Analysis: Zohran Mamdani will be New York's youngest mayor in more than a century - the youngest before him was the grandson of an Irish nationalist and largely forgotten
By Mary M. Burke, University of Connecticut
Newly elected New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, will be the city's "youngest mayor in more than a century" noted the New York Times on the morning after this election. What that article did not note was the name of the even younger past mayor being indirectly referred to. This was John Purroy Mitchel (1879-1918), in office from 1914-1917, and the second youngest ever mayor of New York at that time, sometimes known as the "boy mayor". Of greater interest in Ireland may be the fact that he was the grandson and namesake of nationalist John Mitchel (1815-75), who embodied the tail-end of the kind of radical Ulster Presbyterian politics that had led to the 1798 uprising.
The elder Mitchel's writings cemented the view of the 1845 Famine as deliberate genocide by the British authorities. He inspired the militant Irish Republican tradition of Irish America and, in the period of his grandson’s mayoralty, shaped post-Famine Catholic Irish America’s antagonistic attitude to American participation on what was perceived to be the "British" side of the Great War.
In Betty Smith’s 1943 semi-autobiographical novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, pre-pubescent Irish Catholic Francie Nolan and her father enjoy the cavalcade of an unnamed New York mayor-to-be in her Brooklyn neighbourhood. This was almost certainly based on William Jay Gaynor (1849-1913), an Irish Catholic Democrat who held office from 1910 to 1913. He was backed by Tammany Hall, the notoriously corrupt New York seat of post-Famine Irish-American power.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, Zohran Mamdani elected mayor of New York City
Gaynor preceded John Purroy Mitchel, and the manner in which the Nolans celebrate Gaynor as "one of their own" contrasts to how Mayor Mitchel was increasingly distrusted by Catholic Irish American voters during his tenure. The Columbia-educated Mitchel was raised Catholic but his Republicanism and pro-war and Reform politics -- which saw him take on a case against Tammany as a young lawyer in 1907 - put him at odds with the New York Irish Democratic political machine and facilitated accusations in Irish-American media that his loyalty was with Britain.
Mitchel’s reformist bent made him popular with the broader electorate, however, so when, aged 38, he died in uniform during Air Service training on July 6, 1918, he was given one of the largest public funerals ever seen by his city. He lay in state at New York City Hall, followed by a massive procession up Fifth Avenue for a funeral service with full military honours at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, symbol par excellence of the aspirations of post-Famine Irish New York.
An enormously impactful event for New Yorkers, a city in which F. Scott Fitzgerald had resided, the shocking crash seems to have inspired a poignant cameo in that Irish-American author’s 1922 novel, The Beautiful and Damned: Heroine Gloria’s former Ivy League flame, Tudor Baird, reconnects with her during the Great War when relocated by the Aviation Corps. Gloria kisses him "sentimentally one night" and afterward is glad, "for next day when his plane fell fifteen hundred feet at Mineola [airfield, New York] a piece of a gasolene engine smashed through his heart."
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From RTÉ Radio 1's The History Show, Myles speaks to Australian writer Thomas Keneally about John Mitchel
Nine days after Mitchel’s death, the former mayor and his grandfather were referred to in the widely reported trial in the Federal District Court in New York of John A. O'Leary, a leader in America of Sinn Féin, the Irish republican political organisation then pushing back against America joining a "British" war. O’Leary’s brother, Jeremiah, was President of the American Truth Society, which was under surveillance for its pro-German stance. John O’Leary had been charged with having aided in Jeremiah’s flight from the jurisdiction of the court. During cross examination, reference was made to a 1917 letter written by Jeremiah in which he castigated British military forces and the "degenerate Irishman," Mitchel. John O’Leary then produced a copy of Jail Journal, the elder Mitchel’s caustic 1854 critique of British colonial policy that details his devastating first-hand witness of the Famine. In what the New York Times called an "outburst," the chief witness declared:
'when I said that John Purroy Mitchel was a degenerate Irishman I meant that he did not agree with the sentiments of his grandfather, who did not fear jail in support of his convictions. He was put into jail unlawfully, as I have been. […] you have no right to keep me in jail […] because I want to see old Ireland free.'
The denouncing of the former mayor’s pro-British stance implied that, for Irish America, John Purroy Mitchel had failed to replicate his grandfather’s politics. This seems to have contributed to his current absence from the Irish-American pantheon.
In 1994, the Central Park Reservoir, which had been decommissioned, was renamed the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in honour of the former First Lady who had long worked and resided in the city. What Irish tourists who visit that park will almost certainly fail to notice, however, is the granite, slate, and gilded bronze monument to John Purroy Mitchel located on the reservoir’s eastern embankment at 90th Street. Today it functions mostly as a monument to forgotten New York Irish history.
Mary M. Burke is a Professor of English at the University of Connecticut and author of Race, Politics & Irish America (Oxford University Press, 2023).
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
