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Returning from the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson is confronted by Suffragette and Irish Protests in Boston



President Wilson on deck of Coast Guard cutter Ossipee, approaching Commonwealth Pier in South Boston, February 24, 1919. 

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson arrived in Boston, Massachusetts aboard the USS George Washington on February 24, 1919, with a series of parades and protests awaiting him.  The president was returning from the Paris Peace Conference in France, where he and other world leaders, generals, diplomats and government officials were trying to broker a post-World War I agreement that would stand the test of time.  

At the heart of the conference, especially from the perspective of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora in the United States, was whether the talks would result in freedom and independence for small nations in Europe, including Ireland. 

The day Wilson arrived in Boston, a two-day Irish Race Convention was just ending in Philadelphia.  More than 5,000 people attended the convention, discussing how best persuade Wilson to support Ireland's declared pleas and demands for self-determination, in the wake of the Irish Rising of 1916 and the long quest from freedom. 

Britain ultimately vetoed Ireland's right to even get a hearing at the Paris Peace Conference, despite pressure from Irish-American leaders like Senator David I. Walsh of Massachusetts. 

Sinn Fein issued a strong statement, issued in the Kentucky Irish American newspaper, dated February 22, 1919, which said in part: 

"Internationally Ireland is the gateway to the Atlantic. Ireland is the last outpost of Europe toward the West; Ireland is the point upon which great traded routes between East and West converge; her Independence is demanded by the freedom of the seas; her great harbors must be open to all nations, instead of being the monopoly of England. Today these harbors are empty and idle because English policy is determined to retain Ireland as a barren, bulwark for English aggrandizement, and the unique geographical position of this Island, far from being a benefit and safeguard to Europe and America, a subjected to the purposes of England's policy of world dominion.

"Ireland, resolutely and irrevocably determined at the dawn of the promised era of self-determination and liberty, that she will suffer foreign dominion no longer. Ireland calls upon every free nation to uphold her national claim to complete Independence as an Irish republic against the arrogant pretensions of England founded in fraud and sustained only by an overwhelming military occupation. Ireland demands to be confronted publicly with England at the Congress of Nations, that the civilized world having judged between English wrong and Irish right may guarantee to Ireland its permanent support for the maintenance of her national Independence."



In addition to the parade, promenades and official welcomes from Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge and Boston Mayor Andrew Peters, Wilson also encountered women protestors from the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, the Women's Suffrage Club, and the Women's Trade Union.

A number of women were arrested on February 23 for picketing Wilson's appearance at the State House. They had congregated at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common and were giving speeches when the Boston Police moved in and arrested 23 of the women, including Martha Foley of Dorchester, Eleanor Calnan of Metheun and Betty Connolly of Newton Highlands, according to the Boston Globe.

Wilson meet briefly with the suffragette representatives at his hotel.   As he was boarding his train to Washington, DC at South Station at the end of the visit, the president met with women union leaders, and  "gave a short audience on the platform to Miss Mabel Gillespie, secretary of the Boston Women's Trade Union League, Miss Mary E. Meehan, representing the Allied Printing Trade, and Miss Mary B. Quinn, president of the Springfield Telephone Operators Union," according to a local report.

Research + Text, Michael Quinlin





 

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