Kennedy Center Honors could see some changes under Trump
The Kennedy Center has slightly delayed naming its list of annual lifetime achievement honorees until closer to the event in December, and the award itself, known for its rainbow-hued ribbon, may be redesigned in favor of a simpler version, sources familiar with the decisions told CBS News.
The announcement of the Kennedy Center Honors recipients, usually made annually in August, will happen in the next several weeks, one of the sources said.
Although some of the arts center’s staff and those who closely follow the event have worried the televised gala would be completely revamped and renamed in favor of a patriotic-sounding moniker, the Kennedy Center Honors name will remain untouched, sources said.
The rainbow theme won’t disappear entirely, but the ribbon for the lifetime achievement medallion will likely to be redesigned — possibly with a black or gold ribbon.
President Biden with 2022 Kennedy Center Honorees Amy Grant, Bono and The Edge of U2, and Gladys Knight during a reception at the White House on Dec. 4, 2022.Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
The Honors weekend will be revamped, with a more streamlined schedule instead of multiple gatherings at the State Department, the White House and elsewhere, sources said. The events were expensive and time-consuming, and honorees sometimes skipped portions of the non-televised events.
After criticizing the Kennedy Center‘s artistic fare and its finances, President Trump earlier this year named himself as its chairman, longtime aide and supporter Richard Grenell as its president and several White House officials and Trump allies as board members. That triggered a number of artists to cancel performances and some staff members resigned.
The Kennedy Center Honors ceremony is directed and produced by CBS and airs on the network.
The size of the Kennedy Center’s development team has been severely downsized, several sources close to the matter said. That team has shrunk from more than 60 to less than 20, and some departments have been slashed altogether.
Giving by Democratic donors has collapsed, although aggressive fundraising has continued and has outpaced past years with more corporate sponsors, several sources said.
Grenell told CBS News: “I don’t want to lose a single Democratic donor. We’re working hard to keep them and expand the donor base. The arts should not be political.”
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump at The Kennedy Center for the opening night performance of “Les Misérables” on June 11, 2025.Craig Hudson/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
During his first term, after several award recipients criticized him, Mr. Trump skipped the Honors shows, breaking a tradition of presidential attendance at the cultural venue.
President Biden attended during all four years of his term, including last year’s ceremony that recognized singer Bonnie Raitt, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, surviving members of the band the Grateful Dead, trumpet player Arturo Sandoval, and Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
Two of the sources said Grenell has been an effective organizer but is only occasionally at the Kennedy Center. One was critical of Grenell’s salary. Grenell started off taking zero salary and is now paid $175,000, sources said, which is less than the previous president, Deborah Rutter, whose salary topped $1 million, public tax records show.
Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy Center, declined to comment on Grenell’s salary or changes to the award design.
She said they’re not making changes to ceremony itself. “If anything,” she said, “it’s going to be more exciting.”
August 8, 1974 President Richard M. Nixon resigned from office, the first U.S. president ever to do so. The House Judiciary Committee had, with bipartisan support (the Democrats and one-third of the Republican members), voted for three articles of impeachment: obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.A week later, one of the White House tapes was finally made public, showing the President’s direct involvement in the Watergate scandal cover-up: “…call the FBI and say that we wish, for the country, don’t go any further into this case, period…” – Nixon to Chief of Staff Haldeman, June 23, 1972 (six days after the Watergate break-in) He officially left office August 9, and was fully pardoned one month later by his successor, President Gerald Ford. Asked years later about some of his administration’s questionable activities, Nixon said, “Well, when the president does that, it isn’t illegal.” The headlines in Washington that day
August 8, 1999 A 53-mile peace walk commemorating the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended near Clam Lake, Wisconsin, at the site of the U.S. Navy’s Project Elf (extremely low frequency) submarine communications transmitter. Twelve of the demonstrators were arrested for trespassing, adding to the nearly 500 previously arrested for sit-ins, Citizen Inspections, blockades and disarmament actions at the transmitter site in Ashland County.
August 7, 1904 Ralph Bunche, born this day in Detroit, spent a remarkable life in vigorous service to academia, his community, the nation and the world. Ralph Bunche Head of the Howard University Political Science Department for over twenty years, he was one of the first African Americans to hold a key position at the U.S. State Department. He went on to the United Nations and served as its mediator on Palestine. He was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the 1948 armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab states. He worked with Martin Luther King in the civil rights struggles of the ‘50s and ’60s. Succinct biography of Ralph Bunche
August 7, 1958 The D.C. Court of Appeals reversed playwright Arthur Miller’s conviction for contempt of Congress following a two-year legal battle. He had been charged for refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) the names of alleged Communist writers with whom he attended five or six meetings in New York in 1947. Arthur Miller in front of HUAC Read more
August 7, 1964 After a reported U.S. confrontation with North Vietnamese forces that, it was later discovered, never occurred, the U.S. Congress nearly unanimously passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.The resolution gave President Lyndon Johnson broad powers in dealing with North Vietnam, including sending U.S. troops. News coverage relied almost entirely on official U.S. government sources so Americans assumed the North had in fact launched an unprovoked attack. Two courageous senators, Wayne Morse (D-Oregon) and Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska), provided the only “no” votes. “I rise to speak in opposition to the joint resolution. I do so with a very sad heart. But I consider the resolution . . . to be naught but a resolution which embodies a predated declaration of war . . . .” –Senator Wayne Morse The media and the Gulf of Tonkin The facts of the incident uncovered by the National Security Archive
August 7, 1995 Four experienced Plowshares activists, Michele Naar-Obed, Erin Sieber and Rick Sieber, hammered and poured their blood on the U.S.S. Greenville, a fast-attack submarine in production at the Newport News, Virginia, shipyard.
Do You Know Who Created The Super Soaker? by Lique Read on Substack
It was him!
Lonnie Johnson. A NASA Scientist and Inventor.
Also, an African American. Though that should not make any difference. The part of his history that angered me, though I should not be surprised, was that Hasbro had tried to jilt this man out of $73 million dollars! I could not believe it. But him being the super star brain that he is won at his day in court.
Ben Franklin and his role as the postmaster general of the U.S. Postal Service embodied a combination of individual and communal ideals that was at the heart of America’s founding.
This series by American studies professor Ben Railton explores the connections between America’s past and present.
By late July 1775, the military conflict between American colonials and English troops that would come to be known as the American Revolution was fully underway. The April battles at Lexington and Concord had blossomed into a war on many fronts, including the even more substantial Massachusetts Battle of Bunker Hill, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys seizing New York’s Fort Ticonderoga, and George Washington being appointed Commander in Chief by the newly convened Second Continental Congress.
Amid the growing war, on July 26th, that same body voted to establish a national mail service, the U.S. postal system, with Ben Franklin as the first postmaster general.
Portrait of Ben Franklin by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis, ca. 1785 (Wikimedia Commons)
That might seem like a profoundly mundane action to take during the fraught military battles and campaigns of an unfolding Revolution. But it represented an important way for the Continental Congress to amplify the emerging identity of a newly unified United States: It embodied a combination of individual and communal ideals that was at the heart of the American founding and that the USPS continues to exemplify today.
As we see in the official transcript of the Second Continental Congress, the creation of a national postal system was part of an important overarching conversation throughout the week of July 24-28, 1775; on Monday July 24th, “the Congress then resolved themselves into a committee of the whole to take into consideration the state of America.” Those considerations included establishing a medical department and new hospitals (which were connected to the war effort of course, but also comprised a communal good far beyond that immediate cause), printing currency out of a new continental treasury, and, as decided on Wednesday July 26th, responding to “the report of the Committee on the post office” by creating “a line of posts … from Falmouth in New England to Savannah in Georgia,” appointing a postmaster General for the United Colonies, and unanimously electing Benjamin Franklin, Esq. to serve in that role.
By 1775, Ben Franklin had been involved in the creation of mail services for nearly four decades, and as was so consistently the case with Franklin, those efforts reflected both his pursuit of individual self-interests and his dedication to the communal good. In 1737, when Franklin was only 30 years old, he was appointed postmaster of his adopted home city of Philadelphia. In his autobiography he freely admitted that he took the job largely to support his own newspaper, the Gazette, writing, “tho’ the salary was small, it facilitated the correspondence that improv’d my newspaper, increased the number demanded, as well as the advertisements to be inserted, so that it came to afford me a considerable income.” But even if Franklin was mercenary about this new role, he was too much of an inventor not to innovate in it as well, and his most lasting and collectively meaningful such innovation was printing in the newspaper lists of people who had letters waiting for them at the post office, a practice that many other papers would take up for decades to come.
A painting by Charles Mills of young Ben Franklin working his printing press in Philadelphia (Library of Congress)
After a decade and a half in that important local role, the ever-ambitious Franklin was ready to move up. When Postmaster General for the Crown Elliott Benger became ill in 1753, Franklin lobbied for his overarching role. Eventually both he and a friend and fellow journalist, Virginia public printer William Hunter, were chosen as Joint Postmasters for the Crown, a role that Franklin would hold for the next two decades. He would bring a number of his Philadelphian innovations to that national role, including the aforementioned printed newspaper lists (which he instructed postmasters around the country to do). But he would also add successful new ideas, such as implementing nighttime service that led to far faster mail delivery. Ever the successful businessman, Franklin had the British Crown Post registering its first profit by 1760.
In 1774, after more than 20 years in that role, Franklin was dismissed by the British government for being too sympathetic to the colonies. But as he seemingly always did, Franklin parlayed this temporary setback into even more substantial long-term success, securing the July 1775 election to Postmaster General for the United Colonies with (again quoting the Continental Congress transcript) its accompanying “salary of 1000 dollars per an. for himself.” In case Franklin wasn’t able to make this new national postal system as profitable as the Crown’s had become under his leadership, Congress protected both the system and Franklin financially, adding that “if the necessary expense of this establishment should exceed the produce of it, the deficiency shall be made good by the United Colonies, and paid to the postmaster general by the continental Treasury.”
At least since the posthumous 1791 publication of his mythmaking autobiography, Ben Franklin had somehow embodied both self-made individual success and selfless philanthropy for the communal good. But contradictory as that duality may seem, it is also at the heart of America’s founding, as reflected in the opening passages of our two most famous framing documents. The Declaration of Independence begins with the “self-evident truths” that among each individual’s “unalienable Rights” are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” While the Constitution’s Preamble focuses on collective goals for “We the People” that include “forming a more perfect Union” and “promoting the general Welfare.”
In order for a society to endure, I would argue that it has to genuinely ensure both of these founding American ideals: that each individual in that nation has the opportunity to pursue their own dreams; and at the same time that the communal good remains an overarching collective goal. Since its July 1775 establishment, the United States Postal Service has impressively embodied both layers: offering mail service to every individual, in every corner of this giant nation; and doing so not as a corporation, but as a non-profit public good. Here on its 250th anniversary, let’s celebrate this continued reflection of our founding ideals.
