Tag: printed ephemera

National Hispanic Heritage Month 2025

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month.

From our Latin American and Latino Studies Archives: Celebration and Resistance

by Payton Phillips Quintanilla, Latin American & Iberian Studies Librarian and Curator

2025 has seen various local and community-based annual public celebrations of Latino heritage scaled-down, postponed, or cancelled altogether out of fears for the safety of participants and community members. Other public celebrations have gone on as planned, with some organizers even rearticulating their yearly “Grito de Independencia” (the September 15th commemoration of the “Cry of Independence” from Spanish colonial rule, specific to the Mexican context) as “Grito de Resistencia” (“Cry of Resistance”). Both paths, however, are guided by a spirit of solidarity, and informed by a history of perseverance, that predate—and are poised to persist beyond—any formal federal recognition of the diverse cultures, accomplishments, and contributions of Latinos in the United States.

Inspired by that same spirit and history, we present three examples, preserved in Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections, of historical moments when Latino communities organized celebrations of resistance—both public and private, and throughout the calendar year—in direct response to histories and realities of persecution, oppression, exclusion, and erasure.  

1969: “La Fiesta de los Barrios”

“The Fiesta De Los Barrios is the Fiesta of all of our people. For the first time the heritage of our cultural past and the richness of our cultural present will be expressed through the creative talent and skill of our barrio artists, writers and performers. […] It is this pride in ourselves and confidence in our future that has made this magazine and indeed the entire Fiesta possible.”

The name “La Fiesta de los Barrios” carries multiple references: it was a community celebration, a literary journal, and an aspiration for the future. The actual “fiesta” took place in early May, 1969, at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the LA Walkouts: a watershed movement through which Mexican American students protested systemic racism, abuses, and neglect on their campuses, and demanded inclusive and unbiased curricula. (For an introduction to the Walkouts, we suggest you watch this Retro Report hosted by PBS, or this excerpt from PBS’s Latino Americans.)

The journal by the same name, or Fiesta Magazine (MSH/LAT 0099-61), memorialized select verse, prose, and drawings created by community members and event participants, representing a diversity of voices and experiences. And finally, it was the hope, as articulated by photographer Pedro Arias in one of the journal’s opening essays, that all peoples of Mexican descent living in the United States could overcome generational and cultural divides to work together toward common goals: “Y entonces será un día de fiesta, será una FIESTA DE LOS BARRIOS, pero una Fiesta de Los Barrios permanente […]” (And then it will be a day of celebration, it will be a FIESTA DE LOS BARRIOS, but a permanent Fiesta de Los Barrios […]) (7).    

1984: “A benefit for Casa El Salvador Farabundo Martí”  

“Casa El Salvador Farabundo Martí is a solidarity committee of Salvadoran refugees living in the U.S. Our goals are to inform people about the situation in El Salvador and Central America, to promote friendship with our people, and to discourage U.S. intervention in our country.”  

In December 1984, the Chicago-based, refugee-led organization called Casa El Salvador Farabundo Martí hosted a benefit dinner and invited allies and supporters to “share this season of peace with the people of El Salvador.” El Salvador itself, rather than celebrating a season of peace, was deep in a brutal civil war marked by widespread human rights abuses: far from a conflict confined to fighting between armed factions, the government’s military and paramilitary death squads—trained and funded by the United States government—broadly targeted civilian non-combatants. Meanwhile, only a minuscule portion of refugees fleeing El Salvador were granted asylum in the United States. This combination of domestic U.S. policies, enabled by controversial Cold War rhetoric, sparked passionate peace, solidarity, and anti-intervention movements across the country. A snapshot of those efforts, and the array of allies that were involved in them, are captured in this small poster (MSH/LAT 0120 U.S./Central America Cold War Ephemera Collection).

(If this historical moment and its relationship to “sanctuary” activism is unfamiliar to you, an article published earlier this year in The Conversation is a good place to start reading.)

2001: “Encuentro del Canto Popular”

“A Tribute to 20 Years of Culture and Resistance”

San Francisco’s first annual “Encuentro del Canto Popular” (“Gathering of Popular Song”) was organized by volunteers from the community newspaper El Tecolote in 1982. The event was inspired by the life and legacy of Víctor Jara, a Chilean educator, activist, and singer-songwriter who was one of the founding figures of Chile’s—and, ultimately, Latin America’s—nueva canción (new song). This folkloric genre was imbued with such deep social commitment that it became an international movement (the Smithsonian offers an introduction to la nueva canción in their Folkways series). Jara was kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, and executed by Chile’s military just after the U.S.-backed coup that ousted the democratically-elected president, Salvador Allende, and which began the 17-year military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

Acción Latina, a community organization based in San Francisco’s Mission District that grew out of El Tecolote, took part in U.S.-based protests against Pinochet’s regime (as can be seen in this post from the Bancroft Library, which now preserves a substantial Acción Latina archive), as well as later solidarity movements. The poster featured here was created for the Encuentro’s 20th year, celebrated in 2001 under the stewardship of Acción Latina. Its lineup of musicians from Nicaragua for this “tribute to 20 years of culture and resistance” was a nod to the protest and dissent expressed in both Nicaragua and the United States following the CIA-led formation in 1981 of the Contras (an umbrella organization of anti-Sandinista combatants), a covert project that ultimately culminated in the Iran-Contra Scandal. The musician wearing the symbol of the United Farm Workers on her shirt speaks to solidarity within and between Latino communities.

Previous Hispanic Heritage Month Blog Posts:

Upcoming Events: October 2025

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Drop in to one of this month’s Exhibit Open Houses to meet and speak informally with one of the curators of the fall exhibition, Mapping Global Dante in Translation. Learn how translators, artists, and printers have popularized and reshaped the Divine Comedy over the centuries and across the world and discover the Library’s many Dante editions.

Thursday, October 3, 2:00 – 3:30pm | Exhibit Open House with curator Giulia Maria Gliozzi (Notre Dame, Italian Studies doctoral candidate)

Thursday, October 10, 2:00 – 3:30pm | Exhibit Open House with curator Inha Park (Notre Dame, Italian Studies doctoral candidate)

Thursday, October 17, 2:00 – 3:30pm | Exhibit Open House with curator Salvatore Riolo (Notre Dame, Italian Studies doctoral candidate)

Thursday, October 30 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: Research presentations by 4th-year students in the Italian PhD program (University of Notre Dame) — this year’s speakers are: Elisa Bisson, Inha Park, and Salvatore Riolo.

The Fall 2025 Exhibition | “What through the universe in leaves is scattered”: Mapping Global Dante in Translation

This exhibit traces the global journey of Dante’s masterpiece through rare and valuable printed editions, highlighting how translators, artists, and printers have popularized and reshaped the Commedia. These volumes reveal a dynamic dialogue between Dante’s poetry and the world. A global literary perspective transforms Dante from a monumental yet isolated figure of the European Middle Ages into a central presence in the ongoing international conversation about humanity, the universe, time, eternity, and the power of literature.

This exhibit is curated by Salvatore Riolo (Notre Dame, Italian Studies doctoral candidate), and co-curators Giulia Maria Gliozzi (Notre Dame, Italian Studies doctoral candidate); Inha Park (Notre Dame, Italian Studies doctoral candidate); and Peter Scharer (Yale, Comparative Literature doctoral candidate). Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (Notre Dame) and Jacob Blakesley (Sapienza Università di Roma) served as consultants on the exhibit.

The exhibit is co-sponsored by the Center for Italian Studies and the Devers Program in Dante Studies. This and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment.

The current spotlight exhibits are: Portrait of the Artist as a Dance Fan: Edward Gorey and the New York City Ballet (September-October 2025) curated by Rachel Bohlmann (American History Librarian and Curator)…

…and Bibliomania: The Library of Sir Thomas Phillipps (May-December 2025) curated by Anne Elise Crafton (2024-2025 Rare Books and Special Collections Postdoctoral Research Fellow).

All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours.

RBSC will be open regular hours during the University of Notre Dame Fall Break, October 18 – 26.

Reading the Gay Rodeo Ephemera Collection for Pride Month

by Greg Bond, Sports Archivist and Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection

In observance of LGBTQ Pride Month, Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlight the recently acquired Gay Rodeo Ephemera Collection (MSSP 10128). Containing programs, posters, fliers, and other printed material, the collection documents the history of rodeo organizations and rodeo events by and for LGBTQ people.

Souvenir Program, 2nd Annual Golden State Cowboys Round Up.

One of the earliest organized groups of gay rodeo enthusiasts was the California-based Golden State Cowboys (GSC) founded in 1969. In the introduction to the 1972 Souvenir Rodeo Program for the 2nd Annual Golden State Cowboys Round Up (MSSP 10128-01), GSC President Ernie Wilbanks described the group’s early history and explained the organization’s mission:

“Admittedly, we have had problems and growing pains but we have never lost our self respect and hopefully can become an even greater source of community pride. Without a goal no race is ever won and we believe the same criteria can apply to an organization without a purpose. Our purpose is one of friendship in performing those facets of service to our community that promote the honor and acceptance of our fellow man.”

