W.E.B. DuBois & More, In Peace & Justice History for 7/28

(I should know better than to try to set up this post while I’m making supper. Thanks, WP, not; it’s much easier Any Other Time. 🤬)

July 28, 1868
Passed in the wake of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing due process, equal protection of the law, and full citizenship to all males over 21, including former slaves,
went into effect.


Booklet on the 14th Amendment from the Damon Keith Collection of
African-American Legal History at Wayne State University Law School


More on the amendment and the context of post-Civil War Reconstruction 
July 28, 1917

Anti-Lynching Parade in New York City, 1917
W.E.B. DuBois and others organized a silent parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City against the lynching of negroes and segregationist Jim Crow laws. There had been nearly 3,000 documented cases of hangings and other mob violence against black Americans since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.
Read about W.E.B. DuBois
Strange Fruit, the song about lynching, and the film 
July 28, 1932

Bonus Marchers on the Capitol Steps
Federal troops, under command of General Douglas MacArthur, forcibly dispersed the so-called “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” or Bonus Army. They were World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand money they had been promised but weren’t scheduled to receive until 1945. Most of the marchers were unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits during the Great Depression.
More on the Bonus Army  (It’s WaPo; you can read it for free, but you have to sign in)
Film of the confrontation in Washington  (Watch on YouTube for free without sign in)
July 28, 1965

Pfc. John L. Lewis decorates his helmet with good luck tokens.
[Khe Sanh, February 1968.]” Life [Asia edition]. 18 Mar. 1968. cover
President Lyndon Johnson ordered 50,000 troops to Vietnam to join the 75,000 already there. By the end of the year 180,000 U.S. troops will have been sent to Vietnam; in 1966 the figure doubled. In addition to countless Vietnamese deaths, close to 1900 Americans were killed in 1965; the following year the number more than tripled.
Lyndon Johnson told the
nation
Have no fear of escalation


I am trying everyone to please
Though it isn’t really
war


We’re sending fifty thousand more


To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese

— part of Tom Paxton’s anti-Vietnam-war song, “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation”
Full lyrics of the song

President Johnson explained: “We intend to convince the communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power.””
July 28, 1982
San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban the sale and possession of handguns. The law was struck down by state courts, which ruled the local law to be in violation of the California constitution which gives the state the sole power to regulate firearms.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july28

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