August 6, 1890 At Auburn Prison in New York state, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair, developed by the Medico-Legal Society and Harold Brown, a colleague of Thomas Edison. William Kemmler received two applications of 1,300 volts of alternating current. The first lasted for only 17 seconds because a leather belt was about to fall off one of the second-hand Westinghouse generators. Kemmler was still alive. The second jolt lasted until the smell of burning flesh filled the room, about four minutes. As soon as his charred body stopped smoldering, Kemmler was pronounced dead. ——————————————————————————- August 6th, 1945 – 8:15 AM ANNIVERSARY OF HIROSHIMA The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. Hiroshima ruins An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent years from burns and other injuries, and radiation-related illnesses. President Harry Truman ordered the use of the weapon in hopes of avoiding an invasion of Japan to end the war, and the presumed casualties likely to be suffered by invading American troops. The weapon, “Little Boy,” was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets. Voices of the Hibakusha, those injured in the bombings <Hiroshima survivor Found watch stopped at the time of explosion> Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb On August 6, 1995, up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing. —————————————————————————— August 6, 1957 Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site. —————————————————————————– August 6, 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote. It created federal oversight of election laws in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina where black voter turnout was very low. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states. The laws has been re-authorized by Congress four times. Introduction to the Voting Rights Act —————————————————————————— August 6, 1990 George Galloway The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions“ . . . killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time . . . .” When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” -60 Minutes (5/12/96) Were Sanctions Worth the Price? by Christopher Hayes ————————————————————————– August 6, 1998 Nearly 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing which killed nearly 200,000 Japanese with a single weapon. The headlines when it happened ————————————————————————— August 6, 1998 Calling themselves the Minuteman III Plowshares, two peace activists, Daniel Sicken [pronounced seekin], 56, of Brattleboro, Vermont and Sachio Ko-Yin, 25, of Ridgewood, N.J entered silo N7 in Weld County [near Greeley] in Colorado operated by Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. With hammers and their own blood, they symbolically disarmed structures on the launching pad of a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.
August 5, 1963 The U.S., U.S.S.R. and U.K. signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in Moscow, banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in space or underwater. Underground testing, however, was not prohibited. It has since been signed by more than 100 countries. Text of the treaty, background and signatories
August 5, 1964 President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress ”for a resolution expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in southeast Asia.” The president had already used the alleged incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin [see August 4, 1964 above] to mount major air strikes on the North Vietnamese navy. The resulting Congressional Resolution authorizing military force in Vietnam was the legal basis for the war there that lasted until 1975. Only two members of the senate voted against the resolution: Ernest Greuning of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon. …
“Let’s go back to the war in Vietnam. I was here. I was one of the Senators who voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Yes, I voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. I am sorry for that. I am guilty of doing that. I should have been one of the two, or at least I should have made it three, Senators who voted against that Gulf of Tonkin resolution. But I am not wanting to commit that sin twice, and that is exactly what we are doing here. This is another Gulf of Tonkin resolution.” Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) in debate on the resolution to authorize use of military force on Iraq, October 4, 2002
August 5, 1981 President Ronald Reagan, having ordered striking air traffic controllers back to work within 48 hours, fired 11,359 (more than 70%) who ignored the order, and permanently banned them from federal service (a ban later lifted by President Bill Clinton). The controllers, seeking a shorter workweek among other things, were concerned the long hours they were required to work performing their high-stress jobs were a danger to both their health and the public safety. Lessons from When Reagan Crushed PATCO Union
This one’s about trouble for all coastal states, coming from Louisianans.
Louisiana Fights Against Becoming Another Not There No More Statistic by Jerileewei
Terrebonne Parish: Where the Rivers Meets the Sea Read on Substack
CCJC Audio Podcast Episode 00086, Season 2
“It’s not just the land we’re losing. It’s the stories. The way we talk. The smell of the air before a big storm.” — Emile Navarre
Cajun Chronicles Audio Podcast – Bringing you the heart of Louisiana. Artwork generated with Google Docs Image Maker.
Back from his month long vacation in Chacahoula, Louisiana, Cajun Chronicle Podcast, Writer/Editor, Emile Navarre arrived for our first staff meeting armed with fresh material for a future episode, as soon as Marie Lirette, our Outreach Coordinator can reach out to potential experts on the topic of “Ain’t There No More” – a nation wide trending group talk everywhere these days, as our world changes in ways none of us could have imagined.
Here is his recount of his lifelong story telling to his family’s youngest children:
Cajun Chronicles Audio Podcast – Bringing you the heart of Louisiana. Artwork generated with Google Docs Image Maker
“Come closer, chérs,” he said, his voice a low rumble like the last Lafitte skiff shrimping boat of the day heading down the Bayou Lafourche over Galliano or Golden Meadow way. His cane bottom rocking chair seat creaked a steady rhythm against the worn Cedar floorboards as he said that.
