peace history august

August

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

August 1, 1914

As World War I began, Harry Hodgkin, a British Quaker, and Friedrich Siegmund-Schulte, a German Lutheran pastor, attending a conference in Germany, pledged to continue sowing the "seeds of peace and love, no matter what the future might bring," germinating the idea of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR).

read more on the history of the Fellowship of Reconciliation

FOR's Mission: FOR seeks to replace violence, war, racism, and economic injustice with nonviolence, peace, and justice. We are an interfaith organization committed to active nonviolence as a transforming way of life and as a means of radical change. We educate, train, build coalitions, and engage in nonviolent and compassionate actions locally, nationally, and globally.

August 1, 1920

Gandhi began the movement of "non-violent non-cooperation" with the British Raj in India. The strategy was to bring the British administrative machine to a halt by the total withdrawal of Indian support, both Hindu and Muslim. British-made goods were boycotted, as were schools, courts of law, and elective offices.

August 1, 1976

200 people, organized by the Clamshell Alliance, occupied the nuclear power plant site in Seabrook, New Hampshire. They were attempting to halt construction the same day the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission had issued a construction license. Eighteen were arrested. Eventually, only one of two planned reactors was built.

read about The Clamshell Alliance and Seabrook

August 2, 1931

Albert Einstein urges all scientists to refuse military work.

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
- Albert Einstein

Other Einstein thoughts on the military:

August 2, 1964

U.S.S. Maddox, a destroyer conducting intelligence operations along North Vietnam’s coast, reported it had been attacked by some of their torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. The day before, the North had been attacked by the South Vietnamese Navy and the Laotian Air Force under U.S. direction.

August 3, 1981

More than 12,000 air traffic controllers, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) went on strike. The union endorsed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980, but Pres. Reagan said they were violating U.S. law banning strikes by federal workers.

Two days later, on August 5th, Pres. Ronald Reagan, having ordered striking air traffic controllers back to work within 48 hours, fired 11,359 who had ignored the order, and permanently banned them from federal service (a ban later lifted by Pres. Clinton).

more about the strike

August 3, 1986

Eight women were arrested in a Motherpeace action at the naval weapons testing range located on Nanooose Bay off Vancouver Island in British Columbia. They were protesting the ten-year extension of free use of the range to the U.S. for testing and development of new weapons systems, instead of converting the land to peaceful uses.
The Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental Test Range (CFMETR), a joint Canadian-American testing facility for torpedos and other maritime warfare and listening equipment, has operated out of Nanoose Bay since 1965.

August 3, 1988

One hundred forty-three conscripts from four cities in South Africa announced their refusal to serve in the SADF (South African Defense Force). The SADF was engaged in actions to preserve apartheid, the social and economic system of racial separatism in South Africa, and to prevent independence by South Africa’s neighbors, Angola and Namibia [see July 31, 1986].

read more about resistance in South Africa

The first in the wave of refuseniks was David Bruce, a 24-year-old sentenced to six years in prison the month prior for refusing to serve (he only served two).

about David Bruce

August 4, 1925

U.S. Marines left Nicaragua after a 13-year occupation, initially there to support the provisional president, Adolfo Díaz, in a civil war. In 1916 the two countries signed a treaty granting the U.S. exclusive rights to build a canal. There was considerable opposition to occupation which eventually led to guerilla warfare. The marines returned the following year.

August 4, 1964

A second attack on U.S. naval ships in Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin was reported by the Pentagon. But there was no such activity reported by the task force commander in the Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick.
One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, later held as a POW by the North Vietnamese for more than seven years, and Ross Perot's vice presidential candidate in 1992. "I had the best seat in the house to watch that event," recalled Stockdale, "and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there.... There was nothing there but black water and American firepower."

August 4, 1964

FBI agents discovered the bodies of three missing civil rights workers at a dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi in 1964 to help organize voter registration efforts on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). James Chaney, was a local African-American man who had joined CORE in 1963.

Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman

August 4, 1985

Peace Ribbons made by thousands of women were wrapped around the U.S. Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol. Twenty thousand people participated, and the 27,000 pieces making up the Ribbon stretched for 15 miles.

August 5, 1963

U.S., USSR and Great Britain signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in Moscow, banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere, space and underwater.

Underground testing was not prohibited.

August 5, 1964

Pres. Johnson asked Congress ”for a resolution expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in southeast Asia.” The president had already used the alleged incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin to mount major air strikes on the North Vietnamese navy.

