Our original campaign raised €24,000, which was enough to do all the tour filming. We now need a further €21,000, or approximately $25,000, to pay for filming in Ireland, editing and gathering archive material. Our new target is thus €45,000, which we hope to raise by donations and in Ireland so that the film can be produced in 2018, the centenary of Hanna’s return to Ireland and of women getting the vote. You can donate in dollars, pounds or euros.  Thank you!​

A new message from Micheline:

“The tour was a great success, thanks to all the donors’ generosity in making the filming possible. Joanna filmed me on board the liner Queen Mary 2 and Eddie captured my arrival into Brooklyn. The immediate highlights were filming in the archives section of Carnegie Hall -where I learned that Hanna spoke a second time – on March 31st 1918 – and on Ellis Island where I discovered Hanna never set foot, as only 3rd class passengers were sent there for further processing. But it was very moving to stand in the very hall where so many of the Irish diaspora – many of whom were to come and hear her speeches – were vetted for admission to the US. We were shown the original ship’s manifest listing Hanna and Owen’s false names: Mrs Mary and Master Eugene Gribben.

Before attending the iBAM! (Irish Arts Books & Music festival) in Chicago, we tracked down the graves of two feminist /socialist friends of Hanna’s in the Forest Home Cemetery there. These were Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, of Irish descent, who was in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and Emma Goldman who was one of the first to visit Hanna after her arrival in New York. Hanna was to speak publicly in support of another IWW affiliate, Tom Mooney, in San Francisco in 1918 that may have lost her some of her massive support in that city. It was then that she decided to turn for home. So I also explore on film Hanna’s association with feminist and socialist movements of the time, as well as the huge Irish activism of the time.

Right now, Sé Merry Doyle of Loopline films is putting together a 10-minute clip of the early part of my tour in order to apply for funds from Irish national tv RTÉ and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. We hope to be able to give a preview of this when it is ready. But for now, any funds we can raise ourselves will help guarantee that the documentary will be produced to the best of quality. So please help if you can.”

Here's what Micheline set out to do before starting her tour:

 

 

“This autumn, 100 years on, I am retracing my grandmother, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington’s epic lecture tour of the US. This tour was so important for Ireland’s fight for independence, yet has largely been forgotten today. I want to publicise what she did by making a documentary of my trip. I will spend three months speaking in the places she visited and, like her, my tour is being funded by the organisations and communities that host me. But I also want to film the tour, and the people I encounter and places I visit to provide footage for the making of a documentary about Hanna on my return in November 2017. To do bring this to fruition, I need your support. 

This tour will make for a thought-provoking and revealing documentary film because Hanna’s own story, the challenging of authorities, and the people and ideas she encountered in the US, continue to be relevant to us today.

Hanna’s prime motivation to go to America was to tell how her husband, Francis Sheehy Skeffington, had been shot without trial in Portobello Barracks, Dublin during Easter Week 1916. She had met British Prime Minister Asquith in London to demand a full public inquiry. Instead, he offered her £10,000 ‘hush money’ (€750,000 today) which she refused. When the ensuing enquiry proved a travesty, Hanna resolved to go to the US and ‘tell the truth and nothing but the truth’ about what happened to her husband and to the Irish people at the hands of the British. Giving the authorities the slip, she sailed from Glasgow with her seven year-old son, Owen (my father), using false passports.

A century later, I am recreating that tour, sailing this autumn into New York as she did. I will locate their names registered at Ellis Island and visit Carnegie Hall, which she filled at her first engagement in January 1917. I am speaking about her in cities where she also spoke, like New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco. I am travelling by train, as she did, wherever I can, and I’ll go to the train station where British agents attempted to abduct her across the border into Canada so they could arrest her.

I will visit venues she spoke which still exist today like the Fanueil Hall in Boston and Orchestra Hall in Chicago and go to smaller cities and towns, like Butte, Montana which still has a vibrant Irish community and a collective memory of her visit.

And of course I will visit places associated with her more radical friends, such as feminists Jane Adams, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Emma Goldman. We are seeking funding both for the filming of the tour but also for the eventual making of the documentary so it can weave the thread between Hanna’s epic journey then, Irish-Americans today, and Hanna’s suffrage activity in Ireland. We hope to have this broadcast during 2018, the anniversary of Irish women getting the vote – which happened because of the actions of suffragettes like Hanna.

Hanna’s epic eighteen-month journey, undertaken as a leap of faith, when newly widowed and travelling with her young son, was incredibly courageous. I hope you can help us to honour her courage and give due recognition to what she did both for Ireland as well as for Irish women".

Funding 

The money we have already raised through crowdfunding is covering the costs of filming some of the highlights of Micheline's journey, for equipment, film crew time and associated travel. As we receive more donations, we can film other important parts of the tour. Then, if we receive enough, we can also contribute to the next stage of the film’s production back in Ireland.

To make a donation, simply press the BACK IT button. 

If you feel you can't contribute financially, we would still appreciate your help in getting the word out and sharing information about our crowdfunding among your friends, colleagues and networks. You can use the Indiegogo share tools, or via Facebook, Twitter or email.