The sun, a too warm blanket he could feel, but not see, was sinking somewhere behind the great oak in the yard he will always remember. He ran a hand over the cane of his chair, then rested it on the knee of a boy sitting on the steps below him. He lifted his walking stick and pointed off to the right side. “You see that big fence, hein?
“Or that levee your mamans and pépère have to climb to get home from work at the Bollinger Shipyard, just to get up to the house? We didn’t have such a thing when I was a boy. Back then, my feet knew every dip and bump in this land”.
“From our porch right down that oyster shell road to the bayou where the shrimp jumped so high, you’d swear you could catch them in your mouth, if you were quick.” A ripple of giggles ran through the children.
“Ah, oui,” he chuckled, “I lost a good tooth catching shrimp that way. But the land, it was different. We were like a river family. She’d bring us a big muddy hug every spring, and we’d be happy for it.”
“The floods, they were always a part of life. We’d move our things up high, sing songs, and wait for the water to go down. When it did, Mother Nature would leave behind a gift, a rich, dark mud that made our gardens burst with life. You could feel it in your toes, a soft, giving sponge of sandy soil that told you everything was going to be alright.”
He paused, and the laughter faded, replaced by the chirping of crickets.
“My pépère, he’d sit right here on the back porch with a fishing line tied to his toe, but in his mind, Gaia was always busy with the water. He’d talk about how the Lafourche river was a living thing, always moving, always changing. ‘She builds, and she takes away,‘ he’d say.”
“We knew that. A little bit here, a little bit there. It was a fair trade. But then came the men with the big ideas. They came from places where the land didn’t move so much. They told us we could stop the river’s big hugs. They said we could make a straight line and build high walls, so the water would stay in its place.”
Emile’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “The young people, they thought it was wonderful. No more floods! No more moving furniture to the attic! But my pépère, he just shook his head. ‘You can’t trap a wild woman, not for long,’ he said. ‘She will find her way, and she will be angry for it.'”
“And she was,” he said, his hand now clutching his walking stick. “For years, the river was quiet, but our land, she was not. I can’t see it anymore with my eyes, but I felt it with my feet. The soil grew tired, no longer receiving her yearly gift.”
“The ground began to sag, and the bad marsh saltwater, it came closer in to say hello, not from a storm, but like a thief in the night, creeping up through the channels les Américains dug for the oil. They were for the big machines, the big money, but they were also a wound. A wound in the land that never healed.”
He turned his head toward the silent children, his milky blind blue eyes fixed on something only he could see. “Now, this levee you have, it protects you from the river, oui? But it holds the land in a box. It cannot breathe. The land is sick, and the ocean is hungry, taking a football field from our home every hour, the experts say.”
“I hear it in the wind now, not just the storms, but also in the sad whispers of the marsh, of the birds that have no place to land anymore. The land is leaving us, and we are left behind. We traded our river’s muddy hugs for a straight line and some high walls, and now we pay for it. Now, it’s not just the water that takes. It’s the land that gives itself away.”
The porch was silent, a stillness that was heavier than the humid air. The children looked at each other, not understanding all the words, but feeling the weight of them. One of the little girls, her braids tied with pink ribbons, quietly moved her hand to rest on the Emile’s knee as she headed inside for bed.
Emile smiled, his face creasing with a thousand invisible memories. Talking to the breeze, he raised his fist and threatened, “But you know what else my pépère said? He said, ‘As long as we tell the stories, the land is not truly gone.’ So listen, chérs, listen closely to my bedtime stories. Because now, it is your turn to remember.”
Cajun Chronicles Audio Podcast – Bringing you the heart of Louisiana. Artwork generated with Google Docs Image Maker
He had felt the last of the children’s light footsteps fade into the dusk, and the porch was still again except for his rocking chair. His head turned to the quiet rustling of the adults lingering on the porch. “You hear my stories, oui?” he said, his voice now lower, rougher.
“You too remember what I said about the river’s gift of mud? We didn’t know it, but we were like a family that had a big, generous table. Rivers brought food, and our land ate it. Every year, she’d get fat and happy. We thought we were so smart, so clever, when we built those high walls.”
