| |
| |
| 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 captured under the Fugitive
Slave Law. The federal law required "good citizens"
to assist in the return of runaway slaves. 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 secretly taken to Canada.
read
more  |
|
Jerry
Rescue monument
Syracuse,
New York |
|
|
| The
Free Speech Movement was launched at the University of California
at Berkeley when mathematics grad student Jack Weinberg was
arrested for setting up a CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)
information table in front of Sproul Hall, the administration
building. |
| 
|
Hundreds of students surrounded the police car holding Weinberg
for 32 hours, making speeches from atop the car, and ultimately
negotiating Weinberg’s release.
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 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 said: "Harvest of Hope - Swords into Plowshares"
at 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 United States 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 nonviolent
resistance to British colonial rule in India.
learn
more about Gandhi
|
|
|
| Ten
months after its start in San Francisco, an antinuclear 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 President Lyndon Johnson
who had previously chosen him as 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" |
|
|
| 
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.
read
more about Woody
|
|
|
|
|
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 inmates did
not enjoy. Despite Sands' election (while an inmate) as MP
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.
|
|
| |
Louisiana sugarcane workers, working with the racially integrated
Knights of Labor, went on strike. The Louisiana Militia, aided
by bands of "prominent citizens," shot and killed
35 unarmed black sugar workers striking to gain a dollar-per-day
wage, and lynched two strike leaders.
read more |
|
|
| 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." |
read
more |
|
|
| 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 |
|
| |
| 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.
read
the lyrics
|
the
Fermi plant |
|
|
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 |
|
|
| 
A
captured Eugene Hasenfus |
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
into Nicaragua for use by the Contras, an anti-Sandinista
force that had been created and supported by the United States,
in violation of congressional action stopping the funding,
and run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Iran-Contra
background |
|
| |
Thirteen Mennonite families from the Geman town of Krefeld
arrived in Philadelphia on the ship Concord. Having endured
religious warfare in Europe, the Mennonites were pacifists
who opposed all forms of violence.
modern
Mennonite peace activism:
|
|
| |
|
 |
Over
1,000 were arrested at Seabrook, New Hampshire, the construction
site of a nuclear power plant, for an occupation organized
by the Clamshell Alliance.
Seabrook
Nuclear Power Plant protest - late 1970s |
|
| |
| 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. |
| 
Working
on Howl in San Francisco, circa June, 1956.
|
"Howl
and Other Poems" was printed in England, but its second
edition was seized by Customs officials as it entered the
country. 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.
read
more about Allen Ginsberg
|
 Autographed
City Lights Edition
|
read
Howl
|
|
|
| 
|
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
awakened the world to the persecution that homosexuals have
endured for centuries.
read
more
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 |
 |
|
read
more about the pardons  |
|
|
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. |
|
| |
| 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, on October 16, 1967, 1158 young men turned
in their draft cards in eighteen U.S. cities.
Memoirs
of a Draft-Card Burner |
| Draft
card burning in support of Vietnam War resisters, 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
demonstration.
|
| |
One
of the largest demonstrations occurred when 100,000 people
converged on the Boston Common, but demonstrations nationwide
also included smaller rallies, marches, and prayer vigils.
The demonstrations involved a broad spectrum of the population,
including those who had already participated in antiwar
demonstrations and 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 planned to seize. Virtually all his
compatriots were killed or captured by Gen. Robert E. Lee’s
troops; he 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, Sheppard, a popular
priest in the Church of England, invited those who would be
willing to join a public demonstration against war to send
him a postcard.
read
more
 |
 |
|
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.”
“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
at the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland; 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 by the U.S. Olympic Committee
from the team 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.
read
more
Henry
Kissinger |
|
|
In a human rights and international law breakthrough, British
authorities, after receiving an extradition request from Spanish
Judge Baltasar Garzon, placed former Chilean dictator, and
senator-for-life, Augusto Pinochet under arrest for "crimes
of genocide and terrorism that include murder."
Kissinger(left)
and Pinochet(center) |
 |
|
| |
U.S.
took control of Puerto Rico. One year after Spain granted
Puerto Rican self-rule following their rout in the Spanish-American
War, troops raised the U.S. flag over the Caribbean island
nation, formalizing American authority over the island's one
million inhabitants.
a
history of the struggle for Puerto Rican Independence |
|
|
|
|
U.S.
President Ronald Reagan signed into law an act of Congress
approving $100 million of military and "humanitarian"
aid for the Contras, a paramilitary group fighting to undermine
the elected Sandanista government in Nicaragua.
read
more 
|
|
|
| |
I.
Marc Carlson |
The
Shoemakers Guild of Boston became the first labor union in
the American colonies.
|
|
| |
| The
War Resisters League was founded in New York City. |
| Above:
One of the founders, Jessie Wallace Hughan (r), 1942
photo:
WRL/Swarthmore Peace Collection |
|
|
| |
Martin
Luther King, Jr., and 35 students were jailed after being
arrested during a sit-in at the snack bar of Atlanta's Rich's
department store where they requested service.
|
|
|
|
J.P.
Stevens & Co. was forced to sign its first contract with
a union after a 17-year struggle in North Carolina and other
southern states. The workers at J.P. Stevens were supported
by a widespread boycott by labor, progressive and religious
organizations.
read
more
|
|
|
| |
|
| 
|
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) opened public
hearings into alleged Communist influence in Hollywood. To
counter what they claimed were reckless attacks by HUAC, a
group of motion picture industry luminaries, led by actor
Humphrey Bogart, his wife, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, William
Wyler, Gene Kelly and others, established the “Committee
for the First Amendment” (CFA).
read
more
|
|
October
20, 1962 |
|
A
folk music album, "Peter, Paul and Mary," hit No.
1 on U.S. record sales charts. The group’s music addressed
real issues – war, civil rights, poverty – and
became popular across the Unites States. The trio's version
of "If I Had A Hammer" was not only a popular single,
but also embraced as an anthem of the civil rights movement.
About
Peter, Paul and Mary |
|
|
|
The biggest demonstration yet in Oakland, California, against
American involvement in the Vietnamese War took place. An
estimated 5000-10,000 people poured onto the streets to demonstrate
in a fifth day of massive protests against the conscription
of soldiers to serve in the war. [see
October 16, 1967 above]
read
more |
|
| |
