April 24, 1915 The Ottoman Turkish government arrested 200 of the most prominent political and intellectual leaders of the Armenian community in the capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul). These men and hundreds more were then imprisoned from throughout Anatolia (present-day Turkey) and, shortly thereafter, most were summarily executed. This is the day on which the genocide of more than a million Armenians is commemorated: when the intention of the Turkish government to eliminate the Armenian people became clear. Already Armenian recruits in the Ottoman Turkish army had been disarmed and organized as laborers working under slave-like conditions. The plan for Armenian genocide from University of Michigan-Dearborn
April 24, 1916 The Easter Uprising began when between 1,000 and 1,500 members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood attempted to seize Dublin and issued the declaration of Irish independence from Britain. The seven signatories of the Irish Proclamation Read about the Proclamation Read more
April 24, 1934 This editorial cartoon appeared in New Masses magazine. It refers to the attempt of anti-radical vigilantes and repressive college administrators to disrupt the first national student strike against war.
April 24, 1962 President John F. Kennedy authorized high-altitude atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons to determine whether missile-borne warheads could be used to black out military communications.
April 24, 1967 At a news conference in Washington, D.C., General William Westmoreland, senior U.S. commander in South Vietnam, said that the enemy (considered to be North Vietnam and the Viet Cong southern insurgents) had “gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily.”Though he said that ninety-five percent of the people were behind the United States effort in Vietnam, he asserted that the American soldiers in Vietnam were “dismayed, and so am I, by recent unpatriotic acts at home.” This criticism of the anti-war movement was not received well by many in and out of the movement, who believed it was both their right and responsibility to speak out against the war. General Westmoreland meeting President Lyndon Johnson later in 1967, Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam
April 24, 1971 500,000 demonstrated against the Vietnam War in Washington, D.C. It was the largest-ever demonstration opposing U.S. war; 150,000 marched at a simultaneous rally in San Francisco.
April 24, 1987 On the World Day for Laboratory Animals, nationally coordinated demonstrations occurred in California, Arizona, Florida, New York, Minnesota, Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Tennessee, and other states. It was the largest display of civil disobedience for animal rights ever. Hundreds of activists across the country blocked access to university laboratories and more than 150 were arrested nationwide. The day was designated to bring attention to the treatment of lab animals used in testing of medical and other products, sponsored in Congress by the late Tom Lantos (D-California). World Day Laboratory Animals
April 23, 1968 Students at Columbia University in New York City occupied campus buildings to protest military research and the razing of part of the neighboring Morningside Heights section of Harlem to make way for a new student gymnasium. Perspective from 40 years on by Mark Rudd, one of the Columbia leaders
April 23, 1971 In the final event of Operation Dewey Canyon III, nearly 1,000 Vietnam War veterans threw their combat ribbons, helmets, and uniforms on the U.S. Capitol steps along with toy weapons. Read more about Operation Dewey Canyon III
April 23, 1996 Chernobyl veterans Nineteen Ukrainian demonstrators were arrested in the capital, Kiev, during an illegal anti-nuclear protest marking the 10th anniversary of the nuclear reactor explosion and fire at Chernobyl, Ukraine, until then the largest and deadliest nuclear accident in history, now exceeded by Fukushima. [see April 26, 1986].
I want to thank brucedesertrat who sent me the link to this substack article. I enjoy learning about history but sadly this hits home too deeply. It is so close it is scary. Hugs.
Today President Trump is threatening to pull funds if Harvard does not comply with his demands for the school to shape it’s curricula to favor Trumpism. Harvard has refused to caved to Trump’s fascist demands which clearly violate free speech.
“The University will not surrender its independence or its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan M. Garber
The seizure of power by the MAGA Republicans in 2025, led by Donald Trump, brought far-reaching changes to American Universities. Some caved, some obeyed in advance.
The seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, led by Adolph Hitler, brought far-reaching changes to German Universities. All caved. All obeyed in advance.
There is a parallel in German history for this American moment when books are banned, educational institutions are battered and a brutal and barbaric anti-intellectual ethos is on the rise.
