[higgmeister]

It's pretty hard for me to accept anti-Catholic bias existed in Massachusetts given the huge Irish and Italian populations.

You have to be kidding....there was a hatred for Catholics and especially Irish Catholics in Massachusetts to the point where jobs ads were posted with "no Irish need apply" in newspapers and at the hiring companies.

Research the "No Nothings." They amended the Massachusetts constitution...and their anti Catholic poison is still there.

Don't forget the Catholic Portuguese that settled en masse on the coast of Massachusetts. They were treated like flotsam and jetsam that came in on the waves until people like "Emeril Lagasse" and "Meredith Vieira" rehabilitated Northeastern Portuguese prestige.

[Sherman Logan]

jobs ads were posted with "no Irish need apply" in newspapers and at the hiring companies.

A historian recently researched it and could find almost no contemporary evidence for it ever happening. Less than ten examples in tens of thousands of newspapers he reviewed over decades.

But many thousands of Irish "remembered" it vividly.

http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm