Category: Military
Frederick Douglass Does Some Great Work at Seneca Falls, Dockum Drug Store Sit-Ins, & More, in Peace & Justice History for 7/19
| July 19, 1848 The first Women’s Rights Convention in the U.S. was held at Seneca Falls, New York. Its “Declaration of Sentiments” launched the movement of women to be included in the constitution.The Declaration used as a model the U.S. Declaration of Independence, demanding that the rights of women as individuals be acknowledged and respected by society. It was signed by sixty-eight women and thirty-two men. The impetus came from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, both of whom had been excluded, along with all the other female American delegates, from the World Anti-Slavery Convention (London, 1840) because of their sex.  Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist leader attended the convention and supported the resolution for women’s suffrage. When suffrage finally became a reality in 1920, seventy-two years after this first organized demand in 1848, only one signer of the Seneca Falls Declaration, Charlotte Woodward, then a young worker in a glove manufactory, had lived long enough to cast her first ballot. The Seneca Falls Convention and the Early Suffrage Movement The Declaration of Sentiments |
| July 19, 1958 Several black teenagers, members of the local NAACP chapter (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), entered downtown Wichita’s Dockum Drug Store (then the largest drugstore chain in Kansas) and sat down at the lunch counter.  Wichita sit-in sculpture The store refused to serve them because of their race. They returned at least twice a week for the next several weeks. They sat quietly all afternoon, creating no disturbance, but refused to leave without being served. Though the police once chased them away, they were breaking no law, only asking to make a purchase, a violation of store policy. This was the first instance of a sit-in to protest segregationist policies. Less than a month later, a white man around 40 walked in and looked at those sitting in for several minutes. Then he looked at the store manager, and said, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.” That man was the owner of the Dockum drug store chain. That day the lawyer for the local NAACP branch called the store’s state offices, and was told by the chain’s vice president that “he had instructed all of his managers, clerks, etc. (statewide), to serve all people without regard to race, creed or color.” |
| July 19, 1974 Martha Tranquill of Sacramento, California, was sentenced to nine months’ prison time for refusing to pay her federal taxes as a protest against the Vietnam War. |
| July 19, 1993 President Bill Clinton announced regulations to implement his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding gays in the military, saying that the armed services should put an end to “witch hunts.” The policy was developed by General Colin Powell, then Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and eventually summarized as “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue, don’t harass.” |
| July 19, 2000 A federal administrative law judge ordered white supremacist Ryan Wilson to pay $1.1 million in damages to fair housing advocate Bonnie Jouhari and her daughter, Dani. The decision stemmed from threats made against Jouhari by Wilson and his Philadelphia neo-Nazi group, ALPA HQ.  Bonnie and Dani Jouhari |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july19
Good Trouble Today, The Young Lords Begin To Repair A Hospital, & More In Peace & Justice History for 7/17
Good Trouble demonstrations today, all. Let’s do what we can to make a visible stand for democracy!
| July 17, 1927 In a significant early use of close air support, a U.S. Marine squadron of seven airplanes dive-bombed rebels and peasants surrounding Marines and Nicaraguan military (then under direct U.S. control) in Ocotal, Nicaragua, killing more than 100. The rebels were opposed the presence of U.S. forces, essentially continuously in their country since 1909. Why was the U.S. in Nicaragua? |
July 17, 1970 The Young Lords Party entered the Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, NYC. The hospital, located in a condemned and dilapidated building, was filled with pain, degradation, neglect, flies, and humiliation. The YLP set up care units in the Hospital, and drew attention to the abysmal conditions. The direct-action takeover prompted a response by the government, and the building of a new Lincoln Hospital. The Lincoln Hospital Offensive |
=July 17, 1976 The opening ceremony of the 21st Olympic Games in Montreal was marked by the withdrawal of more than twenty African countries, Iraq and Guyana, and their 300 athletes. They had demanded that New Zealand be banned from participation because its national rugby team had toured South Africa, itself banned from the Olympics since 1964 for its refusal to end the racially separatist policy of apartheid. The Soweto Massacre, in which 150 children were killed by South African troops, had occurred just one month earlier. The apartheid government had been using international sport as a means to build respectability. The following year, however, in reaction to the Olympic boycott, the nations of the British Commonwealth (which includes New Zealand) adopted the Gleneagles Agreement, discouraging all sporting contacts with South Africa. African countries boycott Olympics Gleneagles Agreement (It’s a .pdf) |
| July 17, 1979 Fighters of the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew the U.S.-supported dictatorial regime of Anastasio Somoza in the Central American republic of Nicaragua and forced him to flee the country. The notorious and feared U.S.-trained National Guard crumbled and its surviving commanders negotiated a surrender, despite their superiority in armaments. The Sandanista Revolution  Anastasio Somoza  Girls born after the historic Sandinista victory. Legal voting age in Nicaragua is 16 years. The overthrow: Sandinista rebels take Nicaraguan capital |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july17
Some clips from The Majority Report dealing with Racism in the US and Israel and ICE.
