Discrimination
Catholics and Protestants kept their distance; intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants was uncommon, and strongly discouraged by both ministers and priests.
After the large influx of Irish in the middle of the 19th century, many Catholic children were being educated in public schools. While officially nondenominational, the King James Version of the Bible was widely used in the classroom across the country, which Catholics were forbidden to read. Many Irish children complained that Catholicism was openly mocked in the classroom. In New York City the curriculum vividly portrayed Catholics, and specifically the Irish, as villainous. The Catholic clergyman John Hughes campaigned for public funding of Catholic education in response to the bigotry. While never successful in obtaining public money for private education, the debate with the city's Protestant elite spurred by Hughes' passionate campaign paved the way for the secularization of public education nationwide. In addition, Catholic higher education expanded during this period with colleges and universities that evolved into such institutions as Fordham University and Boston College providing alternatives to Irish who were not otherwise permitted to apply to other colleges.
Prejudice against Irish Catholics in the US reached a peak in the mid-1850s with the Know Nothing Movement, which tried to oust Catholics from public office. After a year or two of local success, the Know Nothing Party vanished. Some historians, however, maintain that actual job discrimination was minimal.
Many Irish work gangs were hired by contractors to build canals, railroads, city streets and sewers across the country. In the South they underbid slave labor. One result was that small cities that served as railroad centers came to have large Irish populations.
In 1895, the Knights of Equity was founded, to combat discrimination against Irish Catholics in the U.S., and to assist them financially when needed.
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