peace history september

September

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September 1

International Day of War Tax Resistance.

“Refusing to pay taxes for war is probably as old as the first taxes levied for warfare...”

History of War Tax Resistance

September 1, 1986

Charles Liteky & George Mizo began a Fast For Life against U.S. support of Nicaraguan contras in Washington, D.C.

Charles Liteky George Mizo

September 1, 1987

During a nonviolent protest at Concord Naval Weapons Station, a Navy munitions train ran over blockader Brian Willson. Willson lost both legs but has remained an active and articulate leader in the anti-military movement.

Brian's Biography read more

Brian Willson bird-watching California, 1997

Ron Kovic (author 'Born on the Fourth of July')
and Brian Willson (also born on the Fourth of July)

September 1, 1997

Kurdish & British activists blockaded an arms trade exhibition outside London. 89 were arrested.

September 2, 1945

Revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam a republic and independent from France (National Day). Half a million people gathered in Hanoi to hear him read the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence which was based on the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

read more about the Fast for Life

September 15, 1996

6,000 rallied and 1,033 were arrested near the Headwaters Grove in rural Carlotta, California, in a protest against the logging of one of the last large unlogged stands of redwood trees in the world.

September 15, 2001

Four days after 9-11, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) cast the only congressional vote opposing the granting of unlimited military power to President Bush to deal with Iraq.

read her statement

September 16, 1837

William Whipper, and ex-slave from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, published "An Address on Non-resistance to Offensive Aggression" in the The Colored American. This landmark essay predated Thoreau's on “Civil Disobedience” by 12 years.

“...fatal error arises from the belief that the only method of maintaining peace, is always to be ready for war.”

read Whipper’s words

September 16, 1939

August Dickmann, a German and a Jehovah's Witness, became the first conscientious objector (CO) to be executed by the Nazis during World War II.

The execution by firing squad took place in Sachsenhausen concentration camp before all prisoners, including 400 Jehovah's Witness inmates.

Threatened by Commandant Hermann Baranowsky with the same fate, none of the remaining 400 Witnesses renounced their CO position. Later, the Nazis commonly executed Witnesses by guillotine or hanging, not wanting to spend bullets on COs. German military courts sentenced and executed 270 Jehovah's Witnesses, the largest number of COs executed from any victim group during World War II.

watch a timeline

NY Times, Sept 16, 1939

August Dickmann

September 16, 1974

A federal judge dismissed all charges against American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means stemming from the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

Dennis Banks

Russell Means

On Feb. 27, 1973, AIM and supporters seized control of Wounded Knee to draw attention to corruption and conditions on the Pine Ridge (Lakota Sioux) reservation.
Wounded Knee was the site where, on December 29, 1890, over 200 Sioux men, women and children were mercilessly gunned down by U.S. cavalry.

September 16, 1974

President Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders, provided they swear allegiance to the country and agree to work two years in the branch of the military they had abandoned. He did this one month following his pardon of resigned former Pres. Nixon.

September 16, 1991

The Philippine Senate defeated a treaty allowing continued operation of U.S. military bases in the Philippines. The Americans had occupied the Philippines since 1898 (except after surrendering control to the Japanese in 1942 until the end of WWII), though on a “temporary” basis. More than two dozen U.S. military installations were established in the country, even after independence in 1945, notably Clark Air Base and the naval installation at Subic Bay.

September 16, 2003

New York Stock Exchange Chair Dick Grasso resigned amid a furor over his $139.5 million pay package.

September 17, 1961

1,314 arrested in anti-nuclear bomb sit-down in London’s Trafalgar Square. Philosopher and peace activist Bertrand Russell, aged 89, and 32 others were already in jail, having been arrested for days earlier during a major demonstration against nuclear weapons in Trafalgar Square.

Bertrand Russell at anti nuclear weapons March, 1961.

September 17, 1983

3,000 demonstrated against nuclear power iin Hamm-Uentrop, Germany.

September 17, 1988

Haiti's military government was overthrown.
From the report of the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued on September 7, 1988:
“The Commission has come to the conclusion that the current military government in Haiti has perpetuated itself in power as a result of violence instigated by elements of the Haitian Armed forces resulting in the massacre of Haitian voters on November 29, 1987, the manipulation of the elections held on January 17, 1988, and the ouster of President Leslie Manigat on June 20, 1988.”

