| |
| October |
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In
the "Jerry
Rescue," citizens of Syracuse, New York, broke into
the city’s police station and freed William Henry
(called Jerry), a runaway slave working as a barrel-maker.
The federal Fugitive Slave Law required "good citizens" to
assist in the return of those who had fled “ownership” by
another. A group of black and white men created a chaotic
diversion and managed to free Jerry but he was later re-arrested.
At his second hearing, a group of men, their skin color
disguised with burnt cork, forcibly overpowered the guards
with clubs and axes and freed Jerry a second time; he was
then secretly taken over the border to Canada.
read
more 
|
|
Jerry
Rescue monument
Syracuse,
New York
|
Samuel
Ringgold Ward, whose parents were also escaped slaves,
urged the crowd to help release Jerry. “They say
he is a slave. What a term to apply to an American! How
does this sound beneath the pole of liberty and the flag
of freedom?” He asked those present not ever to
vote for those who support “. . . laws which empower
persons to hunt, chain and cage men in our midst.” Ward
also fled to Canada.
|
|
more
on Sam Ward
|
|
James
Meredith became the first black American to register at the
University of Mississippi. In the nearly two years
Meredith spent trying to attend classes at then all-white “Ole
Miss,” he had to file a federal lawsuit and, ultimately,
be escorted through registration by U.S. Justice department
attorney John Doar, and protected by U.S. Army troops.
The night before whites had rioted and attacked U.S. Marshalls
after the Highway Patrol officers withdrew as the crowd became
larger and more unruly. Pres. John F. Kennedy and Attorney
General Robert Kennedy sent the troops to enforce the order
of a federal court which Gov. Ross Barnett refused to accept. |
 |
a
visual and audio chronology of Meredith’s
struggle
|
role of the U.S. Marshalls
|
|
| The
Free Speech Movement was launched at the University of California – Berkeley
when mathematics grad student Jack Weinberg was arrested
for setting up an information
table for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) in front of Sproul
Hall, the administration building. |
|
|
Hundreds
of students surrounded the police car holding Weinberg
for 32 hours,
keeping him from being taken away. Many made speeches from
atop the car, and ultimately Weinberg’s release was
negotiated.
University Chancellor Clark Kerr had been under pressure
from the Board of Regents to ban expression of views considered
communist, but the students, inspired by the Civil Rights
movement, questioned and resisted the restrictions.
|
|
read
more
|
Jack
Weinberg 
|
|
| Five
activists, in what became known as the Trident II Plowshares,
hammered and poured blood on six missile tubes
and unfurled a banner which read: "Harvest of Hope – Swords
into Plowshares" at shipbuilder Electric Boat’s
Quonset Point facility in North Kingston, Rhode Island. |
General
Dynamics built the fourteen Ohio-class nuclear-powered
submarines there, each of which are armed with 24 Trident
II nuclear-tipped missiles (3.8 megatons each) launched
from underwater with a range of 4000 nautical miles (4600
miles; 7400 kilometers).
Plowshares participants, individually or in groups, actually
or symbolically damage parts of the U.S. first-strike nuclear
arsenal or conventional weaponry, and take public responsibility
for their actions.
|
 |
read
more about this action
|
a
chronology of Plowshares actions
|
|
 |
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Indian nationalist
leader whose philosophy of nonviolence would influence
movements around the world, was born. He came to prominence
as the leader of the successful nonviolent resistance to
British colonial rule of India.
|
| a
brief biography |
|
| Ten
months after its start in San Francisco, an anti-nuclear
peace march sponsored by the Committee for Nonviolent Action
arrived in Moscow’s Red Square where they successfully
distributed leaflets calling for disarmament. |
|
|
Thurgood
Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the
United States Supreme Court, the first African American
on the nation's highest court. He was appointed by Pres.
Lyndon Johnson who previously had appointed him Solicitor
General. Marshall had been the lead attorney in the Brown
v. Board of Education decision which led to the end of
legal segregation in the nation’s schools.
read
more about Thurgood Marshall
|
 |
|
|
With the
admission of Iraq into the League of Nations, Great Britain
terminated its control over the Arab nation, making Iraq
independent after 17 years of British rule and centuries
of Sunni Ottoman rule. It had taken 11 years from a plebiscite
creating a constitutional monarchy (King Feisel) until
the new country achieved complete independence. Iraq had
been created in the wake of World War I by combining three
provinces, Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, into one political
entity under British mandate.
