March


March 1, 1943

A huge rally in New York City’s Madison Square called on the U.S. government to reconsider its refusal to offer sanctuary to Jewish refugees of Nazi Germany.

March 1, 1954
The biggest explosion ever made by man was witnessed in the Pacific when U.S. scientists exploded their second hydrogen (fusion) bomb at Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the south Pacific.

Over 7,000 square miles were contaminated, as well as many local residents and Japanese fishermen.
The blast overwhelmed the measuring instruments, indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than scientists had anticipated. It was believed this hydrogen bomb (equivalent of 20 megatons of TNT) was up to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. This date has since been designated Nuclear-Free Pacific Day.

 


March 1, 1956

The University of Alabama permanently expelled Autherine Lucy, the first black person ever admitted to the University (following a federal court ordering her admission). She was met with rioting by thousands of students and others. She charged in court that University officials had been complicit in allowing the disorder, as a means of avoiding compliance with the court order. The trustees expelled her for making such “outrageous, false and baseless accusations.”

March 1, 1961

 

 

President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10924 establishing the Peace Corps as a new agency within the Department of State. The same day, he sent a message to Congress asking for permanent funding for the agency, which would send trained American men and women to foreign nations to assist in development efforts. The Peace Corps captured the imagination of the U.S. public, and during the week following its creation, thousands of letters poured into Washington from young Americans hoping to volunteer.

read more


March 1, 1981

 

Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands began a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland; he died 65 days later. He had dedicated his life to freeing Northern Ireland from British rule.

read more


Bobby Sands

March 2, 1807

The U.S. Congress sought to end international slave trade by passing an act to make it unlawful “to import or bring into the United States or the territories thereof from any foreign kingdom, place, or country, any negro, mulatto, or person of colour, with intent to hold, sell, or dispose of such negro, mulatto, or person of colour, as a slave, or to be held to service or labour." Domestic traffic in slaves was still legal and unregulated.

The first shipload of African captives to North America had arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1619, and the first American slave ship, named Desire, sailed from Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1637. In total, nearly 15 million blacks were transported as slaves to the Americas. The African continent, meanwhile, lost approximately 50 million human beings to slavery and related deaths. Despite the federal prohibition and because the slave trade was so profitable, an additional 250,000 slaves would be imported illegally by the time the Civil War began.


African slave trade timeline


March 2, 1955 

 

Nine months before Rosa Parks made headlines, teenager Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person.

 

 

Claudette Colvin


March 3, 1863

In the midst of the Civil War, the U.S. Congress passed a conscription act that produced the first draft lottery of American citizens. The act called for registration of all males between the ages of 20 and 35, and unmarried men up to 45, including aliens with the intention of becoming citizens, by April 1.
Exemptions from the draft could be bought for $300 or by finding a substitute draftee.
Blacks were also not eligible because they weren’t considered citizens.


March 3, 1961 

The Village Council in the Inuit town of Point Hope, Alaska, formally protested, in a letter to President Kennedy, the chain explosion of three atomic bombs in the nearby above-ground "Project Chariot" tests. The project entailed using atomic explosions to create a harbor near Point Hope in northwest Alaska. The excavation never happened due to public opposition but inspired native peoples in Alaska to assert their rights and legitimate land claims.

 

read more

Edward Teller "Father of the hydrogen bomb" arrives to promote plans for Project Chariot

March 3, 2003

In the first-ever worldwide theatrical act of dissent, at least 1,029 stagings of Lysistrata, the Aristophanes anti-war comedy, were presented on the same day to oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Performed in 59 countries (including Iraq), the bawdy play tells of Athenian and Spartan women who unite to deny their lovers sex in order to stop the 22-year-long Peloponnesian War between the two city-states. Desperate for intimacy, the men finally agree to lay down their swords and see their way to achieving diplomatic peace.

read more


March 4, 1917

 

Montana elected Republican Jeanette Rankin as the first woman to sit in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rankin voted against American entry into both world wars, and later led marches against the Vietnam war.

 

more about Jeanette Rankin

Jeanette Rankin

 


March 4, 1969

the UCS today

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) was founded.