A timeline of the Nazification of Munich University
1933
Hitler demands The University of Munich restructure its curriculum in accordance with the new ruling ideology of Nazism.
Trump demands Harvard University restructure its curriculum in accordance with the new ruling ideology of Trumpism. Abandon DEI. Police your students and faculty for viewpoint “diversity”.
Those faculty members who are not Nazi sympathizers are dismissed.
Trump’s letter calls for political undesirables to be gone.
The numbers of Jews admitted to university are restricted.
Munich University is the site of book burnings led by pro-Nazi students.
With the passage of these laws, the Nazis attempted to root out any opposition to their ideology that remain in German higher education.
Trump wants all of America’s Universities to root out anti-Trumpist thought, to be citadels of Trumpism, to employ MAGA professors who will teach American students how Trumpism will make America and her institutions of higher learning great again.
1941
Munich University appoints of Walther Wüst, an Aryan ideologue, Führer-Rektor of the University. By this time the Nazification of Munich University is complete. The once prestigious Munich University employs an all Nazi faculty.
1943
Sophie Scholl, a student attending Munich University, is guillotined for distributing anti-Nazi broadsides on campus.
Under President Trump students are deported or “disappeared”. I can safely assume an American student will be martyred for resisting fascism here in our nation in t he months ahead.
Hitler visiting the University of Munich
Here is a harrowing account of the Nazification of Frankfurt University witnessed by young Austrian economist named Peter Drucker:
Frankfurt was the first university the Nazis tackled, precisely because it was the most self-confidently liberal of major German universities, with a faculty that prided itself on its allegiance to scholarship, freedom of conscience, and democracy. The Nazis knew that control of Frankfurt University would mean control of German academia. And so did everyone at the university.
Above all, Frankfurt had a science faculty distinguished both by its scholarship and by its liberal convictions; and outstanding among the Frankfurt scientists was a biochemist-physiologist of Nobel-Prize caliber and impeccable liberal credentials. When the appointment of a Nazi commissar was announced . . . and every teacher and graduate assistant at the university was summoned to a faculty meeting to hear this new master, everybody knew that a trial of strength was at hand. I had never before attended a faculty meeting, but I did attend this one.
The new Nazi commissar wasted no time on the amenities. He immediately announced that Jews would be forbidden to enter university premises and would be dismissed without salary on March 15; this was something that no one had thought possible despite the Nazis’ loud antisemitism. Then he launched into a tirade of abuse, filth, and four-letter words such as had been heard rarely even in the barracks and never before in academia. . . . [He] pointed his finger at one department chairman after another and said, “You either do what I tell you or we’ll put you into a concentration camp.” There was silence when he finished; everybody waited for the distinguished biochemist-physiologist. The great liberal got up, cleared his throat, and said, “Very interesting, Mr. Commissar, and in some respects very illuminating: but one point I didn’t get too clearly. Will there be more money for research in physiology?”
The meeting broke up shortly thereafter with the commissar assuring the scholars that indeed there would be plenty of money for “racially pure science.” A few of the professors had the courage to walk out with their Jewish colleagues, but most kept a safe distance from these who only a few hours earlier had been their close friends. I went out sick unto death—and I knew that I was going to leave Germany within forty-eight hours.
The Nazis attacked academic dissent with lethal cruelty
Some went to nearby Dachau. Some, such as our heroic young student Sophie, were beheaded.
Sophie Scholl, photographed by the Gestapo
Here is the text of the pamphlet that cost Munich University student Sophie Scholl her life. Her haunting critique of Hitler resonates eerily with the familiar critiques of our current leader:
Fellow Students!
Shaken, our people faces the downfall of our men of Stalingrad. Three hundred thirty thousand German men have been senselessly and irresponsibly rushed into death and ruin by the brilliant strategy of the man who served as a private in the Great War. Führer, we thank you!
It is festering in the German people: Do we want to continue entrusting the fate of our armies to a dilettante? Do we want to sacrifice the rest of our young Germans to the base, power-seeking instincts of a Party clique? Nevermore.