Busy Day In Peace & Justice History, from Crusaders Sacking Jerusalem To Strikers To Nukes, & More:
July 16, 1099 The Sacking of Jerusalem Soldiers from all over Catholic Europe, known as Crusaders, overtook the defenses of Jerusalem and slaughtered both the Jewish and Muslim populations. According to Fulk of Chartres in his contemporaneous account, “Many fled to the roof of the Temple of Solomon, and were shot with arrows, so that they fell to the ground dead. In this temple almost ten thousand were killed. Indeed, if you had been there you would have seen our feet colored to our ankles with the blood of the slain. But what more shall I relate? None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared.” Pope Urban II initiated this effort to wrest the Holy Land from the hands of the “Infidel” (the city had been under Islamic rule for 460 years) and assured those who joined the first crusade that God would absolve them from any sin associated with the venture. ———————————————————————————————————- July 16, 1877 Firemen and brakemen for the Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio Railroads refused to work, and refused to let replacements take their jobs. They managed to halt all railroad traffic at the Camden Junction just outside of Baltimore. The railroad companies had cut wages and shortened the workweek.  A contemporary artist’s rendering of the clash in Baltimore between workers and the Maryland Sixth Regiment during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. The governor had called out the troops on behalf of the railroad company. After a second pay cut in June, Pennsylvania RR announced that the same number of workers would be expected to service twice as many trains. The work stoppage spread west and eventually became the first nationwide strike Background and growth of the Strike ——————————————————————————————————– July 16, 1945 The U.S. Army’s Manhattan Project succeeded as its first hand-made experimental atomic bomb, known as the “Gadget,” was successfully detonated at the top of a 30m (100 ft.) tower in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico (at the Trinity test site now part of the White Sands Missile Range). The original $6,000 budget for the intensive and secret weapons development program during World War II eventually ballooned to a total cost of nearly $2 billion (more than $25 billion in current dollars).  “Gadget” explodes  The “Gadget” just before the Trinity test July 16, 1945. Assembled in the McDonald Ranch house nearby, the orange-sized plutonium core, weighing 6.1 kg (13.5 lbs.), yielded an explosive force of more than 20 kilotons (equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT). Trinity Atomic Bomb (A good read -A.) What it’s like there today: “My Radioactive Vacation” ———————————————————————————————————- July 16, 1979 The largest release of radioactive material in the U.S. occurred in the Navajo Nation. More than 1200 metric tons (1,100 tons) of uranium tailings (mining waste) and 378 million liters (100 million gallons) of radioactive water burst through a packed-mud dam near Church Rock, New Mexico. The river contaminated by the spill, the Rio Puerco, showed 7,000 times the allowable standard of radioactivity for drinking water downstream from the broken dam shortly after the breach was repaired.  A month later, only 5% of the tailings had been cleaned out. Warnings not to drink the contaminated water were issued by officials, but non-English-speaking Navajo never heard them, having no electrical power for TV or radio. Humans and livestock continued to drink the water. ———————————————————————————————————- July 16, 1979  Saddam Hussein became president of the Iraqi republic, secretary general of the Ba’ath Party Regional Command, chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He had been the ambitious protegé of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, who resigned on this day. ———————————————————————————————————- July 16, 1983 During a time of increasing tension between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), and an escalating nuclear arms race, 10,000 peace activists formed a human chain linking the two superpowers’ embassies in London, England. The same day, members of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp painted the U.S. spy plane, Blackbird, and composed this song for their activities: [to the tune of Count Basie’s “Bye, Bye, Blackbird”] “Here I stand paint in hand Speaking low, here I go Bye bye blackbird Just a dab of paint or two Here I stand paint in hand Speaking low, here I go Bye bye blackbird Just a dab of paint or two Grounds you for a week or two Bye bye blackbird. No one in the base could undermine you Till we did some countersigning on you Now you’re just a silly joke Invented by some macho bloke Blackbird bye bye.” |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july16
The Longest Walk, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 7/15
| July 15, 1834 The Spanish Inquisition, a centuries-long brutal effort by the Catholic Church to root out heresy, begun in 1481, was officially abolished by King Bonaparte. Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had chosen Catholicism as their religion and asked the pope to help purify the people of Spain. Many thousands were forced to convert, were tortured to encourage confession, or burned at the stake.  Witch burning during the Inquisition More on the Inquisition |
| July 15, 1919 Following World War I, the U.S. War Department announced that it had classified more than 337,000 American men as “draft dodgers.” Read a brief history of Conscientious Objection in America |
| July 15, 1978 The Longest Walk, a peaceful transcontinental trek for Native American justice, which had begun with a few hundred departing Alcatraz Island, California, ended this day when they arrived in Washington, D.C. accompanied by 30,000 marchers.  They were calling attention to the ongoing problems plaguing Indian communities throughout the Americas: lack of jobs, housing, health care, as well as dozens of pieces of legislation before Congress canceling treaty obligations of the U.S. government toward various Indian tribes. They submitted petitions signed by one-and-a-half million Americans to President Jimmy Carter.  The Longest Walk Zinn Project |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july15
