May 28, 1892 The Sierra Club, America’s oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization, was organized in San Francisco with wilderness explorer John Muir as its first president. The organization’s initial effort was to defeat a proposed reduction in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. Muir introduced President Theodore Roosevelt to Yosemite the following year, inspiring him during his presidency to establish the U.S. Forest Service, create 5 national parks, and sign the 1906 Antiquities Act, under which he proclaimed 18 national monuments. “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” – John Muir, The Yosemite (1912)  John Muir The Sierra Club today |
May 28, 1961 Amnesty International (AI) was founded on this date in Great Britain. It is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights, particularly as laid out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Members of AI help maintain a media focus on political prisoners, and organize public pressure to afford them their legal rights and obtain their release. Visit Amnesty International Read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Amnesty International projects |
| May 28, 1963 Black and white civil rights advocates were attacked as they sat-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. They were defying state laws against serving “colored” citizens at “whites-only” public facilities. According to John Salter, AKA Hunter Bear, one of those who sat in: “This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I’m covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things.”  Attacked for trying to eat at Woolworth’s (L to R): John Salter (Hunter Bear), Joan Trumpauer (now Mulholland), and Anne Moody. More photos and the story of the struggle against segregation Freedom Movement Bibliography |
| May 28, 1982 Seven women fasted for 10 days in Springfield, Illinois, in support of ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by the Illinois state legislature. The amendment had already been ratified by 35 other states of the 38 required. |
| May 28, 1998 Pakistan exploded five underground nuclear devices in response to India’s most recent nuclear tests.  Since the British partitioned the subcontinent in 1947, there have been three wars between the two countries and numerous border clashes over the disputed Kashmir province. Kashmir had a majority (77%) Muslim population at the time of partition, but became part of predominantly Hindu (80%), though constitutionally secular, India.  Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, widely proclaimed as the ” Father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb,” stands in the access tunnel inside the Chagai Hills nuclear test site before Pakistan’s 28 May 1998 underground nuclear test. Read more |
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