Excellent
history of Iraq
|
|
|
Britain successfully tested its first atomic bomb, dubbed Hurricane,
at the Monte Bello Islands, off the northwest coast of Australia.
read
more
|
"Hurricane"
|
|
| The
Mississippi House of Representatives passed a concurrent resolution
(as did the Senate two days later) that condemned the effort
to ensure James Meredith’s enrollment at the University
of Mississippi (as its first negro student). They considered
the federal court order an encroachment on their state’s
sovereignty, the federalizing of the state’s national
guard a violation of the second amendment, and the use of the
army an invasion. |
read
the resolution |
|
| Thich
Nu Tri, a Buddhist nun, immolated herself in protest of the
repression of the Government of (South)
Vietnam. It
had denied participation in recent elections of peace and
neutralist elements. Buddhist leaders thus boycotted the
elections, and the Diem regime only received 35% of the vote.
Within four weeks, three more nuns followed Thich Nu Tri’s
example, all in an effort to bring peace to the their country,
split in two and caught up in a war with the North, and escalating
presence of U.S. troops. |
|
|
Woody
Guthrie
1912-1967
|
Folksinger/songwriter
Woody Guthrie died in New York City at the age of 55.
He had spent the last decade of his life in the hospital,
suffering from Huntington's chorea. Woody called his
songs "people's songs," filled with stinging
honesty, humor and wit, exhibiting Woody's fervent belief
in social, political, and spiritual justice.
extensive
bio with photos and Woody’s writing: |
|
|
| The SALT I treaties,
which placed the first limits on nuclear arsenals, went into
effect. The Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks succeeded with U.S. Pres. Richard Nixon and Soviet
General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev agreeing to limit anti-ballistic
missile systems, and to freeze the number of intercontinental
and submarine-based missile launchers (1,710 for the United
States, some of which had multiple warheads, and 2,347 for
the Soviet Union). |
|
| Irish
nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern
Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had
claimed 10 lives. |
|
The
first to die was Bobby Sands, the imprisoned Irish Republican
Army (IRA) leader who initiated the protest on March
1—the fifth anniversary of the British policy of "criminalisation" of
Irish political prisoners.
Prior to 1976, Irish political prisoners
were incarcerated under "Special Category Status," which
granted them a number of privileges that other
criminal inmates did not enjoy.
Despite Sands's election (while an inmate) as member
of Parliament from Fermanagh and South Tyrone after
the first month of his hunger strike, and his death
from starvation a month later, the government of British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would not give in,
and nine more Irish republicans perished before the
strike was called off.
The dead included Kieran Doherty, who had been elected
to Parliament in the Irish Republic during the strike.
In the aftermath, the British government quietly conceded
to some of the strikers' demands, such as the rights
to wear civilian clothing, to associate with each other,
to receive mail and visits, and not to be penalized
for refusing prison work.
|
|
The
United States and South Africa signed a missile non-proliferation
agreement committing South Africa to abide by the The Missile
Technology Control Regime, and to end its missile program and
its space-launch vehicle program.
|
more
about MTCR |
|
| Demonstrations across the country protested the scheduled
launch of the space probe Cassini with its three plutonium-fueled
Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators which provide power
for the mission. |
| The probe carried 72.3 pounds of plutonium,
the most ever put on a space device. The concern was for
an accidental release in the event of a launch mishap. |
 |
 |
Plutonium
is the most toxic substance known. "It is so toxic," says Helen Caldicott,
president emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, "that
less than one-millionth of a gram is a carcinogenic dose.