From its founding document: “Misuse of scientific and technical knowledge presents a major threat to the existence of mankind. Through its actions in Vietnam our government has shaken our confidence in its ability to make wise and humane decisions. There is also disquieting evidence of an intention to enlarge further our immense destructive capability...”

continued


March 4, 1978

40,000 demonstrated against a uranium enrichment plant
in Almelo, Netherlands.


March 5, 1970

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty went into effect after ratification by 43 nations.

The agreement seeks to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament as well as general and complete disarmament. It has since been joined by 187 countries, and is enforced through the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Read about the non-proliferation treaty


March 5, 1994

 

Ukraine, having voluntarily agreed to give up its nuclear weapons following the collapse of the Soviet Union, began transfer of its nuclear stockpile to Russia.

 

 read more

 

Schoolchildren preparing to turn the keys to destroy the last missile silo in the Ukraine. October 30, 2001                    



March 6, 1857

The U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Dred Scott decision (Sanford v. Dred Scott) which declared that an escaped slave, Scott, could not sue for his freedom in federal court because those of African descent could never be considered citizens but “as a subordinate and inferior class of beings.”

Dred Scott

Chief Justice Roger Taney stated in his opinion that the "unhappy Black Race . . . had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it."


Chief Justice Roger Taney

 

read more read the decision

March 6, 1884
Susan B. Anthony and more than 100 delegates from the National Woman Suffrage Association met with Pres. Chester Alan Arthur concerning women's right to vote. Anthony asked him, "Ought not women have full equality and political rights?" He responded, "We should probably differ on the details of that question."
Susan B. Anthony
Pres. Chester Alan Arthur

March 6, 1957 

Ghana became the first black African country to become independent from colonial rule.
Dr. Kwame Nkrumah became independent Ghana's first leader.

read more



Ghana's flag


Dr. Kwame Nkrumah

March 6, 1967 

Muhammad Ali was ordered by the Selective Service to be inducted into military service. He refused, citing his religious beliefs that precluded him from killing others.

 

"I ain't got no quarrel with those Vietcong." 

 

 

< Top Black athletes gather to hear Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay) give his reasons for rejecting the draft, United States, June 4, 1967.


March 6, 1982

The United Nations University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica was founded. The University had been chartered by a General Assembly in a resolution on December 5, 1980

visit the University for Peace

 

The monument on campus sculpted by Cuban artist Thelvia Marín in 1987, is the world's largest peace monument.


March 7, 1965

525 civil rights advocates began a 54-mile march on a Sunday morning from Selma, Alabama, to the capital of Montgomery, to promote voting rights for blacks. Just after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, the marchers were attacked in what became known as Bloody Sunday.

 

Enforcing an order by then Governor George Wallace, the group was broken up by state troopers and volunteer officers of the Dallas County sheriff who used tear gas, nightsticks and bullwhips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. John Lewis, then head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a leader of the march (and now a congressman), suffered a fractured skull.

 read more

ABC television interrupted a Nazi war crimes documentary, “Judgment at Nuremberg,” to show footage of the violence in Selma, confusing some viewers about who was beating whom.

March 7, 1988

A Federal Court ruled in Atlanta, Georgia, that a peace group must have the same access to students at high school career days as military recruiters.

 

the anti-recruitment movement today:

LEAVE MY CHILD ALONE!



March 8, 1908

Thousands of workers in the New York needle trades (primarily women) demonstrated and began a strike for higher wages, a shorter workday and an end to child labor.

 

This event became the basis for International Women's Day celebrated all over the world since March 8, 1945.

read more


March 8, 1965

About 3,500 U. S. Marines became the first American combat troops in Vietnam, landing near the coastal city of Da Nang. The USS Henrico, Union, and Vancouver, carrying the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade under Brig. Gen. Frederick J. Karch, took up stations 4,000 yards off Red Beach Two, north of Da Nang.


March 8, 1983

40,000 in Tel Aviv, Israel, organized by Peace Now, rallied against the war in Lebanon.


March 9, 1839

The U.S. Supreme Court, with only one dissent, freed the slaves who had seized the Spanish slave ship Amistad, ruling that they had been illegally forced into slavery, and thus were free under American law.

