peace history january

January

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January 1, 1831

William Lloyd Garrison first published The Liberator, which became the leading abolitionist paper in the United States. He labeled slave-holding a crime and called for immediate abolition.

see January 6, 1832

January 1, 1847

Michigan became the first state – the first government in the English-speaking world – to abolish capital punishment (for all crimes except treason).

This was done by a vote of the legislature, and not a part of the state’s constitution until 1964.

How it happened:

January 1, 1959

32-year-old lawyer Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over the corrupt government of Fulgencio Batista who had fled the island the day before.

Batista, a former army sergeant, had seized power in a coup, canceling an election, in 1952.

More on pre-Castro Cuba:

Fidel Castro

January 1, 1983

44 women scaled a 12-foot fence at dawn, breaking into a cruise missile base at Greenham Common in Great Britain and danced on a missile silos.

The lyrics to their song: listen

January 1, 1987

Ten anti-nuclear activists were arrested for trespassing at the Nevada Test Site, the culmination of a 54-day encampment at the main Test Site gate.

The camp established momentum for what became a movement ultimately involving over 10,000 arrests in numerous Test Site protests over the following years.

January 1, 1989

Kees Koning, a former army chaplain and priest, and Co van Melle, a medical doctor working with homeless people and illegal refugees, entered the Woensdrecht airbase (a second time), and began the conversion of NF-5B fighter airplanes by beating them with sledgehammers into ploughshares.

The Dutch planned to sell the NF-5B to Turkey, for use against the Kurdish nationalists as part of a NATO-aid program which involved shipping 60 fighter planes to Turkey. They were charged with trespass, sabotage and $350,000 damage, and convicted, both sentenced to a few months in jail.

Kees Koning

January 1, 1991

Moana Cole

Early in the morning Moana Cole, a Catholic Worker from New Zealand, Ciaron O’Reilly, a Catholic Worker from Australia, and Susan Frankel and Bill Streit, members of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in Washington, D.C., calling themselves the Anzus (Australia, New Zealand and U.S.) Peace Force Plowshares, entered the Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York.
After cutting through several fences, Frankel and Streit entered a deadly force area, and hammered and poured blood on a KC-135 (a refueling plane for B-52s), and then proceeded to hammer and pour blood on the engine of a nearby cruise missile-armed B-52 bomber. They presented their action statement to base security who encircled them moments later.

January 2, 1905

Conference of Industrial Unionists in Chicago formed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as The Wobblies. The IWW mission is to form “One Big Union” among industrial workers.

IWW home

January 2, 1920

U.S. Attorney General Alexander Palmer ordered the arrest and detention without trial of 6,000 Americans, including suspected anarchists, communists, unionists and other radicals, including many members of the IWW. This followed a mass arrest of 10,000 two months earlier based on Palmer’s belief that Communist agents from Russia were planning to overthrow the American government.

Attorney General Alexander Palmer

January 2, 1975

A U.S. Court ruled that John Lennon and his lawyers be given access to Department of Immigration files regarding his deportation case, to determine if the government case was based on his 1968 British drug conviction, or his anti-establishment comments during the Nixon administration years.
On October 5, 1975, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the order to deport Lennon, and he was granted residency status.

January 2, 1996

An estimated 100,000 Bangladeshi women traveled from the countryside to attend a rally in Dacca, the capital, to protest Islamist clerics' attacks on women's education and employment.

Khaleda Zia, the prime minister, had introduced compulsory free primary education, free education for girls up to class ten, a stipend for the girl students and food for the education program.

Khaleda Zia

January 3, 1967

Carl Wilson of the the Beach Boys was indicted for draft evasion.

Claiming conscientious objector status, he eventually won his battle against these charges.

Carl Wilson

January 3, 1968

Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-MN) announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination. McCarthy, though a contender to be Pres. Lyndon Johnson's running mate in 1964, had since become increasingly disenchanted with Johnson's policies in Vietnam, and opposed the war in his campaign.

Eugene McCarthy

January 3, 1993

The United States of America and the Russian Federation agreed to cut the number of their nuclear warheads to between 3,000 and 3,500 (nearly half).

U.S. President George Bush, just before leaving office, and his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty – Start II – in Moscow.

Start II marked the biggest reduction in nuclear arms ever agreed, eliminating land-based multiple warhead missiles, and putting limits on submarine-based missiles.

January 3, 2003

Brazil’s new leftist president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, suspended purchase of 12 new fighter planes, saying money could be better used to relieve hunger.

about Lula da Silva

January 4, 1961

The longest recorded labor strike ended after 33 years: Danish barbers' assistants began their strike in 1938 in Copenhagen.

January 4, 1974

President Richard Nixon refused to release tape recordings of Oval Office discussions and other documents subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee investigating illegal activities of the president’s re-election committee.

the Watergate tapes online

January 5, 1916

With World War I entering its third year, British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith introduced the first military conscription bill in British history to the House of Commons. It was passed into law as the Military Service Act later that month and went into effect on February 10.

World War I Conscientious Objectors, Dyce Camp, UK

About 16,000 conscientious objectors refused to fight. Most believed that even during wartime it was wrong to kill another human being. About 7,000 agreed to perform non-combat service. More than 1,500 men refused all compulsory service. They were usually drafted into military units and, if they refused to obey orders, were court-martialed.

January 5, 1968

"Prague Spring," a mass movement advocating political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech and an end to state censorship, began in Czechoslovakia when Alexander Dubcek came to power.

Alexander Dubcek

”Socialism with a human face”

Soviet tanks enter Prague, August 1968

January 6, 1832

William Lloyd Garrison, along with 15 others, founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society at the African Meeting House in Boston. By 1833, Garrison helped establish the American Anti-Slavery Society with fellow abolitionists Arthur Tappan, Lewis Tappan, and Theodore Dwight Weld. This organization sent lecturers across the North to convince whites of slavery's brutality.

read about the Anti-Slavery Society today

about William Lloyd Garrison

January 6, 1941

President Roosevelt introduced the term "Four Freedoms": freedom of speech and expression; freedom of every person to worship God in his own way; freedom from want; and freedom from fear.

The full text

January 7, 1953

President Harry S. Truman announced in his State of the Union address that the United States had developed a hydrogen (fusion) bomb.

January 7, 1971

The U.S. District Court of Appeals ordered William Ruckelshaus, the Environmental Protection Agency's first Administrator, to begin the de-registration procedure for DDT.

DDT being sprayed next to livestock

DDT was a widely used pesticide in agriculture (principally cotton). This happened nine years after the publication of Rachel Carson's “Silent Spring,” a book which cautioned about the dangers of excessive use of pesticides and other industrial chemicals to plants and animals, and humans.

read more about Gandhi

Gandhi, 1906

January 10, 1920

The League of Nations formally came into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations (part of the Treaty of Versailles), ratified by 42 nations in 1919,

took effect.
In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of the most costly war ever fought to that date. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in the United States and Britain began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security.
Though strongly supported by Pres. Woodrow Wilson (who served as Chairman of the Committee that developed the Covenant), the U.S. never joined.

The archives of the League of Nations:

January 10, 1940

Members of the Brethren, Mennonites and Friends religious groups, sent a message to President Roosevelt requesting alternative service in the event of war.

The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 proclaimed that all persons who “by reason of religious training and belief were conscientiously opposed to all forms of military service, should, if conscripted for service, be assigned to work of national importance under civilian direction.”

Men at a Civilian Public Service camp.

January 10, 1946

The first General Assembly of the United Nations convened at Westminster Central Hall in London, England,

and included 51 nations.

On January 24, the General Assembly adopted its first resolution, a measure calling for the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the elimination of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction.

January 10, 1966

Vernon Dahmer, a wealthy businessman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, offered to pay poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford the fee required to vote. The night after a radio station broadcasted Dahmer’s offer, his home was firebombed.

Dahmer died later from severe burns.

former home of Vernon Dahmer

January 10, 1971

The Peoples' Peace Treaty between the peoples of U.S. and Vietnam was endorsed by 130 organizations. Several million North Americans later signed it.

