August 28, 1833 The Abolition of Slavery Act was passed by the British Parliament. As early as 1787, members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), particularly Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, organized to end the slave trade.Since Quakers were barred from serving in the House of Commons, the cause was led by a member of the Evangelical Party, William Wilberforce, ending the international trade in slaves in 1807. By 1827 slaving was considered piracy and punishable by death. The complete ban on slavery itself through the British Empire didn’t happen until this day; Wilberforce was informed of the Act’s passage on his death-bed. William Wilberforce
August 28, 1963 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of half a million gathered on the Mall in Washington, D.C. They gathered there for jobs and freedom. The speech: https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety
1983: Three hundred thousand marched in Washington on the 20th anniversary of MLK’s “I Have A Dream” speech for the second “March on Washington for Jobs, Peace and Freedom.”
August 28, 1976 60,000 joined the Community of Peace People demonstrations in Belfast and Dublin, Ireland. Peace People was founded by two women, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan to decry the painful violence between Catholics and Protestants, between unionists and republicans, and to move the peace process forward in Northern Ireland. Betty Williams Mairead Corrigan They jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976. More about Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan From the Declaration of the Peace People: “ . . . We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society. We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, our lives at home, at work and at play, to be lives of joy and peace. We recognize that to build such a life demands of all of us, dedication, hard work and courage . . . We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbors, near and far, day in and day out, to building that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning.” The Peace People’s website: https://www.peacepeople.com/
Company A of the 3rd Battalion, the 196th Light Brigade, refused to advance further into the Songchang Valley of Vietnam after five days of heavy casualties; their number had been reduced from 150 to 60. This was one of hundreds of mutinies among troops during the war.
“He [President Nixon] is also carrying on the battle in the belief, or pretense, that the South Vietnamese will really be able to defend their country and our democratic objectives [sic] when we withdraw, and even his own generals don’t believe the South Vietnamese will do it.” –James Reston in the New York Times
(Note from A: Sometimes, people recall things that don’t make it into these newsletters. I referred someone one time to the page, where you can contact the owner/writers, and let them know. They appreciate that, and you’ll see the item next time! Just in case.)
The Democratic National Convention kicked off in Chicago on Monday (August 19) at United Center and was quite the celebration. President Joe Biden gave the final address of the night, which was full of resilience and reassurance that Vice President Kamala Harris is going to be our next President Of The United States.
Biden was also proud of his own legacy, which he expressed by sharing a quote from the song “American Anthem” by Gene Scheer: “What shall our legacy be, what will our children say, let me know in my heart when my days are through, America, America, I gave my best to you.”
In addition, the night contained a myriad of moments that uplifted the Black community. Here are the best and Blackest moments from Day 1 at the DNC.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson gave VP Harris a galvanizing endorsement.
As one of the night’s earliest speakers, former teacher and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson declared his city as the greatest in the world before recognizing the contributions of journalist Ida B. Wells, Rev. Jesse Jackson and this country’s first Black president Barack Obama.
He also expressed excitement about his daughter being able to see a “reflection of herself in the White House” before giving a galvanizing endorsement of Harris.
“What will it take to defeat MAGA Republicans and move our country forward and not backward? It will take everyone, and let me tell you all: Kamala, she’s got us,” Johnson said. “Together, we will build a better, brighter future.”
The great Rev. Jesse Jackson was honored for paving the way for Kamala Harris.
Iconic civil rights leader Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. received a standing ovation when he made an appearance on the first night of the Democratic National Convention.
Jackson, who stepped down as president of the Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition last year, made history as the second Black American to seek a major-party nomination for President when he ran as a Democrat in 1984.
His historic contributions made it possible for Harris to run today. Jackson, who is currently living with Parkinson’s disease, did not give a speech Monday evening. Instead, he waved and gave a thumbs-up from his wheelchair as he enjoyed the celebration.
Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance
The Democratic presidential nominee is scheduled to give a speech at the DNC Thursday night, but Harris made a surprise appearance on Monday to honor President Biden and thank him for everything he’s done for his country.
Entering the stage to Beyoncé’s “Freedom” wearing a tan pantsuit (which some thought was a nod to former President Barack Obama’s biggest fashion moment in 2014), Harris remarked: “Joe, thank you for your historic leadership, for your lifetime of service to our nation, and for all you will continue to do, we are forever grateful to you.”
She then added: “With optimism, hope and faith, so guided by our love of country, knowing we all have so much more in common than what separates us, let us fight for the ideals we hold dear. And let us always remember when we fight, we win.”
Rep. Jasmine Crockett reads Donald Trump for absolute filth
In a speech delivered Monday night, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett boldly contrasted Vice President Kamala Harris’ record to that of her presidential opponent Donald Trump. “She became a career prosecutor while he became a career criminal — with 34 felonies, two impeachments and one porn star to prove it!” Crockett said.