 

Slave ship

They had mutinied and taken control of the ship off the shore of Cuba (then a colony of Spain) and demanded to be taken back to Africa but wound up in U.S. waters off the coast of Long Island, New York.

read more

The slave leader, Joseph Cinque, returned to Africa to become a slaver himself.

March 9, 1965

Two days after Bloody Sunday [see March 7, 1965] Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. led 1500 outraged people from around the country back to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Confronted once again by state troopers, King knelt in prayer, then led his followers back, avoiding further violence.
Later that evening three white ministers were attacked by locals as they left a soul food restaurant in Selma. Rev. James Reeb was struck on the head with a club and died two days later.

March 9, 1969

CBS cancelled “The Smothers Brothers' Comedy Hour," a television show which featured edgy political satire and such rock bands as the Beatles, the Who, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors.

 

Smothers brothers

The brothers had refused to censor a comment made by Joan Baez. She wanted to dedicate a song to her husband, David, who was about to go to jail for objecting to the draft during the Vietnam War. 

 more about the show

David Harris and Joan Baez


March 10, 1969

 

James Earl Ray was jailed for 99 years by a court in Memphis, Tennessee, after admitting he murdered American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Rev. King, who preached non-violence, was shot dead by a sniper in Memphis as he stood on a hotel balcony.

King (center) moments before the murder with Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Ralph Abernathy

March 10, 2006

Turkish conscientious objector Mehmet Tarhan was released unexpectedly from a military prison for having refused service in the army. A court decided that he had already been held longer than any possible sentence for the crime. He was ordered, however, to present himself again for military service and thus be subject to re-arrest for the same offense.
War Resisters' International(WRI) led an international support campaign for him along with conscientious objection (CO) activists in Turkey.

March 11, 1968

Cesar Chavez ended a 23-day fast for U.S. farm workers in a Delano, California, public park with 4,000 supporters at his side, including Senator Robert Kennedy (D-NY). Cesar Chavez led the effort to organize farm workers into a union for better working conditions.

The story of Cesar Chavez


March 11, 1988

10 days of protest and direct action demanded and end to nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site, a massive outdoor laboratory and national experimental center for testing nuclear weapons larger than the state of Rhode Island. The actions resulted in over 2,200 arrests, the largest number of arrests at a political protest outside Washington, D.C. in U.S. history.


March 12, 295 AD

Maximilian, a Christian, was beheaded by Romans for refusing military service in Thevesta, North Africa.


March 12, 1912

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) wins Lawrence, Massachusetts "Bread & Roses" textile strike after nine weeks involving 32,000 strikers.

read more

 

“Bread and Roses” became the strikers slogan and inspired a poem by by the same name.

read  the poem

<IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn addresses a strike rally

Bread & Roses victory parade


March 12, 1978

One hundred fifty thousand demonstrated against nuclear reactor in Lemoniz, Spain.


March 13, 1864

The first contingent of 14,030 Navajo reached Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Men, women and children were marched almost 400 miles from northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico to Bosque Redondo, a desolate tract on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Traveling in harsh winter conditions for almost two months, about 200 Navajo died of cold and starvation.  More died after they arrived at the barren reservation.  The forced march, led by Kit Carson became known by the Navajos as the "Long Walk."

A grueling 400-mile march to imprisonment in a sterile land.

read more


March 13, 1945

Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization was founded in France. From their website: “Pax Christi is a ground up organization – it began with a few committed people who spoke out, prayed and worked for reconciliation at the end of the second world war, and is now active in more than 60 countries and five continents, with more than 60,000 members worldwide.”

Pax Christi history


March 13, 1968

Clouds of nerve gas drifted outside the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, poisoning 6,400 sheep in nearby Skull Valley.

 

read more about Dugway - the home of WMD


March 14, 1879

Physicist and Peace activist Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. The Nobel Prize winner opposed militarism and became a champion of nuclear disarmament. Though he supported the development of the atomic bomb in fear that Germany would develop it first, he warned in a 1944 letter to the Manhattan Project’s Niels Bohr: "When the war is over, then there will be in all countries a pursuit of secret war preparations with technological means which will lead inevitably to preventative wars and to destruction even more terrible than the present destruction of life."

 read more


March 14, 1990

 

Sixteen disability-rights activists were arrested at the U.S. Capitol demanding passage of what would become the Americans With Disabilities Act.

read more

 

disability rights demonstration


March 15, 1970

During a second attempt by Native American activists to occupy Fort Lawton, 78 protesters were arrested. They were demanding the City of Seattle give the unused facility back to Native Americans.

read more

 

Indians demonstrating at Fort Lawton


March 15, 1993

The United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador concluded that most of the murder and human rights abuses during its civil war had been committed by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government through its various military and security and allied paramilitary organizations.

read more

The complete report

March 16, 1921

The War Resisters International was founded with sections set up in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. By 1939 there were 54 WRI Sections in 24 countries, including America.

