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May
Day was called Emancipation Day in 1886 when 340,000
went on strike (though it was Saturday it was a regular
day of work) in Chicago for the 8-hour workday.
May
1, 1890
May Day labor demonstrations spread to thirteen other countries; 30,000
marched in Chicago as the newly prominent American Federation of Labor
threw its weight behind the 8-hour day campaign.
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The Catholic
Worker newspaper was founded by Dorothy Day and
Peter Maurin. Dorothy Day said, "God meant things
to be much easier than we have made them," and
Peter Maurin wanted to build a society "where
it is easier for people to be good."
read more
about the Catholic Worker 
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Sen.
Glen Hearst Taylor (D-Idaho) was arrested in Birmingham,
Alabama, for trying to enter a meeting through a door marked
for "Negroes" rather than using the “whites
only” door, and convicted of disorderly conduct.
Taylor was the Progressive Party candidate for Vice President, running
mate of Henry Wallace. He was in Birmingham to address the Southern Negro
Youth Congress.
Sen. Glen Hearst Taylor
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| Second
Factory for Peace opened in Onllwyn, Dulais Valley, in
south Wales, employing disabled miners. Tom McAlpine, active
in the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, and a supporter
of cooperatives and industrial democracy, established Rowen
Engineering in both Wales and Glasgow, Scotland.
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500,000
Vietnamese marched for an end to the war dividing their
country.
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Soviet
youths openly defied police and danced the twist
in Moscow's Red Square during May Day celebrations.
In the early ‘60s the Twist had been banned in
Buffalo, New York, and Tampa, Florida. The religious
right claimed the Twist was actually a pagan fertility
dance.
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More
on the jazz-rock counterculture in Russia
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Are you old enough to remember Chubby Checker?
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Beginning
of five days of anti-war May Day protests in Washington,
D.C., resulting in over 14,000 arrests—the largest
mass civil disobedience in U.S. history.
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Following
a 24-hour occupation at the site of two proposed nuclear
power plants in Seabrook, New Hampshire, 1,414 people
were arrested. The non-violent civil disobedience, organized
by the Clamshell Alliance, became a model for anti-nuclear
direct actions across the country. National and international
news coverage brought the issue of nuclear power into
public focus and no nuclear reactors were ordered after
that time. Those plants already approved eventually went
online, including Seabrook Unit I, but Unit II was never
built.
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There
is still no permanent method or location for long-term
safe storage of the highly radioactive nuclear waste
generated by such plants. Most of the radioactive isotopes
in high-level waste have extremely long half-lives (some
longer than 100,000 years).
Currently, it is stored on-site at nuclear plants around the country.
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One million South Africans demonstrated their opposition to apartheid
in a strike organized by the Congress of South African Trade Unions
(COSATU).
read
more about COSATU
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| Pres.
George W. Bush landed in a jet on the aircraft carrier
USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast and, in a
speech to the nation, declared major combat in Iraq over.
The banner his staff posted on the ship read, “Mission
Accomplished.” |
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Since
that presidential declaration more than 4000 American
and allied troops and nearly 8000 members of Iraqi security
and police forces have lost their lives. In addition,
tens of thousands (more than 30,000 Americans) injured
in the hostilities. The number of Iraqi civilian deaths
is open to dispute.
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Details
of Iraq military casualties: and
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Civilian
casualties and
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| Hundreds
of children ranging in age from six to eighteen were arrested
in Birmingham, Alabama, as they marched from Kelly Ingram
Park, across from 16th Street Baptist Church, to downtown
singing, “We Shall Overcome.” Part of an ongoing effort
to end segregation in that city, and following the arrests
of many adults including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
the children had volunteered to minimize the threat to
families if a breadwinner were jailed. A judge had issued
an order preventing any of 133 civil rights leaders from
organizing a demonstration. Birmingham, the capital of
Alabama, had been the site of 18 unsolved bombings in black
neighborhoods over recent years, and the place where mobs
had attacked Freedom Riders on Mother’s Day in 1961. Leaving
the park in groups of fifty, the kids were put in vans
by police, led by Eugene “Bull” Connor, until there were
959 filling the city jails. |
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The Poor People's Campaign began with groups from several locations around
the U.S. setting out for Washington, D.C., to draw attention
to the conditions of poorest in the United States. It was conceived
and organized by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and, following
his assassination the previous month, led by his successor at
the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC),
Rev. Ralph David Abernathy.