“Let's go back to the war in Vietnam. I was here. I was one of the Senators who voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Yes, I voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. I am sorry for that. I am guilty of doing that. I should have been one of the two, or at least I should have made it three, Senators who voted against that Gulf of Tonkin resolution. But I am not wanting to commit that sin twice, and that is exactly what we are doing here. This is another Gulf of Tonkin resolution.”
Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) in debate on the resolution to authorize use of military force on Iraq,

October 4, 2002

August 6th, 1945 - 8:15 AM

August 6, 2006

The 61st Anniversary of Hiroshima

Hiroshima ruins

The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II. An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent decades from radiation-related illnesses.
The weapon, Little Boy, was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets.

On August 6, 1995 up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing.

<Hiroshima survivor

Found watch stopped at the time of explosion>

Aug 6, 1957

Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site.

August 6, 1965

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by Pres. Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing Blacks from exercising their constitutional right to vote. It created federal oversight of election laws in seven southern states. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states.

Voter registration rates then and now:

August 6, 1990

George Galloway

The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions "...killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time....”

read George Galloway's speech or watch (download) a video

When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: "This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it." -60 Minutes (5/12/96)

August 7, 1904

Ralph Bunche, born in Detroit, spent a remarkable life in vigorous service to academia, the community, the nation and the world.

Ralph Bunche

Head of the Howard University Political Science Dept. for over twenty years, he was one of the first African-Americans to hold a key position at the State Department, and went on to the United Nations and served as UN mediator on Palestine. He was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the 1948 armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab States. He worked with Martin Luther King in the civil rights struggles of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Succinct biography of Ralph Bunche:

August 7, 1958

The D.C. Court of Appeals reversed playwright Arthur Miller's conviction for contempt of Congress after a two-year legal battle.

He had been charged for refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) the names of alleged Communist writers with whom he attended five or six meetings in New York in 1947.

Arthur Miller in front of HUAC

August 7, 1959

The U.S. launched the Explorer VI satellite which recorded the first photograph of Earth taken from space, 17,000 miles above the earth.

August 7, 1964

After a reported U.S. confrontation with North Vietnamese forces that, it was later discovered, never occurred, the U.S. Congress nearly unanimously passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. The resolution gave President Lyndon Johnson broad powers in dealing with North Vietnam, including sending U.S. troops.
News coverage relied almost entirely on official U.S. government sources so Americans assumed the North had launched an unprovoked attack. Two courageous senators, Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK), provided the only "no" votes.

“I rise to speak in opposition to the joint resolution. I do so with a very sad heart. But I consider the resolution . . . to be naught but a resolution which embodies a predated declaration of war . . . .”

Sen. Wayne Morse

August 8, 1974

President Nixon resigned from office, the first U.S. president ever to do so. The House Judiciary Committee had voted in the two weeks prior, with bi-partisan support, for three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. However, just three days before the resignation, one of the White House tapes was made public finally, showing the President’s direct involvement in the Watergate scandal cover-up:

"...call the FBI and say that we wish, for the country, don't go any further into this case, period..." -- Nixon to Chief of Staff Haldeman, June 23, 1972 (six days after the Watergate break-in)
He left office August 9th and was fully pardoned one month later by his successor, President Gerald Ford. Asked years later about some of his administration’s questionable activities, Nixon said, "Well, when the president does that it isn't illegal."

read more Read the articles of impeachment:

August 9, 1758

The first Indian reservation, Brotherton, was established in New Jersey. The treaty of 1758 required the Delaware Tribes, in exchange, to renounce all further claim to lands anywhere in New Jersey, except for the right to fish in all the rivers and bays north of the Raritan, and to hunt on unenclosed land. A tract of three thousand acres of land was purchased at Edge Pillock, in Burlington County.

Lenape chief late 1700s

August 9, 1943

Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian conscientious objector who reported for induction but refused to serve in the army of the Third Reich, was publicly beheaded in Berlin. An American, Gordon Zahn, wrote about Jägerstätter while researching the subject of German Roman Catholics' response to Hitler.
His book, “In Solitary Witness,” influenced Daniel Ellsberg's decision to stand against the Vietnam War by bringing the Pentagon Papers to public attention.

read about Franz Jagerstatter

August 9, 1945

The second atomic bomb, Fatman, was dropped on the arms-manufacturing and key port city of Nagasaki. Of the 195,00 population of the city (many of its children had been evacuated due to bombing in the days just prior), 39,000 died and 25,000 were injured, and 40% of all residences were damaged or destroyed.

hear an eyewitness account of this terrrible event

"What on earth has happened?" said my mother, holding her baby tightly in her arms. "Is it the end of the world?"
Sachiko Yamaguchi (nine years old at the time of the bombing.