About Micheline 

Dr Micheline Sheehy Skeffington is a plant ecologist with an interest in terrestrial ecosystems, especially wetlands including turloughs, peatlands, heathlands, river flood-meadows and salt marshes.  Interests also include sustainable agriculture in the tropics, with publications on Indonesian and Cuban sustainable forest and agricultural management.  Most of her academic work has been concerned with protecting the wonderful wildlife habitats of the west of Ireland. She and her students have worked on over-grazing in the uplands, the flora of the Burren and how to protect it, the wetland grasslands of the Shannon callows and how to put right recent damaging changes, and turloughs which are fascinating temporary lakes nearly unique to the limestone of western Ireland. She has been on The Heritage Council, and has chaired its Wildlife Committee as well as numerous other appointments.

Micheline's Campaign

Micheline took an equality case against her employers, NUI Galway in 2009 which she won. The University had not promoted her from Junior Lecturer to Senior Lecturer for twenty-four years. In the promotion round of 2008/09, only one out of 17 successful candidates was a woman even though more than 52% of Junior Lecturers were women. Her win was the first by any female academic in Ireland or the UK proving gender discrimination in promotion. It resulted in extensive media coverage which was then doubled when she announced she was offering her €70,000 award to the five other women who were shortlisted and not promoted in that round so they could take High Court actions, as they were by then out of time to go to the Irish Equality Tribunal.

Ever since Micheline has been campaigning both for the five women and to highlight the atrocious promotion prospects for women in Irish Universities and colleges. One European report showed that only Malta was worse in Europe. 

Micheline’s campaign has resulted in her university, NUI Galway, adopting a quota system for all future promotion rounds, mandatory numbers for women for all boards and committees and the creation of the new post of Vice President for Equality to ensure the changes are adopted. The Irish Higher Education Authority set up an inquiry and has now made future grant funding dependent on universities improving the promotion prospects for women.  However the five other academic women who were not promoted in 2009 have still not been promoted by NUI Galway and Micheline continues to support their fight.

This short promotion video, made by Eddie Mularkey who will be filming the tour, was for a recent demo at the Irish High Court in Dublin. It includes footage from a benefit concert the campaign organised in Galway, the interrogation of NUI Galway president by the government Public Accounts Committee based on info from Micheline’s campaign, television news footage about her original win, plus a fabulous diatribe against the university by Tommy Tiernan, a famous Irish comic. Check it out!

 

The Team

Dr Joanna McMinn 

A previous CEO of the National Women's Council of Ireland, and Board member of Hanna's House, an all-Ireland feminist network inspired by Hanna and Frank Sheehy Skeffington, Joanna is helping organise the tour, with logistics and research; traveling with the film crew as a producer, sound recording, and doing all of this for expenses only.

Eddie Mullarkey

Eddie Mullarkey started out writing, directing and acting in plays at NUIG Dramsoc and went on to do an MA in Acting with Contemporary and Classical Text at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Presently he works with Ishkafilms as a producer and writer.

 Eddie made the excellent promotion videos for the campaign such as the one above. He will be both cameraman and director for the US filming, and working with an independent production company to complete the documentary on our return to Ireland.

What the money will be used for

The initial €21,000 raised has paid for the two of us to fly to the US for two key parts of Micheline’s tour. Micheline’s arrival in New York by boat, and the first part of the tour, which includes New York, -Ellis Island, Carnegie Hall-, Boston, - Harvard and the railway station where reports say the British agents tried to abduct Hanna - and other important lectures and events. Later we are filming in Chicago, where Micheline will be a star turn in a large Irish American festival, and the Mid West including Butte, Montana. The money is paying for the train rides, and other transport, accommodation in Airbnb and other expenses. In addition we will hire local camera and sound people to supplement Eddie for important events where two angles are needed.

Further donations we have since received on this site will pay for filming other parts of the tour, such as Rochester NY, en route to Buffalo NY where we now think the attempted abduction of Hanna took place. We will also film Micheline’s visit to the West Coast at the end of her tour in November, particularly San Francisco, where Hanna’s own 18 month tour finally started to unwind, and we will explore how that happened.

What next with the documentary.

We are now working with Sé Merry Doyle of Loopline, an independent film company based in Dublin. Sé was the director for Loopline's excellent documentary about another famous Irish feminist, Kathleen Lynn – Rebel doctor.  (http://ifiplayer.ie/kathleen-lynn-the-rebel-doctor/).

The film will be produced by experienced film maker Margo Harkin, best known for her feature drama Hush-A-Bye Baby and feature documentary Bloody Sunday – A Derry Diary. The team will use the footage we bring back from the US, along with achieve film they will find through research and film recorded in Ireland about the rest of Hanna's life.

Finding out more

Micheline’s tour has its own Facebook page Hannas Us Tour which will have updates on the preparations and then from the tour ((https://www.facebook.com/hannasUStour/)

Micheline is on twitter and will tweet from the US throughout her tour (https://twitter.com/michelineshsk

The campaign Micheline's Three Conditions has an excellent web page run by supporters. (https://michelinesthreeconditions.wordpress.com/)