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The first wave of demonstrators arrived in Washington on May 11. One
week later, Resurrection City was built on the Washington Mall,
a settlement of tents and shacks to house the protesters.
read
more
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 Resurrection
City
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| Civilians
were executed by Napoleonic forces putting down a rebellion
by the citizens of Madrid, Spain on Principe Pio Hill.
The event was memorialized in the painting by Francisco
de Goya, “The Third of May 1808: The Execution of
the Defenders of Madrid.” Aspects of the painting
inspired the design of the peace symbol by Gerald Holtom
in 1958. |
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At
Haymarket Square in Chicago, a rally was being held because
of a strike at the McCormick Harvester plant and, just
two days after the enormous May Day turnout. Though the
mass meeting was peaceful, a force of 176 police officers
arrived, demanding that the meeting disperse. Someone,
unknown to this day, then threw a bomb at the police. In
their confusion, the police began firing their weapons
in the dark, killing at least three in the crowd and wounding
many more. Seven police died (only one by the bomb), the
rest probably by police fire. |
read
more
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| In
Birmingham, Alabama, Public Safety Commissioner and recently
failed mayoral candidate Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor
used fire hoses and police dogs on children near the 16th
Street Baptist Church to keep them from marching out of
the "Negro section" of town. |
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With
no room left to jail them (after arresting nearly 1000
the day before), Connor brought firefighters out and ordered
them to turn hoses on the children. Most ran away, but
one group refused to budge. The firefighters turned more
hoses on them, powerful enough to break bones. The force
of the water rolled the protesters down the street. In
addition, Connor had mobilized K-9 (police dog) forces
who attacked protesters trying to re-enter the church.
Pictures of the confrontation between the children and
the police were televised across the nation. |
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| More
than 100 black students took over a building at Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois. They were demanding attention
to their advocacy for inclusion of African-American history,
literature and art in the curriculum. Their efforts led
to the establishment of an African-American studies department
which now offers a doctoral program. |
How
it happened
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The
Nixon administration ordered the arrest of nearly 13,000
anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe
who had begun four days of demonstrations in Washington,
D.C. on the first. They aimed to shut down the nation's
capital by disrupting morning rush-hour traffic and other
forms of nonviolent direct action, skirmishing with metropolitan
police and Federal troops throughout large areas of the
capital. The slogan of the Mayday tribe: "If the
government won't stop the [Vietnam] war, we'll stop the
government."
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read
more
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The
first broadcast of National Public Radio’s evening
news and public affairs program, "All Things Considered," was
aired on about 90 public radio affiliates around the
country. The main story was the disruptive anti-Vietnam
protests in Washington. It is now the third most listened-to
radio program in the U.S.
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Listen
to that first program
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| Sixty
thousand marched on the Pentagon to urge the end of U.S.
military involvement in El Salvador. |
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A
group of Freedom Riders left Washington, DC for New Orleans
in a first challenge to racial segregation on interstate
buses and in bus terminals; it was organized by the Congress
of Racial Equality (CORE).
read
more about the freedom riders
The
Freedom Riders dining at a lunch counter in Montgomery
before traveling to Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans,
Louisiana.
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Ohio
National Guard troops opened fire on anti-war protesters
at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others,
one permanently disabled. |
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The previous day, President Nixon had announced a widening of the Vietnam
War with bombing in neighboring Cambodia. There were major campus
protests around the country with students occupying university
buildings to organize and to discuss the war and other issues.
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read
more
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| A “sense
of the Congress” resolution, intended to urge a halt
to all testing of nuclear weapons, was approved by the
U.S. House of Representatives (287-149). The support for
a nuclear freeze, ending all American and Soviet nuclear
weapons testing, was widespread. In ballot resolutions
in 25 states, the freeze had passed in all but one, losing
in Arizona by just two points. |
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Political
philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary
Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany. His ideas, laid out
in the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, and in many other
publications, considered the state, class divisions, the
nature of industrial capitalism, and culture and religion
as oppressive forces. |
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A young Karl Marx
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| Biology
teacher John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution
in a Dayton, Tennessee, high school in violation of state law.
Working in a public school, he was prohibited by statute “to
teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation
of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man
has descended from a lower order of animals.” |
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John Scopes |
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| Irish
Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died in Northern
Ireland’s Maze Prison; it was his 66th day without
food. He had just been elected to a seat in the British
Parliament for the district of Fermanagh while still serving
the last of a 14-year sentence for possession of firearms.
