peace history november

November

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November 1, 1929

Australia abolished peace-time compulsory military training.

November 1, 1954

The north African nation of Algeria began a war of independence against French colonial rule.

French troops clash with Algerian civilians

November 1, 1961

50,000 women joined protests against the resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests.

The demonstrations, in at least 60 U.S. cities, led to founding of Women Strike for Peace.

“Women's Strike for Peace" storming the Pentagon in a 1967 protest against the war in Vietnam.

November 1, 1970

The Detroit City Council voted for immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces

from Vietnam.

November 1, 1990

As part of the adoption of the International Law of the Sea, forty-three nations agreed to ban dumping industrial wastes at sea by 1995. Neither the U.S. or Canada (along with Albania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and San Marino) have ever ratified the treaty which thus lacks the force of federal law.

November 1, 2003

A Tel Aviv memorial for Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, slain eight years previously, was transformed into a peace rally with over 100,000 protesting the military policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

November 2, 1972

Five hundred protesters from the "Trail of Broken Treaties," a Native American march, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices (part of the Department of Interior) in Washington, D.C., for six days. Their goal was to gain support from the general public for a policy of self-determination for American Indians.

November 2, 1983

A bill designating a federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (to be observed on the third Monday of January) is signed by President Ronald Reagan. King was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 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 of the laws that enforced racial segregation.

MLK Day by Coretta Scott King

the history of Martin Luther King Day

(pdf)

November 3, 1883

The U.S. Supreme Court in its decision Ex Parte Crow Dog, declared Native Americans were subject to U.S. law, “not in the sense of citizens, but … as wards subject to a guardian … as a dependent community who were in a state of pupilage.”

read more about Govan Mbeki

November 6, 1913

Mohandas K. Gandhi led 2,500 Indian miners, women and others from South Africa’s Natal province across the border with Transvaal in the Great March.

This was a violation of the pass laws restricting the movement of all non-whites in the country. Originally granted the rights of British subjects, Indians’ rights were steadily eroded beginning in the 1890s with the denial of the right to own property. Shortly before the March, a court in Capetown invalidated all Muslim and Hindu marriages.
Gandhi and many others were arrested and jailed when he refused to pay a fine.

Mohandas Gandhi, 1915

read about the early resistance in South Africa

The Great March to Transvaal

November 6, 1962

The 17th session of the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 1761 condemning apartheid in South Africa and called on all member states to terminate diplomatic, economic and military relations with the country.

The racial policies of the country were declared a threat to international peace and security.
Apartheid was the racially separatist regime under which black, and so-called colored South Africans to a somewhat lesser extent, were without political, civil or economic rights. All political power and wealth were held by the white population, approximately 15% of the country. "Apartheid" is the Afrikaans word for "apartness." (Afrikaans is the language of the Boers, or [white] Afrikaners.)

The day-to-day reality of apartheid:

a chonology of the U.N. and apartheid

November 6, 1986

Although an American plane with supplies for the Nicaraguan Contra insurgents had been shot down the previous month, and a Lebanese newspaper reported that the U.S. government had arranged for the sale of weapons to Iran, President Ronald Ronald Reagan denied involvement (“... a story that came out of the Middle East, and that to us has no foundation....”) in what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

November 7, 1837

Abolitionist and editor Elijah P. Lovejoy, 34, was murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, as he defended his printing press.

Elijah P. Lovejoy

He had lost three other presses to mob attacks, but refused to surrender this one, which had been contributed by the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. For this he was shot five times in the fatal attack. Lovejoy had moved 20 miles to Alton from St. Louis where, after denouncing the lynching and burning of a black man, a mob tore down his office.

Warehouse with Lovejoy's press set ablaze by mob

"We must stand by the Constitution and laws, or all is gone."

Elijah Lovejoy, The Observer

November 7, 1916

Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Missoula, Montana, became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. American women nationwide would not be able even to vote for another four years.

November 8, 1892

Thirty thousand black and white workers factory and dock staged a general strike in New Orleans, demanding union recognition, closed shops (where all co-workers join the union), and hour and wage gains. They were joined by non-industrial laborers, such as musicians, clothing workers, clerks, utility workers, streetcar drivers, and printers.

November 8, 1933

President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration, designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed.

November 9, 1935

United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other other labor leaders formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). They had split with the existing labor union umbrella organization, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) which was not interested in organizing unskilled workers, such as those in the steel and auto industries.

John L. Lewis

November 9-10, 1938

Nazis looted and burned synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and homes, and beat and murdered Jewish men, women, and children across Germany and Austria. Known as Kristallnacht, it was a night of organized violence against Jews marking the beginning of the Holocaust with the killing of 91 and the deportation of 30,000 to concentration camps. The German word translates to "the Night of Broken Glass," so called because of the vast number of broken windows in Jewish shops. 5 million marks worth ($1,250,000).