Their symbol - a broken gun.

WRI No More War demonstration in Berlin 1922

Their slogan -

"The right to refuse to kill."

read more


March 16, 1968

U.S. troops in South Vietnam killed an estimated 350 unarmed men, women and children in My Lai, a cluster of hamlets in the coastal lowlands of Quang Ngai Province.

Lt. William L. Calley, Jr. commanded the men of Charlie Company, First Battalion, American Division, and was the only one tried out of 80 involved in what is called the My Lai Massacre.

The Army, including a young Colin Powell, at first tried to cover it up and the media resisted reporting it.

Young girls sheltering behind their mother during My Lai

Some of Calley’s soldiers refused to participate, but only 24-year-old helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson and his crew stopped it by putting themselves between villagers and troops pursuing them.

read more

Lt. William L. Calley              Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson


March 16, 2003

Over 5,000 coordinated candlelight vigils and demonstrations took place, in more than 125 countries, in a 11th hour protest against a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Knoxville, Tennessee
Trafalgar Square, London

March 17, 1966

A three-week 340-mile march by Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association left Delano for Sacramento, the capital of California, arriving on Easter Sunday, calling public attention to the plight of farm workers and for their right to organize a union.

read more  


March 17, 1968

In London’s Trafalgar Square, at the largest anti-Vietnam War protest in Britain to date, 25,000 people marched. Some then attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy, resulting in 200 arrests and fifty taken to hospital, nearly half police officers.

watch footage of the demo

 Actress Vanessa Redgrave was allowed to enter

the embassy to deliver a protest


March 17, 1978

The oil supertanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground and, in the worst oil spill ever, lost its entire cargo of 1,619,048 barrels. A slick 18 miles wide and 80 miles long polluted approximately 200 miles of France’s Brittany coastline.

The Amoco Cadiz disaster was the first marine environmental catastrophe to be covered by the world's media in real time and to be recognized by the public.

read more

one of the victims

 

March 18, 1962

Algeria became a sovereign nation after 130 years of French colonial rule. The struggle for independence inspired "The Battle of Algiers," a movie by Gillo Pontecorvo. The film has been shown extensively in the Pentagon to help understand the Iraqi insurgency.

read about the movie

 

French army confront demonstrators for Algerian independence in 1960


March 18, 1970

The first strike against the U.S. government and the first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Post Office began with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan demanding better wages. Ultimately 210,000 of the nation's 750,000 postal employees participated. With mail service virtually paralyzed in New York, Detroit, and Philadelphia, Pres. Nixon declared a state of national emergency and assigned military units to New York City post offices. The stand-off ended one week later.

read more


March 19, 1963

Pete Seeger's blacklisting from the television show "Hootenanny" was protested by 50 Greenwich Village folk artists. He had become a cultural hero through his outspoken commitment to the anti-war and civil rights movements. He was involved in several civil rights campaigns in 1962-1965, and helped popularize the anthemic "We Shall Overcome."

read about Pete Seeger

Hear We Shall Overcome by Bruce Springsteen


March 20, 1983

In Australia 150,000 (1% of the population) demonstrated in anti-nuclear rallies.

 

Australia's anti-nuclear movement: a short history

 

Sydney anti-uranium protest.April 7, 1979.


March 20, 2003

Iraq was invaded by a U.S. dominated and led coalition amidst protests by millions all over the world.

 

read about the cost of this war

 

Baghdad, Iraq under attack


March 21, 1960

South African police opened fire on unarmed demonstrators in Sharpeville near Johannesburg.

The demonstrators were protesting the establishment of apartheid pass laws which restricted movement of non-whites.

