Irish in Philadelphia remember Easter Rising

In the late morning sunshine, John Kline held up a poster-size photograph of his great-uncle, an Irish immigrant named Dominic McEmey.

"He escaped Ireland and came here to Philadelphia in 1920," Kline said, adding that McEmey had been a runner between Irish rebels in the Easter Rising against the British on April 24, 1916 - 100 years ago to the day.

"As a teenager, he had to leave for America," Kline recalled, for fear of reprisal by the British occupying Ireland.

Kline was one of roughly a thousand Irish Americans who came together Sunday in Center City to mark the centennial of Ireland's Easter Rising.

Many gathered before the official ceremony at the Irish Memorial, at Second and Chestnut Streets, otherwise known as the National Memorial to An Gorta Mór - Gaelic for "the great hunger."

"There was plenty of food being raised in Ireland, but it was being sent to England. That's why we do not call it a famine," said Kathy McGee Burns, president of the Irish Memorial.

Philadelphia's hard-core Irish Americans sported green sweaters, wore kilts, or dressed as Civil War reenactors from the Union Army's Irish Brigade.

Roughly one in five Philadelphians claim Irish ancestry, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2014 survey of the region. Nationally, the Census Bureau reports Americans claiming Irish ancestry have dropped to 33.3 million people, or 10.5 percent of the population. The number was 37 million in 2009.

Kevin Kent represents the 21st-century Irish American.

He works as an attorney in Philadelphia and has a direct family connection to the Easter Rising: a distant cousin, Eamonn Ceannt, fought the British during the weeklong battle.

Ceannt (pronounced Kent) was commander of the Fourth Battalion of Irish Volunteers during the 1916 Rising. He was one of 16 men executed by the British on May 8, 1916, for instigating the rebellion and signing a proclamation demanding Irish independence.

Philadelphia's commemoration of the centennial shows that the city "has always had a strong Irish American community," Kent said.

Today, Irish Americans like Kent work to foster business ties between Philadelphia and Ireland. In addition to his day job, Kent chairs the Irish American Business Chamber here.

The Irish American chamber helps American companies, such as Aramark and Coca-Cola, open operations in Ireland; Irish companies often need help expanding in the United States, former chamber president Bill McLaughlin said.

"I had Irish grandparents who came here from County Mayo in Ireland, and I visit every year, but their focus once they got here was really on their life in America," McLaughling said. "Of all my siblings, I'm the only one who goes back regularly."

When they arrived on ships in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, "most Irish came here speaking no English and starving," said Brian O'Murchu, a cardiologist affiliated with Temple University Hospital, who read a proclamation in Gaelic on Sunday.

Nearly one-eighth of the population, or about one million people, left Ireland because of starvation.

Some Irish Americans still pine for a completely united island. A few Northern counties are part of the United Kingdom.

"We now have peace in Ireland, and it's important to bear in mind that real progress has been made," said Irish diplomat Michael Lonergan, deputy chief of mission for the Irish Embassy in Washington.

"The injustices that took place, such as the great famine, are no longer the case."

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