Backwards Ireland looks like Deep South

SCENES from anther world. Mississippi 1963.

Black people, or Negros, as they were known, are burnt from their homes at a time when minorities in the US began to assert their civil rights. As far as some people were concerned, the blacks were sub-human and deserved to be treated as such. These bigots held sway in the Deep South.

Belfast 1969. Catholics are burnt out of their homes. Just as those of the minority religion began to assert their civil rights, elements in the majority violently let it be known that the Taigs should lie down where they belonged. The police force looked on. Unionist leaders’ voiced muted, if any, abhorrence of the violence. The sight of fellow Irish people literally fleeing for their lives from their own homes elicited huge anger and sympathy south of the border. In council chambers, members spoke for the great majority of citizens and decried the animals that would do such a thing onto their fellow human beings.