Though Frederick Douglass remains the most well-known abolitionist to visit Ireland in the decades prior to the American Civil War, he was not the only one. As many as 30 Black abolitionists and activists also traveled to Ireland between 1790 and 1860. Olaudah Equiano was one of them. Born in Africa, Equiano was kidnapped when […]
Christine Kinealy
Christine Kinealy is the founding Director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute.
A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Christine has published extensively on Ireland’s Great Hunger and, more recently, the Irish Abolition movement. This includes the award-winning This Great Calamity. The Great Hunger in Ireland, and a graphic novel entitled, ‘The Bad Times’, or ‘An Drochshaol’. In 1997, she spoke in the British Houses of Parliament and in the American Congress on the Famine.
Christine is a Director of the African American Irish Diaspora Network. In 2018, she published Frederick Douglass and Ireland. In his own words. In 2020, Black Abolitionists in Ireland was published and a second volume is planned. This research led to the creation of Frederick Douglass Walking Trails in Belfast, Cork and Dublin.
Christine has been named one of the top educators in Irish America. In 2014, she was inducted into the Irish America Hall of Fame and, in 2017, received an Emmy for ‘The Great Hunger and the Irish Diaspora’ documentary. In 2019, she was one of five historians who walked 100-miles from Roscommon to Dublin, following in the footsteps of tenants sent to Canada in 1847. This route now forms The National Famine Way.