There is a remarkable institution in New York that is about to turn its attention to Ireland. It is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, which has begun its painstaking reconstruction of the life of the Moore family.
The Tenement Museum occupies an intact former tenement building on Orchard Street in which it recreates the lives of a variety of immigrant families who lived in the building at various stages over the past 150 years.
The Moores, who lived in the building in 1869, represent one of their most ambitious projects. Joseph Moore was from Dublin, and left for New York at the age of 20. He married Bridget Meehan, also Irish. They lived down the hall from the Kennedys, the Dineens and the Sullivans. Their other neighbours were German, Italian and eastern European.
The Moores' tenement flat is being recreated exactly as it was in 1869, with the help of their descendents, who have been able to provide photographs of the family. One of the issues which the museum will highlight through its Irish family is that of public health, concentrating on childbirth and babies. Seven of the family's nine children died in infancy from a variety of diseases. Bridget herself died in childbirth at the age of only 36.
The Tenement Museum is firmly focused on the idea "the usable past" - its stated mission is to "promote tolerance and historical perspective through the presentation and interpretation of the variety of immigrant and migrant experience" in New York.
It is striking to read about the Moore family in the context of the debate on citizenship and immigration in this country at the moment. Issues of public health arose last week in this context, with the Dublin maternity hospitals highlighting the issue of HIV-positive mothers in their wards, many of whom are non-nationals. Great credit is due to the staff of these hospitals for their life-saving work with these patients, whose numbers we should be seeking to increase, regardless of the result of the citizenship referendum.
Joe and Bridget Moore struggled for their existence at a time when Irish immigrants experienced widespread racism across the US. The American Nativist movement was powerful at the time, with its slogan of "America for the Americans" widely proclaimed. The Nativists repeatedly expressed the danger of being swamped by immigrants, and specifically targeted the Irish as one of the largest ethnic groups entering the country at the time. Violent racist attacks were not uncommon.
Again, the echoes are strong. The National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism in Ireland has recorded a number of racist attacks on non-nationals in Ireland over the past few years. It highlighted an increase in racist incidents around the time of the Supreme Court ruling last year that non-national parents of babies born here had no entitlement to remain in Ireland. Pregnant black women were singled out for abuse, and ironically in two of the incidents, those targeted were actually Irish born and bred.
By far the most serious spate of racist attacks recently has been in Belfast. Earlier this year, a number of pregnant women and some with tiny babies were targeted. There were several incidents of intimidation, and about a dozen actual assaults.
In one case a Chinese woman, nine months pregnant, was attacked in the street. Her husband, who was with her, sustained a fractured skull. In another incident, two tiny new-born twins were attacked and beaten. They were Irish citizens. Their mother, who was also assaulted, was Nigerian. Their attackers on the streets of Belfast had full entitlement to Irish citizenship.
What is so alarming about these attacks is the specific targeting of pregnant women and babies. They appear to stem from a view that immigrants are threatening livelihoods, benefits and jobs of people in south Belfast, with one local publicly describing foreign women as "baby factories" earlier this year. While nothing as serious has been reported in the Republic so far, there is little room for complacency.
Some weeks ago, I received in the post a copy of one of my previous columns for this newspaper, carefully cut out and smeared with excrement. What was disturbing was that the column in question had dealt critically with the Government's citizenship referendum, and specifically with the misinformation surrounding figures for non-national births in maternity hospitals.
While my experience is insignificant in comparison to that of the pregnant women attacked in Belfast, I wondered whether I was unique in receiving such an unpleasant missive. I discovered that I was not. Others have been sent similarly smeared items, but there was a general feeling that it was best to ignore them as the manifestations of disturbed minds.
However, as we prepare to vote on who is and is not entitled to be Irish, I believe it is important that we be aware that there exist among us people who are driven by a visceral hatred of those of a different race. And further, that some are clearly prepared to act on this hatred.