The Irish experienced confusion upon their arrival in the United States.  Because most people in the United States before 1850 were of Anglo descent and were Protestant, the Irish were seen as enemies.  As Catholics, the Irish were viewed as a “papal conspiracy to rule America and displace all others.” 1  Although they were not received in a friendly manner by Anglo-Americans in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Irish did find jobs. Although the jobs they found originally were far from glamorous, the Irish had a place in society, even though the majority of American society, the Anglo-Protestants, did not like or respect them. The place for the Irish in America was therefore not secure, and when other groups began to appear in New York, the jobs the Irish held became endangered.  Thus relations between the Irish and other New York immigrant and ethnic groups were far from trouble-free during the seventy years spanning from 1850 until 1920. To the Irish, African-Americans, Italians, and Jews were competition for jobs and housing. Language and religious differences also made interaction with other groups difficult for the Irish.

    The relationship between the Irish in New York and African-Americans was definitely negative during the last half of the nineteenth century.  It stemmed mostly from job competition and a common living environment, not from simple racial hatred.  Although blacks and Irish were usually at odds in New York at this time, Peter Quinn makes a close comparison between them, stating that they were both “tough, violent, jail-prone miscreants who changed the nature of city life, making it more threatening and volatile, a place widely perceived to be as intrinsically hostile to the real American family values of work, thrift, and sobriety.”7Despite these seeming similarities, Irish and African-American conflict permeated New York City, perhaps because of these similarities.  Even as early as the 1830s, new Irish immigrants in New York were competing with blacks for jobs.  The Irish were often willing to work for the lowest amount, and would therefore displace any free blacks that had an opportunity to work for wages. 8  Since the competition was so stiff for jobs in New York during the mid-nineteenth century, the Civil War posed a great threat to Irish job stability.
    One of the first signs of Irish prejudice towards African-Americans was the New York Draft Riots in 1863. The riots were in response to the National Conscription Act, which had been passed in early 1863.  It was the first draft in American history.  During the four days of riots, from July 13 until July 16, 1863, conscripted men, mostly Irish, fought against law enforcement officers and attacked blacks.  Among the destruction caused during the riots was the burning of the Negro Orphan Asylum.  Predictably, the Irish who participated in the Draft Riots were immigrant laborers who could not afford to pay for replacements soldiers.  There were two reasons that the Irish targeted blacks during these riots.  The more immediate reason was that “blacks had been used as strikebreakers in New York and were exempt from the draft.”9  The Irish in New York were already of the lowest social order, and if they were to leave to fight, African-American strikebreakers would certainly be used to take their old jobs.  There might not be any jobs left if and when they returned from war.  The other reason the Irish attacked blacks during these riots and resented them at this time was more general.  The Irish saw “abolitionism as a nativist and anti-Catholic movement that represented a profound threat to their livelihoods.”10  It was more than blacks being used as strikebreakers.  Millions of free blacks might make their way north to New York, and inevitably would be competing for the jobs the Irish held.  Some typical jobs that the Irish and blacks fought over in New York were manual labor positions, hodcarriers, white-washers, waiters, coachmen, cooks, and servants.  It seems obvious that the Irish were not willing to be displaced in New York as they had been in Ireland.
    As the nineteenth century wore on and New York City became more crowded, the Irish and African-Americans ended up living in the same slums.  New York’s 6th Ward, or the Five Points District, as it came to be called, was just north of City Hall in downtown Manhattan at the intersections of Orange, Anthony, and Cross Streets.  As stated above, the Irish and African-American populations in New York were not friendly.  Until 1850, the black and Irish populations in the 6th Ward were relatively equal, however, by 1870, blacks had left the 6th ward as the Irish population in New York boomed.  In that year, approximately eleven thousand Irish lived in the 6th Ward, as opposed to just over two hundred African-Americans.  African-Americans began moving north towards Harlem as the Irish immigrant population increased in the 6th Ward and the Irish began collecting political power through Tammany Hall.  Overmatched, blacks were peacefully forced out of the 6th Ward, which ended the frequent Irish and African-American relations in New York City.
    Unforeseen results of the mixed slums that the Irish and African-Americans lived in New York were some of the first mixed marriages between whites and blacks in the United States.  Typically it was the Irish women who were part of interracial marriages, simply because there were more Irish women than Irish men in the city at in the nineteenth century.11  Although most Irish men showed disgust at these marriages, they became more common as time went on.  Bayor and Meagher claim that these mixed marriages are an example of affectionate relations between the Irish and African-Americans.  Aside from the Draft Riots, they go on, “day-to-day contact was as harmonious as could be in a tough, urban slum.”12
 
 
 
 