Images of social events and activities from the Golden State Cowboys 1972 program.

A relatively small social organization for fans of rodeo and rodeo culture, the Golden State Cowboys folded by about 1976. Other organizations soon sprung up in the late 1970s and early 1980s—particularly in Nevada, California, and Colorado—that sponsored some of the first rodeos that explicitly featured and celebrated LGBTQ rodeo participants.

Although originating in the Western United States, organized gay rodeos slowly spread around the country. One of the earlier significant gay rodeos was held in New York City in Madison Square Garden on Saturday, October 1, 1983. Sponsored by the pioneering gay rights organization, Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Inc., the “World’s Toughest Rodeo” was an AIDS Benefit fundraiser (MSSP 10128-002).

The cover of the program for the World’s Toughest Rodeo (left), and page 5 (right) with the following dedication: “We dedicate this special evening to the memory of our many loved ones who have died and to the lovers, families, and friends who have endured these losses. We salute their courageous spirit and extend our continued support. Unity has given us this strength.”

Paul Popham, the President of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Inc., described the purpose of community-building activities like the “World’s Toughest Rodeo” in the program for the event:

“What emerged as a horrifying disease that sapped our physical strength has resulted in newly-found strength in other areas. We have discovered communal strength, spiritual strength, and political strength. We find that we are truly more powerful than we had ever dreamed. By transcending the various social boundaries that kept us apart as strangers, we find that we are not only a nation, but an entire world of brothers, sisters, and friends.

A battle it has been and continues to be. But as we march, in greater numbers, and with greater courage, love, and hope, our victory seems more possible with every step.”

Gay rodeos increased in popularity during the 1980s and 1990s, culminating in the founding of the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) in 1985. The IGRA sponsored the first International Gay Finals Rodeo competition in Hayward, California, in September 1987. RBSC’s Gay Rodeo Ephemera Collection includes a production copy of the poster for the inaugural IGRA championships (MSSP 10128-08-F2).

The collection includes other programs, posters, and pieces of ephemera that demonstrate the proliferation of gay rodeos. The holdings include, for example, a poster for the 1994 12th Annual Rocky Mountain Regional Rodeo sponsored by the Colorado Gay Rodeo Association (MSSP 10128-09-F2) and the program for the 1996 North Star Regional Rodeo and Great Northern Shindig in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, sponsored by the North Star Gay Rodeo Association (MSSP 10128-06). As seen on these two items, the newfound popularity of gay rodeos attracted corporate sponsors that helped to fund these events.

The Gay Rodeo Ephemera Collection is open and available to researchers. RBSC welcomes new donations to expand the contents of this important collection.

For further reading:

Nicholas Villanueva, Rainbow Cattle Co: Liberation, Inclusion, and the History of Gay Rodeo (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004).

Gay Rodeo History: A Project Of The Gay & Lesbian Rodeo Heritage Foundation [website].

Upcoming Events: May 2025 and through the summer

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Tuesday, May 13 at 1:30pm | “Potawatomi in Un/Expected Places: Archives, Stories, and the Native American Initiative of Notre Dame” by Zada Ballew.

Last year, Ballew spent nine months at Hesburgh Library researching on behalf of the Native American Initiative (NAI) of Notre Dame. Her goal was to better understand the role that Indigenous peoples have played in the founding and shaping of Notre Dame’s history. What she found surprised her in ways that she didn’t expect. In this talk, she will share some of the most important findings with the people who helped make this work possible.

Presented by the Professional Development Committee (PDC) of Hesburgh Libraries.

Thursday, May 15 at 3:00pm | Hesburgh Libraries’ 2024-2025 Rare Books and Special Collections Postdoctoral Fellow Anne Elise Crafton (MI PhD ‘24) will discuss the major research and collections project they completed during their postdoc year. Crafton catalogued over 270 previously undescribed medieval and early modern documents in the Hesburgh Libraries’ collection. They will discuss the challenges and discoveries which emerged from the project and reflect on the intensive work of making the hitherto unknown documents accessible for scholars, students, and faculty at Notre Dame and beyond.

There are currently no events scheduled to be hosted in June or July.

The exhibition Tragedies of War: Images of WWII in Print Visual Culture runs through the summer and closes in late July. Learn more about the exhibit in this video, and plan your visit this summer.

