On This Day: Easter Rising leader Thomas Clarke was executed
On This Day: Easter Rising leader Thomas Clarke was executed
The moments that defined Thomas Clarke s life and why he is such an important figure in Irish history
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Thomas Clarke, a key member of the Irish revolutionary and a leader of the 1916 Easter Rising. was among the rebel leaders executed on May 3, 1916.
Thomas J. Clarke was born in 1858 on the Isle of Wight but grew up in County Tyrone.
At age 20 he joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and his career as an indefatigable Irish revolutionary began. After a skirmish with police, he was forced to flee to America where he became a citizen of the United States in the City of Brooklyn in 1883. (He was the only American citizen involved in the 1916 Rising executed by the British.)
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Thomas Clarke was the only U.S. citizen to be executed as a result of the 1916 Easter Rising - the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798.
“Clarke spent a good deal of time in America,” said journalist and historian Dermot McEvoy, “and he eventually became a citizen.”
Clarke is considered the real leader of the 1916 Easter Rising, despite his quiet somewhat meek persona.
“Padraig Pearse was the front man because he liked to make speeches,” McEvoy said. “Clarke worked behind the scenes. He was the man who organized everything.”
The six-day Rising took place during Easter Week 1916 against British rule after members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood Military Council (IRBMC), the Irish Volunteer Force, and the Irish Citizen Army successfully took over pre-selected buildings around Dublin with little resistance.
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In April 1916, the front pages of America’s newspapers were dominated by headlines about the war on Europe’s western front, where the German and French armies were battling at Verdun, and by reports of German American opposition to President Wilson’s re-election campaign. Then, on Tuesday morning, the 25th, came news of the capture of a German ship that had tried to land arms on Ireland’s west coast, and the arrest of Sir Roger Casement, a retired diplomat. “Daring Invasion of Ireland by Germans Fails,” screamed the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. Partisan passions about World War I were running high in the United States, and pro-British papers like The New York Times were quick to circulate the “official” announcement calling Casement “mentally unbalanced,” and the Irish news nothing more than a “madcap adventure.”