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“Mr. Hume says Northern Ireland is too complicated to reduce to a Yes/No proposition,” Ted Smyth said to me. Fall 1976. I’m an Associate Producer at Good Morning, America and Ted’s the Press Secretary for the Irish Embassy. We didn’t realize how young we were – Ted wasn’t 30; I was 31 and John Hume hadn’t turned 40.“But,” I said, “this would be his chance to reach millions of Americans who have never heard of him. Tell him we just beat the Today Show in ratings.”Ted had pitched John Hume to me as the leader of the Martin Luther King inspired Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland the voice of Irish constitutional nationalism. Like most Irish Americans I was sympathetic to the Catholics of the North, had been horrified by Bloody Sunday and hoped for a united Ireland but hesitated to support the violence of an armed struggle. Here was an alternative.

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