The current spotlight exhibit is Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers (January – May 2025). In May, we will install spotlights highlighting Medieval charters (May – August 2025) and Medieval homiletics (May – July 2025) from our collections.

Rare Books and Special Collections is open
regular hours during the summer.

RBSC will be closed Monday, May 26, for Memorial Day and Friday, July 4th, for Independence Day.

Upcoming Events: April 2025

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, April 3 at 4:00pm | Medieval Institute Working Group “The Materiality of Medieval Texts” Lecture: “Workmanly and Truly Made: Everyday Writing and the Materiality of Literature” by Daniel Wakelin (University of Oxford).

Thursday, April 10 at 3:30pm | Exhibit Tour – Tragedies of War: Images of WWII in Print Visual Culture.

Thursday, April 10 at 4:30pm | Exhibit Lecture: “The Fascist Lair: the Battle of Berlin” by Robert M. Citino (retired Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian at the National WWII Museum).

Thursday, April 22 at 3:30pm | Exhibit Tour – Tragedies of War: Images of WWII in Print Visual Culture.

Thursday, April 22 at 4:30pm | Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Program commemorating the victims of Holocaust and featuring a live performance of “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” by Lori Laitman, performed by Anne Slovin (Soprano, University of Notre Dame) and Jason Gresl (Clarinet, Saint Mary’s College).

The Spring 2025 Exhibition — Tragedies of War: Images of World War II in Print Visual Culture — is now open and runs through the end of July. Based predominantly on recently acquired Rare Books and Special Collections European holdings, the exhibition commemorates the end of the Second World War (1939-1945) and will explore a diverse assortment of themes including Fascist Racial Ideology, the Holocaust, Children in War, Resistance, Liberation, and Memories of War.

Curated by Natasha Lyandres (Curator, Rare Books & Special Collections), Jean McManus (Catholic Studies Librarian, University Archives) and Julia Schneider (German Language and Literature and Italian Studies Librarian, Hesburgh Libraries).

The current spotlight exhibit is Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers (January–April 2025). In 1980, the University of Notre Dame became the first major university to boycott Campbell Soup products in support of Midwestern farmworkers represented by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (Toledo, OH). In a few short months, a small and dedicated cohort of students tapped into a growing movement and convinced the campus to act in solidarity.

Curated by Emiliano Aguilar (Assistant Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Latino Studies).

Rare Books and Special Collections will be closed April 18 in observance of Good Friday.

We will resume regular hours on Monday, April 21.

Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers — a spotlight exhibit in Special Collections

This spotlight exhibit and blog post were created in conjunction with Somos ND, a campus-wide initiative to honor the history and legacy of Latino and Hispanic contributions to the University.

Campbell Soup Boycott

By Emiliano Aguilar, PhD, Assistant Professor History, University Of Notre Dame

In 1979, a small cadre of University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College students organized to push a boycott of Campbell Soup and Libby Manufacturing goods on their campuses. The group formed the Notre Dame–Saint Mary’s College Farm Worker Project in February to support the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), a Midwest-based labor union and advocacy group that supported the rights of migrant farm workers. FLOC had initiated a nation-wide boycott campaign earlier that year to convince these major food manufacturers to pressure their suppliers to negotiate with FLOC to improve migrant farm workers’ salaries and labor conditions.

The immediate goal of the Notre Dame–Saint Mary’s College Farm Worker Project was to convince the undergraduate student bodies to pass a campus-wide referendum to join the boycott of both Campbell and Libby on their campuses. To do so, the organizers needed to convince most students to not only vote in favor of the boycott but to also participate in the election at all. While the vote favored the boycott, not enough students chose to vote—bringing the ballot initiative short of the university’s guidelines.

However, the organizers were not dismayed. When the students reconvened for a new semester, they stressed the need to make their classmates aware of both the issue and the impending ballot initiative. Members of the committee plastered the campus with impromptu posters urging their peers to boycott Campbell and Libby products. Donning small buttons urging a boycott of the companies and handing out business cards that listed all the goods included in the boycott, organizers initiated an awareness campaign and voter drive.

The calls for a boycott placed the university at the center of a moral battle between the company and Midwestern farmworkers. With a successful vote, Notre Dame would become the first major university to boycott Campbell and Libby goods in solidarity with FLOC. This potential shift would lead the company to engage in an extensive public relations campaign, including publishing editorials and letters in the campus newspaper, The Observer.

