The Sullivan story

My Irish story began one night in 1867 at the Royal Victoria Dockyard on the River Lee in Passage West, just south of Cork City, when RUC carried out a raid to capture a group of Fenian organizers. Seven were captured, and three escaped, including my great-grandfather John Sullivan.

The family history states that John was on the run for a few days until he could board a ship bound for New York. A year later, he returned to Passage West, to his young wife, Ellen, and raised four boys. Originally from rural Canovee, the Sullivan family moved to Ballincollig, and John eventually found work in Passage West at the dockyards.

With the death of his wife Ellen in the 1880’s, John Sullivan immigrated with his four sons to Jersey City, New Jersey. He did not leave his politics behind, joining Clan-Na-Gael, the secret IRB organization in the United States. Upon his death in 1925, the local Jersey City paper obit read “Fenian Fighter is dead at 84.” My father Jimmy Sullivan knew him well.

Almost 50 years later, in 1973, I was backpacking around the world and visited Passage West and Black Rock to reconnect the Irish and American side of the family. My Irish cousins were not impressed. The first “Yank” back was a 25-year-old long-haired, bearded political liberal.

My mother Anne Bridget McNally came from a small town in Tyrone, Northern Ireland called Six-Mile-Cross. The town, a small rural enclave near Omagh, had one notable distinction – it was among several towns that came out in support of the Easter Rebellion in 1916. Doctor Patrick McCartan from Carrickmore was the family doctor and also one of the senior leaders of the IRB in Tyrone. My mother, one of nine children, had no choice but to immigrate to the United States when she was all of 17, sailing to New York City on the U.S. S California. She came with a packet of letters, so on the night of her arrival other emigrants from Tyrone met her to collect their letters and catch up the news from back home. My mother was known to have a great singing voice as well so she was put on a table and sang Irish laments all through the night.

My father Jimmy Sullivan joined the U.S. Army during WWII so I grew up as an “Army Brat” moving from post to post every three years; that said I grew up in a very Irish household. I was required to say my prayers before going to school and the rosary in the evening. My mother was also an ardent Irish nationalist. In many ways she never left Ireland, and on many nights I could hear her singing Irish laments in the kitchen.

I went to Georgetown University and got involved in American politics as a result of the Vietnam War. I was far more concerned with ending that war then the Troubles back in Northern Ireland. However, when Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher came to Georgetown University in 1981 several hundred students and alumni protested. I was one of them…

I became much more involved in the Troubles when I joined the Clinton Administration in the 1990’s. My friend Carol Wheeler in 1995 had just started the “Washington Ireland Project” to foster reconciliation for future Irish leaders, so I had an Irish intern in my office. More importantly, I worked directly for the U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley, whose family originally came from Cavan.

The Secretary went to Ireland with President and Mrs. Clinton's historic first visit in 1995. When Secretary Riley returned to Ireland in 1997 at the invitation of American Ambassador Jean
Kennedy Smith, I went with him and met the newly appointed Minister for Education Micheal Martin thus beginning a long term friendship.

In 1998 Secretary Riley would return to Dublin for a joint US/Irish education conference and with the appointment of Martin McGuinness as the Minister of Education in Northern Ireland in 1999, we included Northern Ireland in these annual summits. To his credit, Secretary Riley understood the value of “educational diplomacy” and invited Martin McGuinness to the United States to help validate him in his new position as Minister of Education.

Before I left the Clinton Administration I was able to secure a large grant from the Irish Department of Education for the Washington Ireland Program (WIP) and helped to create a joint US/ Irish project entitled Civic Link: a cross community/ cross border reconciliation initiative, which was announced by President Clinton in Armagh in 1998. Over the years Civic Link would reach over 12,500 secondary school students:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/us-education-secretary-presents-civic-link-programme-in-ni-1.188875

As the years passed, I stayed involved with various Irish projects. I became the Chair of the Board of the Washington Ireland Program for nine years https://wiprogram.org/ and would meet scores of future Irish leaders including future Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Deputy First Minister Emma Pengelly, SDLP leader Matt O’Toole, Alliance MLA Nuala McAllister and former Minister for Justice in Northern Ireland Claire Sugden.

In 2015 a small group of Irish Americans became concerned that new Stormont Executive led by Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness was stalling out. So under the leadership of Congressmen Jim Walsh and Bruce Morrison, we became an unofficial kitchen cabinet to various State Department officials and a point of contact in DC for various Irish political leaders. In 2019, this group would morph into and grow into the Ad Hoc Committee to Protect the Good Friday Agreement (https://adhocgfa.org/). Over the next seven years, I would serve as the Executive Director as we built a green wall to prevent Brexit from creating a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. And we continue to this day to keep a spotlight on Northern Ireland.

Voting rights has been an important issue for me. I had the great opportunity to meet the iconic civil rights leader John Lewis when I was young and just starting out in American politics. I always stayed in touch with John and went to Ireland in 2020 as part of his delegation to meet Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume. All this to say that I was happy enough to establish www.votingright.ie with the late Irish
Senator for Diaspora, Billy Lawless, and the great Irish American advocate Noreen Bowden. Our goal was simple enough — allow all Irish citizens, whether they live just over the Border or in London or New York, the right to vote in Presidential elections. We had a great champion in the Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney but it was not be.

Ireland likes to pat itself on the back as a progressive democracy but when it comes to voting rights Ireland is far behind the rest of the E.U. Indeed, I would make the case that the Republic is complacent and parochial democracy when it comes to voting rights, denying over one million Irish citizens and passport holders the right to vote by a quirk of geography: they are not on the island or on the wrong part of the Ireland on Election Day.

Being Irish has always been part of my identity. I had an Irish-born mother; the family was very proud of our Fenian ancestor John Sullivan, and being an “Army Brat” meant that I had no place to call home. My Irish American identity gave me a Home. I have passed my love of Ireland on to my three daughters and they are delighted that they have Irish cousins their own age.

So it wasn’t hard for me to organize https://irishamerica250.org/. We have much to be proud of in helping to create the United States America. We were there at the very beginning. Stephen Moylan named the nation. Eight signers of the Declaration of Independence had Irish heritage and John Dunlap from Tyrone would print it. Our goal is to remind ourselves of what we have achieved and to recognize our unsung heroes. For over 250 years we have shown resilience in making our way.

Our story is not perfect. We were late to the civil rights movement; that said John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy stepped up to the challenge in the great moment of crisis. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the many Irish Catholic bishops and Cardinals who covered up the sex abuse scandals to our great shame.

Irish America is not old or dying as some pundits suggest. Indeed, it thrives and is deeply rooted all across the country. The new infusion of Irish music, film and dance has found a growing audience – younger and more diverse.

Our story is America’s story. How we extend and drive that story is up to us.