The day of reckoning has come, our German youth’s reckoning with the most abhorrent tyranny that our people has ever endured. In the name of all young Germans, we demand that Adolf Hitler’s State return to us our personal freedom, the German’s most valuable possession, which he has cheated us out of in the most disgraceful way.
We have grown up in a State where every free expression of opinion has been ruthlessly gagged. The HJ, SA, and SS have tried to make us uniform, to revolutionize us, to narcotize us in the most fruitful educational years of our lives. “Ideological training” was the name given to the despicable method of stifling our budding independent thought and self-esteem in a haze of empty phrases. A “Führerauslese”1 of a kind as fiendish and at the same time as narrow-minded as one can possibly imagine, grooming its future Party bosses at Ordensburgen [special educational centers for Party cadres] to become godless, shameless, and unscrupulous exploiters and cutthroats, to become blind, mindless followers of the Führer. We “brain-workers” were exactly right for becoming the cudgel of this new ruling class. Front-line soldiers are disciplined like schoolboys by student leaders and would-be Gauleiter; Gauleiter, with prurient jests, assault the honor of female students. German female students at the university in Munich have given a dignified reply to the insult to their honor, and German male students have intervened and stood their ground on behalf of their female classmates. That is a first step toward gaining our right to free self-determination, without which intellectual values cannot be created. We are grateful to our brave fellow students, female and male, who have led the way by setting this shining example!
For us, there is only one watchword: Fight against the Party! Get out of the Party formations, in which the goal is to keep us politically muzzled! Get out of the lecture rooms of the SS Unter- or Oberführer and the Party bootlickers! True scholarly activities and genuine intellectual freedom are at stake! No threat of any kind can frighten us, not even the closing of our universities. Each of us must fight for our future, our freedom and honor in a body politic that is aware of its moral responsibility.
Freedom and honor! For ten long years, Hitler and his comrades have squeezed these two magnificent German words and made them loathsome, have banged on them and twisted them as only dilettantes can, dilettantes who cast the highest values of a nation before swine. They have sufficiently demonstrated what freedom and honor mean to them during ten years of the destruction of all physical and intellectual freedom, of all moral substance in the German people. Even the dumbest German’s eyes have been opened by the dreadful blood bath which they have brought about everywhere in Europe and continue to bring about each day. The German name will remain forever disgraced unless German youth stand up at last, engage simultaneously in revenge and expiation, smash their tormentors, and bring about a new intellectual and spiritual Europe.
Students! The German people is watching us! It expects us, as in 1813 with the breaking of Napoleon’s domination, now also in 1943 to break the domination of National Socialist terror through the power of the mind.
Berezina and Stalingrad blaze in the East; the dead of Stalingrad implore us!
“Fresh on, my people, the flame signals are smoking!”2
Our people is rising up against the enslavement of Europe by National Socialism, in a new, trustful breakthrough of freedom and honor!
As you read her courageous words consider how and why a regime would loathe and fear such a voice for liberty.
Now is the time to stand with all who see Trump for the terrifying tyrant he is.
Now is the time to stand with all educators and students who courageously stand against this tyranny.
Now is the time to join Thomas Jefferson in swearing “upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Now is the time to stand with Harvard University.
Now is the time to stand with all educators and educational institutions threatened by MAGA fascism.
David Fitzsimmons: Arizona’s Progressive Voice is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
April 19, 1911 More than 6,000 Grand Rapids, Michigan, furniture workers—Germans, Dutch, Lithuanians, and Poles—put down their tools and struck 59 factories in what became known as the Great Furniture Strike. For four months they campaigned and picketed for higher pay, shorter hours, and an end to the piecework pay system that was common in the plants of America’s “Furniture City.” Although the strike ended after four months without a resolution, Gordon Olson, Grand Rapids city historian emeritus, said once employees returned to work, most owners did increase pay and reduce hours.
