Black and Green: The Fight For Civil Rights in Northern Ireland & Black America

‘An excellent book.’ Irish Voice (New York)

'Focusing on the period from the 1960s onward, Brian Dooley suggests that the black rights struggle in the US had a formative influence on Northern Ireland's civil rights movement which adopted similar tactics of protest marches and sit-ins ... A well researched book, written from an unusual angle that illuminates this understudied international influence on the Ulster conflict' Political Studies

Ties between political activists in Black America and Ireland span several centuries, from the days of the slave trade to the close links between Frederick Douglass and Daniel O’Connell, and between Marcus Garvey and Eamon de Valera. This timely book traces those historic links and examines how the struggle for black civil rights in America in the 1960s helped shape the campaign against discrimination in Northern Ireland. The author includes interviews with key figures such as Angela Davis, Bernadette McAliskey and Eamonn McCann.

Brian Dooley is Senior Advisor at Washington DC–based NGO Human Rights First. From April 2020 to March 2023 he was Senior Advisor to Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders. He is the author of a critical study of Robert Kennedy, published by Keele University Press in 1995. He has worked for the BBC in Africa and for Amnesty International.