Photographic exhibit of the aftermath

August 9, 1956

20,000 women demonstrated against the pass laws in Pretoria, South Africa. Pass laws required that Africans carry identity documents with them at all times. These books had to contain stamps providing official proof the person in question had permission to be in a particular town at a given time. Initially, only men were forced to carry these books, but soon the law also compelled women to carry the documents.

August 9, 1966

Two hundred staged a sit-in at the New York City offices of Dow Chemical to protest use of napalm in Vietnam.

read more about Dow Chemical and the use of napalm

Napalm in use in Vietnam

August 9, 1987

Hundreds were arrested in an all-day blockade of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Golden, Colorado. Protests at Rocky Flats had been going on for some years.

August 10, 1948

Gay rights activist Harry Hay organized what later became the Mattachine Society (originally Foundation), a groundbreaking 1950s gay rights organization. The group was named after the Mattachines, a medieval troupe of men who went village-to-village advocating social justice.

August 10, 1984

Two Plowshares activists, Barb Katt and John LaForge, damaged a Trident submarine’s guidance system with hammers at a Sperry plant in Minnesota.

In sentencing them to six months' probation, the judge in the case commented: "Why do we condemn and hang individual killers, while extolling the virtues of warmongers?"

Barb Katt

August 10, 1988

President George H.W. Bush signed legislation apologizing and compensating for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Pres. Roosevelt had authorized the round-up of hundreds of thousands of Japanese ancestry, some American citizens, as security risks. Most lost all their property and were moved to relocation camps for the duration of the war (though not in Hawaii where public opposition would not allow it).

Note: In the entire course of the war, 10 people were convicted of spying for Japan, all of whom were Caucasian.

August 10, 2005

Mehmet Tarhan was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on two charges of "insubordination before command" and "insubordination before command for trying to escape from military service" because he refused service in the Turkish Army.

He would not sign any paper, put on a uniform nor allow his hair and beard to be cut. He went on two extended hunger strikes to protest his arrest and abuse while in Sivas Military Prison. War Resisters International has supported his efforts throughout his ordeal.

August 11, 1894

Federal troops forced some 1,200 jobless workers from Washington, D.C., across the Potomac River.

Jack London

Led by an unemployed activist, Charles "Hobo" Kelley, the jobless group's "soldiers" included young journalist Jack London, known for writing about social issues, and miner/cowboy William ”Big Bill” Haywood who later organized western miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

read about about “Big Bill”

\"Big Bill" Haywood

August 11, 1984

Prior to his weekly radio address, unaware that the microphone was open and he was broadcasting, President Ronald Reagan joked, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." Many at home and throughout the world were concerned about the President’s apparently flippant attitude in a time of increasing tension between the two major nuclear powers.

August 12, 1953

The world’s first hydrogen (or thermonuclear) bomb, far more potentially damaging than those dropped on Japan, was exploded in the Kazakh desert, then part of the Soviet Union. Igor Vasziljevics Kurcsatov, head of the Soviet Uranium Committee, said to Josef Stalin at the time: "The atomic sword is in our hand. It is time to think about the peaceful use of nuclear energy."

August 12, 1982

Twelve were arrested in a blockade of first Trident submarine, the USS Ohio, entering the Hood Canal in Washington. In motorboats, sailboats, and small handmade wooden vessels, the demonstrators were objecting to the presence of nuclear weapons in Seattle.

open missile tubes on Trident sub

August 12, 1995

Thousands demonstrated in Philadelphia and other cities in support of journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal (on death row for murder since 1982) in the largest anti-death penalty demonstrations in the U.S. to date.

who is Mumia Abu-Jamal?

August 13, 1961

The city of Berlin was divided as East Germany sealed off the border between the city's eastern (Soviet Union-controlled) and western (American-, British- and French-controlled) sectors in order to halt the flight of economic and political refugees to the West. Two days later, work began on the Berlin Wall.

The wall stood until November 9, 1989.

