first learned of the scheduled Bucknell
presentation from friends who live in Bloomsburg. I subsequently contacted John
Rickard and advised him of my research, in particular the essay collection
posted from September through November 2016 to this blog, From John
Kehoe’s Cell.
Both Rickard and Adrian Mulligan
paused midway through their presentations to acknowledge my contributions. Both
referred to my position as a “Molly” descendant and to the scholarship
contained in the work posted to the blog, which includes documentation showing that
prior to their arrests, a number of Hibernians charged as “Mollies” had been elected
as school directors.
In his concluding remarks, Mulligan
spoke of the need to share these findings with today’s students. Rickard had mentioned a number of times during his remarks that winners usually
write the history. He concluded: “Now the descendants are writing the history.”
The Kehoe Foundation
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careful study of Pennsylvania’s
“Molly Maguire” conflict yields innumerable echoes of today’s challenges, from
the dangers of unbridled nativist rhetoric to the perils associated with fake
news to the potentially tragic effects of corporate, political, judicial, and clerical abuse of
power.
In 2013, I formed the Kehoe
Foundation, with interested individuals, as a 501c3 research foundation. Its
goals include education into the intricacies of Pennsylvania’s “Molly Maguire”
conflict to help inform and illuminate current scenarios—educational,
political, and cultural.
This post was revised on September 1, 2017.