Read
more on Bobby Sands, including some of his poetry
“Our
revenge will be the laughter of our children.” -
Bobby Sands
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| Over
one million Sicilians, a fifth of the Italian island’s
population, signed a petition against the deployment of more
than 100 U.S. cruise missiles at the Comiso Air Base. |
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The
last U.S. cruise missile left Greenham Common Air Base
in England, the site of a decade of women's anti-nuclear
protests. The encampment persisted for nearly another
decade until it was returned to public access.
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Protesters leave
Greenham Common for the last time
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peace
link |
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Reformers allied with President Mohammed Khatami swept run-off
elections, winning control of the 290-seat Majlis
of Iran (parliament) from hard-liners for the first
time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Results were
subject to certification by the Guardian Council
which reversed the results in eleven of the original
February contests. |
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Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman started the No Conscription
League in the U.S. This was prior to American troops’ being
sent to Europe in what is known as World War I.
read
the No-Conscription League Manifesto
Emma
Goldman and Alexander Berkman
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| Mohandas
Gandhi, due to declining health, was released from his last
imprisonment in India, having spent 2,338 days in jail during
his lifetime. |
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| Two
American pilots and most of their crew died flying ammunition
supply missions
to French colonial troops under siege by Vietnamese insurgent
troops under Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. James “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern
and Wallace Buford became the first U.S. aviators to die in
Vietnam. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower had not wanted to commit the
U.S. military to Vietnam so shortly after the end of the war
in Korea, so McGovern and Buford were working for an organization
contracted by the CIA. |
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| U.S.
Senate hearings began on ratification of the Equal Rights
Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution: “Equality
of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Similar
amendments had been introduced in every Congress since
1923. |
Writer
and editor Gloria Steinem testified: “During
twelve years of working for a living, I've experienced much
of the
legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this
country. I have been refused service in public restaurants,
ordered out of public gathering places, and turned away from
apartment rentals, all for the clearly stated, sole reason
that I am a woman.”
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Gloria Steinem
in 1970 |
Steinem’s
full testimony |
FAQ
on the ERA |
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14 cities across France saw demonstrations against their
country’s nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific
Ocean. |
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| 125,000
rallied in Washington, D.C. to oppose nuclear power. |
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| The
battle at Vietnam’s Dien Bien Phu ended after 55
days with Viet Minh insurgents overrunning French colonial
forces, and forcing their surrender. An agreement for complete
French withdrawal was negotiated within two months in Geneva,
Switzerland.
The battle began in March, when a force of 40,000 Vietnamese
troops armed with heavy artillery surrounded 15,000 French
soldiers holding the French position under siege. The Viet
Minh guerrillas had been fighting a long and bloody war against
French colonial control of Vietnam since 1946. |
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French prisoners being marched
by Viet Minh out of Dien Bien Phu, May 7, 1954 |
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| The
Rev. George Lee, one of the first black people registered
to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi, and who used
his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote,
was murdered in his hometown of Belzoni. |
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The
county sheriff had initially refused to accept Rev. Lee’s
poll tax (a tax collected before someone was allowed to
vote, which became unconstitutional
in 1964), but he was later allowed to vote after contacting federal authorities.
That, and the subsequent registration of 92 other negro citizens he helped register,
angered some white residents of the county. His assailants were never caught,
and Rev. Lee is considered the first martyr of the civil rights movement. |
| Rev George Lee |
More
on Rev. Lee |
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American
veterans of the Vietnam War reached a $180-million out-of-court
settlement with seven chemical companies in a class-action
suit relating to use of the herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam.
The veterans charged they had suffered injury and illness
from exposure to the defoliant used widely in the war to
eliminate jungle cover for Vietnamese forces opposing the
U.S. military presence.
Book
review about the ongoing effects of Agent Orange |
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| 15,000
protesters demonstrated against the import of French nuclear
waste to Gorleben, Germany. Water cannons were used to disperse
the crowd. |
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| The
American Peace Society was established when the peace societies
of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania
merged to become a national organization. Currently based
in Boston, the merged organization was a result of the
leadership of William Ladd, an advocate of a "Congress
and High Court of Nations" for solving international
disputes.
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William Ladd, one of the
founders of the American Peace Society |
read
more |
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Mohandas
Gandhi began a 21-day fast to support political rights
for the Dalit (or untouchables) whom he called Harijans,
the children of God. He had been jailed by the British
to interfere with his movement to end colonial control
of India. He was released the day after he began his personal
purification because the colonial authorities were afraid
he might die in prison. |
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An
estimated 9,000,000 people in Belgium participated
in a ten-minute work stoppage to protest nuclear weapons.
