Delmarva Today: 7-30-20
The Battle of the Bogside drew the British army onto the streets of Northern Ireland on August 14 [1969]; they would remain for more than thirty years. Margo Shea in Derry City.
Margo Shea is my guest on Delmarva Today tomorrow morning. She is associate professor of history at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts. The subtitle of Shea’s book is Memory and Political Struggle in Northern Ireland and it certainly is that. But it is much, much more. Derry City is a civil rights book that chronicles the struggle of Irish Catholics for equality and justice against institutional, political, and cultural bigotry as Northern Ireland defines its own identity. The struggle for equality and justice outlined by Shea, in this excellent book, not only draws parallels to our own civil rights movement of the 1960’s but resonates strongly in the resurgent movement for equal justice playing out in US streets today.