O'DOCHARTAIGH, Fionbarra
"Ulster's White Negroes"
From Civil Rights to Insurrection
£5.95
pb. 1 873176 67 8.156
Ireland/politics/history. illustrated
"a must for anyone interested in the history of the civil rights movement"
- Saoirse
"Fionbarra O Dochartaigh has performed a notable service to the cause of peace and justice"
- Anderstown News
The detail in which the author recalls the organising in the early years is invaluable, not least in that it restores many individuals to their proper place in the scheme of things, people who never attracted media attention or aspired to political office. It also locates the developing struggle within the reach and experience of the ordinary people, dispelling the ÔBig Bang' theory of the civil rights years."
Bernadette McAliskey from her introduction
"Ulster's White Negroes" is an invaluable work for those who wish to understand how a struggle for basic civil liberties in Ireland developed into an allÐout revolutionary war Ð a war that has claimed more than 3000 lives and has raged, with little respite, for more than a quarter of a century.
The book outlines the early years of the civil rights movement, and the new wave of working class Catholics, in Derry and elsewhere, who were no longer prepared to be treated as second class citizens. It documents in detail the growing confrontation with the State, leading to the introduction of troops in 1969, and records the massacre in 1972 of thirteen unarmed demonstrators on Bloody Sunday, and the subsequent collapse of Stormont.
"Ulster's White Negroes" is not another academic textbook. As an activist within the Derry Unemployed Action Committee and the Derry Housing Action Committee, and the coÐfounder of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, Finbarr O'Doherty was, and is, an integral part of the struggle.
Introduction by Bernadette McAliskey
