The people of New Orleans showed “strength beyond belief” to recover after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, much like the survivors of the Irish Famine, Minister for Arts, Heather Humphreys, has told an Irish Famine commemoration.
Speaking on her visit to New Orleans, in a keynote address at the International Irish Famine Commemoration, Ms Humphreys drew strong parallels between the two catastrophes, separated by 154 years.
“The Famine was characterised by suffering, sacrifice and survival, experiences the people of New Orleans know only too well,” she said at a symposium at Tulane University in the Louisiana city. “The world watched in horror as the citizens of this great city suffered greatly as the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina unfolded in 2005, leaving lives and communities utterly ripped apart.”
But like those people who endured the Famine, she said, the people of the city “have shown strength beyond belief and the thriving city of New Orleans today is a testament to that spirit of resilience”.
Ms Humphreys estimated that as many as 250,000 Irish entered the US through New Orleans, many of them fleeing hunger during the 1845-1851 famine years, and that by 1860 the Irish population of the city had grown to 38,000, or a sixth of its population.
Such was the “enduring strength” of the links with the Irish diaspora in New Orleans, the Irish government gave €1 million in disaster relief immediately after Katrina with contributions to the Red Cross for immediate use along the Gulf of Mexico coast.
“Just as New Orleans gave shelter and support to emigrating Irish in our many hours of need following the Famine, so too were the Irish government and people determined to offer our assistance to the people of this great city when you needed it most in the wake of Katrina,” she said. Ms Humphreys travelled to New Orleans from Atlanta, where she spoke at the city’s Irish Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.
In her New Orleans address, she spoke of how Irish emigrants established themselves in the city prospering “to such a degree” that John Fitzpatrick became the first Irish-American mayor in 1892.
Irish dock leaders co-operated with their black counterparts to strike for better conditions realising that “in an ethnically diversified society where racism was sadly rife, unity was strength”.