It’s Bastille Day in France! & More, In Peace & Justice History for 7/14
| July 14, 1789 Bastille Day in France: Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a former royal fortress converted to a state prison, that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchy. This dramatic action was proof that power no longer resided in the King as God’s representative, but in the people, and signaled the beginning of the French Revolution and the First Republic.  Bastille Day for kids |
| July 14, 1798 A mere 22 years after the Declaration of Independence, Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to “. . . unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States . . . or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States . . . .” The Declaration: “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government….” “An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States” |
| July 14, 1887 Adrian C. “Cap” Anson, both manager and captain of the Chicago Whitestockings (National League), refused to let his baseball team take the field as long as the Newark Little Giants included their starting pitcher, George Stovey, an African-American, in the lineup. “Get that nigger off the field!” Anson was heard to say. Newark refused to allow Anson to dictate the use of their personnel, but the game was ruled a forfeit to Chicago. At the time there were only 20 black players in all of professional baseball. The same day, the directors of the International League (which included Newark) barred any of their teams from hiring black players in the future. By the following year there were only six black players left on all the teams in four leagues. All-black teams were formed, but the last of them, the Acme Colored Giants from Celeron, New York, of the Iron and Oil (I&0) League, stopped playing in 1898. No African-American would play in white organized baseball again until Jackie Robinson nearly 50 years later. |
| July 14, 1955 The Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 became law, the first in a series of laws that ultimately became the Clean Air Act in 1963. This first law simply provided funding to the Public Health Service to conduct research.  History of the Clean Air Act |
July 14, 1958 King Faisal II A group of Iraqi army officers staged a coup in Iraq and overthrew the monarchy of King Faisal II (who had ascended to the throne at age four). The new government, led by Abdul Karim el Qasim, was ousted in 1963 by a coup helped by the CIA and led by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party—later dominated by Saddam Hussein. Read more |
YOU HAVE THE LEGAL AUTHORITY, F*****G USE IT
One voice was yelling he was a US citizen. The conditions are horrible. They get their drinking water from the toilet. Maxwell Frost is a progressive treasure. Hugs
Draft Lottery Riots & More, In Peace & Justice History for 7/13
| July 13, 1863 Massive New York City protests decrying the first-ever wartime draft lottery led to bloody rioting over five days as a mob of 50,000 burned buildings (including looting and torching the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue, though the 200+ children were unharmed), stores and draft offices, and attacked police. Some clubbed, lynched, and shot large numbers of blacks, whom they blamed for the war.By the time troops returning from the Battle of Gettysburg finally restored order, 1200 had died over five days. New Yorkers, spurred on by the Democratic leadership of Tammany Hall and tired of the seemingly endless war, had been angered by President Abraham Lincoln’s recent call for 300,000 more troops.  In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 by Leslie M. Harris They especially resented the legal provision allowing a cash payment ($300 commutation fee) as a way for those with the means to avoid military service in the Union Army. Read more about the 1863 draft riots |
| July 13, 1905 A Declaration of Principles was issued by the Niagara Movement (the precursor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) following their conference in Buffalo, New York. Matters of concern included: realization of suffrage for all black men, as well as other civil liberties; economic opportunities for black Americans, especially in the South; access to education, especially high schools, trade and technical schools, and colleges; fair treatment in the courts and an end to the convict-lease system; fair treatment in employment wherein employers brought in black workers temporarily to keep down wages, and labor unions refused membership to blacks; an end to the color line, particularly in public transporation; fair treatment for black soldiers and access to military training schools; enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution passed in the wake of the Civil War. “The Negro race in America, stolen, ravished and degraded, struggling up through difficulties and oppression, needs sympathy and receives criticism; needs help and is given hindrance, needs protection and is given mob-violence, needs justice and is given charity, needs leadership and is given cowardice and apology, needs bread and is given a stone. This nation will never stand justified before God until these things are changed.” Additionally, they urged upon the African-American community: The duty to vote. The duty to respect the rights of others. The duty to work. The duty to obey the laws. The duty to be clean and orderly. The duty to send our children to school. The duty to respect ourselves, even as we respect others. |
| July 13, 1985 The first Live Aid concert raised $75 million for agricultural and technical assistance to Africa, many times what was expected. Described as the Woodstock of the ‘80s, the world’s biggest rock festival (in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, Australia, simultaneously and linked by satellite) was organized by Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.   Bob Geldof The Republic of Ireland (Éire) gave the most donations per capita, despite being in the throes of a serious economic depression at the time. The single largest donation (£1m) came from the ruling family of Dubai (Al Maktoum). More about Live Aid ’85 Watch a video about the concert |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryjuly.htm#july13
Clips from The Majority Report on different subjects.
