In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, UNMC Today has highlighted the life and times of Irish Americans. The four-part series ends today with two Irish Americans, whose contributions influenced women’s rights and medicine.
Contributions of Irish Americans to America and the World
Kate Kennedy
Irish women also headed West during the gold rush. One notable example was Kate Kennedy (1827-90). Born in Meath, she fled the famine with her sisters and went to New York. Tales of California gold enticed them, so they headed West to pursue new lives for themselves.
Kennedy began teaching in San Francisco in 1857. When she was promoted to the position of principal in 1867, she was assigned a salary lower than that of her male counterparts. In response, she waged a campaign to end the practice of paying women less than men for equivalent work. As a result of her efforts, the California legislature passed an anti-discrimination law in 1874, ensuring equal pay for women.
Word of Kennedy’s success reached famed women’s right activists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton who later honored her with a visit. In the years that followed, Kennedy became active in San Francisco’s labor movement, joining the Knights of Labor and speaking frequently at labor rallies. She won a second court battle (and $5,000 in back pay) in the late 1880s when she successfully contested her demotion to a lesser job.
Joseph E. Murray
Joseph E. Murray (b. 1919) originally trained as a plastic surgeon. But the Milford, Massachusetts native gradually became interested in developing a treatment for kidney failure.
In 1954 at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital (today’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital), Murray performed the first human kidney transplant. He chose to do the operation with identical twins so as to minimize the chances that the recipient’s body would reject the organ.
The success of the initial operation led Murray to study the effects of immunosuppressant drugs that would allow for transplants between unrelated people. His path-breaking research made Murray a co-recipient of the 1990 Nobel Prize in medicine.
Taken from “1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Irish American History” by Edward T. O’Donnell.