| April 9, 1898 Ida Wells-Barnett, a journalist, speaker and advocate for suffrage, wrote to President William McKinley requesting federal action against those who lynched the U.S. Postmaster of Lake City, South Carolina.  Ida Wells-Barnett Though the federal government had previously refused to involve itself with the thousands of lynchings, leaving them to be dealt with at the state level, Ms. Wells-Barnett insisted that a postmaster’s murder was a federal matter. “We most earnestly desire that national legislation be enacted for the suppression of the national crime of lynching . . . . Her open letter to President McKinley ============================================= April 9, 1947  The first freedom ride, the “Journey of Reconciliation,” left Washington, D.C. to travel through four states of the upper South.In response to a Supreme Court decision (Morgan v. Virginia) outlawing segregation on interstate busses, the group of both black and white Americans rode together despite “Jim Crow” state laws making it illegal. Together on the bus, and arrested several times for being so, were George Houser, Bayard Rustin, James Peck, Igal Roodenko, Nathan Wright, Conrad Lynn, Wallace Nelson, Andrew Johnson, Eugene Stanley, Dennis Banks, William Worthy, Louis Adams, Joseph Felmet, Worth Randle and Homer Jack. Two African-American members of the group, Rustin and Johnson, served on a chain gang for 30 days after their conviction in North Carolina. The integrated bus tour was sponsored by CORE (Congress for Racial Equality) and FOR (Fellowship of Reconciliation) Read more about the freedom rides ============================================== April 9, 1981 Members of the Bigstone Cree band of indigenous people ended a 250-mile march to the capital, Edmonton, to highlight their economic plight in northern Alberta, Canada.  ============================================== April 9, 1995 Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara first publicly acknowledged error in prosecution of the war in Vietnam. “Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.” Robert McNamara, Fog of War ============================================== April 9, 2000 Jubilee 2000 National Mobilization Day in Washington, D.C. brought together individuals and groups demanding cancellation of third world debt. “Every child in Africa is born with a financial burden which a lifetime’s work cannot repay. The debt is a new form of slavery as vicious as the slave trade.” Jubilee USA Network |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryapril.htm#april9
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