Episode 48: The Parade: Recent Immigrants, Younger Generations, and Women Find Common Cause

The immigrants of the 1950s and 1960s had a particular impact on the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. From 1935 until 1958, the Irish Civic Association organized the parade. Most of the Civic Association members were born in the US. By 1958, the postwar immigrants had formed new clubs that celebrated traditional Irish sports, music, and dance and were also reinvigorating the Hibernians and the West Side IA. The new energy required a new model for parade management--the United Irish Societies. New constituencies--women and younger generations--also had to work their way to the table, but the UIS functions to this day as a kind of United Nations for Irish organizations in Cleveland.