“We told Gaia to stop eating for a while, believing for a while that she didn’t need the mud. ‘Don’t worry,’ we said, ‘We’ll protect you from the floods.’ But what we really did was put the food in a box and send it out to sea. Now, the land is starving. You cannot see it in a day, or a year. But that’s happening rapidly.”
“But I feel it in every part of my mind and body. Every year, she gets thinner, weaker. And like a sick old person who can’t stand anymore, Mother Earth’s starting to melt away. The medicine to save her is that very food we cut her off from. But the walls of levees and the canals the Corps of Engineers built? They are so high.”
“How will we get the food back to Louisiana’s coast before she’s gone entirely? That is the story my heart tells me now. And that is the story for you all to worry about. Time’s running out. I’m 75 years young this month. In another 75 years I won’t be here to see that my beloved Louisiane will be added to that dreaded list, “Ain’t Here No More.“
Cajun Chronicles Note: Sediment Starvation: The settlers’ levees and later government agencies built, while protecting their land from floods, also had an unintended consequence that would become a major factor in today’s coastal crisis. By containing the rivers, they prevented the natural flooding that would have deposited sediment into the wetlands.
This sediment was the building block of the delta. Without it, the land began to sink (subsidence) and slowly disappear. The settlers since the 1800s and later colonists were unaware of this long-term process and the vital role of the Mississippi’s and other rivers’ sediment in sustaining the land.
Water’s Takin’ Our Land, Gulf’s Hungry & She Ain’t Slowin’ Down
Cajun Chronicles Audio Podcast – Bringing you the heart of Louisiana. Artwork generated with Google Docs Image Maker
Louisiana has the highest coastal land loss rate in the United States. Since the 1930s, the state has lost about 2,000 square miles of land. This is a significant amount, roughly the size of the state of Delaware.
Without major intervention, the state of Louisiana is projected to lose an additional 700 to 1,000 square miles of land by the year 2050. This is an area roughly the size of the greater Washington D.C.-Baltimore area.
By the year 2100, the projections are even more dire, with some worst-case scenarios suggesting that up to 3,000 square miles of land could be lost. Some scientists have even warned that the entire remaining 5,800 square miles of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands in the Mississippi River delta could eventually disappear.
A Word of Wisdom:
Our fictional and non-fictional tales are inspired by real Louisiana and New Orleans history, but some details may have been spiced up for a good story. While we’ve respected the truth, a bit of creative license could have been used. Please note that all characters may be based on real people, but their identities in some cases have been Avatar masked for privacy. Others are fictional characters with connections to Louisiana.
As you read, remember history and real life is a complex mix of joy, sorrow, triumph, and tragedy. While we may have (or not) added a bit of fiction, the core message remains, the human spirit’s power to endure, adapt, and overcome.
August 4, 1964 The Pentagon reported a second attack on U.S. Navy ships in Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin [see August 2, 1964]. But there was no such activity reported at the time by the task force commander in the Gulf, Captain John J. Herrick. One of the Navy pilots flying overhead that night was squadron commander James Stockdale, who was later captured and held as a POW by the North Vietnamese for more than seven years, and became Ross Perot’s vice-presidential candidate in 1992: ” I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets — there were no PT boats there . . . There was nothing there but black water and American firepower.” Nearly three decades later during the Gulf War, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget “our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.”
August 4, 1964 FBI agents discovered the bodies of three missing civil rights workers buried deep in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. James Chaney was a local African-American man who had joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled from New York to heavily segregated Mississippi that year to help register voters with the support of CORE. Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman At the time, fewer than 10% of eligible black Mississippians were registered to vote. The three young men and many others were part of Freedom Summer, a massive voter registration and education project organized by the Council of Federated organizations (COFO), an umbrella group of major civil rights organizations. Watch a video Here is a transcription of what was written on the chalkboard (photo below) this August day in 1964: Yesterday – Negro woman arrested in Hattiesburg for refusing to give her bus seat to a white woman. • 400 attended mass meeting in Marks. • Tallahatchie Co. – 24 people tried to register to vote in Charleston; at least one man told he would lose his job as a result. Today – 6 youths arrested in Greenwood while singing in front of a store. One boy reported beaten. • Local girl missing since Sunday in Natchez • $200 each bond paid by 2 SNCC workers arrested in Anguilla (Sharkey Co.) yesterday for passing out vote leaflets. This is a close-up of the chalk-board beside the front door of the COFO headquarters building in Jackson, Mississippi. (Transcript just above.) Read more
August 4, 1985 Peace Ribbons made by thousands of women were wrapped around the U.S. Pentagon, the White House and the Capitol. Twenty thousand people participated, and the 27,000 panels making up the ribbon stretched for 15 miles.