    The story of race relations between the Irish and the Italians of New York City occurs toward the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century since large numbers of Italian immigrants did not arrive in New York until the 1880s.  It is not characterized by violence and hatred that the Irish and African-American relationship was.  Although competition for jobs was also a factor in the Irish not liking Italians in New York, disagreements over religion also played a major part in Irish-Italian relations.
    Since the vast majority of Irish and Italian immigrants in New York were Catholic, one would assume there both found common ground to get a long.  The truth is that the Irish did not think that Italians were good Catholics. 13  One reason for this common thought amongst the Irish was that Italy had recently been unified as a nation, a move that considerably weakened the pope’s political power.  The Irish in New York also did not agree with the form of Catholicism that Italians practiced.  Bayor claims neither the Italian peasant form of Catholicism nor the anti-clericalism practiced by educated Italians was acceptable to the Irish.14  The Irish, in contrast, were very faithful sheep to their parish priests and Irish bishops in New York.  Resulting from practical theological differences, the Irish therefore often did not welcome the Italians in their churches.  Part of this problem, however, was that Italians did not speak English as well as the Irish did and therefore often could not understand what was being said at church.  Bayor goes on to claim that part of the Irish hostility towards the Italians in New York resulted from insecurity as to their place in society, a place that was deeply affected by their jobs.15
    Like African-Americans before them, Italians also became job competition for the Irish in New York.  Because of their immigrant status, both usually competed for unskilled labor jobs and unskilled city jobs.16  Competition for construction jobs often ended in fights between Irish and Italians at job sites.  Although the Irish and Italians for the most part were job competition for each other at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, Irish-controlled Tammany Hall gave Irish laborers a significant advantage when jobs were “distributed.”  “The best jobs and resources went to the Irish.”17  Because the Italians did not present enough of a threat to the Irish for jobs, Irish-Italian relations did not escalate into the problematic situation that the Irish and African-Americans experienced a few decades previous.  Italians also did not begin to move into traditionally Irish neighborhoods until the Irish actually moved to other places.  Despite a relatively uneventful relationship, the Irish were seen as more respectable than newer ethnic groups in New York City, like the Italians, because the Irish could speak English well and were a little more established than their Italian counterparts.18  Because of a new seeming favoritism for the Irish, at least over their Italian counterparts, the Irish began to believe that they were in fact better than the Italians.

    Like the Italians, Jews that immigrated to New York City came in the late 1800s and early 1900s, primarily from Eastern Europe.  Eastern European Jews often were unable to speak English well, as they hailed from poor Slavic countries.  In addition to being foreigners, Jews rose very quickly in the workplace, unlike Irish New Yorkers, who had struggled for years to move up the socio-economic ladder.  This along with traditional Christian anti-Semitism, caused the New York Irish to have distaste for their Jewish neighbors.
    During the late 1800s there were minor outbursts of violence between Jews and the Irish in New York.  Jews began to move into formerly Irish neighborhoods in Manhattan, and although many of the Irish had moved out of these neighborhoods, such as Hell’s Kitchen and the 6th Ward, the remaining Irish did not like that Jews were “invading” their homes.  Aside from the occasional street fight, the Irish and Jews of New York did not really begin to have problems until the 1930s, which this paper will not discuss.
    Economic success was the major problem the Irish had with Jews in New York.  In 1929, the Irish World wrote that “we see all around us, the peoples of other races forging ahead.”19 The Germans in New York were highly successful for an immigrant group, but it was not German success that the Irish resented.  Jews, in a very short amount of time, began to dominate the garment trade, which the Irish had previously controlled.  The main reason that Jews dominated the garment industry in New York was that more than a quarter million Jewish tailors entered New York between 1898 and 1915. 20  In addition to taking over the garment business, Jews were more successful in banking and other white-collar jobs, and also became numerous as teachers, although they numbered many less than the Irish.  In 1909, Jews made up more than eleven percent of the fifteen thousand teachers in New York City, while the Irish made up just twenty percent.21There were more Irish teachers than Jewish teachers in number, but in proportion to their respective populations, there were many less Irish than Jews.  Many Jews also made their way into professional schools, whereas the Irish seemed to be stuck doing blue-collar work.
    The difference in religion was an automatic strike for the Jews in the eyes of the Irish.  Judaism was not compatible with Catholicism.  As strict Catholics, the Irish followed what the Church hierarchy said very carefully.  Jews were a target of the Catholic Church up until World War II, when the Holocaust changed their image from subversives and criminals to that of the oppressed.  The Church was very anticommunist, and since Jews were often politically liberal, Jews were viewed with suspicion as to their political ideology.  Because of these differences that stem from religion, the Irish and the Jews in New York did not get along well from the 1880s until 1920.  Although Catholic loathing of Jews was very prevalent at this time, it would only get worse in the years following.

    It seems that the Irish in New York were a racist, deeply hateful group of people based on their relationships with the Anglos, Jews, African-Americans, and Italians that also lived there.  Obviously the Irish were insecure insofar that they were afraid of losing their jobs to others and of being persecuted by others.  New York at that time was a hard place to live.  The city was too small to support the number of people that lived there, at the turn of the century, the Irish made up about twenty-five percent of the population.  Certainly many Irish men and women would somehow suffer at the hands of another ethnic group, whether they lose their jobs or suffer anti-Irish discrimination in some form.  Considering the persecution the Irish suffered at the hands of the English and Protestant Anglo-Americans, it seems that the racism the Irish displayed in New York was learned.  This learned behavior appears to have turned into a xenophobia where the Irish are afraid of all those who are different than them.  Certainly this xenophobia contributed to New York in a negative manner, carving up the city based on ethnicity.  There was an upside to the interaction between the Irish and African-Americans that lived in the 6th Ward though.  They helped make acceptable interracial marriages.  Without this ethnic mixing, it is uncertain how much more racism would persist in New York today, when so many different ethnic groups call it their home.