John Boyle O'Reilly is Keynote Speaker at Massachusetts Colored League Meeting in Faneuil Hall on December 7, 1886

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Leaders from Boston's Irish and Black communities came together to support each other at Faneuil Hall on December 7, 1886, where the Massachusetts Colored League held its first public meeting.  

Irish immigrant and activist John Boyle O'Reilly and Black attorney Edwin G. Walker were keynote speakers at the meeting, The Boston Globe reported.

The purpose of the meeting, according to League President John L. Ruffin, was "to hear the opinions of all lovers of political freedom and independence made public, and to take such action as should benefit the Negro race, irrespective of its condition, and to endorse the president of the United States. The Negro has too long remained to silence, and therefore the Massachusetts League, through its chairman and executive committee, has issued this call."

Prior to O'Reilly's speech, the League passed a resolution: 

Resolved, That the 8.000,000 of colored Americans of the United States, who know what it is to be oppressed, send a hearty greeting to the Irish people in Ireland who are struggling to be free from the oppressive policy of the English government, and say to Parnell, their wise and intrepid leader, "Go On In your noble career, that victory will surely attend your efforts."


John Boyle O'Reilly

When O'Reilly was called upon to speak, he told the assembly, "When coming here I didn't quite know the drift or purpose of this meeting, whether it was to be political, social or racial. But I was asked to speak at a Negro meeting, and I came here because, being an American by adoption and an Irishman by birth, such a meeting was a symbol to me of something high and beautiful and human, above politics and society and race.

"When questions of right or wrong are concerned, of suffering, injustice, degradation, or exclusion, there ought to be and there are no races or classes. The heart-beats of mankind, black and white, are one harmonized throb. I regard it as unreasonable and as wicked to discriminate against a man because of the color of his skin or because of the color of his hair.

"The Negro is a new man. A free man, a spiritual man, a hearty man; and he can be a great man if he will avoid modeling himself on the whites.  

"No race or nation is great or illustrious except by one test: the breeding of great men. Not great merchants or traders, not rich men, bankers, insurance mongers or directors of gas companies.  But great thinkers, great seers of the world through their own eyes, great tellers of the truths and beauties and colors and equities as they alone see them. Great poets...above all and great painters and musicians and fashioners of God's beautiful shapes in clay and marble and bronze. 

"The Negro will never take his stand beside or above the white man till he has given the world proof of the truth and beauty and heroism and power that are in his soul. And only by the organs of the soul are these delivered by the self-respect and self-reflection, by philosophy, religion, poetry, art, sacrifice and love. 

"One poet will be worth a hundred bankers and brokers, worth ten presidents of the United States to the  Negro race. One great musician will speak to the world for the black men as no thousand editors or politicians can," O'Reilly concluded.

Edwin G. Walker

Boston's Black leader E.G.Walker praised local Irish politicians who supported the Black community.  "Governor Butler, God bless him, made one of our number a magistrate. Mayor O'Brien, to whom we all owe so much, has given us a share of the profits of our labors, and we would be indeed recreant did we deny these men when they ask for our support." 

Read more about John Boyle O'Reilly, whose monument is part of the Boston Irish Heritage Trail. 

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