One pound, if uniformly distributed, could hypothetically
induce lung cancer in every person on Earth." |
radioactive dangers and space
|
an interview with Dr. Caldicott |
|
| Birthday
of activist Philip Berrigan. He spent four decades devoted
to opposing war and violence. In
his final statement
prior to his death in 2002, he said, "I die with the
conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear
weapons are the
scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them,
deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human
family, and
the earth itself." |
 |
Brother Dan Berrigan's Meditation on the Action of the Catonsville
9 |
|
| A
sodium cooling system malfunction caused a partial core
meltdown at the Enrico Fermi I fast-breeder reactor near
Detroit, Michigan. |
While
conducting a power test, two fuel assemblies overheated
and two others partially melted, but there was no release
of radiation. The public did not find out until one
of the engineers who witnessed it wrote the book, “We
Almost Lost Detroit.” The event inspired the
Gil Scott-Heron song of the same name.
|
the
Fermi plant
|
read
the lyrics |
what
actually happened |
|
2,000
activists demonstrated against development of uranium
mines in the Black Hills of South Dakota. This followed
the Department of the Interior releasing its final environmental
impact statement, endorsing the North Central Power Study's
plans to turn the Black Hills into a "national sacrifice
area." The plan was to devote nearly 200,000 acres
to mineral extraction and energy production with up to
25 nuclear power plants.
Uranium
Mining in the Black Hills
|
|
|
Raoul Wallenberg
Day, honoring the Swedish diplomat who saved as many as 100,000
Hungarian Jews from deportation and probable death in concentration
camps during WWII. He did this through bargaining with Nazi
officials, establishing safehouses, distributing false passports,
disguising Jews in Nazi uniforms and setting up checkpoints
to avert deportations. He had attended the University of
Michigan.
|
 |
read
more about Raoul Walenberg
|
|
| The
cover-up of the Iran-Contra scandal began to unravel when
Eugene Hasenfus was captured by government troops in Nicaragua
after the plane in which he was flying was shot down; three
others on the plane died in the crash. Under questioning,
Hasenfus confessed that he had been shipping military supplies
from the U.S. into Nicaragua for use by the Contras, an
insurgent force trying to bring down the Sandanista government. |
|
A
captured Eugene Hasenfus
|
The Contras had been recruited by the United States, and supported
in violation of specific law passed by Congress that forbid
it.
The operation was directed from the White House and run by
the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Funding came from the
sale of nearly 1500 missiles to Iran for use in its war with
Iraq, though weapons sales to Iran were also illegal.
good summary of
the Iran-Contra Affair and implications for presidential
power
|
|
| Pres.
Gorbachev of the Soviet Union responded in kind to Pres.
George H.W. Bush’s announcement of unilateral partial
nuclear weapons reduction. Bush had committed to withdrawal
of all U.S. land- and sea-based tactical nuclear weapons; standing
down strategic bombers on day-to-day alert, and to store their
weapons; deactivating missiles scheduled for elimination under
the SALT I treaty; and ending some new nuclear weapons programs.
Pres. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union announced a comparable
Soviet reduction. |
a
timeline of strategic arms control |
|
Thirteen
Mennonite families from the German town of Krefeld arrived
in Philadelphia on the ship Concord. Having endured religious
warfare in Europe, the Mennonites were pacifists, similar
to the Quakers, who opposed all forms of violence. The
first Germans in North America, they established Germantown
which still exists in Philadelphia.
|
about
Mennonite peace activism |
more
about the Mennonites in America |
|
| Poet
Allen Ginsberg read his poem "Howl" for the first
time at Six Gallery in San Francisco. The poem was an immediate
success that rocked the Beat literary world and set the
tone for confessional poetry of the 1960s and later. |
 |
"Howl
and Other Poems" was printed in England, but its
second edition was seized by customs officials as it
entered the U.S.
City Lights, a San Francisco bookstore, published the book itself to avoid customs
problems, and storeowner (and poet) Lawrence Ferlinghetti was arrested and tried
for obscenity, but defended by the ACLU. Following testimony from nine literary
experts on the merits of the book, Ferlinghetti was found not guilty.
|
 Lawrence
Ferlinghetti outside City Lights |
|
Working
on Howl in San Francisco, circa June, 1956.
|
more
about City Lights |
read
Howl |
read
more about Allen Ginsberg |
|
|
|
| 20,000 marched against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos
in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. |
|
| 200,000 marched on Washington calling on Congress to provide
affordable housing for the homeless. |
|
|
|
Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University
of Wyoming, was beaten, robbed and left tied to a wooden
fence post outside Laramie, Wyoming; he died five days
later. The death of Matthew Shepard helped awaken the
nation to the persecution that homosexuals have endured
for centuries, and which still exists.
read
more Matthews's
Place
Matthew
Shepard
|
|
President
Harry S Truman announced that the secret of the atomic
bomb would be shared only with Britain and Canada.
|
 |
|
Solidarnosc
leader Lech Walesa, 1982
|
The
Polish Parliament overwhelmingly approved a law banning
Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity), the independent
trade union that had captured the imagination and allegiance
of nearly 10 million Poles.
