Savannah, Georgia's oldest city, is planning a supersized celebration as it marks the 200th anniversary of its beloved St. Patrick's Day parade.
FILE - Participants carry flags past the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist while marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade, March 17, 2023, in historic downtown Savannah, Ga. Savannah, Georgia's oldest city, is planning a supersized celebration as it marks the 200th anniversary of its beloved St. Patrick's Day parade. City Manager Jay Melder says he's expecting historic crowds for the Irish-themed parade Saturday, March 16, 2024.
Over the past two centuries, St. Patrick's Day in Savannah has morphed into perhaps the South's biggest street party between Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Florida's raucous spring break.Founded as a nondenominational charity to assist poor Irish immigrants, the Hibernian Society of Savannah had an important day planned on March 17, 1824.
Afterward, the Irish society marched back to the hotel, where the bishop joined about 80 members for an evening banquet marked by a steady stream of toasts, said Howard Keeley, director of the Center for Irish Research and Teaching at Georgia Southern University. Savannah's celebration grew along with its Irish population. Laborers from Ireland settled in the Southern port city in the 1830s to help build railroads and canals. In the 1840s, the potato famine in Ireland drove as many as 2 million immigrants to U.S. shores, causing Savannah's Irish-born population to double, Keeley said.
And following the 1888 celebration, a newspaper reported that Savannah officials had ordered businesses to close for a day because"the city is agitated by Sunday cocktails.”Tim Mahoney, chairman of the parade's organizing committee, recalled that when his father held the same post in 1969, the parade got planned “on somebody's dining room table” and was pulled together from high school bands, locally based military units and Savannah's Irish families.
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