June

June 1, 1845

Sojourner Truth (a name she believed God had given her as a symbolic representation of her mission in life) set out from New York on a historic journey across America, preaching about the evils of slavery and promoting women's rights.

read more about Sojourner Truth

June 1, 1932

Gay rights organizer Henry Gerber published an article in Modern Thinker magazine attacking the view that homosexuality is a neurosis.

In 1924, Henry Gerber, a postal worker in Chicago, started the Society for Human Rights, America's first known gay rights organization. "The Society for Human Rights is formed to promote and protect the interests of people who are abused and hindered in the legal pursuit of happiness which is guaranteed them by the Declaration of Independence, and to combat the public prejudices against them."
After having created and distributed a newsletter called "Friends and Freedom,” Gerber was arrested and held for 3 days without a warrant or being charged with any infractions. Upon release he lost his job for "conduct unbecoming a postal worker.”

On this day in 1942, on the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler ordered all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.

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June 1, 1950

June 1, 1963

The U.S. Supreme Court banned formal prayers and religious exercises from public schools.

[School Dist. Of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963); Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962)]

June 1, 1967

The Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW) was formed.

the VVAW today   

June 2, 1863

Abolitionist and former slave James Montgomery led 300 African-American troops of the Union's 2nd South Carolina Volunteers on a raid of plantations along the Combahee River. Meanwhile, backed by three gunboats, Harriet Tubman's forces set fire to the plantations and freed 750 slaves.

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Harriet Tubman

June 2, 1936

General Anastasio Somoza took over as dictator of Nicaragua.

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June 2, 1952

The U.S. Supreme court ruled illegal President Truman's order two months earlier for the Army to seize the nation's steel mills in order to avert a strike.

June 3, 1900

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was founded.

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June 3, 1957

Linus Pauling and thousands of other scientists joined in a call for banning nuclear weapons testing. President Eisenhower rejected their plea.

“...Then on May 15, 1957, with the help of some of the scientists in Washington University, St. Louis, I wrote the Scientists' Bomb Test Appeal, which within two weeks was signed by over two thousand American scientists and within a few months by 11,021 scientists, of forty-nine countries....”

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Linus Pauling's Nobel Peace Prize speech 1962

Linus Paulng at a disarmament demonstration

Conscientious objection became legally recognized in Belgium.

a history of European conscientious objection

June 4, 1972

Angela Y. Davis, a former philosophy professor at the University of California, militant black leader and self-proclaimed communist, was acquitted on charges of conspiracy, murder, and kidnapping by an all-white jury in San Jose, California.

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New Zealand passed legislation declaring itself nuclear-free. In 1986, New Zealand had banned the entry of U.S. Navy ships from their ports in the belief that they were carrying nuclear weapons or were nuclear-powered. U.S. government protests of the policy led to breakup of the ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-United States) defense alliance.

The New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act 1987 (which implemented the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) prohibits the:
-   manufacture, acquisition, possession, control of any nuclear explosive device,
-   aiding, abetting or procuring any person to manufacture, acquire, possess, or have control over any nuclear explosive device, and
-   transport ,stockpiling, storage, installation, or deployment of any nuclear explosive device.

Hundreds of civilians were shot dead by China’s People’s Liberation Army during a bloody military operation in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Students and workers had became part of a growing pro-democracy movement, gathering there continuously for weeks. The Chinese government still officially denies any deaths occurred; thousands arrested "disappeared" and remain unaccounted for.

"deaths from the military assault on Tiananmen Square range from 180 to 500; thousands more have been injured . . . thousands of civilians stood their ground or swarmed around military vehicles. APCs [armored personnel carriers] were set on fire, and demonstrators besieged troops with rocks, bottles, and Molotov cocktails."*

watch

*From a comprehensive overview prepared by the National Security Archive based on formerly classified U.S. Government documents

June 5, [since] 1972

World Environment Day was established by the U.N. General Assembly to commemorate the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in Sweden. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was established as a result of the conference.

UNEP Mission: To provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.

read more

past milestones of World Environment Day

Each year World Environment Day adopts a theme.

For 2006 the theme of World Environment

Day is Deserts and Desertification Don't Desert Drylands!

June 6, 1936

First issue of Peace News published in England.

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June 6, 1966

He was walking the 220 miles from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to encourage others to stand up for their rights and respect, and to register to vote. Law enforcement officers and reporters following him witnessed the attack, and the shooter was arrested.

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June 6, 1968

Comedian Dick Gregory began a hunger strike in Olympia, Washington jail after his arrest with others at a fish-in, an act of civil disobedience in support of the fishing rights of the Nisqually Indian Tribe.

visit Dick Greogy.com            read more about Dick Gregory

Homer Plessy was arrested when he refused to move from a seat reserved for whites on a train in New Orleans. The case led to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ''separate but equal'' decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

more about Homer Plessy               Read his petition to the Court

a young Ghandi

In his first act of civil disobedience, Mohandas Gandhi refused to comply with racial segregation rules on a South African train and was forcibly ejected at Pietermaritzburg.

read "Pietermaritzburg: The Beginning of Gandhi's Odyssey"

June 7, 1997

Seven activists are arrested for distributing copies of the Bill of Rights outside the Bradbury Science Museum, part of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the primary nuclear research facility in the U.S.

