This
Week in History is a collection designed to help us
appreciate the fact that we are part of a rich history
advocating peace and social justice. While the entries
often focus on large and dramatic events there are
so many smaller things done everyday to promote peace
and justice.
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March
26, 1966
Over
50,000 marched peacefully in the
Fifth Avenue Vietnam
Peace Parade in
New York City.
They
were part of the second International Days of Protest
with marches in several cities in North America.
read
more
photo:
Robert Parent
March
26, 1979
In
a ceremony at the White House, Egyptian President Anwar
el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed
a peace agreement they had worked out with the assistance
of Pres. Jimmy Carter at Camp David. It ended three decades
of hostilities between Egypt and Israel, establishing diplomatic
and commercial ties.
Less
than two years earlier, in an unprecedented move for an
Arab leader, Sadat had traveled to Jerusalem to seek a
permanent peace settlement with Egypt's Jewish neighbor.
March
26, 2003
Over one million students in Spain went on strike
in opposition to their government's support of the U.S./U.K.
invasion of Iraq.
The demonstration
in Barcelona
March
27, 1867
Newly freed negroes after the American Civil War staged ride-ins
on Charleston, South Carolina, streetcars. The railway company
integrated later the same year.
March
27, 1966
20,000
Buddhists marched silently for peace in Hue, South Vietnam.
March
27, 1969
The
first Chicano Youth Liberation Conference was held by the
Crusade for Justice. The poet known as Alurista presented
his poem, "Plan Espiritual De
Aztlán," on the concept of Aztlán, a unifying spiritual
and geographic homeland of the Chicanos. He [took] the concept that the
land belongs to those who work it from the Mexican Revolutionary, Zapata.
Aztlán is a name for the home of the Aztecs.
Alurista
read more about Alurista
in
search of
Azlan
March
28, 1799
The
New York state enacted a law mandating the gradual end
of slavery. Children of slaves would not be emancipated
until they had served their parent’s “holder” until
they reached their mid-twenties. It was not until 1827
that a subsequent law declared: “every person born
within this state, whether white or colored, is free.”
March
28, 1918
2,000
in the city of Quebec, Canada, demonstrated in the culmination
of the Conscription Crisis during World War I.
High
casualty rates in the Great War forced the Ottawa government
to
institute a draft. The Canadiens resisted military service
supporting Great Britain in. The protests continued for
five days over the Easter weekend. [see April 1]
read
more
Anti-Conscription
Parade in Victoria Square, Montreal, Quebec, May 24,
1917,
The
gathering in this photo looks calm. Riots nearly a
year later resulted in the death of four demonstrators
in Quebec City.
March
28, 1979
In
the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, a cooling
system on the Unit Two reactor failed at Three Mile Island
in Middletown, Pennsylvania. This led to a partial meltdown
that uncovered the reactor's core. Radioactive steam
leaked into the atmosphere, prompting fears for the safety
of the plant's 500 workers and the surrounding community.
three
mile island timeline
March
29, 1925
Black
leaders in Charleston, West Virginia, protested the showing
of D. W. Griffith's movie, “Birth
of a Nation,” scheduled to open at the Rialto Theatre
on April 1.
They said it violated a 1919 state law prohibiting
any entertainment which demeaned another race. Mayor W. W.
Wertz and the West Virginia Supreme Court supported their argument
and prevented the showing of the film.
March
29, 1971
U.S. Army Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty at a court martial
for his part in the My Lai massacre which claimed the lives of hundreds
of South Vietnamese civilians. Convicted for the premeditated murder
of at least 22 Vietnamese civilians, he was sentenced to three years
under house arrest.
March
29, 1973
The
last American troops left South Vietnam, ending direct
U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. Of the
more than 3 million Americans who served in the war,
almost 58,000 had died, and more than 1,000 were missing
in action. Some 150,000 Americans had been seriously
wounded. The loss of Vietnamese killed and wounded was
in the millions and damage to the countryside persists
to this day.
read
more
The
615th MP Company was inactivated in Vietnam on the last
day of American military combat presence.
March
29, 1987
Members of Vietnam
Veterans For Peace arrived in Wicuili at the end of a march
from Jinotega, Nicaragua. The veterans were actively monitoring
the U.S. attempts to destabilize the country by providing
aid to the insurgent contras.
visit
Veterans for Peace
March
30, 1891
Signaling
a growing movement toward direct political action among desperate
western farmers, "Sockless" Jerry Simpson called
on the Kansas Farmers' Alliance to work for a takeover of
the state government. Simpson was one of the most well-known
and influential leaders among Populist-minded western and
midwestern farmers of the late 19th century.