The treaty had been signed in December by leaders from the South Vietnam National Student Union, South Vietnam Liberation Student Union, North Vietnam Student Union, and National Student Associations in Saigon, Hanoi and Paris. The treaty was adopted by New University Conference and Chicago Movement meeting.

read the treaty

Peoples' Peace Treaty organizers

January 10, 1994

Guatemalan government officials and leftist guerilla movement leaders agreed to negotiate to end 36 years of violent conflict.

January 11, 1952

The Peace Pledge Union organized "Operation Gandhi," which became the first British protest against nuclear weapons. Ten members staged a "sit down" on the War Office steps in London.

January 11, 1998

Twenty-five thousand occupied the the site of one of 30 dams to be built on the Narmada River in India. They objected to a World Bank-funded project to build 30 large, 135 medium and 3000 small dams to harness the waters of the Narmada and its tributaries to provide electrical power and irrigation to Gujarat and Rjasthan.

Local residents, Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada movement), organized as they became concerned about their livelihoods, environmental impact and a host of other issues.

read about IRN (International Rivers Network)

The largest proposed dam, Sardar Sarovar, would submerge 61 villages and displace more than 320,000 people.

January 12, 1954

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced U.S. abandonment of President Truman's doctrine of "containing Communism" for a new policy: “Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory [nuclear] power.”

January 12, 1957

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded by Dr. Martin Luther King and other Black clergymen who wanted to press for civil rights. Sixty black ministers from ten states came to Atlanta, Georgia, to set up the coordinating group. They elected King its first president, with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy as treasurer.

January 12, 1962

Federal workers were guaranteed the the right to join unions and bargain collectively after President Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988.

Executive Order 10988 being signed

January 12, 1971

Reverend Philip F. Berrigan, founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship anti-Vietnam War organization, was indicted along with five others on charges of conspiring to kidnap National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and to bomb the heating systems of federal buildings in Washington, D.C.

At the time, Berrigan was serving a six-year sentence at a federal prison in Connecticut with his brother, Daniel, for their destruction of military draft records in Maryland during 1967-68. Berrigan’s ethic of nonviolence towards others made the charges questionable, and eventually all six were acquitted of the conspiracy charges. Berrigan and Elizabeth McAllister (later to become his wife) were convicted of smuggling mail out of a federal penitentiary.

more about Philip Berrigan

January 12, 1971

"All in the Family" premiered on CBS TV. The sitcom focused on the major social and political issues of the day such as racism and war.

January 12, 1987

Twenty West German judges were arrested for blockading the U.S. Air Force base at Mutlangen, West Germany where Pershing missiles were being deployed.

Judge Ulf Panzer stated:

"Fifty years ago, during the time of Nazi fascism, we judges and prosecutors allegedly

'did not know anything.' By closing our eyes and ears, our hearts and minds, we became a docile instrument of suppression, and many judges committed cruel crimes under the cloak of the law. We have been guilty of complicity. Today we are on the way to becoming guilty again, to being abused again.

By our passivity, but also by applying laws, we legitimize terror: nuclear terror.

Today we do know...”

January 12, 1991

The United States Congress voted to authorize the use of military force against Iraq to end its occupation of Kuwait. House: 250-183; Senate: 52-47.

January 12, 2002

The "Refusenik" movement began when 53 Israeli soldiers signed an ad refusing to serve in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.

read their statement ... more

January 13, 1874

The depression of 1873-1877 left 3 million people unemployed. In the winter of 1873, 900 people starved to death, and 3,000 deserted their infants on doorsteps. A public meeting was called in New York City's Tompkins Square Park to lobby for public works projects.

The Tompkins Park Massacre

The night before, the city secretly voided the permit for the gathering. The next morning, mounted police charged into the crowd of 10,000, indiscriminately clubbing adults and children, leaving hundreds of casualties.

Police commissioner Abram Duryee commented, "It was the most glorious sight I have ever seen..."