June 8, 1966

270 walked out of graduation ceremonies at New York University (NYU) to protest the presentation of an honorary degree to Robert McNamara, then the Secretary of Defense and responsible for U.S. forces waging war in Vietnam.

Counsel for the U.S. Army Joseph N. Welch confronted Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) during hearings into alleged communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps. McCarthy attacked a member of Welch's law firm, Frederick G. Fisher, as a communist
for his prior membership in the

National Lawyers Guild.

Army counsel Joseph N. Welch (left) confronts Sen Joseph McCarthy (right)

Said Welch: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" The entire hearings and this encounter were broadcast live on television, a first, and was the beginning of the end for McCarthy’s power to spread fear.

read more

June 9, 1984

150,000 marched in London, England, for nuclear disarmament, protesting the presence of U.S. Cruise missiles on British soil.

June 9, 1993  

Police banned a vigil by Women in Black in Belgrade, Serbia.

read about Women in Black

Women in Black demonstrations combine art & politics

June 10, 1917

The Women's Peace Crusade in Scotland launched a three-week campaign of street meetings and demonstrations in dozens of towns to build support for peace in the midst of World War I.

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June 10, 1980

Nelson Mandela's first writings while imprisoned on South Africa’s Robben Island were smuggled out and made public.

read more about Nelson Mandela

Reflections in Prison

Nelson Mandela's cell on Robben Island

where he spent 17 years

June 11, 1962

Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held its founding convention in Michigan and issued The Port Huron Statement, laying out its principles and program.

“Making values explicit--an initial task in establishing alternatives--is an activity that has been devalued and corrupted. The conventional moral terms of the age, the politician moralities--"free world," "people's democracies"--reflect realities poorly, if at all, and seem to function more as ruling myths than as descriptive principles.”

read The Port Huron Statement

June 11, 1963

Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from the Linh-Mu Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam, burned himself to death (self-immolation) in front of U.S. embassy in downtown Saigon to protest the the South Vietnamese regime and the war.

June 11, 1968

Daniel Cohn-Bendit arrived in Britain, stirring up fears of campus unrest. The 23-year-old Paris law student had been given permission to remain in the UK just 24 hours, but immediately threatened to defy the authorities and out-stay his welcome. Mr Cohn-Bendit -- a German citizen -- had been expelled from France in May for being an organizer of the French student and worker demonstrations which almost brought the country to a standstill the previous month.

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"I don't know how long I will stay. I think it's a free country"

June 11, 1988

100,000 marched from United Nations headquarters to Central Park during the 3rd U.N. Special Session on Disarmament.

In the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death by a white supremacist. His murderer was not convicted until 1994.In the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death by a white supremacist. His murderer was not convicted until 1994.

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June 12, 1964

Nelson Mandela, a 46-year-old lawyer and a leader of the opposition to South Africa’s racially separatist apartheid system, was convicted of sabotage in the Rivonia Trial and sentenced to life imprisonment.

“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Mildred and Richard Loving

The Supreme Court struck down state miscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriages as violations of the 14th amendment which guarantees equal protection under the law. In June of 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter had married in Washington D.C. Upon return to their home state of Virginia, the couple was arrested, convicted of a felony, and sentenced to a year in jail. Their appeal led to the decision.       

read more about it

June 12, 1982

In the largest U.S. peace demonstration to date, one million rallied in Central Park to support the newly formed Nuclear Freeze Campaign which called for a halt to all nuclear weapons testing.

read about the origin of the Nuclear Freeze Campaign

June 13, 1967

Thurgood Marshall was nominated for justice of the Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson. Marshall was the Solicitor General of the United States and had been the lead attorney in the Brown v. Board of Education case that ended legal segregation. He would be the first African American on the Court.

more about Justice Thurgood Marshall

June 13, 1971

The New York Times began publishing the “Pentagon Papers,” a series of excerpts from the government’s classified history of the Vietnam War, giving details of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from the end of World War II to 1968. Publication was interrupted after the Nixon administration went to court to block it, asserting its power to exercise prior restraint. The Washington Post then began publishing the papers. On June 30 the Supreme Court, 6-3, allowed publication to resume.

more on the Pentagon Papers

“But out of the gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing: [unclear] you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong.”
-- H.R. Haldeman to President Nixon, Monday, 14 June 1971, 3:09 p.m.

June 13, 1985

June 13, 1991

June 14, 1816

The Society for the Promotion of Universal and Permanent Peace, often known as the London Peace Society, was founded. Nearly all of the members of the Society came from Protestant denominations, and Quaker influence was strong.

