Women at the Saint Patrick’s Day “Protest” Parade 

March is Women’s History Month. NY1920s always centers women’s history; this month we’ll do so a bit more emphatically.

One hundred years ago today … The Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in NYC was a political affair, as it always was in the decades and years leading up to Irish independence from Great Britain (1922). (See our post for the 1920 parade for more.)

The 1921 edition had a particularly feminist slant. Among the marchers was a battalion of White Cross nurses, one of whom carried a sign quoting the nineteenth-century Irish nationalist William Rooney: "A FEARLESS INDOMITABLE WOMANHOOD / A FEARLESS INDOMITABLE RACE.”

The nurses, the News noted, had “volunteered their services for the American Committee for relief in Ireland.” (“Irish March In Protest / 20,000 Honor St. Patrick With Signs Scoring Actions Of England.” Daily News, 18 March, 1921. p. 2.)

The parade started at 43rd Street and 5th Avenue and proceeded up to 79th Street, where it was seen by politicians including Mayor John Hylan and recently-voted-out Governor Al Smith.

– Jonathan Goldman, March 17, 2021

TAGS: Irish, Ireland, holiday, parade, medical workers, protest, feminism