A chief piece of ephemera passed around by campus protesters was “The Farmworker Struggle: A Debate By Letter.” This eight-page pamphlet featured FLOC leader Baldemar Velasquez’s response to letters written by the Director of Customer Service at Campbell Soup, D.Y. Robinson. Within his letter, Robinson stressed that the company did not directly employ farmworkers and was not responsible for the demands leveled by FLOC. Robinson asserted Campbell’s policy that the company “should not and will not inject itself into the labor negotiations between our suppliers and organizations representing the employees of their suppliers.”

Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry Records (CCUM) / University of Notre Dame Archives

While Robinson argued that it would be “impractical” for the company to get involved, Velasquez’s response noted that the company was directly responsible for creating the conditions the migrants labored in – whether it was the field or a canning facility. Velasquez retorted that when the company dictated prices, that “the wages were automatically set for the farmworker, because the growers can afford only a limited amount of overheard.”

As a tool to educate and mobilize, the pamphlet offered not only multiple perspectives in direct conversation with each other but a partial list of supporters and a reprinted card, listing the goods included in the boycott. This pamphlet became one of many entry-ways for campus organizers to educate their peers and the broader community.

Campbell Soup also crafted materials to dissuade the boycott. A contemporary advertisement, for example, invoked the company’s popular “Labels for Education” school fundraising promotional program—as well as its support for Catholic education across the United States—to leverage Campbell’s Catholic identity against FLOC and the increasing support the farmworkers found within the Church. Featuring two young children, the ad hoped to emphasize that the pictured students were both the recipients of the company’s corporate philanthropy and victims of the boycott.

On Monday, February 25, 1980, the Notre Dame–Saint Mary’s referendum passed by a close margin, with exactly half of the campus voting. With 2,012 students in support and 1,321 opposed, Notre Dame began a boycott of Campbell and Libby. As one student organizer proclaimed, “We are not stopping. We are moving into South Bend and across the nation through the Catholic Church and the universities” (“FLOC Referendum Takes Voter Majority,” The Observer Feb. 26, 1980, pp 1, 6). Despite students graduating, the campus maintained the boycott for six years.

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee and its boycott against Campbell Soup, a quintessentially American company, even led to a line in Jesse Jackson’s famous speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1984, “The Rainbow Coalition.” FLOC organizers and activists were on hand with fliers that invoked the company’s iconic can image, relabeling the soup as “Cream of Exploitation.” The reverse side implored delegates to partake in a floor action during Jackson’s speech, holding signs in support for the nearly 2,000 farmworkers on strike in Campbell’s tomato fields.

On February 19, 1986, after seven years of protest, FLOC, the Campbell Soup Company, and their growers, entered into a historic three-way labor contract in Ohio and Michigan—recognizing the union, establishing farmworkers as paid employees, and guaranteeing minimum earnings and benefits.

Tragedies of War: Images of World War II in Print Visual Culture — RBSC 2025 Spring and Summer Exhibition

Rare Books and Special Collections’ spring and summer exhibition, Tragedies of War: Images of World War II in Print Visual Culture, is open and will run through July 31st.

This exhibition commemorates the end of the Second World War (1939-1945). It showcases over forty works on paper, including posters, maps, propaganda ephemera, illustrated books, photographs, and first-hand accounts. Based predominantly on recently acquired Rare Books & Special Collections European holdings, the exhibition explores a diverse assortment of themes ranging from Fascist Racial Ideology, the Holocaust, Children in War, Resistance, Liberation, and Memories of War.

By examining these topics through images created by both ordinary people for personal use and for state-sponsored propaganda purposes, the exhibition presents a visual narrative of the war’s profound impact on individuals and societies, offering deeper insight into how war was experienced and remembered.

Please mark your calendars to join us for:

Monday, March 31, 2025 – 4:30 pm  

Curator-led tour will be offered at 3:30 pm

[CANCELLED] Martina Cucchiara (Professor of History, Bluffton University) will present her lecture, “Fervent Faith, Relentless Persecution: The Daily Life of Erna Becker-Kohen, a Catholic of Jewish Descent in Nazi Germany.” 

Thursday, April 10, 2025 – 4:30 pm 

Curator-led tour will be offered at 3:30 pm

Robert M. Citino (American military historian and the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian at the National WWII Museum) will present his lecture “The Fascist Lair: the Battle of Berlin.”

Tuesday, April 22, 2025 – 4:30 pm 

Curator-led tour will be offered at 3:30 pm

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Program commemorating the victims of Holocaust and featuring a live performance of “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” by Lori Laitman, performed by Anne Slovin (Soprano, University of Notre Dame)  and Jason Gresl  (Clarinet, Saint Mary’s College). This piece features musical settings of texts by children living in the Theresienstadt ghetto.

