The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women (15 page)

the Irish-Jewish rivalry, if not for the votes cast by Fordham University’s

mostly Jewish School of Social Work, its conservative Catholic undergradu-

ates would have given the nod to Nixon—early signs that in reaction to the

Vietnam protests, sexual revolution, and Civil Rights movement, the Irish

were trending Republican (Meagher 2005, 164). Kennedy also won votes

because he presented a more moderate image than his Irish American prede-

cessors Joe McCarthy and Father Coughlin; rather, Kennedy “proved to be

the Father O’Malley—portrayed by Bing Crosby in
Going My Way
—of Irish

Catholic politicians for the postwar American consensus” (Smith 2010, 87).

It could also be argued that Kennedy achieved this status thanks in part

to the women in his life. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s
The Fitzgeralds and the

Kennedys
describes his strong female role models and forebears. His great-

grandmother, Rosanna Cox Fitzgerald, who raised eleven children before

dying in childbirth, was “indispensable” to the family’s success (1987, 59).

His paternal great-grandmother, Bridget Murphy Kennedy, was a widow

who single-handedly raised four children and saved enough money to send

her son P.J. through private school. After entering politics, P.J. met Rose,

the daughter of Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, who defi ed her father

to marry P.J.’s son, Joseph Kennedy. Before meeting her husband, Rose had

aspirations of furthering her education at Wellesley. Denied this opportunity

by her vote-counting father, she spent the rest of her life sublimating her

desires for the good of the men in the family, an unfortunate family trait

passed down to the Kennedy wives and daughters (Dezell 2001, 112–13).

Despite these family dynamics, the Kennedy presidency effectively

brought an end to anti-Irish bigotry. One sign was the 1960 establish-

ment of what later became ACIS, the American Conference for Irish Stud-

ies. Another sign was the appointment of the “Irish Mafi a”—top advisors

David Powers, Ken O’Donnell, and Larry O’Brien—“Irishmen skilled in the

art of politics” (Meagher 2005, 276). Following Kennedy’s election, Mike

Mansfi eld was named majority leader of the Senate; the following year, John

McCormack became Speaker of the House (Meagher 2005, 331–32). They

were joined by national security advisor McGeorge Bundy and secretary of

defense Robert McNamara (Woods 2005, 165), but Kennedy was the key.

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Although his family’s wealth set him apart, his Irish American traits—edu-

cation, wit, political expertise, and oratorical skills—changed Americans’

views of the Irish and ushered in feelings of acceptance and respect, thus

opening the door for Irish American ascendancy into the middle class and

breaking through the “green ceiling” (Hamill 2006, 529). Consequently,

“By 1960, the Irish had become one of the most prosperous and best-edu-

cated ethnic groups in the nation” (Dolan 2008, 278). Indeed, the propor-

tion of Irish Americans holding white-collar jobs was well above the national

average, surpassing every other ethnic group except the Jews (Meagher

2005, 132). The Irish moved out of the cities into the suburbs, where their

endogamy—and defensiveness due to their immigrant identity—gradually

diffused. Thanks to their education, Irish American males were gaining

access to highly paid, prestigious positions previously denied them; thanks

to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, women of all ethnic backgrounds were able to

progress in the workplace.

Within a year of his election, Kennedy created the PCSW, the Presi-

dent’s Commission on the Status of Women. Its fi rst job was to tackle the

question of the Equal Rights Amendment, fi rst introduced in 1920 and still

unresolved. As the PCSW wrangled over the amendment, Kennedy ordered

all federal agencies to “hire, train, and promote employees regardless of sex.”

The following year, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act a mere eighteen years

after it was fi rst proposed. In 1963, Kennedy created the Citizens’ Advisory

Council on the Status of Women as well as an Interdepartmental Committee

on the Status of Women, both of which survived until Ronald Reagan took

offi ce. In the year following Kennedy’s assassination, Congress passed the

Civil Rights Act, which included Title VII, banning “sex discrimination in

the workplace, along with racial discrimination [in] jobs at all levels and to

most American businesses” (Davis 1991, 37–39). By 1967, this legislation

also included Affi rmative Action and Title IX, which extended equal rights

to women and minorities.

The changing roles of women were supported, to a certain extent, by

the media. In television shows such as “The Bionic Woman” and “Char-

lie’s Angels,” women were depicted as tough (but attractive) crime fi ghters.

The “Mary Tyler Moore Show” actually featured an independent work-

ing woman. Irish American Moore was self-suffi cient, sexually active, and

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assertive, leaving her boyfriend when he balked at marriage, openly taking

the pill, and willing to demand equal pay. Granted, she was an exception. For

the most part, Irish American females in television land relied on the wisdom

and advice of their male bosses, colleagues, and husbands, as evidenced in

The Real McCoys
,
June Allyson
,
Donna Reed
,
The Brady Bunch
,
My Sister
Eileen
, and
Leave it to Beaver
. Irish American males were even more popular, with hosts such as Pat Boone, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Dick Clark, Garry

Moore, Glen Campbell, Andy Griffi th, Ed Sullivan, Arthur Murray, Jimmy

Dean, Johnny Cash, Bing Crosby, Phil Donahue, Dick Powell, Jackie Glea-

son and Art Carney, and shows such as
Ben Casey
,
The Brothers Brannagan
,

Burke’s Law
,
Ensign O’Toole
,
Harrigan and Son
,
Hogan’s Heroes
,
McHale’s
Navy
,
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
, and
The Trials of O’Brien
. And these were just some of the better known.

