Margie Bernard

Daughter of Derry: the Story of Brigid Sheils Makowski Margie Bernard

When seeking attention to overlooked injustices, you must do something bold. Or just sit down.

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.

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.

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.

This remarkable woman's story is for those seeking to unravel past and present complexities of Irish politics.