Close proximity, and a unique and significant pattern of intermarriage between immigrant Irish women and African American men within the Eighth Ward in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War and the Draft Riots, indicates the possibility of a much greater level of interracial stability and intimacy than has been presumed in discourses about Irish and Black relations during this period in New York and, indeed, in the United States.
Graham Hodges is the George Dorland Langdon Jr. Professor of History at Colgate University and has written extensively about the Irish and African American experience.