September 18, 1850

Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, allowing slave owners to reclaim slaves who escaped into another state. Fugitive Slave Act is passed, specifying harsh penalties for those who interfere with the apprehension of runaway slaves.

As part of the Compromise of 1850, it offers federal officers a fee for captured slaves. The underground railroad which became active twelve years earlier now became even more of a necessity.

read more about the Fugitive Slave Act and the Underground Railroad

September 19, 1893

With the signing of the Electoral Bill by Governor Lord Glasgow, New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant national electoral rights to women. The bill was the outcome of years of suffragette meetings in towns and cities across the country, with women often traveling considerable distances to hear lectures and speeches and pass resolutions.

Organizer Kate Sheppard delivered to parliament a petition signed by a quarter or more of all the women in the country. New Zealand women (both Päkehä (Anglo-European or non-Maori) and Ma¯ori) first went to the polls in the national elections in November of 1893.
The United States granted women voting rights in 1920, and Great Britain didn’t guarantee full voting rights until 1928.

Kate Sheppard, a leader of the New Zealand suffragette movement

September 19, 1926

80,000 demonstrated for democratic peace in The Hague, the Netherlands.

September 19, 1952

The United States prevented the director, actor and producer, Charlie Chaplin, from returning to his Hollywood home until he had been investigated by Immigration Services.
He had been on the FBI's Security Index since 1948, and was one of over 300 people blacklisted by Hollywood film studios and thus unable to work after refusing to cooperate during his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Informed that he would not necessarily be welcomed back, he retorted, "I wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ were president," and surrendered his re-entry permit in Switzerland.

Chaplin’s FBI files

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin: "My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist.

Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them."

September 19, 1957

The United States conducted its first underground nuclear test in the Nevada desert under the leadership of Edward Teller.

September 19, 1966

After 300 members of Grenada, Mississippi’s white community called for “an end to violence,” hundreds of Negro schoolchildren were allowed to integrate the local public schools. The leaders of the vicious organized attack on the kids the previous week (including the Justice of the Peace) had been arrested by the FBI, and the mobs were gone but the children were all escorted to school by community members, or driven in cars for safety. Folksinger Joan Baez had been in Grenada that first week lending support and running the same risks as Grenadans struggling against the segregationist way of life.

Chronology of a Movement Grenada Mississippi, 1966

Marching strong and proud

in Grenada, Mississippi, 1966

On the front line at the March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, 1965.

James Baldwin, Joan Baez, and James Forman (left to right)

Forty years later Joan is still playing for

peace and justice.

She performed at Camp Casey in support of Cindy Sheehan and her protest against the war in Iraq.

September 19, 1966

A group of 22 eminent U.S. scientists, including seven Nobel laureates, urged President Lyndon Johnson to halt the use of antipersonnel and anti-crop chemical weapons in Vietnam. That same day in Congress, House Republicans issued a "White Paper" that warned that the United States was becoming "a full-fledged combatant" in a war that was becoming "bigger than the Korean War." The paper urged the President to end the war "more speedily and at a smaller cost, while safeguarding the independence and freedom of South Vietnam."

September 19, 1977

A lawsuit was filed which would become "University of California Regents v. Bakke," a groundbreaking claim of "reverse discrimination" by a white prospective student (Allan Bakke) passed over for admission to the UC-Davis Medical School allegedly due to the school’s affirmative action program.

September 19, 2001

Some 5,000 march in a nighttime procession through Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, mourning the dead of September 11, and calling for a non-military response by the U.S.

September 20, 1830

The National Negro Convention, a group of 38 free African-Americans from eight states, met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the express purpose of abolishing slavery and improving the social status of African-Americans. They elected Richard Allen president and agreed to boycott slave-produced goods and encourage free-produce organizations. The most active would be the Colored Females' Free Produce Society, which sought to overthrow the economic power of slavery one bolt of cotton and teaspoon of sugar at a time.

Richard Allen

National Negro Convention leaders 1879

September 20, 1906

Upton Sinclair's “The Jungle,” a realist novel, was published, exposing the dangerous conditions and deplorable sanitation in the Chicago meatpacking plants. Reaction from readers was intense, including Pres. Theodore Roosevelt who coined the term, muckrakers, to describe Sinclair, Lincoln Steefens, Ida Tarbell and others who exposed corruption in government and business (what we’d now call investigative reporting).