August 3, 1882 Congress passed the first U.S. law to restrict immigration of a particular ethnic group into the United States, the Chinese Exclusion Act. It stopped all further Chinese immigration for ten years, and denied citizenship to those already in the country, most of whom had been recruited by American railroad and mining companies. The law remained in effect until 1943. Chinese rail workers Very cool site from the National Archives and Records Administration
August 3, 1913 Four died and many others were injured in the Wheatland Hop Riot when police fired into a crowd of California hop pickers trying to organize (with the help of the IWW, or Industrial Workers of the World). At the Durst Ranch in Wheatland, the state’s largest single agricultural employer, hundreds of workers—whites, Mexicans, and Filipinos—had put down their tools because of terrible working conditions, low wages, and an almost complete lack of sanitation and decent housing. It was one of the first attempts to organize agricultural workers. The story of the Wheatland Hop Riot
August 3, 1981 Nearly 13,000 of the nation’s 17,500 air traffic controllers, members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), went on strike.After six months of negotiations with PATCO President Robert Poli, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had offered less than 10% of what the union had sought. Due to the stressful nature of their jobs, managing the nation’s ever-increasing volume of airport landings and take-offs without up-to-date equipment, they had asked for a shorter workweek, an increase in pay and retirement after 20 years. 95% of PATCO members rejected the FAA’s final offer. The union had endorsed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980 (one of very few to do so), but President Reagan said they were violating U.S. law banning strikes by federal workers, and would all be terminated unless they returned to work within 48 hours. A Reagan Letter to Robert Poli, PATCO (October. 20, 1980) Dear Mr. Poli: I have been briefed by members of my staff as to the deplorable state of our nation’s air traffic control system. They have told me that too few people working unreasonable hours with obsolete equipment has placed the nation’s air travellers in unwarranted danger. In an area so clearly related to public safety the Carter administration has failed to act responsibly. You can rest assured that if I am elected President, I will take whatever steps are necessary to provide our air traffic controllers with the most modern equipment available and to adjust staff levels and work days so that they are commensurate with achieving a maximum degree of public safety…. I pledge to you that my administration will work very closely with you to bring about a spirit of cooperation between the President and the air traffic controllers. Sincerely, Ronald Reagan More about the strike
August 3, 1986 Laurie McBride and seven other Motherpeace members of the Nanoose Conversion Campaign were arrested for picnicking on Winchelsea Island, east of British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. They, along with dozens of volunteer witnesses and supporters who had set off by boat from the town of Nanoose Bay, were protesting the ten-year extension of free use by the U.S. of the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental Test Range (CFMETR). It is a joint Canadian-American facility for torpedos, other maritime warfare and detection equipment; the island held the command and control center. The Campaign advocated conversion of the area back to peaceful purposes. Laurie McBride’s story
August 3, 1988 One hundred forty-three white English and Afrikaans conscripts from four cities in South Africa announced their refusal to serve in the South African Defense Force. The SADF was engaged in actions to preserve apartheid, the social and economic system of racial separatism, in South Africa, and to occupy and thwart independence for South Africa’s neighbors, Angola and Namibia [see July 31, 1986]. 24-year-old David Bruce had just been sentenced to six years in prison for refusing to serve; he was released after two. He works today with The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation on issues of integrity, conduct and accountability in democratic policing. David BruceThe Police That We Want .pdf
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Scottie's Playtime 