April 19, 1943 On the eve of Passover, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began when Nazi forces attempted to clear out the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland, to send them to concentration camps. The Germans were met by unexpected gunfire from Jewish resistance fighters. The destruction of the ghetto had been ordered in February by SS Chief Heinrich Himmler: “An overall plan for the razing of the ghetto is to be submitted to me. In any case we must achieve the disappearance from sight of the living-space for 500,000 sub-humans (Untermenschen) that has existed up to now, but could never be suitable for Germans, and reduce the size of this city of millions—Warsaw—which has always been a center of corruption and revolt.”
These two women, soon to be executed, were members of the Jewish resistance. ” …Jews and Jewesses shot from two pistols at the same time… The Jewesses carried loaded pistols in their clothing with the safety catches off… At the last moment, they would pull hand grenades out…and throw them at the soldiers….” Captured Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Learn more about The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (it’s the search page for the national Holocaust Museum.)
April 19, 1971 As a prelude to a massive anti-war protest, Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) began a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C. The generally peaceful protest was called Dewey Canyon III in honor of the operation of the same name conducted in Laos. They lobbied their congressmen, laid wreaths at Arlington National Cemetery, and staged mock “search-and-destroy” missions. Read more about this action
April 19, 1997 Two Swedish Plowshares peace activists, Cecelia Redner, a priest in the Church of Sweden, and Marija Fischer, a student, entered the Bufors Arms factory in Karlskoga, Sweden, planted an apple tree and attempted to disarm a naval cannon being exported to Indonesia. Cecelia was charged with attempt to commit malicious damage and Marija with assisting in what was called the Choose Life Disarmament Action. Both were also charged with violating a law which protects facilities “important to society.” Both women were convicted, arguing over repeated interruptions by the judge, that, in Redner’s words, “When my country is arming a dictator I am not allowed to be passive and obedient, since it would make me guilty to the crime of genocide in East Timor. I know what is going on and I cannot only blame the Indonesian dictatorship or my own government.” Fischer added, “We tried to prevent a crime, and that is an obligation according to our law.” Redner was sentenced to fines and three years of correctional education. Fischer was sentenced to fines and two years’ suspended sentence. Both the prosecutor and defendants appealed the case. No jail sentences were imposed.
April 17, 1959 22 were arrested in New York City for refusing to take shelter during a civil defense drill.
April 17, 1960 Inspired by the Greensboro sit-in of four black college students at an all-white lunch counter, nearly 150 black students from nine states formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, with Ella Baker, James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., the founders set SNCC’s initial goals as overturning segregation in the South. They also considered it important to give young blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement, as many had participated in sit-ins that had proliferated to dozens of cities over the previous three months. At the Raleigh conference Guy Carawan sang a new version of “We Shall Overcome,” an adaptation of an old labor song. This song would become the national anthem of the civil rights movement. People joined hands and gently swayed in time singing “black and white together,” repeating over and over, “Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.” History of SNCC (It’s a Stanford.edu page, which “cannot be reached.” Take from that what you will. I’ve decided to note these things when they happen.) What SNCC did to make change happen (This page is good.)
April 17, 1961 Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the Bay of Pigs invasion. An army of 1500 anti-Castro Cuban exiles, mercenaries equipped and trained at a secret Guatemala base by the CIA, landed at Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) in an attempt to “liberate” Cuba from Communist rule. Within three days, the invasion proved disastrous with nearly 1200 members of Brigade 2506 (who had been trained in the U.S.) taken prisoner. Known as Operation Zapata, it was conceived by Vice President Nixon, planned and approved by the Eisenhower administration, and executed shortly after President John Kennedy’s inauguration. President Kennedy receives the Brigade 2506 flag in Miami in 1962 and declares: “I promise to return this flag in a free Havana.”
