Episode 34: Secret Societies, Gaelic Sports, and Social Clubs: The Greenhorns Make their Way

Many of the Irish immigrants who came to Cleveland in the 1910s and 1920s were young single men who were escaping conflict. They or their families wanted them to avoid conscription into the British Army during World War I or to avoid what seemed certain to be another failed rebellion in 1916. Others left in the later 1910s as rebellion spread in Ireland, and the British Black and Tans terrorized the countryside. Others had been enemy combatants during the Irish Civil War in 1922 and 1923. This cohort of immigrants swelled the ranks of organizations that promoted Irish freedom, including the secretive Clan na Gael. They also brought Gaelic football to Cleveland in the 1920s, and they helped to found the city’s most enduring Irish social club, the West Side Irish American Club. A new wave of immigration was already producing a new wave of Irish community leaders.