| April 18, 1912 Members of the United Mine Workers of America on Paint Creek in Kanawha County, West Virginia, demanded wages equal to those of other area mines. The operators rejected the wage increase and miners walked off the job. Miners along nearby Cabin Creek, having previously lost their union, joined the Paint Creek strikers and demanded: • the right to organize • recognition of their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly • an end to blacklisting union organizers • alternatives to company stores • an end to the practice of using mine guards • prohibition of cribbing • installation of scales at all mines for accurately weighing coal • unions be allowed to hire their own checkweighmen to make sure the companies’ checkweighmen were not cheating the miners.When the strike began, operators brought in mine guards from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to evict miners and their families from company houses. The evicted miners set up tent colonies and lived in other makeshift housing. The mine guards’ primary responsibility was to break the strike by making the lives of the miners as uncomfortable as possible.  Striking miners and their families being evicted from company houses. Deep background on the W. Virginia coal business and the strike |
April 18, 1941 Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Bus companies in New York City agreed to hire 200 black drivers and mechanics after a four-week boycott by riders led by Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. of Harlem’s Abysinnian Baptist Church, the largest Protestant congregation in the U.S. Powell ran and won a City Council seat later that year and became a member of Congress four years later. A Bus Boycott Before Its Time |
April 18, 1955 Sukarno hosts Bandung conference A conference bringing together government representatives from 29 Asian and African countries began in Bandung, Indonesia. The intention was to promote economic and cultural cooperation, and to oppose Western colonialism, then still prevalent on both continents. At the same time, many countries were worried about communism and the power of the Soviet Union. The principal actors were Sukarno of Indonesia, one of the countries that organized the meeting; Jawahrlal Nehru, prime minister of recently independent India; Kwame Nkrumah, prime minister of the Gold Coast (now Ghana); Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt; Chou En Lai, premier of China; and Ho Chi Minh, prime minister of Vietnam.  Chou En-Lai and Jawaharlal Nehru at the Bandung Conference Many concepts of international cooperation and mutual interest were discussed at the week-long conference, including Pan-Islam, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Asianism, and Pan-Africanism. The meeting was a precursor to what became known as the Non-Aligned Movement (aligned neither with Washington nor Moscow). Bandung Conference background info |
| April 18, 1958 The first march against nuclear arms in West Germany took place. |
April 18, 1960 Tens of thousands of people marked the end of the Aldermaston “ban the bomb” march at a rally with at least 60,000 gathering in Trafalgar Square, the largest demonstration London had seen to date. Read more |
| April 18, 1989 Thousands of Chinese students from several universities took to the streets to protest government policies and issue a call for greater democracy in the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC). Mourning over the death of Hu Yaobang began on the 15th in Tiananmen Square. As Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party, he had called for rapid reform in the PRC, but had been pushed out of office over the Democracy Wall protests. Students in the Square demanded response from government officials, and began a sit-in and other activities that persisted for weeks. Timeline of the Beijing democracy protests |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april18
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