Soviet General Secretary Nikita Kruschev sent a telegram to President Kennedy: “Mr. President, I send you this message in an hour of alarm, fraught with danger for the peace of the whole world. Armed aggression has begun against Cuba. It is a secret to no one that the armed bands invading this country were trained, equipped and armed in the United States of America. The planes which are bombing Cuban cities belong to the United States of America, the bombs they are dropping are being supplied by the American Government . . . .” What actually happened
April 17, 1965 The first national demonstration against the Vietnam War took place in the nation’s capital. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the organizers, had expected about 2000 marchers; the actual count was 15,000–25,000. This was the largest anti-war protest ever to have been held in Washington, D.C. up to that time. The number of marchers approximately equaled the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Several hundred students in the protest broke away from the main march and conducted a brief sit-in at the U.S. Capitol’s door. An exam prepared by SDS about the Vietnam War (answers available)
April 17, 1965 Gay rights advocate Jack Nichols The first demonstration promoting equal treatment of homosexuals, Jack Nichols, Barbara Gittings and others picketed in front of the White House. There were no media present.. Read more
April 17, 1986 Reverend Jesse Jackson, future congresswoman Maxine Waters and others co-founded the Rainbow Coalition, initially intended as a progressive public-policy think tank within the Democratic Party. Representative Maxine Waters, Harry Belafonte, John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Willie Nelson August 6, 2005-Atlanta, Georgia. Brief history of Rainbow Push Coalition
April 17, 1992 On Good Friday morning, about 50 people accompanied Fr. Carl Kabat and Carol Carson to Missile Silo Site N5 at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, the same silo that Carl and other members of the Silo Pruning Hooks (see below) disarmed in 1984. They cut through a fence and, once inside, Carol used a sledgehammer on the concrete lid of the silo while Carl performed a rite of exorcism. Eventually, the police arrived and arrested Carl and Carol. They were jailed and held until their court appearance. At that time, they made a preliminary agreement with federal prosecutors wherein they would plead “no contest” to trespass in exchange for the property destruction charge being dropped; they were sentenced to six and three months, respectively, in a halfway house. Carl Kabat A History of Direct Disarmament Actions About the Silo Pruning Hooks action
April 13, 1919 Socialist, pacifist, and labor leader Eugene V. Debs was imprisoned for opposing U.S. entry into World War I. While in prison, he received nearly one million votes for President in the 1920 election (as he had in 1912). All aspects of Debs from the Eugene Debs Foundation
April 13, 1919 In Amritsar, holiest city of the Sikh religion (in India’s Punjab province), British and Gurkha troops fired without warning and killed at least 379 and wounded another 1200 Sikhs meeting in a park known as Jallianwala Bagh to celebrate their new year’s festival of Baisakhi Mela.In the previous three days, two key Sikh leaders had been deported, Mohandas Ghandi had been barred from entering the Punjab, and a general strike and demonstration had been met with deadly fire from British troops, sparking violent reaction. Background of the Amritsar massacre
April 10, 1516 In what was the first ghetto, Jews in Venice, Italy, were forced to live in a specific, restricted area of the city known as Campo del Ghetto Nuovo. The word “ghetto” comes from the Venetian word “geto,” meaning foundry. Prior to becoming an exclusively Jewish neighborhood, the Venice ghetto was the site of a foundry. After its establishment the city’s Jews, who were allowed to attend to their business during the day (though required to wear a yellow badge or scarf indicating their religion), were forced to return to the ghetto where gates were locked to keep them inside overnight. Venice also restricted the living quarters of Germans and Turks, all to satisfy the demands of the Roman Catholic Church. The site of the Ghetto Nouvo today
April 10, 1971 Ninety-year-old Jeannette Rankin, the first female member of Congress (R-Montana), and the only one to vote against U.S. entry into both World Wars, led 8000 in protest of the Vietnam War in a women’s peace march on the Pentagon.