In Sharpeville itself, 69 were killed and 176 wounded when police opened fire on the crowd, 63 of them shot in the back.

In the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre, protests broke out in Cape Town and elsewhere and there were further casualties.

Overall, 13,000 were jailed.


March 21, 1965

3,200 civil rights demonstrators, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and under protection of a federalized National Guard, began a week-long march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol at Montgomery in support of voting rights for black Americans.


March 21, 1990

The Ploughshares Two disabled a U.S. F-111 bomber in Upper Heyford, England. The first plowshares action in Britain.

read more



March 22, 1974

 

The Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by Congress. The amendment, giving women full equality under law, was never ratified by the required 3/4 of the 50 states.

 

read more


March 22, 1980

30,000 marched in Washington, DC against reintroduction of draft registration.

 

 

Denise Levertov's lines from her poem,

"A Speech for Antidraft Rally, D.C., March 22, 1980”

"...Let our different dream,
and more than dream, our acts
of constructive refusal generate
struggle. And love. We must dare to win
not wars, but a future
in which to live."

read the entire poem

 

March 23, 1918

The trial of 101 Wobblies (members of the Industrial Workers of the World or IWW) began in Chicago, for opposition to World War I. In September 1917, 165 IWW members were arrested for conspiring to hinder the draft, encourage desertion, and intimidate others in connection with labor disputes. The trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history to date. The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced IWW leader "Big Bill" Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison; 33 were given 10 years, the rest shorter sentences. They were fined a total of $2,500,000 and the IWW was shattered as a result. Haywood jumped bail and fled to Russia, where he remained until his death 10 years later.

"Big Bill" Haywood on right


March 23, 1933

The Nazi German concentration camp at Dachau opened, the first of many such camps built for the destruction of Jews, the Roma (frequently referred to as Gypsies), the "work-shy", homosexuals, the "hereditary asocial" and those with mental and/or physical handicaps.

March 23, 1961

The first member of the American military died in Indochina. He was on an intelligence-gathering flight returning from Vietnam. (The last American died on April 30, 1975.)


March 24, 1965

 

 

The first Teach-In to oppose the Vietnam War is held at the University of Michigan.

 

 

read more about the 1st Teach-In


March 24, 1974

Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) was founded, electing as their first president Olga Madar, a vice president of the United Auto Workers. The convention adopted four goals: organize the unorganized; promote affirmative action; increase women's participation in their unions; and increase women's participation in political and legislative activities.

visit CLUW


March 24, 1980

The archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was assassinated while consecrating the Eucharist during mass. Monseñor Romero had become a well-known critic of violence and injustice and, as such, was perceived in right-wing civilian and military circles of El Salvador as a dangerous enemy, and criticized by the Roman Catholic church. Romero had exhorted the police and soldiers to disobey orders to kill innocent people, refusing to be silenced. Worshippers had interrupted, with ovations, his homilies condemning the terrorism of the state.

read more about Monsignor Romero


March 25, 1965

Their numbers having swelled to 25,000, the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers arrived at the Alabama state capitol. “Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. (Yes, sir) We are on the move now. The burning of our churches will not deter us. (Yes, sir) The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. (Yes, sir) We are on the move now. (Yes, sir) The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us. We are on the move now.”

Read all of Rev. King’s speech

Martin Luther King Jr. and wife Coretta lead march into Montgomery, Alabama.
March 25, 1965

Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a housewife and mother from Detroit, driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery, was shot and killed by Klansmen in a passing car. She had driven down to Alabama to join the march after seeing on television the Bloody Sunday attacks at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge earlier in the month. It was later learned that riding with the Klansmen was an FBI informant.

read more about Viola Liuzzo

Anthony & Viola Liuzzo


March 25, 1969

The newly wed John Lennon and Yoko Ono-Lennon began their seven-day "bed-in for peace" against the Vietnam War at the Amsterdam Hilton in New York City.

 

read more about their

bed-ins for peace

bed-in photo album 
“Yoko and I are quite willing to be the world's clowns, if by so doing it will do some good.”

March 26, 1966

 

 

Over 50,000 marched in the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade in New York City.