Following the performance, a discussion on the spiritual resistance of the arts during the Shoah will be led by Philip B. Bohlman (Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Music and Humanities, University of Chicago) and Nicolette van den Bogerd (Postdoctoral scholar in Jewish Studies, Indiana University).  

The exhibition is open in the Rare Books & Special Collections exhibit room, Hesburgh Library, Monday-Friday 9:30am-5:00pm. All events will take place in the main Reading Room.

Curator-led tours and all events are free and no reservations are required.

Exhibition tours may also be arranged for classes and other groups by contacting rarebook@nd.edu.

Discovering Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland

by Matthew Knight, Irish Studies Librarian and Curator

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to showcase this recently-catalogued item, Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland. This journal was published sporadically between 1935-36 by an organization called Na Fianna Éireann—also known as the Boy Scouts of Ireland. The goal of the publication was to rekindle a spirit of patriotism in a new generation of Irish youth. It featured songs, poetry, and prose in English and Irish; biographical sketches of republican heroes and martyrs; patriotic editorials that focused on the glorious past; essays on the joys and benefits of camping; and updates on the various sluaite (troops) across the country. Hesburgh Libraries houses the only complete run of this extremely scarce publication in which, among other things, 13-year-old Brendan Behan saw his first articles in print.

Background

Legendary member of the Fianna, Oisín, tells St. Patrick about the deeds of his father, Fionn Mac Cumhaill. Ua Concheanainn, Tomás. Fianna Éireann. Brún agus Ó Nólláin, n.d.

Na Fianna Éireann was founded in 1909 by Countess Constance Markievicz and Bulmer Hobson to create an Irish nationalist alternative to British uniformed youth groups like the Baden-Powell Boy Scouts (from which the Boy Scouts of America would later be formed). Taking its name from the Fianna, the legendary band of warriors in ancient Irish mythology, the young members of Na Fianna Éireann were provided with both military training and a nationalist education, emphasizing the importance of Irish language, history, and cultural traditions.1 Although generally aged between eight and seventeen years, these boys were prepared, mentally and physically, to make the ultimate sacrifice for Ireland.2

Due to the military nature of Na Fianna Éireann, however, controversies regarding the role of girls in the organization quickly arose. Even though Countess Markievicz, one of Ireland’s most famous woman activists, was a founding member of the Fianna, the annual Ard-Fheis (National Convention) of 1912 voted to make the organization open to boys only.3

RBSC has a copy of the 1924 Fianna Handbook, revised and expanded from the original 1914 version. Special Collections Rare Books Small DA 954 .F53 192

Members of Na Fianna Éireann were also involved in the production and distribution of Irish nationalist publications, including the 1914 Fianna Handbook and a monthly newspaper, Fianna, which first appeared in February 1915 and ran until Easter 1916. British authorities included this work in a list of publications that they considered to be disseminating “seditious propaganda.” Although the publication contained mostly innocuous fiction, poetry, jokes, historical essays, and a monthly column on folklore written in Irish, it is apparent that British authorities were aware of the nationalist undertones of the contents and likely of Na Fianna Éireann itself.4

Detail from page 29. Drill terms in Irish from Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland, 1935. These terms were in use from the time of the founding of Na Fianna Éireann.

Current and former Fianna participated in the 1916 Easter Rising, and the organization later worked alongside the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the Irish War of Independence (1919-21). As with the broader republican movement, Na Fianna Éireann experienced internal divisions over the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, ultimately taking an anti-Treaty stance (Pro-Treaty members having left the group). The ensuing Irish Civil War (1922-23) nearly destroyed Na Fianna Éireann, as membership numbers collapsed, and many leaders and affiliates were killed or imprisoned. After the Civil War, Countess Markiewicz once again revived her beloved organization, though with a fundamental change in philosophy that disassociated the children’s group from any actual military activity. Instead, they became an independent, non-political, civilian group focused on educating and training young boys to be good Irish citizens.5 Theirs, however, was still to be a republican education.

Revival of Fianna

Revitalizing Na Fianna Éireann proved difficult, as the Free State government did not buy into the notion that the group was truly non-political; thus, in 1931, the IRA and the Fianna were declared illegal organizations. Na Fianna Éireann also faced competition from other youth organizations, especially the Catholic Boy Scouts of Ireland founded in 1927, but membership did continue to increase each year. When Éamon de Valera and his Fianna Fáil party gained power in 1932, and freed republican prisoners and suspended the Act proscribing Na Fianna Éireann, membership exploded across the country.

Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland, vol 1., no. 1 (October 1935)

High-ranking officials in the organization decided to revive the Fianna journal for a new generation of youth. With the help of poet Norah O’Kane of Derry, they published the first issue of Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland in October 1935.6 Serving and former members of Na Fianna Éireann who died in the Easter Rising were praised and promoted as role models in historical essays, and contributors like young Brendan Behan provided wonder tales and heroic biographies of their own.

Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland June 1936, page 130; and
Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland, July-August 1936, page 148

Interestingly, despite its continued existence as a boys-only organization, this incarnation of Fianna devoted as much space in its columns to the past and present contributions of women to the nationalist cause, reprinting the works of—and offering tributes to—Rose Kavanagh, Alice Milligan, Countess Markievicz, Anna Johnston (AKA Ethne Carbery) and several others, while issuing regular reports on the activities of Cumann na mBan, Cumann na gCailíní, Cumann na Gael, and Mná na Poblachta. Since one of the leading editors was Norah O’Kane, one might perceive her guidance, and potentially even the primacy of her input, in these choices.7

Detail from Fianna: The Voice of Young Ireland, July-August, 1936, page 137.

Na Fianna Éireann was made illegal in the Free State in the summer of 1936, along with other Republican organizations, and Fianna was shuttered after the July-August issue. The proscription of this journal and its sponsoring organization, along with its association with a children’s cause, may have led to its scarcity in the historical record. Yet, it offers much to researchers interested in the under-studied topics of women’s and children’s contributions to Irish independence. Notre Dame is excited to house this rare publication, and we hope that you will visit Rare Books and Special Collections to see more of this fascinating periodical, and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Women’s History Month at the same time.

 

Footnotes

1. For more information on the history of Na Fianna Éireann see: Marnie Hay, Na Fianna Éireann and the Irish Revolution, 1909-23: Scouting for Rebels. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019.

2. At age eighteen the Fianna would ‘graduate’ into the Irish Volunteers military group or, after 1919, the IRA.

3. Some girls joined the Clann na Gael Girl Scouts, an auxiliary to the Hibernian Rifles. When Cumann na mBan (League of Women) was formed in 1914 as an auxiliary to the Irish Volunteers, many of the young women who joined were former Fianna. It was not until 1930 that Cumann na mBan established their own republican scouting organization for girls, Cumann na gCailíní, or the Irish National Girl Scouts. See: Hay, Na Fianna Éireann, 11-12.

4. The organization later revived the journal Fianna—in 1921 and 1926—but it shuttered after one issue each time.

5. See John R. Watts, “Na Fianna Éireann: A Case Study of a Political Youth Organization,” PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1981. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/1907/

6. Many boys had fathers who served in the British army during WWI, so it was necessary to indoctrinate them into the republican cause. For more on the editors of Fianna see: S.G. O’Kelly, “I Knew the Real Brendan Behan,” in Irish Digest, vol. 78, No. 12, 1964, 67-70.

7. Note the masthead, unlike previous iterations of the journal, depicts a girl opposite a young boy scout. Also, the inclusion of all women’s groups is especially interesting, as Mná na Poblachta had recently split from Cumann na mBan on political lines. This lack of an editorial preference for which group to highlight in its pages is telling. The Fianna were still referring to Cumann na gCailíní as their female counterpart in 1964 and finally began to accept girls as members in 1968–69.

Previous St. Patrick’s Day Blog Posts:

2022: The Breastplate of Saint Patrick — Thomas Kinsella and the Dolmen Press
2021: Competing with Finian’s Rainbow
2020: St. Patrick’s Day Postcards
2019: St. Patrick and the Nun of Kenmare
2018: St. Patrick’s Day in America, 1872

Women’s History Month 2025

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history by celebrating Women’s History Month.

The First Women’s Political Party

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator

Rare Books and Special Collections recently acquired a small collection of mostly printed materials of the National Woman’s Party (NWP) and its short-lived precursor, the Congressional Union (CU). Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, CU’s founders, believed the mainstream National American Woman Suffrage Association’s methods were neither effective nor aggressive enough. Paul and Burns engaged in militant (non-violent) protest—like picketing the White House—to bring attention to women’s suffrage. By 1916 the NWP had formed in states where women had won the right to vote. It was the first women’s political party and had a single plank: immediate passage of a suffrage amendment to the Constitution.

After passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, the NWP turned to campaigns for women’s full and equal rights at home and abroad. The party championed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution and opposed any legislation that constrained women’s choices in the labor market.