April 10, 1972 Charlie Chaplin received an honorary Oscar for “the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.” The British native’s political views had previously been criticized, as had been his failure to apply for U.S. citizenship. Pressed for back taxes and accused of supporting subversive causes during the McCarthy era, Chaplin left the United States in 1952.Informed that he would not be welcomed back, he retorted, “I wouldn’t go back there if Jesus Christ were president.” He returned briefly from exile, however, to accept this award and received the longest standing ovation in Academy Award history, lasting a full five minutes. Charlie Chaplin, one of PBS’s American Masters
April 10, 1981 The United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (also known as the Inhumane Weapons Convention) started gathering signatures of nations willing to abide by its limitations. Currently, 109 countries have agreed to ban or limit munitions that cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants, or affect civilians indiscriminately. So far the restrictions cover mines, booby traps, incendiary weapons (such as Napalm) and blinding laser weapons. This Life photograph of a naked child running down a street in Vietnam screaming in agony captures the effects of Napalm. Nick Ut’s photograph of Kim Phuk, taken in 1972, won the Pulitzer Prize ( Associated Press). Not all country signatories have agreed to all its provisions How militaries think about incendiary weapons
April 10, 1994 France, Belgium, the U.S., among other countries airlifted their nationals out of Rwanda as the wholesale slaughter of Tutsis at the hands of the Hutu majority proceeded. Rwandan employees of Western governments were left behind. The International Red Cross was already estimating the death toll in the tens of thousands.
April 10, 1998 The Northern Ireland peace talks ended with an historic accord—called the Good Friday Agreement—reached after nearly two years of talks and 30 years of conflict. Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) was chair of the talks which established a Northern Irish Assembly for both the Irish Catholic republicans and the British Anglican unionists. Senator George Mitchell
April 9, 1898 Ida Wells-Barnett, a journalist, speaker and advocate for suffrage, wrote to President William McKinley requesting federal action against those who lynched the U.S. Postmaster of Lake City, South Carolina. Ida Wells-Barnett Though the federal government had previously refused to involve itself with the thousands of lynchings, leaving them to be dealt with at the state level, Ms. Wells-Barnett insisted that a postmaster’s murder was a federal matter. “We most earnestly desire that national legislation be enacted for the suppression of the national crime of lynching . . . . Her open letter to President McKinley ============================================= April 9, 1947 The first freedom ride, the “Journey of Reconciliation,” left Washington, D.C. to travel through four states of the upper South.In response to a Supreme Court decision (Morgan v. Virginia) outlawing segregation on interstate busses, the group of both black and white Americans rode together despite “Jim Crow” state laws making it illegal. Together on the bus, and arrested several times for being so, were George Houser, Bayard Rustin, James Peck, Igal Roodenko, Nathan Wright, Conrad Lynn, Wallace Nelson, Andrew Johnson, Eugene Stanley, Dennis Banks, William Worthy, Louis Adams, Joseph Felmet, Worth Randle and Homer Jack. Two African-American members of the group, Rustin and Johnson, served on a chain gang for 30 days after their conviction in North Carolina. The integrated bus tour was sponsored by CORE (Congress for Racial Equality) and FOR (Fellowship of Reconciliation) Read more about the freedom rides ============================================== April 9, 1981 Members of the Bigstone Cree band of indigenous people ended a 250-mile march to the capital, Edmonton, to highlight their economic plight in northern Alberta, Canada. ============================================== April 9, 1995 Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara first publicly acknowledged error in prosecution of the war in Vietnam. “Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.” Robert McNamara, Fog of War ============================================== April 9, 2000 Jubilee 2000 National Mobilization Day in Washington, D.C. brought together individuals and groups demanding cancellation of third world debt. “Every child in Africa is born with a financial burden which a lifetime’s work cannot repay. The debt is a new form of slavery as vicious as the slave trade.” Jubilee USA Network
April 8, 1952 President Harry S. Truman attempted to nationalize the steel industry in order to avert a nationwide strike. He was concerned about a shortage of steel needed for the war effort in Korea. Read more from the Truman library
April 8, 1993 Women in Black of Lund, Sweden, demonstrated in solidarity with their Serbian sisters suffering amidst the conflicts resulting from the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. “We dressed in black. We knew that despair and pain needed to be transformed into political action. Our choice of black meant that we did not agree with everything that the Serbian regime was doing. We refused their language which promotes hate and death.” We repeated: “DO NOT SPEAK FOR US, WE WILL SPEAK FOR OURSELVES” Who are Women in Black?
Scottie's Playtime 