| November 27, 1095 Pope Urban II called on all Christians to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims and reclaim the Holy Land: “Deus vult (God wills it)!” What is currently called the Middle East was then in control of the Turks who frequently barred Christian pilgrims entrance to the city. At the Council of Clermont in France, the pope promised absolution and remission of sins for all who died in the service of Christ. The mobilization of 60,000 to 100,000 Christians throughout Europe in this effort became known as the First Crusade. |
| November 27, 1914 The No-Conscription Fellowship (NCF) was founded by two English pacifists, Clifford Allen and Fenner Brockway. They opposed the Military Service Act which introduced conscription, and then mounted a vigorous campaign against the punishment and imprisonment of conscientious objectors. They were consistently opposed to the war in Europe.  Early Fellowship members  Fellowship members at a recent protest Read more about Clifford Allen, Fenner Brockway and No-Conscription Fellowship More on the No-Conscription Fellowship from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection |
| November 27, 1957 Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, made an impassioned speech appealing to the United States and the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) to end testing and begin nuclear disarmament. The two superpowers were the only nations with atomic weapons at the time. Nehru had fought to free his country from British colonial authority through acts of nonviolent passive resistance with Ghandi, and they achieved independence. He stressed the urgency for the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to “save humanity from the ultimate disaster.”Nehru’s Congress Party government nevertheless pursued an aggressive nuclear program, starting in 1948, publicly committed to peaceful purposes exclusively. Nehru acknowledged that the possession of fissionable materials and growing expertise could readily be directed toward production of such weapons. In the absence of universal nuclear disarmament, he feared acquisition of such weapons by potential adversaries. In particular for India, this meant Pakistan or China.  India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru Nuclear India – a short history |
| November 27, 1965 In Washington D.C., 35,000 anti-war protesters circled the White House then marched on to the Washington Monument for a rally against the war in Vietnam. |
| November 27, 1967 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. announced the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign, a movement to broadly address economic inequalities with nonviolent direct action. “It must not be just black people,” argued King, “it must be all poor people. We must include American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and even poor whites.”  Why a Poor People’s Campaign? |
| November 27, 1969 Over one hundred members of the U.S. 71st Evacuation Hospital and the 44th Medical Detachment at Pleiku, Vietnam, organized a Thanksgiving protest fast called the “John Turkey movement.” In Home before Morning, nurse Lynda Van Devanter recalled her change in attitude.  Nurse Lynda Van Devanter “Earlier in my tour, when I had heard about the war protesters, I had felt angry at them for not supporting us. Now I wished I could march with them . . . Most others in Pleiku felt the same way . . . We even held our own Thanksgiving Day fast—the John Turkey movement — as a show of support for those who were trying to end the war through protests and moratoriums. We heard that the fast had spread to units all over Vietnam.” The fast received considerable media coverage when Denise Murray, a nurse at Pleiku and daughter of a distinguished admiral, made antiwar statements to the press. |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november27
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