Berlin Wall 1962

August 13, 1971

U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell announced there would be no federal grand jury investigation of the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State University. Ohio National Guard troops had fired on unarmed anti-Vietnam War demonstrators, killing four.

slain Kent State student Atty General John Mitchell

August 14, 1935

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, creating unemployment compensation, old-age benefits and aid to dependent children.

a comprehensive history:

“We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.”
President Roosevelt at the signing

President Roosevelt signing Social Security Act of 1935 in the Cabinet Room of the White House.
Library of Congress photo

August 14, 1968

400 Anti-apartheid students occupied the university in Capetown, South Africa to protest its refusal to hire a Black professor.

August 14, 1976

Majella O'Hare, a young Catholic girl, was shot dead by British soldiers while walking near her home. 10,000 Northern Ireland women, organized by the Women's Peace Movement, demonstrated for peace.

Majella O'Hare

August 14, 1980

After months of labor turmoil, more than 16,000 Polish workers seized the Lenin Shipyards. They helped form Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity), the first independent labor union anywhere in the Soviet bloc. Under the leadership of Lech Valensa and others, it united a broad representation of political and social opposition to the Communist government.

August 15, 1876

Congress passed a law to remove the Lakota Sioux and their allies from the Black Hills country of South Dakota after gold was found there.

In 1874 General George Armstrong Custer had led an unapproved expedition into the Black Hills.

Often referred to as the "starve or sell" bill, it provided that no further appropriations would be made for the subsistence of the Sioux under the 1868 Treaty unless they gave up the Black Hills. The treaty had granted them the territory and hunting rights in exchange for peace.

Lakota Sioux watch as their Black Hills are invaded. painting by Howard Terpning

August 15, 1947

Great Britain partitioned its empire on the subcontinent into primarily Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan, both becoming independent of British rule after 200 years of colonial control, and more than two decades of Gandhian resistance. Rioting between Hindus and Muslims followed.

Gandhi had been an advocate for a united India where Hindus and Muslims would live together in peace. On January 13, 1948, at the age of 78, he began a fast with the purpose of stopping the bloodshed. After 5 days the opposing leaders pledged to stop the fighting and Gandhi broke his fast. Twelve days later he was assassinated by a Hindu who opposed his program of tolerance for all creeds and religion.

Among the tributes to Gandhi upon his death were these words by Albert Einstein:
“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked

the earth in flesh and blood.”

August 15, 1967

Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at a Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, urged a civil disobedience drive in northern cities and support of a peace candidate in the 1968 presidential elections.

August 16, 1963

Buddhists staged protests across South Vietnam, protesting the government of President Diem, a Catholic who removed Buddhists from important government positions and replaced them with Catholics. Buddhist monks protested Diem's intolerance of other religions and the methods he used to silence them. Several Buddhist monks immolated themselves in protest of the war.

Buddhist monk Quang Duc became the first to killed himself in an

anti-government protest in Vietnam in June, 1963

20,000 Buddhists in silent march for peace,

Hue, South Vietnam. 1966

August 17, 1966

Beatle John Lennon expressed his admiration for American draft dodgers resisting enlistment during the Vietnam War while in Toronto, Canada.

August 17, 1982

The first draft resister since the Vietnam era, Enten Eller, was convicted. A member of the Mennonite Church of the Brethren Resistance received three years probation in Bridgewater, Virginia, for refusing to register for the draft. Support demonstrations occurred all over the U.S.

read more about the Church of the Brethern Resistance

Enten Eller

August 18, 1963

James Meredith

James Meredith, the first African-American to attend the University of Mississippi, became the first to graduate. His enrollment in the University a year earlier had been met with deadly riots, forcing him to attend class escorted by heavily armed guards.

who was James Meredith

James Meredith being escorted to his classes by
U.S. marshals and the military.

August 18, 1964

South Africa banned from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo due to the country's refusal to reform its racist apartheid system.

August 18, 1977

Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement resisting apartheid, was arrested at a roadblock outside King William’s Town. He was murdered while in custody during the weeks of interrogation that followed.

"So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior."
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." --Speech in Cape Town, 1971

Steve Biko

August 18, 1982

Peace activists attempted to disrupt the launch of the Polaris submarine at Groton, Connecticut.

missile launch from a Polaris sub

August 19, 1791

Benjamin Banneker, the first African-American scientist and son of former slaves, sent a copy of his just-published Almanac to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, along with an appeal about “the injustice of a state of slavery.”