1927 October 14

Irish-American Groups Seek Ban on Films That Offend Racial or Religious Groups

 

Leaders of Irish-American groups in New York City on this day demanded a city ordinance that would empower officials to revoke the license of any film that “maligns, ridicules, or gives offense to any racial or religious group.”

The campaign referred specifically to recent films “The Callahans and the Murphys” and “The Shamrock and the Rose.” One Jewish leader also spoke in favor of the proposed ordinance. Representatives of the motion picture industry, however, did not appear at the hearing before the General Welfare Committee of the Board of Alderman.

As this incident indicates, in the 1920s Irish-Catholic Americans advocated movie censorship to protect themselves from religious and ethnic slurs. By the 1930s, the Catholic Church became the leading pressure group advocating movie censorship primarily because of the expression of sexuality in the movies. See the infamous 1934 Motion Picture Production Code (June 13, 1934).

Learn more at a timeline on movie censorship: https://www.aclu.org/files/multimedia/censorshiptimeline.html

Read: Jennifer Nugent Duffy, Whose Your Paddy? Racial Expectations and the Struggle for Irish American Identity (2014)

Learn more: Frank Walsh, Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry (1996)

 

Find a Day

Go
Abortion Rights ACLU african-americans Alice Paul anti-communism Anti-Communist Hysteria Birth Control Brown v. Board of Education Censorship CIA Civil Rights Civil Rights Act of 1964 Cold War Espionage Act FBI First Amendment Fourteenth Amendment freedom of speech Free Speech Gay Rights Hate Speech homosexuality Hoover, J. Edgar HUAC Japanese American Internment King, Dr. Martin Luther Ku Klux Klan Labor Unions Lesbian and Gay Rights Loyalty Oaths McCarthy, Sen. Joe New York Times Obscenity Police Misconduct Same-Sex Marriage Separation of Church and State Sex Discrimination Smith Act Spying Spying on Americans Vietnam War Voting Rights Voting Rights Act of 1965 War on Terror Watergate White House Women's Rights Women's Suffrage World War I World War II Relocation Camps

Topics

Tell Us What You Think

We want to hear your comments, criticisms and suggestions!