Kentucky Irish American (Louisville, Ky.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,151 issues from 1898 to 1921, published in Louisville, Kentucky, digitised for Chronicling America.
First published on July 4, 1898, a date chosen to reflect resolute patriotism and devotion to community interests, Louisville’s Kentucky Irish American was one of the nation’s most durable ethnic newspapers and at its close one of three Irish-American newspapers in the United States. Later renowned for its satirical examination of politics, sports, and popular culture, the weekly that the Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Red Smith ranked just above bread and slightly below whiskey as a necessity in his home attracted politicians, intellectuals, and plain folk across Kentucky and the nation.
Founded by William M. Higgins (1852-1925), a typesetter who had moved to Louisville from Syracuse, New York, the Kentucky Irish American was initially devoted to the defense and advancement of the community it served. During its earliest decades it opposed any organization or interest understood to be anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, or anti-Democratic, including Great Britain, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Republican Party. It was pointedly critical of what it perceived as the pro-British sentiment of Henry Watterson’s Louisville Courier-Journal during the years preceding American intervention in World War I, and it frequently responded to anti-Catholic sentiments in Louisville’s two Baptist newspapers, the Western Recorder and The Baptist World. A casual racism, exercised in descriptions of African Americans, was also evident in the Kentucky Irish American’s earliest years and was often tied…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Louisville, Kentucky, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress