Clarence Page on Irish History

Clarence Page’s commentary (“The Potato Famine and the Black Experience,” March 17) is dead right about the consequences of state legislatures pushing bills requiring schools to teach about the Irish potato famine.

My father, the sixth of eight children born in County Mayo in 1884 to a family of meager means, was able to attend college by scholarships. He attended the university in Dublin, studying engineering after his mother had read about proposed Irish railroad construction and urged her sons to attend college. After graduating, no railroad jobs materialized, so he left for Canada in 1912, where he worked as a surveyor until going to California in 1920.

He was an inveterate reader of history, literature, classical literature, poetry and enjoyed solving problems in geometry and mathematics as well as helping his son and his son’s friends with their schoolwork. He knew Irish history inside out but blamed no one but the Irish themselves for much of their misery.

These legislators should take a cue from my grandmother and push education bills, not curricula.

FRANK L. BURKE

Los Angeles

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Page should note that in 1841 60,000 Irish issued an address to their compatriots in America calling upon them to join with the abolitionists. This was the only European nation to do so. He should also note that until the end of the 19th century, Irish immigrants were not considered “white” by Anglo-Saxon American citizens and were often denied citizenship as a result.

Seeing that Page’s ethnic group has the entire month of February to celebrate its roots, I find it hard to believe that he would begrudge another group the opportunity to educate our children about their past.

JOHN ZAVESKY

Los Angeles