March 26, 1979

In a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed a historic peace agreement, ending three decades of hostilities between Egypt and Israel, and establishing diplomatic and commercial ties.
Less than two years earlier, in an unprecedented move for an Arab leader, Sadat had traveled to Jerusalem to seek a permanent peace settlement with Egypt's Jewish neighbor after decades of conflict.

March 26, 2003

Over one million students in Spain went on strike in opposition to their government's support of the U.S./U.K. invasion of Iraq.

March 27, 1966

 

20,000 Buddhists marched silently for peace in Hue, South Vietnam.


March 28, 1918

2,000 in Quebec, Canada, demonstrated against military conscription in the midst of World War I. Four died in the ensuing riot.

read more

 

Anti-Conscription Parade in Victoria Square, Montreal, Quebec, May 24, 1917,

The gathering in this photo looks calm. Riots nearly a year later resulted in the death of four demonstrators in Quebec City.


March 28, 1964
Three hundred were arrested during a sit-down protest at U.S. Air Force headquarters in Ruislip, England.

March 28, 1979

In the worst nuclear disaster in US history, a cooling system on the Unit Two reactor failed at Three Mile Island in Middletown, Pennsylvania. This led to a partial meltdown that uncovered the reactor's core. Radioactive steam leaked into the atmosphere, prompting fears for the safety of the plant's 500 workers and the surrounding community.

 

three mile island timeline


March 29, 1971


U.S. Army Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty at a court martial for his part in the My Lai massacre which claimed the lives of hundreds of South Vietnamese civilians. Convicted for the premeditated murder of at least 22 Vietnamese civilians, he was sentenced to three years under house arrest.

March 29, 1973

The last American troops left South Vietnam, ending direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War; Saigon would fall a month later and be renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Of the more than 3 million Americans who served in the war, almost 58,000 had died, and more than 1,000 were missing in action. Some 150,000 Americans had been seriously wounded. The loss of Vietnamese killed and wounded was in the millions and damage to the countryside persists to this day.

read more

The 615th MP Company was inactivated in Vietnam on the last day of American military combat presence.

March 29, 1987


Members of Vietnam Veterans For Peace arrived in Wicuili at the end of a march from Jinotega, Nicaragua. The veterans were actively monitoring the U.S. attempts to destabilize the country by providing aid to the terrorist contras.

visit Veterans for Peace


March 30, 1891

Signaling a growing movement toward direct political action among desperate western farmers, "Sockless" Jerry Simpson called on the Kansas Farmers' Alliance to work for a takeover of the state government. Simpson was one of the most well-known and influential leaders among Populist-minded western and midwestern farmers of the late 19th century. Angered over low crop prices, crippling bank loans and high shipping rates, farmers began to unite in self-help groups like the Grange and the Farmers' Alliances. Initially, these groups primarily provided mutual assistance to members while agitating for the regulation of railroads and grain elevators. Increasingly, though, they became centers of support for more sweeping political change by uniting to help form the new nationwide third-party movement known as the Populists.
"Sockless" Jerry Simpson

March 30, 1948

Henry Wallace criticizes Truman's Cold War policies. Henry Wallace, former vice-president (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and current Progressive Party presidential candidate, lashes out at the Cold War policies of President Harry S. Truman. Wallace and his supporters were among the few Americans who actively voiced criticisms of America's Cold War mindset during the late-1940s and 1950s.

read more on his warnings about American fascists



March 31, 1970

2,500 UC-Berkeley students turned in their draft cards at the Oakland, California, Induction Center in protest of the Vietnam war.

March 31, 1991

Before dawn on Easter, five Plowshares activists boarded the USS Gettysburg, an Aegis-equipped Cruiser docked at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. They proceeded to hammer and pour blood on covers for vertical launching systems for cruise missiles. "We witness against the American enslavement to war at the Bath Iron Works, geographically near the President’s home." They also left an indictment charging President George H. W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Cheney, the National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff with war crimes and violations of God’s law and international law, including the killing of thousands of Iraqis.

read more about Aegis Plowshares


March 31, 1992

ADAPT (American Disabled for Accessible Public Transport) sit in at Tennessee Health Care Association to fight health cuts, Nashville Tennessee.
more about ADAPT


March 31, 2004

Air America, intended as a liberal voice in network talk radio, made its debut on five stations.

listen live


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