“The Woman’s Party and the Minimum Wage for Women” flyer, circa 1923.

Protective labor legislation, put into place beginning in the first decade of the twentieth century, safeguarded women from exploitative working conditions. The NWP argued that by restricting the number of hours a woman could work, for example, these laws kept women from competing for the better-paying positions held by men, whose hours were not restricted. Although these arguments did not make much headway during the 1920s, by the 1930s and after World War II, as the job market and women’s place in it changed, the NWP’s campaigns helped dismantle gender-based restrictions on women’s labor. 

“Feminist Leaders From Other Lands Conferring At Woman’s Party Headquarters,” Equal Rights, 1924.
Equal Rights, 1937.
The NWP’s international focus.

The NWP also stressed the importance of creating international ties among women and raising the status of women everywhere. The party formed an international organization and worked for gender equality in the League of Nations and later, the United Nations. The 1937 issue shown here, for example, included news and reports on women from Ireland, the Philippines, Mexico, and in the legal codes of Hinduism and Vedicism, in addition to the United States.

The NWP gained some political traction for the ERA in the immediate postwar period, bringing the amendment to a vote in the Senate in 1946. Ultimately, however, the party was unable to secure the measure’s passage. In a notable political success, the NWP helped ensure that the wording of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin) included women in its purview. The NWP operated as a political action committee until 1997.

“Equal Rights Amendment Reaches Vote In Senate, July 19, 1946,” Equal Rights, 1946.

Always a small vanguard of feminist women, the NWP’s forceful tactics and focus on women’s equality in the United States and around the world made it one of the most important political and social organizations of the twentieth century. 

This collection holds a variety of printed formats: flyers, pamphlets, brochures, programs, a publicity photograph, and a long, although incomplete, run of the NWP’s magazine, Equal Rights—from 1924 to 1951. While the magazine is partially available online (see the Hathi Trust catalog record), access to physical copies in RBSC enhances researchers’ experience of these records. 

Previous Women’s History Month Blog Posts:

2024: Second-Wave Feminist Articles from an Underground Newspaper
2023: Women for Peace and Disarmament
2022: The Feminine “Math-tique”
2021: Writing to Rehabilitate in the House of Detention for Women in New York City
2020: Mary Taussig Hall and Social Reform
2017: A Woman’s Sardonic Eye

Upcoming Events: March 2025

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections:

Thursday, March 6 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: M.A. Student Presentations (University of Notre Dame) — This semester’s speakers are: Samantha Civitarese and Carolina Minguzzi.

Friday, March 28 at 5:00pm | Faith in Action: Solidarity with Regional Migrant Farmworkers — view the RBSC Spotlight Exhibit, “Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers,” and join a robust conversation afterward with curator Dr. Emiliano Aguilar (Assistant Professor in the Department of History). After viewing the exhibit, visitors will gather in room 125 for refreshments and discussion.

Monday, March 31 at 3:30pm | Exhibit Tour – Tragedies of War: Images of WWII in Print Visual Culture.

CANCELLED: Monday, March 31 at 4:30pm | Exhibit Lecture: “Fervent Faith, Relentless Persecution: The Daily Life of Erna Becker-Kohen, a Catholic of Jewish Descent in Nazi Germany” by Martina Cucchiara (Bluffton University). This event has been canceled. We apologize for the inconvenience. We will have the exhibit tour still.

The Spring 2025 Exhibition — Tragedies of War: Images of World War II in Print Visual Culture — will open shortly and runs through the end of July 2025. Based predominantly on recently acquired Rare Books and Special Collections European holdings, the exhibition commemorates the end of the Second World War (1939-1945) and will explore a diverse assortment of themes including Fascist Racial Ideology, the Holocaust, Children in War, Resistance, Liberation, and Memories of War.

Curated by Natasha Lyandres (Curator, Rare Books & Special Collections), Jean McManus (Catholic Studies Librarian, University Archives) and Julia Schneider (German Language and Literature and Italian Studies Librarian, Hesburgh Libraries).

The current spotlight exhibit is Building a Campus Boycott to Support Midwestern Farmworkers (January–April 2025). In 1980, the University of Notre Dame became the first major university to boycott Campbell Soup products in support of Midwestern farmworkers represented by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (Toledo, OH). In a few short months, a small and dedicated cohort of students tapped into a growing movement and convinced the campus to act in solidarity.

Curated by Emiliano Aguilar (Assistant Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Latino Studies).

Special Collections is open regular hours during Notre Dame’s Spring Break (March 10-14).