Among the 1960s movies,
Bonnie and Clyde
,
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
,
The

Sound of Music
,
The Graduate
, and
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
have been

cited as the best feminist fi lms of the decade. Yet of the fi rst three, Bonnie

Parker is a thief, Holly Golightly is a loose woman, and Maria is a nun who

leaves the novitiate to marry. Fictional Irish American women fare better.

Katherine Ross’s character in
The Graduate
, Elaine Robinson, positively

represents a strong, educated woman who refuses (at least for a while) to

associate with the man who supposedly raped her mother, fi nds the cour-

age to disobey her parents, and leaves her marriage right after the ceremony.

The Unsinkable Molly Brown
celebrates the bravery of Margaret Tobin, also

known as the eponymous Brown, who helped a lifeboat of people survive the

sinking
Titanic
. Fluent in several languages, Brown was able to organize the

lifeboat’s international crew: before the lifeboat was picked up, she had raised

ten thousand dollars from her fellow passengers for the families of those who

had not survived (Dezell 2001, 46).

More powerful were the Irish American women providing momentum

and media exposure for the Women’s Liberation movement. In 1965, Helen

Gurley Brown founded
Cosmopolitan
magazine, an early crusader for wom-

en’s rights amidst the sexual revolution. In 1968, Robin Morgan—the “best

known ‘politico’” in New York City (Brownmiller 1999, 69)—led the New

York Radicals in a protest at the Miss America pageant. As journalist Char-

lotte Curtis described it, “Women armed with a giant bathing beauty puppet

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68 | T H E B A N S H E E S

and a ‘freedom trash can’ in which they threw girdles, bras, hair curlers,

false eyelashes, and anything else that smacked of ‘enslavement’” (quoted in

Woods 2005, 364). That same year, more than ten thousand women pro-

tested the Vietnam War by participating in the Jeannette Rankin Brigade.

Rankin, an early suffragist and the fi rst woman elected to Congress,

was co-founder of the ACLU and the Women’s International League for

Peace and Freedom (Smith 2002). The Rankin Brigade captured the media’s

attention when they buried an effi gy of the “traditional woman” during

their demonstration. Other Irish American activists included Marilyn Webb,

Ellen Willis, Jane McManus, and Nancy Hawley, who went on to found the

Boston Women’s Health Book collective. The following year, Sheila Cro-

nan, a caseworker for the Bureau of Child Welfare, joined the movement

after observing NOW’s week-long demonstration against Colgate-Palmolive

because they refused to promote women to management. To capture the

public’s attention, Kate Murray Millet designed a “giant toilet bowl with

feet, to make the point that Colgate fl ushed women’s aspirations down the

toilet.” They were soon joined by Pam Kearon, who became known for her

satirical essay, “Man-Hating” (Brownmiller 1999, 45–46).

Although they tended to credit their own courage and independence

rather than the women’s movement, Irish American journalists contributed

to the new image of women and transformed the role of women as war cor-

respondents from an aberration to a norm (Hoffman 2008, 8). Years before

her colleagues acknowledged the war’s futility, the Radcliffe alumna Fran-

ces FitzGerald was analyzing the multilayered Vietnamese society.
Fire in

the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
, published in 1972

when she was thirty-two, won a Pulitzer Prize for contemporary affairs writ-

ing, a National Book Award, and the Bancroft Prize for historical writing

(traditionally a scholarly award). Unlike FitzGerald, the
New York Herald

Tribune
correspondent Marguerite Higgins—who had won a Pulitzer for

her reporting on the Korean War—“was a hawkish, anti-Communist” with

regard to Vietnam (Hoffman 2008, 7). Nevertheless, her subsequent book,

Our Vietnam Nightmare
(1965) revealed her concerns about the role of the

American military. Back home, Mary McGrory, who had established her rep-

utation reporting on the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s and won a Pulitzer

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for her commentary about Watergate, enhanced her national standing with

her reporting on John F. Kennedy’s assassination (Dezell 2001).

Lyndon Johnson supported Kennedy’s efforts to cut taxes and further

civil rights, not only because he believed in them but also because he felt

these successes would improve his chances in the next election. Thanks to

his commitment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 put an end to discrimination

in housing, federal funding, educational access, and “on the basis of race,

color, religion, sex, or national origin” (Woods 2005, 182–83). Although

the category of “sex” was added by conservatives as a means of blocking pas-

sage, the bill passed and thus opened the door for women. After winning the

1964 election in a landslide, Johnson continued to promote and protect civil

rights, passing the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The following year he rein-

forced this initiative by issuing an executive order mandating that employers

practice affi rmative action to ensure equal representation in the workforce.

Having apparently overlooked the need for affi rmative action on the basis

of sex, that category was added in 1967 (Woods 2005, 195). Unfortunately,

the 1968 election of Richard M. Nixon put a halt to such forward progress.

Nixon opposed Title IX, the ER A, abortion rights, even day-care centers

(Woods 2005, 334).

Joyce Carol Oates’s 1960s novels brought a feminist awareness to these

disparities. Oates is not generally known to be Irish American, for like Flan-

nery O’Connor she rarely addresses her Irish roots, but the paternal Oateses

emigrated to upstate New York during the Famine. Her great-great-grand-

mother (a Mullaney) brought her six children to America after the death

of her husband, Dominic Oates,3 Oates shares other traits with her Irish

American contemporaries. Like Maureen Howard, she experiments with

narrative style, for example interrupting the chronology in
Expensive People

(1968) with commentaries on memoirs, faux reviews, a short story (“The