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| Nguyen
Thi Co immolated herself where in protest of the Vietnam
War, as did Thich Nu Tinh Nhuan later that month.
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Presbyterian minister Reverend Benjamin Weir
was kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon, while out walking with
his wife, Carol. Members of Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group
in Lebanon, held Weir for sixteen months-twelve of them in
solitary confinement-along with six other Americans who were
released later, including journalist Terry Anderson. Before
the kidnapping, Weir had spent nearly three decades in Lebanon
as a Christian missionary and a teacher at the Near East
School of Theology. In his various positions in the Presbyterian
church since his release, Weir has been a voice of reconciliation
and tolerance.
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Rev. Benjamin Weir |
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In
April, World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali
had refused induction into
the U.S. Army based on his religious convictions. He
claimed, "I ain't got no quarrel with those Vietcong." On
this day, following his indictment by 24 hours, he was
stripped of his title and his license to fight by the
World Boxing Association.
In June, a court found him guilty of draft evasion, fined
him $10,000, and sentenced him to five years in prison.
He remained free, pending numerous appeals, but was still
barred from fighting for three years.
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“Ali's
toughest foe: the Army” from
the St. Petersburg Times |
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| The
New York Times revealed the United States had been secretly
bombing Cambodia—officially
a noncombatant, neutral country—during the Vietnam
War. |
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| Five
days after the Kent State killings [see May 4, 1970], 100,000
marched in Washington, D.C. against the Vietnam War. On
the same day, about 600 Canadian protesters defaced the
Peace Arch at the U.S.-Canadian border in Blaine, Washington. |
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At least 18 demonstrators
were killed and many wounded after police opened fire
on anti-government protesters outside the Metropolitan
Cathedral in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.
More (including graphic video) on the cathedral
bloodbath
CBS
reporter: "The police continued to fire as bodies piled
up on the cathedral steps"
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| In San Salvador six soldiers were
arrested in the slaying of Catholic church workers from the
U.S. |
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| The
Sepoy Rebellion was triggered in Meerut, India, when native
troops (known as Sepoys, which also designated a rank equivalent
to private) turned on their British officers. It was the
first instance of armed resistance against colonial rule.
Indians constituted 96% of the 300,000-man British Army. Loading
the Lee-Enfield Rifled Musket assigned to the Sepoys involved
biting the end of a cartridge greased in a combination of pig
fat and beef tallow. |
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"Attack of the Mutineers," a
British illustration of the Sepoy Rebellion
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The
former is haraam (forbidden) under Islamic law, the latter
offensive to Hindus who consider
the cow as aghanya (that which may not be slaughtered). When
the Sepoys, including both Hindu and Muslim Indians, became
aware of this, some refused to load their weapons. Mangal Pandey,
a soldier in the Army shot his commander for forcing the Indian
troops to use the controversial rifles. When others were charged
with mutiny for refusing, Sepoys turned on their officers and
released the imprisoned soldiers.
The rebellion is now considered the first Indian war for independence. |
More
on the rebellion |
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Army Captain Howard Levy, a physician,
was imprisoned three years for refusing to train U.S. Special
Forces soldiers for Vietnam. He refused an order to perform
the training as he considered it a violation of his medical
ethics.
"The United States is wrong in being involved in the Viet Nam
War. I would refuse to go to Viet Nam if ordered to do so.
I don't see why any colored soldier would go to Viet Nam: they
should refuse to go to Viet Nam and if sent should refuse to
fight because they are discriminated against and denied their
freedom in the United States, and they are sacrificed and discriminated
against in Viet Nam by being given all the hazardous duty and
they are suffering the majority of casualties.”
-From the Supreme Court case, Parker, Warden, et al.
v. Levy. |
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Peace talks began in Paris between the U.S. and North Vietnam
with businessman, former New York governor, ambassador
and cabinet secretary W. Averell Harriman representing
the United States. Former Foreign Minister Xuan Thuy,
heading the North Vietnamese delegation, immediately
demanded cessation of U.S. bombing.
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The
National Organization for Women (NOW) organized 85,000
people to march in Chicago in support of Illinois’s
ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution.
a
chronology of the Equal Rights Amendment, 1923-1996
visit NOW home
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A federal judge in Salt
Lake City, Utah, found the U.S. government negligent for
its above-ground testing of nuclear weapons in Nevada from
1951 to 1962.