The
law abolished all existing labor organizations, including
Solidarity, whose 15 months of existence brought hope
to people in Poland and around the world but drew the
anger of the Soviet and other Eastern-bloc (Warsaw
Pact) governments. The parliament created a new set
of unions with severely restricted rights.
|
|
|
The
International Fellowship of Reconciliation was founded
in Bilthoven, the Netherlands.
Its
members have since been active in promoting programs
and activities for reconciliation, peace-building, active
nonviolence, and conflict resolution.
more
about FOR
|
|
|
The
U.S. began making reparations payments to survivors and
families of Japanese-Americans taken from their homes
put into internment (or concentration) camps during World
War II.
|
The
payments were a result of Civil Liberties Act of 1988
signed by President Reagan. Popularly known as the Japanese
American Redress Bill, this act acknowledged that "a
grave injustice was done" and mandated Congress
to pay each victim of internment $20,000 in reparations.
The first nine redress payments were made at a Washington,
D.C. ceremony. One-hundred-seven-year-old Rev. Mamoru
Eto of Los Angeles was the first to receive his check.
A
chronology of internment during WWII
|
 |
Some
of the housing in the concentration camps was in former
horse stalls.
|
| |
Note: In
the entire course of the war, 10 people were convicted
of spying for Japan, all of whom were Caucasian.
|
|
Women
In Black in Belgrade (Zene u Crnom) began regular weekly
silent vigils in Republic Square. They stood to protest
the nationalist violence that had erupted in the disintegration
of Yugoslavia. They encouraged men who refused to serve
in the military and engaged in many educational efforts.
They were initially encouraged by “Women Visiting Difficult Places,” a
group of Italian women who encouraged women on both “sides” in
conflict-ridden countries to communicate. They in turn were inspired
by Israeli Jewish women who organized in 1988 during the first intifada
to protest their country’s occupation of Palestinian territories,
and held vigils in as many as forty locations, later joined by Israeli
Palestinians.
A
Short History Of Women In Black 
|
Women
In Black • New York City
|
|
| The
Outer Space Treaty (Treaty on Principles Governing the
Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer
Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) demilitarizing
outer space went into force. |
It
sought to avoid "a new form of colonial competition" as
in the Antarctic Treaty, and the possible damage that
self-seeking exploitation might cause.
Discussions on banning weapons of mass destruction in orbit had begun
among the major powers ten years earlier.
read
more
|
|
1949
painting by Frank Tinsley of the infamous "Military
Space Platform"
proposed
by then Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in the December
1948 military budget.
|
|
|
Linus
Pauling
|
The
Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty took effect between The
U.S. and the Soviet Union. In 1957, Nobel Prize-winner
(Chemistry) Linus Pauling drafted the Scientists' Bomb-Test
Appeal with two colleagues, Barry Commoner and Ted Condon,
eventually gaining the support of 11,000 scientists from
49 countries for an end to the testing of nuclear weapons.
These included Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and
Albert Schweitzer.
Pauling then took the resolution to Dag Hammarskjöld, then Secretary-General
of the United Nations, and sent copies to both President John F. Kennedy
and Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev. The final treaty had many similarities
to Pauling’s draft. It went into effect the same day as the announcement
of Pauling’s second Nobel Prize, this time for Peace.
|
|
Elliott
Abrams, then assistant secretary of state for inter-American
affairs, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee (in closed executive session) that he did not
know Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a White House employee
in the Reagan administration, was directing illegal arms
sales to Iran and diverting the proceeds to assist the
Nicaraguan contras.
