Periscope - The South’s Awake!

By NiallO’Dowd

ATLANTA — When you come to the capital of the south you don’t expect the same Irish buzz as you get in, say, New York or Boston — but that is quickly changing.

In fact, Atlanta may well be a new frontier for all things Irish, a fact certainly brought home to me when I attended the luncheon of the local chapter of the Irish Chamber of Commerce USA last week.

There were over 100 business leaders present, including such luminaries as Don Keough, former president of Coca-Cola, and Leo Mullen, who recently stepped down as head of Delta Airlines. Also there was Professor Jim Flannery of Emory University, who has been the key figure in energizing and attracting so many Georgians to their Irish roots.

Also there were leading Irish Atlantans such as Don Keenan and David Fitzgerald member sof the Irish America Magazine Business 100.

It doesn’t hurt, of course, that two of the new top executives in Coca-Cola, are both Irish-born, including new chairman and CEO Neville Isdell. Coke and Atlanta are synonymous, and the injection of Irish influence at the very highest level will have a major knock-on effect in the city at large.

Present at the luncheon also were also a group of young Atlanta businessmen who are quickly reaching the very top in their professions. Indeed, the luncheon organizers told me they have to limit membership because so many Irish Americans in the south want to become part of this latest renaissance.

What was particularly interesting to me was the number of leading businessmen of Scotch Irish ancestry, a reminder that Irish American identity does not stop at the door of the Catholic Church but embraces the Protestant tradition equally.

Indeed, the biggest surprise of the seminal 1980 census, which found that there was an astonishing 40 million Americans of Irish ancestry, was the fact that 50% of those surveyed stated that they were other than Catholic. That was something no one had foreseen.

Of course, the further south you go in America the more that becomes a reality. What is particularly interesting in Atlanta is that this generation of Scotch Irish appears to be just as interested in the Irish part of their identity.

The Irish in Atlanta are certainly on the move, literally. Their St. Patrick’s Day parade which normally runs through the affluent neighborhood of Buckhead has been enticed downtown this year by the mayor’s office, in recognition of the great strides it has made in recent years. 

Georgia already hosts the second largest parade outside New York in Savannah every year. Now the Atlanta Irish are certain they can ensure that no other state in the union hosts two better parades.

Actually, going downtown is not new. The first parade started there in 1858 and in 2005 they are anticipating some 250 units from all over the south.

Irish history is everywhere in the city. The Hibernian Benevolent Society of Atlanta was founded in 1856 to help arriving immigrants and unlike elsewhere, never restricted membership to Catholics. 

Atlanta also has its own famous Irish priest, Father O’Reilly, who saved the churches and large parts of the downtown area when General Sherman came rampaging through. Some older locals still refer to the sacking of Atlanta and the Civil War as the “late unpleasantness,” a wonderful southern understatement for what was a catastrophic event in the lives of millions.

Atlanta is synonymous with Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind which was based on the story of her own Irish family. Her great aunts, the Fitzgeralds, lived in Clayton County in a residence that was the model for Tara, Scarlet O’Hara’s home in the movie.

Atlanta has been described as the “city too busy to hate,” and has become the model for the New South. It may well become the model for a resurgent Irish American city too, one that has unique Irish roots and a rosy future to look forward too.