"The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society ... if they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck,their power of

usefulness is gone."

September 20, 1946

The first Cannes Film Festival began in the French Riviera resort town. It had originally been planned for 1939 but Hitler’s invasion of Poland delayed plans until after the war.
The Grand Prix for Peace was awarded to “The Last Chance” by Leopold Lindtberg of Switzerland, a movie about how three Allied soldiers, including two escaped prisoners of war, lead a group of Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied northern Italy across the Alps into Switzerland.

September 20, 1997

3,000 protesters helped to rip up the railroad tracks leading from Krummel nuclear power station to the main Hamburg-Berlin line. The previous year two doctors had sued for closure of the plant due to the increased incidence of Leukemia among the population around the plant.

September 20, 1999

A multinational peacekeeping force landed in East Timor in an attempt to restore law and order to the territory. Indonesian militias had killed thousands since it had voted overwhelmingly for independence from Jakarta on September 4.

September 21, 1963

The War Resisters League organized the first American anti-Vietnam War demonstration in New York City. The League, organized in 1923, was the first peace group to call for U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and played a key role throughout the war, organizing the burning of draft cards, rallies, civil disobedience at induction centers, and assisting resisters.

history of WRL

WRL home

September 21st (since 1982)

International Day of Peace established by United Nations resolution in 1981 and originally celebrated in 1982 (celebrated then as the 3rd tuesday of the month).

Events are planned all over the world to promote and make peace more visible.

Part of the World Peace Day celebration includes the flying of giant peace doves, a project started by Jane Goodall.

Jane Goodall with a peace dove

hear Jane Goodall

on World Peace Day

(needs RealPlayer)

Sri Lanka day of peace

September 22, 1966

Eight hundred Puerto Rican men pledged in Lares to refuse U.S. Vietnam draft as "part of the colonial subjugation of our country.”

“Let us stop war”

September 22, 1980

The Solidarity union was allowed to organized by the Communist-led Polish government under leadership of Lech Walesa. The previous month the group had occupied the Lenin shipyards in Gdansk and had inspired a national general strike.

September 22, 1985

The first Farm Aid concert, organized principally by Willie Nelson, was held with more than 50 musicians raising $9 million for debt-ridden U.S. farmers.

history of Farm Aid

Check out Farm Aid’s activities and this year’s concert in Camden, New Jersey:

September 23, 1979

200,000 attended an anti-nuclear rally in New York City’s Battery Park. It was the largest political protest of the late '70s in the U.S., six months after the partial meltdown of the nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. Two days earlier the 'No Nukes' concert also known as the “Muse (Musicians United for Safe Energy) concert” was held in Madison Square Garden, featuring Bruce Springsteen, Crosby Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne and others.

September 24, 1968

10,000 draft files destroyed by fourteen anti-war activists with homemade napalm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

watch a video of the event (requires Quicktime)

September 24, 1969

The Chicago 8 trial opened in Chicago. It was the prosecution of eight anti-war activists charged with responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party ("Yippies"); Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party; and two lesser-known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines.

The Chicago 8 minus Bobby Seale

Bobby Seale, after repeatedly asserting his right to an attorney of his own choosing or to defend himself, was bound and gagged in the courtroom and his trial was severed from the rest on November 5th. The group then became know as the Chicago 7.

September 25, 1957

Nine African-American children, protected by 300 members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, with fixed bayonets, entered the previously all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The troops were there to escort the children past white segregationists and the Arkansas Militia (National Guard) that
Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had activated to prevent its federal court-approved racial integration plan.

After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent troops to Little Rock to enforce the court order. The order to de-segregate the Little Rock schools flowed from the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision.
The troops remained for the entire school term.

September 25,1961

Herbert Lee, a farmer who worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help register black voters, was killed by a state legislator, E. H. Hurst, in Liberty, Mississippi. Hurst claimed self-defense and was acquitted by a coroner's jury the same day as the killing. Lewis Allen, who witnessed the shooting, said otherwise, and was himself murdered two years later.

September 25, 2002

Rick DellaRatta and Jazz For Peace performed at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. He led a band consisting of Israeli, Middle Eastern, European, Asian and American jazz musicians in concert for an international audience.

Jazz for Peace continues to perform concerts to raise money for non-profit organizations.