Some days I read this, and wonder how/why people want to allow some historical happenings to repeat, while ignoring history that ought to be recalled to keep earned progress. Then there are items that make me smile to recall how they were so bad when they happened, but wouldn’t it be great if misspellings were what is so bad these days?
| December 21, 1919 Amidst a strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers, the “Red Scare” was launched with the deportation of Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and some 250 other radicals. They were deported to Russia aboard the S. S. Buford (“The Soviet Ark”).  Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman also organized against World War I J. Edgar Hoover, heading the Justice Department’s General Intelligence Division, advanced his career by implementing to the fullest extent possible the government’s plan to deport all foreign-born radicals.  S.S. Buford “Sasha & Emma” Read more about Emma & Alex |
| December 21, 1956 The Montgomery, Alabama, public buses were officially integrated. This happened following a successful boycott of city buses led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and initiated by Rosa Parks’s refusal to move to the back of the bus.  “UH UH, I’m not going your way!” Bus Boycott cartoon by Laura Gray from 1956 |
| December 21, 1965 American political activists Tom Hayden, Staughton Lynd, and Herbert Aptheker began a visit to Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam. Invited by the North Vietnamese, they went despite the U.S. travel ban. Lynd and Hayden wrote “The Other Side” following their trip, explaining the Vietnamese perspective. |
| December 21, 1968 Hundreds of supporters visited jailed Vietnam War resisters at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, organized by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. |
| December 21, 1982 President Ronald Reagan signed, after Congress had passed it unanimously, the first Boland Amendment. Representative Edward Boland’s (D-Massachusetts) legislation prohibited the use of U.S. funds for either overt or covert efforts by its intelligence agencies to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. |
| December 21, 1989 Vice President Dan Quayle sent out 30,000 Christmas cards with the word beacon misspelled “beakon.”  “May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world.” — The Quayles’ 1989 Christmas card. |
| December 21, 1991 Eleven former Soviet republics and Russia peaceably declared an end to the Soviet Union and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine agreed to cooperate on the basis on sovereign equality. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorydecember.htm#december21
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