November 9, 1969

Seventy-eight Indians from 20 tribes seized Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, offering to buy the island from the federal government for $24 worth of beads (the alleged price paid to the Canarsee Delaware Indians for Manhattan Island (it was actually 60 Dutch guilders)). They were reclaiming it as Indian land and demanding fairness and respect for Indian peoples. The occupation lasted for more than a year. "We hold The Rock," said Richard Oakes, a Mohawk from New York.

a new entrance to Alcatraz Photo/Michelle Vignes

Indian people and their supporters wait for the ferry. Photo/Ilka Hartmann

LaNada Boyer (formerly Means) inside one of the Alcatraz guard barracks where occupiers lived from 1969-71. Much of the graffiti from 30 years ago remains throughout the island today. Photo by Linda Sue Scott.

November 9, 1984

U.S. peace activists sailed a shrimp boat into the Port of Corinto to confront U.S. warships threatening Nicaragua. The U.S. had mined the harbor in violation of international law, and had invaded Nicaragua through this port in 1896 and 1910.

November 9, 1989

For the first time since World War II free travel between East and West Germany was allowed. The Berlin Wall, built to stop the exodus from the Communist-controlled East in 1961, opened in response to nonviolent action.

November 9, 2002

Florence, Italy 11.9.02

Somewhere between 450,000 and a million European peacefully protested the threatened U.S. invasion of Iraq in Florence, Italy.

Many joined those attending the first European Social Forum on globalization.

Anti-globalization activists look at a US flag, whose stars have been replaced with logos of multinational companies, displayed at the entrance of the old Leopolda Station in Florence, Italy.

November 10, 1924

Society for Human Rights, the first gay rights organization in the U.S., was founded in Chicago by Henry Gerber, an immigrant inspired by Germany’s Scientific Humanitarian Committee, formed to oppose the oppression of men and women considered "sexual intermediates."

Henry Gerber-one of the founders.

November 11, 1942

Congress approved lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to 37 within a year after declaring war on Japan, Germany and Italy. In September 1940, Congress, by wide margins in both houses, had passed the Burke-Wadsworth Act, the first peacetime draft imposed in the history of the United States.

read about the good war and those who refused to fight it

November 11, 1972

The U.S. Army turned over its massive military base at Long Binh to the South Vietnamese army, symbolizing the end of direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. The last American forces did not leave until 1974.

U.S. military leaving the Long Binh base

November 11, 1989

250,000 marched for the right to reproductive choice, including abortion, in Washington, D.C.

National Abortion Rights Action League Pro-Choice Ameica

November 12, 1969

Seymour Hersh, an independent investigative journalist, in a cable filed through Dispatch News Service and picked up by more than 30 newspapers, revealed the extent of the U.S. Army's charges against 1st Lt. William L. Calley at My Lai, a Vietnamese village.

My Lai

Hersh wrote: "The Army says he [Calley] deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians during a search-and-destroy mission in March 1968, in a Viet Cong stronghold known as 'Pinkville.'"
The same Seymour Hersh first wrote about abuses of Iraqis held in Abu Ghraib prison by Americans in 2004.

Seymour Hersh has been instrumental in exposing abuses and torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

read an interview

Seymour Hersh

November 12, 1982

The Polish Government freed the leader of the outlawed Solidarity union movement, Lech Walesa, after 11 months of internment. His release came only two days after riot police used tear gas, water cannon and phosphorous rockets to disperse big pro-Solidarity demonstrations in Warsaw and other cities.

Lech Walesa

November 13, 1933

The first recorded "sit-down" strike in the U.S. was staged by workers at the Hormel Packing Company in Austin, Minnesota. The tactic worked: Hormel agreed to submit wage demands to binding arbitration.

The success of this strike reinvigorated the labor movement, which had been in decline through the 1920s.

Hormel strikers

November 13, 1956

U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation unconstitutional in public transportation. The case, Browder v. Gayle, was brought by several women, including Aurelia Browder, who had refused to surrender their bus seats to whites (months before Rosa Parks had done so).

Aurelia Browder

The four plaintiffs had been arrested for violating Alabama law which required segregation on public buses. They challenged the law and the Court agreed, finding the law under which they were arrested violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

A roadside monument was dedicated in 2004 to the four plantiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case.

November 13, 1960

Over 1000 Quakers surrounded the Pentagon for a silent vigil to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first Quaker Peace Testimony issued to King Charles II in 1660.

From the 1660 Peace Testimony: "We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world...."

November 13, 1974

Karen Silkwood, a technician and union activist(Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers' Union) at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium fuels production plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, was killed in a one-car crash.