Angered over low crop prices, high-interest bank loans and
unaffordable shipping rates, farmers began to unite in self-help
groups like the Grange and the Farmers' Alliances. Initially,
these groups primarily provided mutual assistance to members
while agitating for the regulation of railroads and grain elevators.
Increasingly, though, they became centers of support for more
sweeping political change by uniting to help form the new nationwide
third-party movement known as the Populists.
"Sockless" Jerry
Simpson
March
30, 1948
Henry
Wallace, former vice-president (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
and then Progressive Party presidential candidate, lashed
out at the Cold War policies of President Harry S. Truman.
Wallace and his supporters were among the few Americans
who actively voiced criticisms of America's Cold War mindset
during the late 1940s and 1950s.
read
more on his warnings about American fascists
March
31, 1968
President
Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek re-election,
ordered a partial bombing halt in Vietnam, and appointed
Averell Harriman to seek negotiated peace talks with North
Vietnam.
March
31, 1970
2,500
University of California-Berkeley students turned in their
draft cards at the Oakland Induction Center in protest
of the Vietnam war.
March
31, 1972
Protesters – singing, blowing horns and carrying banners – launched
the latest leg of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's 56-mile
Easter march from London to Aldermaston, Berkshire, England.
The banner used
in the 1960s Aldermaston marches.
March
31, 1985
Throughout
Australia, 300,000 demonstrated in peace and anti-nuclear
rallies.
March
31, 1991
Before
dawn on Easter, five Plowshares activists boarded the
USS Gettysburg,
an Aegis-equipped Cruiser docked at the Bath Iron Works
in Bath, Maine. They proceeded to hammer and pour blood
on covers for vertical launching systems for cruise missiles. "We
witness against the American enslavement to war at the
Bath Iron Works, geographically near the President’s
home." They also left an indictment charging President
George H. W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Cheney, the National
Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff with war
crimes and violations of God’s law and international
law, including the killing of thousands of Iraqis.
read
more about Aegis Plowshares
March
31, 1992
ADAPT
(American Disabled for Accessible Public Transport) sit
in at Tennessee Health Care Association to fight health
cuts, Nashville Tennessee. more
about ADAPT
March
31, 1997
Four
East Timorese were arrested in Warton, England, at the
British Aerospace factory where Hawk fighter jets were
built for the Indonesian military,
who used them in the ongoing occupation and genocide of their homeland.
March
31, 2004
Air America, intended as a liberal voice in network
talk radio, made its debut on five stations.
listen
live
April
1, 1841
Brook
Farm, perhaps history's most well-known utopian community,
was founded by George and Sophia Ripley near West Roxbury,
Massachusetts. Its primary appeal was to young Bostonians
who shrank from the materialism of American life, and the
community was a refuge for dozens of transcendentalists,
including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
more
about Brook Farm
April
1, 1918
Following
four days of demonstrations against the Military Services
Act that devolved into rioting, Prime Minister Robert
Borden called in troops from Ontario to stop the violence.
Orders from the soldiers were read in English only, and when
the demonstrators didn’t disperse, the troops fired,
killing four and wounding 70. [see
March 28]
memorial monument
April
1, 1932
500
schoolchildren paraded through Chicago's downtown section to
the Board of Education offices, demanding that the school
system provide them with food.
April
1, 1955
The
African National Congress had called on parents to withdraw
their children by this day from South African schools in resistance
to the Bantu Education Act. That 1953 law transferred education
of the Bantu (blacks) from religious missions to state-controlled
schools. Mission education, argued the then minister of Bantu
Education, Dr. H.F. Verwoerd, not only tended to create “false
expectations” amongst the natives, but was also in direct
conflict with South Africa’s apartheid policies.
April
1, 1970
Following decades of struggle
and ending a five-year national boycott, the United Farm
Workers signed its first contract for table-grape workers
with two of California's largest grape growers.
read
about the boycott
April
1, 1983
Protesters
in the United Kingdom formed a human chain 22.5 kilometers
(14 miles) long to express their opposition to the presence
of nuclear missiles. The chain started at the American
airbase at Greenham Common, passed the Aldermaston nuclear
research center, and ended at the ordnance factory in
Burghfield.
At the same time 15,000 people took part in the first of
a series of anti-nuclear marches in West Germany. They are
protesting against the siting of American cruise missiles
on West German territory.
" Sit
up, join up, get on line, get in touch, find out who's
raising hell
and join them. No use waiting on a bunch of wussy politicians."
- Molly Ivins
After
one plane-load every ten minutes for 10 years Laos is
littered with unexploded ordnances.
Cluster bombs have been used most recently in Afghanistan,
Iraq and Lebanon.
This
legacy must end, so others can begin.
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