Abrams, who pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information during that
testimony from Congress in the Iran-contra affair, but was pardoned by
President George H.W. Bush. He has been hired as deputy national security
adviser to President George W. Bush. |
|
|
 Elliott
Abrams |
Presidents
George W. Bush &
George
H.W. Bush
|
 Oliver
North |
|
read
more about the pardons
|
|
| Thirty thousand Germans demonstrated
against construction of a large-scale nuclear reprocessing
installation at Wackersdorf in mostly rural northern Bavaria. |
|
The
House voted 296-133 to pass the “Joint Resolution
to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces
Against Iraq,” giving President George W. Bush
broad authority to use military force against Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein, with or without U.N. support.
|
|
|
| Nearly one million people flooded Washington, D.C., demanding
civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans, now celebrated
each year as National Coming Out Day. |
|
|
|
Natives
of islands off the Atlantic shore of North America came
upon Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, who was searching
for a water route to India for Spanish Queen Isabella.
|
 |
|
|
A
Reform Jewish Temple in Atlanta (the city’s oldest)
was firebombed with fifty sticks of dynamite in retaliation
for Jewish support of local black civil rights activists.
The Temple’s Rabbi Jacob Rothschild was outspoken in
his support of civil rights and integration, and was a friend
of Martin Luther King Jr. before it was fashionable or even
noteworthy.
read
more
|
|
|
|
British
zoologist Desmond Morris stunned the world with his
book, “The Naked Ape,” a frank study of
human behavior from a zoologist's perspective. Morris
had earlier studied the artistic abilities of apes
and was appointed Curator of Mammals at the London
Zoo.
read
more
|
|
|
"A
Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority" appeared
in The Nation and the New York Review of Books. 20,000
signed it, including academics, clergymen, writers.
It
urged “that every free man has a legal right and
a moral duty to exert every effort to end this war [Vietnam],
to avoid collusion with it, and to encourage others to
do the same.”
This document became the main basis for the federal government's criminal
prosecution (encouraging draft evasion) of five of the signers: Dr. Benjamin
Spock, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber, and the Reverend
William Sloane Coffin.
read
the Call
|
|
| Lt.
William Calley was court-martialled for the massacre of
102 civilians in My Lai during Vietnam War; far more actually
died during the incident. |
|
read
more about My Lai
|
Lt.
Calley
|
(general)
|
(link/viewer
caution advised:)
|
|
|
Regents
of the University of California v. Bakke" was argued
in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The question: Did
the University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment's
equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of
1964, by practicing an affirmative action policy that
resulted in the repeated rejection of Bakke's application
for admission to its medical school?
Listen
to the oral argument
|
|
|
The
American Federation of Labor (AFL) voted to boycott all
German-made products as a protest against Nazi antagonism
to organized labor within Germany.
|
|
 |
Folksinger
Joan Baez was arrested during the blockade of a military
induction center in Oakland, California.
|
|
|
|
The first national gay and lesbian march for civil rights in Washington,
D.C., drew over 100,000 demanding an end to all social, economic,
judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people.
a
photo gallery of the march
|
|
|
Dock
workers in Darwin, Australia, began a seven-day strike,
refusing to load uranium on board "Pacific Sky" for
eventual use by the U.S. military. After a week, the
ship was forced to leave without its cargo.
|
|
| 7,000 marched for nuclear disarmament in La Louviere,
Belgium. |
|
| In demonstrations organized by the student-run National Coordinating
Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the first public burning
of a draft card in the United States took place. |
|
|
These
demonstrations drew 100,000 people in 40 cities across
the country. In New York City, David Miller, a young Catholic
pacifist, became the first
U.S. war protester to burn his draft card in direct violation of a recently
passed federal law forbidding such acts. Agents from the Federal Bureau
of Investigation later arrested him; he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced
to two years’ imprisonment.
Two years later 1158 other young men turned in their draft cards in eighteen
U.S. cities.
Memoirs
of a Draft-Card Burner
|
| David
Miller burning his draft card, 1965. |
|
 |
Huey
Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party for
Self-Defense in Oakland, California. Its revolutionary
agenda, and the fact that it was armed, prompted FBI chief
J. Edgar Hoover to refer to it as as "the greatest threat
to the internal security of the United States." |
 |
Read
the Panthers’ Ten Point Platform and Program:
<First
6 members - Top Left to Right: Elbert "Big Man" Howard;
Huey P. Newton, Sherman Forte, Chairman, Bobby Seale.
