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By Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press.
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Debunked: Irish people were not the first slaves to arrive in the American colonies
Slave trading from Africa to the Americas began around 100 years before 1619, and indentured servitude is not the same as chattel slavery.
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Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not Slaves, Too
By Liam Stack for the New York Times.
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Debunking the imagery of the “Irish slaves” meme
By Liam Hogan, Librarian & Historian at the Limerick City Library.
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Does This Photograph Show Irish Slaves in the United States? (Snopes)
A disturbing photo of mining conditions, likely from Belgium in the early 20th century, has often been misrepresented to fit various political narratives.
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Fact check: ‘Irish slaves’ meme repeats discredited article (Reuters)
A lengthy post relating to Irish people and slavery has been widely reposted and shared on Facebook. The text is from a widely discredited 2008 article.
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Free us from myth of US Irish slavery
By Donald Clarke for The Irish Times.
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How the Myth of the "Irish slaves" Became a Favorite Meme of Racists Online
By Alex Amend for The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
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No, The Irish Were Not Slaves Too
Historian Liam Hogan has spent the last six years debunking the Irish slave myth.
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Open letter to Irish Central, Irish Examiner and Scientific American about their
Signed by 82 Irish scholars and writers.
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openDemocracy - ‘Irish slaves’: the convenient myth
By Liam Hogan, Research Librarian, Limerick City Library.
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The curious origins of the ‘Irish slaves’ myth
By Natasha Varner for Public Radio International.
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The Myth of “Irish Slaves” in the Colonies
By Liam Hogan.
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The unfree Irish in the Caribbean were indentured servants, not slaves
By Liam Hogan, Laura McAtackney, and Matthew Connor Reilly.
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By Liam Hogan, Limerick City Library.
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Slavery » MYTH: The Irish Were Slaves
21 Links
The links here are provided to help researchers to debunk a current myth about Irish slavery. While many Irish immigrants were indentured servants, they were not slaves. The very act of entering into an indenture is entering into a contract. Those that did so did it by choice and the contract had a finite period of time in which they served. Slaves were not given a choice and there was no contract. The time period was for their entire life, along with the lives of any offspring. They were considered property. While the two may seem similar, indenture was in a different category from slavery.