I’m black-Irish and proud of it
Rachael Rollins features in riveting crime docuseries Trial 4. Niamh Walsh talks to the US social justice warrior eager to effect change
IF ANYONE personifies the spirit of the ‘fighting Irish’ in America, it is the district attorney of Suffolk County in Massachusetts, Rachael Rollins. The daughter of a secondgeneration Irish Vietnam War veteran, DA Rollins’s roots lie in Mayo – but across the pond she is packing a powerful political punch in Boston. She recently came to global attention after featuring in the gripping new Netflix crime docuseries, Trial 4.
The series focuses on Sean Ellis, a black Boston native, who in
1995 was wrongly convicted of murdering Boston detective John Mulligan during an armed robbery, but that decision was overturned in 2015.
Ellis was released in 2018 after 22 years behind bars, and the case was dropped amid revelations of police misconduct and corruption.
Where does DA Rollins fit into all of this? Well, here is a little background...
Just over two years ago, Rollins, a former prosecutor, decided to enter the political fray and run for the elected office as district attorney.
At the outset, the odds seemed stacked against the 5ft 3in lawyer, who at 46 was considered an outsider and career late-comer in the race for office. But Rollins ran rings around her more seasoned competitors and she won a landslide election with 185,133 votes.
For that knock-out win, Rollins champions her father’s fighting Irish spirit and her can-do attitude coupled with a tireless work ethic.
‘It’s been an amazing ride. There is so much work that goes into running for office,’ she says. ‘I was 46 when I decided to run.
‘I had never been involved in politics, I had voted of course but I had never run. But I will tell you, I have a new-found respect for anyone – whether we agree or not – I have a new-found respect for anyone who puts themselves out there to run for office.
‘It is a gruelling, hard process. No matter what colour, gender, age, it is a gruelling process.’
Campaigning on a promise to reform criminal justice, reduce racial bias in the system, and essentially reinvent the role of DA, not only is Rollins the first woman to hold the office in Suffolk County, she is the first woman of colour to hold it anywhere in the state.
‘Sometimes it’s exasperating if you’re the first woman to ever run for the role... In the over 200-year history of my office, there had never been a woman to win that election in Suffolk County and there had never been a woman of colour in all of Massachusetts,’ Rollins tells More. ‘I am humbled.
‘I love my father and everything about Ireland’
It speaks more to the people of this county.’
Indeed, the past five years have been a frustrating time for many voters in the US, and Rollins says that ‘rather than yelling at my telly’, she decided to be proactive and put herself forward to effect change.
‘In order to be a DA you have to be a lawyer and I had been a prosecutor before,’ she says of the process. ‘I had this wonderful background [and] I have this wonderful respect for the military.
‘My father is second-generation Irish, from Mayo. He is a Vietnam War veteran, he was a former corrections officer. His brother served in our state police for 30 years and his other brother [now deceased] was also a war veteran. So all of the Irishmen in my dad’s family up to my great-greatgrandfather served in our military – and many of them worked in law enforcement when they returned home, so I was built with this deep, deep respect for law and order.’
The eldest of five children of a mixedrace couple, Rollins identifies as black/ Irish and with strong male figures in her life, she says she is ‘fluent in white Irish male’.
She grew up in a working-class family where money was tight, but a scholarship allowed her to attend school at the prestigious Buckingham Browne & Nichols Upper School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Of her Connacht lineage, Rollins says: ‘My dad’s family are from Derrymore, Drummin, Co. Mayo. My great-grandmother, Cathy Jackson, emigrated from Ireland.
‘Like most people [who emigrated to the US], she was born about 25 years or so after the Famine.
‘She had three husbands and two died while working. Ultimately, she came over to the US and ended up in West Roxbury living here in Suffolk County. So that was my great-grandmother Cathy and her husband Shorty is what we called him.
‘She was a Jackson and I remember being in her house as a young child. So that’s why my Irish [heritage] is so important. I love my father and I love everything about Ireland.
‘My dad is very proud. I think he wanted another boy and I think he raised me as such. Where you are capable of doing anything if you work hard, your currency is your work ethic and your word. He ingrained in me to be honourable at all times.
‘What is really interesting is myself and my dad... there are things we don’t agree on politically but how he raised me is I listen to what he has to say and I actively listen. My father risked his life to fight in a war so that I could have all of these big ideas and to open my mouth and say what I want when I
want, and that I have the freedom and liberty to do that. I will always listen to my father.’
Rollins comes to office with a view from both sides of the criminal justice tracks. Her father is a former corrections officer but she also has siblings who have been on the wrong side of the law.
It is her deep-seated sense of social justice that she says positions her perfectly to be DA. ‘I, unfortunately, have siblings that have touched the criminal legal system, so I have seen a different side.
‘So I come to work with both these different experiences every day and I think that helps the way I lead,’ she says.
‘In the US we have a significant problem with race. We also have a significant problem with guns.
‘I met some of the Irish law enforcement – and some of them don’t even carry weapons and others, of course, do. But there is just a level of violence in our country, from its inception, that is different from many other countries in the world. Even before George Floyd [who died at the hands of police], where George was tried, convicted and executed by a police officer for a very low-level offence. Of course, nobody thinks it’s OK that George was passing a counterfeit $20 bill but if you think that somebody should be executed for that, well come on. So why did I decide to run?
‘Because there were so many other George Floyds – and not only black... often it’s poor people. It’s communities that don’t have the political power to have great schools or housing that allows them to live in dignity.
‘We have communities that are overwhelmingly poor and many of them are black or Latino, but the numbers are significantly higher that have interaction with law enforcement.
‘There are these racialised groups and the media is pumping this narrative back and forth of law enforcement that is protecting “us from them”. And a media that often only portrays black or Latino men in violent or crime-related scenarios. So there is all of these things bubbling here in the States.’
While her ancestors hail from Mayo, DA Rollins enjoyed her first trip to the homestead only two years ago – and from Mayo to Kinsale, the ould sod didn’t disappoint.
‘I had the pleasure – for the first time in my life – of going to Ireland. I went to New Ross and spoke at the Kennedy homestead. We drove to Kinsale and I am telling everyone who will listen that the food in Ireland is delicious. We went to FishyFishy, you go to Ireland to eat some of the best food you will ever have.
‘We had a wonderful experience. It’s not just that I love my father... Irish is also coursing through here in Boston – this is where the Kennedys cut their teeth.’
On the popularity of Trial 4 – which saw the wrongly convicted Ellis freed just before Rollins entered office, Rollins says: ‘So many people have seen Trial 4 and have contacted me from all over the world.’
Rollins says she is hopeful America is on the eve of change – with the election of mixed-race women and Kamala Harris now a leading voice for reform as US vice-president. ‘It is a monumental moment... the work starts now,’ says the doughty DA.
‘There was so many other George Floyds’