Both groups of people suffered discrimination in the allocation of houses. In America and in Northern Ireland, civil rights protesters demanded fair allocation of houses.
In Northern Ireland and in the United States, Catholics and Negroes alike suffered from police brutality. In Northern Ireland, civil rights protesters called for an end to this. The B’ Specials were largely responsible for such acts. This was a part time police force consisting entirely of Protestants. As a result, Catholics suffered. In the USA, police officers regularly discriminated against blacks. The American Blacks Civil Rights Movement demanded an end to this as in Northern Ireland. A difference was that in Northern Ireland, they called for the disbandment of the B’ Specials. However, in America, they just called for an impartial police force. They didn’t demand the disbandment of any part of it.
In both countries, Catholics and blacks were heavily discriminated against in employment. In job advertisements, such things were said as, “Catholics need not apply.” Both movements saw that this needed to be changed, so they called for an end to discrimination in employment.
Discrimination happened so obviously and caused so much damage that both the Irish Civil Rights Movement and the American Blacks Civil Rights Movement demanded that in each country, a body was set up to investigate claims of discrimination.
Some of the demands of both movements were slightly different. In America, blacks demanded an end to segregation laws in the southern states (Jim Crow Laws). The Irish Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland didn’t call for such laws to be abolished because they didn’t exist. Although Catholics often lived separated in ghettos, it was not law for them to do so. Catholics demanded that the Special Powers Act (Orange Law) was abolished. This was an act despised by Catholics as it was often used against them. It could be used to intern suspects without trial and to search a house without a warrant.
Also, both groups wanted protection - Catholics from loyalist paramilitaries, and blacks from the Ku Klux Klan.
In conclusion, although both civil rights movements were happening in different parts of the globe, they were very similar. They demanded similar things in their struggle to gain equality.