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June 14, 1943

The U.S. Supreme Court decided a West Virginia case, Barnette v. Board of Education, upholding the constitutional right of children in public schools to refuse to salute the American flag.

A group of Jehovah’s Witnesses had objected to the mandatory salute as a violation of the third commandment (Exodus 20:4) which prohibits worshipping a graven image.

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June 14, 1964

June 14, 1968

Dr. Spock, the pediatrician, author and peace activist, was found guilty of aiding draft resisters during the Vietnam War. A Federal District Court jury in Boston convicted Dr. Benjamin Spock and three others, including Yale University Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr., of conspiring to “aid, abet, and counsel draft registrants to violate the Selective Service Act.”

read A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority co-authored by Dr. Spock (1967)

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled (U. S. v. Sisson) that conscientious objectors need not base their moral beliefs on an organized religion.

visit the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors

Following a meeting between South Vietnam envoy Nguyen Dinh Thuan and President John F. Kennedy, the United States agreed to increase the number of American military advisors in Vietnam from 340 to 805, and to provide direct training and combat supervision to South Vietnamese troops. U.S. personnel rose to 3,200 by the end of 1962.

President Ngo Dinh Diem and President Eisenhower in DC, five years earlier

June 16, 1976

South African police opened fire on black students peacefully protesting the requirement to learn Afrikaans, the language of the small white majority that enforced apartheid regime.

Over 150 South African children were killed and hundreds more injured in the shooting -- what became known as the Soweto Massacre.

read more on Soweto

fact: Soweto stands for

SOuth WEst TOwnships

June 16, 1992

President Ronald Reagan with Caspar Weinberger, George Shultz, Ed Meese, and Don Regan discussing the President's remarks on the Iran-Contra affair.

Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger was indicted on felony charges in the Iran-Contra affair, charged with four counts of lying to Congress and prosecutors. He concealed the secret arrangement to provide funds to the Nicaraguan contra rebels with profits from selling arms to Iran. The Reagan administration was circumventing the legal ban on material support for the terrorist activities of the contras. Iran had needed the weapons for its war with Iraq, and it was hoped that Iran would respond by encouraging the release of hostages being held by Islamist groups in Lebanon.

Weinberger and five others charged were pardoned by President George H. W. Bush six months later, days before the trial was to start.

more on Iran-Contra pardons

June 17, 1838

The Cherokee Nation began the 1,200-mile forced march known as the Trail of Tears. Their removal from their ancestral land had been ordered by Pres. Andrew Jackson as the result of a treaty signed by a small minority of the tribe, and approved in the Senate by a one-vote margin. Ordered to move on the Cherokee, General John Wool resigned his command in protest; Gen. Winfield Scott and 7000 troops moved in to enforce the treaty.

"The Trail Where They Cried" ("Nunna daul Tsuny" in the Cherokee language) led from northern Georgia to Oklahoma during which an estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease.

a Brief History of The Trail of Tears

In the early morning five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. to install bugging devices. They had been hired and financed by President Richard Nixon’s re-election committee. The abuse of power involved in the cover-up of this crime eventually led to the resignation of the President.

The Historical and Political Context of Watergate

a Watergate chronology

June 18, 1970

The U.S. voting age would be lowered to 18 as a result of the passage by Congress of the 26th amendment to the constitution.

June 18, 1979

SALT II (Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty),

an agreement to put limits on both America’s and the Soviet Union’s long-range missiles and bombers, was signed by Presidents Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev. This was the first arms-reduction treaty between the two superpowers.

June 19, 1964

Two hundred college students left Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, to join hundreds of other civil rights volunteers in Mississippi as part of "Freedom Summer."
Under the umbrella organization of COFO (Council of Federated Organizations) they worked on projects across the state. Led by SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) field secretaries, they helped Negroes try to register to vote, they taught in Freedom Schools, participated in community organizing, and endured the hostility toward civil rights work in the deep South. “If we can crack Mississippi,” the students said, “we can crack segregation anywhere."

read more about "Freedom Summer"

June 19, 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. The new law, initiated and passed through the determination of Pres. Lyndon Johnson, guaranteed for the first time equal access to public accommodations “without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.”

read about the Civil Rights (1964) and Voting Rights Acts (1965)

Massive demonstrations a year earlier insured passage of the Acts

June 19, 1982

June 20, 1960

Nobel laureate for Chemistry Linus Pauling defied Congress by refusing to name circulators of petitions calling for total halt of nuclear weapons testing. Pauling later won a second Nobel, a Peace Prize for his work championing nuclear disarmament.

an interview with Linus Pauling on the peace movement, 1983

Linus Pauling

June 20, 1982

Greenpeace climbers on Brent Spar platform

The Molly Maguires

Four members of the "Molly Maguires" were hung in what was then Mauch Chunk, and in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, charged with murder. The Molly Maguires were a secret and violent Irish-Catholic organization of coal miners formed to combat the oppressive working and living conditions in the anthracite region of the state.

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