America tells the Irish immigrant story as resilience. It rarely tells it as colonization, starvation, and exclusion. During the Great Famine, Ireland wasn’t “short on food.” Food was exported under British rule while over one million Irish people starved and another million were forced to flee. When they arrived in America, Irish immigrants weren’t welcomed — they were despised. “No Irish Need Apply” signs were real. Newspapers portrayed the Irish as violent, drunk, lazy, and biologically infer