| November 15, 1917 About 20 women peacefully picketing for universal suffrage (right to vote), who had been arrested in front of the White House a few days earlier, were subjected to beatings and torture at Occoquan workhouse in Virginia. The National Women’s Party and other organizations had been picketing the White House and President Woodrow Wilson as he traveled around the country ever since the inauguration of his second term.   Mary Winsor The incident became known as the “night of terror.” Wilson had led the country into the European war (later called World War I), by characterizing the U.S. mission as “making the world safe for democracy.” The women demonstrating outside in Lafayette Square called attention to the need for complete democracy at home, where half of its citizens lacked complete voting rights. Many women, including Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, had been arrested several times, usually for obstructing the sidewalk, and imprisoned before. When a judge learned of the abuse he freed the women. Public outrage over their treatment increased sympathy for the suffrage movement. .   left: Lucy Burns in Occoquan Workhouse, Washington, DC right: Alice Paul, New Jersey, National Chairman, Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage; Member, Ex-Officio, National Executive Committee, Woman’s Party, ca 1915 Amazing resources from the Library of Congress on women’s suffrage (It’s still all there-go see!) |
| November 15, 1940 75,000 men were called to Armed Forces duty under the first peacetime conscription.  Draft inductees leaving Wilmington, Delaware in November, 1941 |
| November 15, 1943 Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler’s head of the SS (Schutzstaffel or protective rank), Gestapo, the Waffen SS and the Death’s Head units that ran the concentration camps, made public an order that “Gypsies”-more properly, the Roma-and those of mixed Roma blood were to be put on “the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.”  “Gypsy” prisoners arriving at a Concentration Camp  Himmler was determined to prosecute Nazi racial policies, which dictated the elimination from Germany and German-controlled territories of all races deemed “inferior,” as well as “asocial” types, such as hardcore criminals. “Gypsies” fell into both categories according to the thinking of Nazi ideologues and had been executed in droves both in Poland and the Soviet Union. The order of November 15 was merely a more comprehensive program, as it included the deportation to the Auschwitz death camp of “Gypsies” already in labor camps. The Gypsies in Germany Gypsies: Forgotten Victims of the Holocaust |
| November 15, 1957 U.S. Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) was founded. Thirty years later on November 20, SANE merged with the Nuclear Freeze organization (dedicated to freezing all nuclear weapons testing worldwide) at a joint convention in Cleveland to form SANE/FREEZE. Its successor is known as Peace Action, the largest U.S. peace organization.  Sane Nuclear Policy poster, 1960 SANE history-Peace Action |
| November 15, 1969 Following a symbolic three-day “March Against Death,” the second national “moratorium” against the Vietnam War opened with massive and peaceful demonstrations in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Organized by the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (“New Mobe”), an estimated 500,000 demonstrators participated as part of the largest such gathering to date.   It began with a march down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House (while Pres. Nixon watched the Purdue-Ohio State football game on TV) to the Washington Monument, where a mass rally with speeches was held. Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Peter, Paul and Mary, and four different touring casts of the musical “Hair” entertained the demonstrators. The rally concluded with nearly 40 hours of continuous reading of known U.S. deaths (to that date) in the Vietnam War. |
| November 15, 1986 A government tribunal in Nicaragua convicted American Eugene Hasenfus, a CIA operative, of delivering arms to Contra rebels and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. He had been arrested when his plane was shot down by Sandanista troops. He was pardoned a month after his conviction (his last name means “rabbit’s foot” in German).  Hasenfus under arrest |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november15
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