The Tompkins Square event was part of a wave of unemployed parades and bread riots across the nation. In Chicago, 20,000 people marched. Even under police attack, workers in New York, Omaha, and Cincinnati refused to disperse.

January 13, 1962

One hundred fifty members of the Committee of 100 (an anti-nuclear group) launched a sit-down protest at the U.S. consulate in Glasgow, Scotland.

January 13, 1993

A vigil was held against arrival of ship bringing nearly two metric tons of plutonium for a pilot fuel reprocessing plant in Tokai, Japan. The specially constructed ship, the Akatsuki Maru, had carried it from Cherbourg, France.

The Voyage Of The Akatsuki Maru by Mario Uribe

January 14, 1601

Church authorities burned sacred Hebrew books in Rome during the papacy of Clement VIII who had forbid Jews from reading the Talmud (a collection of centuries of interpretation of Jewish law). He had confirmed Pope Paul III’s assignment of Jews to a Roman ghetto, and their banning from papal states by Pope Pius V.

January 14, 1784

The United States Congress ratified a peace treaty known as the Treaty of Paris with England ending the Revolutionary War. By its terms, "His Britannic Majesty" was bound to withdraw his armies without "carrying away any Negroes or other property of American inhabitants."

signing the Treaty of Paris

January 14, 1918

U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the selective service law, affirming all criminal charges arising from non-compliance with the draft. In Arver v. United States, the Court found that a draft does not violate the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of involuntary servitude.

January 14, 1941

A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (and widely considered de facto chief spokesperson for the African American working class) called for a March on Washington, demanding racial integration of the military and equal access to defense-industry jobs.
"On to Washington, ten thousand black Americans!" Randolph urged. He said in the fight to "stop discrimination in National Defense...While conferences have merit, they won't get desired results by themselves."

January 14, 1942

President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation No. 2537, which required aliens from World War II enemy countries – Italy, Germany and Japan – to register with the United States Department of Justice.
Registered persons received a “Certificate of Identification for Aliens of Enemy Nationality.” This proclamation facilitated the beginning of full-scale internment of Japanese Americans the following month.

January 14, 1963

George Wallace was sworn in as Governor of Alabama. In his inaugural address, he called for "segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!"

George C. Wallace, left, blocked the University of Alabama doorway to prevent desegregation later in 1963. U.S. Marshal Peyton Norville, center, and U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach listened. (File/AP)

January 14, 1966

A march in Atlanta was held to protest the ouster of Julian Bond, an African American, from Georgia House of Representatives, after his endorsement of statement critical of U.S. involvement in Vietnam issued by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

January 14, 1994

An agreement was signed for Russia and the U.S. to assist newly independent Ukraine in ridding itself of nuclear weapons. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s leader Leonid Kravchuk found his country with the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal, including multiple-warhead long-range missiles and bombers, and 3000 tactical nuclear weapons.

former Ukranian missle silo

January 14, 1996

Sixteen protesters were arrested in a winter blockade of the rural Wisconsin site (in the Chequamegon National Forest) of the U.S. Navy's ELF (extremely low frequency) transmitter, which communicated (one-way) with deeply submerged U.S. submarines.

A total of nearly 400 arrests occurred in 24 actions between 1991-96.

January 15, 1929

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. The son of a Baptist pastor, he followed in his father’s footsteps, then went on to lead the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and '60s and speak out against the Vietnam war.
In 1955 Dr. King organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience to end racial segregation. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence and arrest, but King and his followers persisted.
His inspiration, leadership and eloquence helped establish the fundamental rights of citizenship for tens of millions, and changed the face of a nation.

A selected bibliography on and about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

January 15, 1968

The Jeanette Rankin Brigade marched on Washington to protest the war in Vietnam. It was led by 87-year-old Rankin herself, the first U.S. Congresswoman (R-MT), and the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry to both World Wars. Once in Washington, The New York Radical Women staged a "Burial of Traditional Womanhood."

Documents from the New York Radical Women including

Funeral Oration for the Burial of Traditional Womanhood by Kathy Amatniek

(who coined “Sisterhood is Powerful”)