O’Kelly, Sean Thomas (1882-1966), served as president of the Republic of Ireland from 1945 to 1959. He played prominent roles in Irish politics and culture in the early and middle 1900’s.
In 1898, O’Kelly joined the Gaelic League, which worked to reestablish Gaelic as Ireland’s national language and to promote Irish literature and culture. He served as the league’s general secretary from 1915 to 1920.
O’Kelly joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1902. The organization was a secret society that aimed to establish an Irish republic independent of the United Kingdom. In 1905, O’Kelly became a founding member of Sinn Fein, a political party that sought self-government for Ireland.
In 1913, O’Kelly enrolled in the newly founded Irish Volunteers, a militia that later became the Irish Republican Army. In 1916, he fought in the Easter Rising, a weeklong armed revolt against British rule. The revolt was unsuccessful, and O’Kelly was arrested and imprisoned for about eight months.
In 1918, O’Kelly was elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, but he and other Sinn Fein members who had been elected refused to take their seats. Instead, Sinn Fein set up the first Dail (the Irish Parliament), and O’Kelly served as ceann comhairle (chairman) from 1919 to 1921. In 1919, he represented Ireland at the Paris Peace Conference, where the treaties that settled World War I (1914-1918) were created. But O’Kelly failed to persuade the other participants to recognize Ireland as an independent country.
O’Kelly opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The treaty created the Irish Free State from most of Ireland but left Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. In 1926, O’Kelly left Sinn Fein to join Fianna Fail, a new political party that sought to unite all of Ireland and to break all ties with the United Kingdom.
In 1932, Fianna Fail won enough seats to control Dail Eireann, and O’Kelly became Ireland’s minister for local government and public health. In 1939, he became minister for finance. O’Kelly was elected president of Ireland in 1945 and reelected in 1952.
O’Kelly was born in Dublin, Ireland, on Aug. 25, 1882. He died in Dublin on Nov. 23, 1966.
