Inside prison walls the color line failed to separate Irish and Black laborers

Evidence

This chapter has looked at prisoner activity as a form of working-class revolt. In the larger society, while Afro-American and Irish-American workers often, and quite militantly, opposed established authority, they rarely collaborated to do so; yet that collaboration was common among the prisoners in the Walnut Street Jail. What accounted for the difference? Put another way, what forces that prevented proletarians in other situations from coming together failed to operate on the prisoners in the Walnut Street Jail? — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 170

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated purpose: here is the control condition proving anti-Black racial solidarity among free Irish workers was a choice, since imprisoned Irish and Black workers did cooperate.