David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

were crowded, and the homes were
narrow—cheaply built nineteenth-
century terraced redbrick row houses,
with one room to a floor, and bathrooms
in the backyard. Very few houses had a
refrigerator. They were dark and damp.
People bought bread daily because it
grew moldy otherwise. But the curfew
was now thirty-six hours old—and there
was no bread left. The Catholic
neighborhoods of West Belfast are
packed so tightly together, and linked by
so many ties of marriage and blood, that
word spread quickly from one to the next
about the plight of the Lower Falls.
Harriet Carson walked through
Ballymurphy, banging together the lids
of pots. Next came a woman named