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The
land of the Nevada Test Site is scarred with craters from
nuclear testing
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Nelson
Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first
black president. He had won the country’s first election
in which all South Africans could vote, regardless of race.
Mandela had spent nearly three decades imprisoned for his part
in the struggle to attain political and civil rights for black
and colored citizens. This ended more than three centuries
of white rule, beginning with the Dutch in 1652.
|
Brief
biography of Nelson Mandela |
South
African chronology |
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Charges
against former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg (including
conspiracy, espionage, and larceny) for his role in the
release of The Pentagon Papers (a comprehensive classified
study of the origins and conduct of the Vietnam War) were
dismissed. Judge William M. Byrne, citing government misconduct,
including attempts to bribe him with an appointment as
FBI Director, and previously undisclosed wiretaps of Ellsberg.
His compatriot, Tony Russo, a former RAND Corporation analyst,
was also released. |
| read
chapters from the Pentagon Papers history of the war
Daniel Ellsberg's book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the
Pentagon Papers |
 |
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| 80,000 turned out in New
York City's Central Park to celebrate the end of the Vietnam
War. |
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The
Poor People's Campaign, organized by the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) began when contingents of the
poor, mainly from the south, began pitching tents in a "Resurrection
City" near the Lincoln Memorial. It was dismantled by
police on June 24. |
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Brazil, which imported more African slaves than any other
Western Hemisphere country (including the U.S.), abolished
slavery.
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"We
Want Beer" marches were held in cities all over America,
with 15,000 unionized workers demonstrating in Detroit. Prohibition
(the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring “the
manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors”)
was repealed the following year. |
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| Natives
of the Marshall Islands pleaded for an end to atmospheric
H-Bomb testing in the south Pacific.
read
more |
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During a goodwill trip through Latin America, Vice President
Richard Nixon's limousine was attacked with rocks and bottles
by an angry crowd and nearly overturned while traveling through
Caracas, Venezuela. The crowd was angered by U.S. Cold War policies
and their effect on Latin America. Five days before, the Vice
President was shoved, stoned, booed, and spat upon by protesters
in Peru. |
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"We are the power"
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Workers
joined Paris students’ protest in a one-day general
strike calling for the fall of the government and protesting
police brutality. The protest by French students included
occupation of The Sorbonne; by the end of the month over 10,000,000
had been involved in school and workplace occupations.
view
and read about the great poster art from Paris ‘68
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The
first groups of WWII conscientious objectors (COs) were ordered
to report to camp at Patapsco, Maryland.
World
War II COs |
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|  Phillip
Lafayette Gibbs
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Two
African-American students were shot to death and 30 others
wounded by government troops at primarily black Jackson State
University in Mississippi. The two were watching demonstrators
protesting the invasion of Cambodia and racial discrimination
from a nearby dormitory tower. Two days of riots ensued in
Jackson resulting in curfews and sealing off of the city.
read
more
|
 James
Earl
Green
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Julia
Ward Howe, suffragist, abolitionist and author of the “Battle
Hymn of the Republic,” proposed Mother's Day as a peace
holiday.
She had seen firsthand some of the worst effects of war --
the death and disease which killed and maimed, and the widows
and orphans left behind on both sides of the Civil War --
and realized that the effects of the war go beyond the killing
of soldiers in battle. Mother’s Day did not become a
national holiday until declared by President Woodrow Wilson
in 1914.
"Disarm!
Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.”
read
her Mother’s Day Proclamation |
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The
National Labor Relations Act was passed, recognizing workers'
rights to organize and bargain collectively with their employer.
read
more
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Britain tested its first H-bomb over Christmas Island in
the south Pacific, after just two years of development.
Mushroom
cloud over Christmas Island.
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| The
American Friends Service Committee, SANE (The Committee for
a SANE Nuclear Policy), and Women March for Peace, with four
other organizations, sponsored a 10,000+ person anti-war picket
at White House and a 63,000+ rally at the Washington Monument
to oppose the Vietnam War. |
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In
response to the U.S. invasion of Cambodia (an expansion
of the Vietnam War) and the killings at Kent State and Jackson
State Universities, several million U.S. students held campus
strikes opposing the Vietnam War.
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May
15 (since the 1980's) |
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International
Conscientious Objectors Day, established to honor those who
leave or refuse to enter their country’s armed forces
for reasons of principle. |
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Are
you a CO? For more info visit PEACE-OUT
Read
the stories of 4 Conscientious Objectors
|
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