Tag: Freedom Riders

Peace & Justice History for 5/20

May 20, 1916
Emma Goldman spoke to garment workers in Union Square about the benefits of birth control.

Goldman speaking to a crowd of garment workers about birth control in New York City’s Union Square
Read more about Emma Goldman: Birth Control Pioneer 
May 20, 1961
A mob of 300 white segregationists, with the tacit assent of the local police, attacked a busload of both black and white “Freedom Riders” in Montgomery, Alabama’s bus depot.
Among those beaten was Justice Department official John Seigenthaler who had tried to negotiate their safety.

Freedom Riders challenged racial segregation at Montgomery bus depot.
Attention to the violence forced Attorney General Robert Kennedy to send in U.S. Marshals to protect the Riders. They had been seeking to guarantee equal access to interstate transportation by riding the bus but had been met by violence elsewhere in Alabama as well as South Carolina.
The Freedom Rides discussed NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross
(with transcript)

Robert Kennedy and John Seigenthaler
The Freedom Rider story
50 Years After Their Mug Shots, Portraits of Mississippi’s Freedom Riders 
May 20, 1968
In the first such instance during the Vietnam War, Arlington Street Unitarian-Universalist Church in Boston offered sanctuary to Robert Talmanson and William Chase, both of whom had refused to participate in the war.
Talmanson had been convicted of refusing induction, and Chase had gone AWOL (absent without leave) as an army private after having served nine months at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.
Church leaders had declared theirs a “liberated zone” on the first day of the trial of Dr. Benjamin Spock and four others in federal court for counseling draft resistance. They believed that individuals had a right to decide not to kill as nonviolent persons, most especially in a war they considered unjust.
May 20, 1971
A delegation of U.S. pacifists traveled to Cuba to exchange children’s art.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may20

4 Dead in OH; When The Sense Of The Congress Was Nuclear Freeze; and More in Peace & Justice History for 5/4

May 4, 1961
A group of Freedom Riders left Washington, DC for New Orleans in a first challenge to racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals; it was organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). 
The Freedom Riders dining at a lunch counter in Montgomery before traveling to Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana.
Read more about the freedom riders  
50 Years After Their Mug Shots, Portraits of Mississippi’s Freedom Riders 
May 4, 1970
Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on anti-war protesters
at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others,
one permanently disabled.

The previous day, President Nixon had announced a widening of the Vietnam War with bombing in neighboring Cambodia.

There were major campus protests around the country with students occupying university buildings to organize and to discuss the war and other issues.
Read more about that day at Kent State with pictures 
May 4, 1983
A “sense of the Congress” resolution, intended to urge a halt to all testing of nuclear weapons, was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives (287-149). The support for a nuclear freeze, ending all American and Soviet nuclear weapons testing, was widespread. In ballot resolutions in 25 states, the freeze had passed in all but one, losing in Arizona by just two points.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may4