Bottom: Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton.
Bobby
Seale(L) and Huey Newton(R)>
|
 |
|
2
million took part in protest against the continuing war
in Vietnam. The National Moratorium was an effort
by David Hawk and Sam Brown, two anti-war activists,
to forge a broad-based movement against the war.
|
The
organization initially focused its effort on 300 college
campuses, but the idea soon grew and spread beyond the colleges
and universities. Hawk and Brown were assisted by the New Mobilization
Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which was instrumental
in organizing the nationally coordinated antiwar demonstrations.
|
 |
|
|
One
of the largest occurred when 100,000 people converged
on the Boston Common, but activities
nationwide also included smaller rallies, marches, and
prayer vigils. The demonstrations involved a broad spectrum
of the population, including many who had never before
raised their voices against the war. This was considered
unprecedented: Walter Cronkite (then CBS news anchor) called
it "historic in its scope. Never before had so many
demonstrated their hope for peace."
Later, a declassified Kissinger (then Nixon’s National
Security Advisor) file revealed that these protests discouraged
a plan by Nixon to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam.
read
more
|
|
Reissued
The
original Vietnam Moratoium Peace Dove button
|
|
| Abolitionist John Brown led a group of 21 other
men, five black and sixteen white, in a raid on the U.S. arsenal
at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. |
|
John
Brown
|
They
had hoped to set off a slave revolt, throughout the south,
with the weapons they had planned to seize. Virtually all
his compatriots were killed or captured by Gen. Robert
E. Lee’s troops; Brown was wounded and arrested,
and hanged for treason within two months.
read
more
|
|
The
Tragic Prelude (John Brown)
mural
by John Steuart Curry (1937-1942)
|
|
|
Dick
Sheppard, who volunteered and joined the Army as a chaplain
in World War I, started
the Peace Pledge Union in England. In a letter published
in the Guardian and elsewhere, Sheppard, a well-known priest
in the Church of England, invited those who would be willing
to join a public demonstration against war to send him
a postcard. In a few weeks there were 30,000 replies. Members
of the Peace Pledge Union vowed to “renounce war
and never again to support another.”
read
more
|
|
|
Rev. Sheppard had been the first to broadcast
religious services on the radio and, when Vicar of St. Martin-in-the
Fields, Trafalgar Square, he had opened the building to the
friendless and homeless of London.
“Up
to now the peace movement has received its main support
from women, but it seems high time now that men should
throw their weight into the scales against war.”
-Dick
Sheppard
|
|
|
China
detonated its first atomic bomb.
Deng
Jiaxian. The father of the chinese bomb. |
 |
|
|
Folksinger
Joan Baez was arrested in a peace demonstration as rallies
took place across America during “Stop the Draft
Week.” 1,158 young men returned their draft cards
in eighteen U.S. cities. Baez was among 122 anti-draft
protesters arrested for sitting down at the entrance of
the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California;
she was sentenced to 10 days in prison.
read
more
|
Joan
Baez the day after the arrest
|
|
During medal
presentations at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico
City, winning sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised
their black-gloved fists while the Star Spangled Banner
was played. They were suspended from the team by the U.S.
Olympic Committee two days later. Smith later told the
media that he raised his right fist in the air to represent
black power in America while Carlos's left fist represented
unity in black America.
read
more
|
 |
|
|
|
U.S.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, though accused of
war crimes
by some for the massive bombing of Laos and Cambodia, was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with North Vietnam’s
Le Duc Tho (who refused the honor) for the cease-fire agreement
they had negotiated. This occurred just a month after the
bloody military coup, fully supported by the Nixon administration
and aided by the CIA, that overturned the democratically
elected government of Chile, and installed Gen. Augusto
Pinochet as military dictator for the next 17 years.
U.S.
involvement in the coup documented
Henry
Kissinger
|
|
In
a human rights and international law breakthrough, British
authorities, after receiving an extradition request from
| | |
