Daughter of Derry

When seeking attention to overlooked injustices you must do something bold. Or just sit down.<p> Brigid Sheils Makowski chose to sit and it worked. In 1970 her week-long sit-in with her five children at the British Consulate in Philadelphia ended media silence about British Army killing unarmed civilians in Belfast. <p>That political protest is one of many recounted by this Bogside-born Derry woman whose father fought in the original IRA against British colonization and its partition of Ireland. At eighteen she went to Philadelphia to marry Polish-American Leo Makowski. She recounts adjustment to his family his country and her increased politicization during Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement to abolish segregation.<p> Brigid participated in the 1968 Derry Civil Rights March-catalyst for renewed efforts to achieve a united Ireland rigorously resisted by both British and Irish governments. A year later she persuaded Leo to move to Shannon where she served twenty-five-years as an elected Town Commissioner. A founder of the Irish Republican Socialist Party her resignation when new leadership changed political objectives resulted in death threats.<p> This remarkable woman's story is for those seeking to unravel past and present complexities of Irish politics.