She didn’t stop there. “She’s lived the American dream while he’s been America’s nightmare. America, looking at the two choices before you, who would you hire? Donald Trump or Kamala Harris? Kamala Harris has a résumé — Donald Trump has a rap sheet.”
She concluded her speech with a nod to her viral Marjorie Taylor Greene “bleach blonde, bad-built butch body” insult from earlier this year.
“The question before us is: Will a vindictive vile villain violate voters’ vision for a better America or not?” Crockett said to raucous cheers from the Chicago audience. “I hear alliterations are back in style.”
Raphael Warnock transforms the stage into his pulpit during moving address
Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is also the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, preached to DNC attendees about unifying for the greater good of the country.
“I’m convinced tonight that we can lift the broken even as we climb. We can heal the wounds that divide us. We can heal a planet in peril. We can heal the land,” he stated. Warnock’s emotional address was exactly what Democrats needed. He also addressed the culture of MAGA and its followers’ attack at the U.S. Capitol building in 2021.
“The line of logic of Jan. 6 is a sickness, is a kind of cancer metastasized into dozens of voter suppression laws all across our country,” Warnock said. “And we must be vigilant tonight, because these anti-democratic forces are at work right now in Georgia and across the country.”
August 19, 1791 Benjamin Banneker, the first recognized African-American scientist, a son of former slaves, sent a copy of his just-published Almanac to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, along with an appeal about “the injustice of a state of slavery.” More about Benjamin Banneker, his achievements and his letter to the president
August 19, 1953 Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq Royalist troops surrounded, bombarded and burned the residence of the Mohammed Mosaddeq, the recently dismissed elected Iranian Prime Minister. After having briefly fled his country for Italy due to the rioting over his unconstitutional dismissal of Mosaddeq, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was returned to the Peacock throne with dictatorial power. All this was done with the planning, financing and assistance of the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6.
August 19, 1958 The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Youth Council in Oklahoma City, led by Clara Luper, a high school history teacher, began sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters, inspired by success in Wichita, Kansas. [see August 11, 1958].
August 19, 1970 The U.S. deployed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles near Greeley, Colorado. It was the first missile with multiple (then three-170 kiloton) nuclear warheads known as MIRVs (Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles). The MIRV: each cone is a warhead All the details about this fearsome armament
August 19, 1989 Anglican Bishop and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Desmond Tutu was among hundreds of black demonstrators, members of Mass Democratic Movement who were whipped and blasted with sand stirred up by helicopters as they attempted to picnic on a “whites-only” beach near Cape Town, South Africa.
I’ve been away from the computer a lot again today, and I apologize. I’ve had ideas, decided against them, maybe one or two will still make it but another day, you know how it goes. I would be unforgiveably remiss to not post this history for this date, though, so here it is!
August 18, 1914 In another step in the ethnic intimidation that led ultimately to the Armenian genocide in Turkey, looting was reported in Sivas, Diyarbekir, and other provinces. Under the guise of collecting war contributions (WWI had just begun), stores owned by Armenian and Greek merchants were vandalized. 1,080 shops and stalls owned by Armenians were burned at the Diyarbekir bazaar.Chronology of the Armenian Genocide
❎💃🥂⭐🥂💃❎ August 18, 1920 Women throughout the U.S. won the right to vote when the Tennessee legislature approved the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the last of 36 states then required to approve it). An amendment for universal suffrage was first introduced in Congress in 1878, and Wyoming had granted suffrage in state law by 1890. This amendment to enfranchise all American women had been introduced annually for 41 years without passage; it had gotten two-thirds of both houses of Congress to approve it just the year before. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” In the Tennessee House, 24-year-old Representative Harry Burn surprised observers by casting the deciding vote for ratification. At the time of his vote, Burns had in his pocket a letter he had received from his mother urging him, “Don’t forget to be a good boy” and “vote for suffrage. “ Teaching With Documents: Woman Suffrage and the 19th Amendment (National Archives)
August 18, 1963 James Meredith James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, became the first to graduate. His enrollment at “Ole Miss” a year earlier had been met with deadly riots, forcing him to attend class escorted by heavily armed guards. . James Meredith being escorted to his classes by U.S. marshals and the military.Who was James Meredith
August 18, 1964 South Africa was banned from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo due to the country’s refusal to reform its racially separatist apartheid system. Read more
August 18, 1977 Steve Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement resisting apartheid, was arrested at a roadblock outside King William’s Town. He died while in custody from abuse during the weeks of interrogation that followed. Steve Biko “So as a prelude whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior.””The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” – Biko speech in Cape Town, 1971
August 16, 1953 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the constitutional monarch of Iran, dismissed the elected prime minister, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq, without the approval of the parliament. In appointing Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi in his place, the Shah was following the coup plan, code-named TPAJAX, developed by the CIA under the direction of Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of President Theodore), and Great Britain’s intelligence service, MI6. About Mohammad Mosaddeq: https://www.iranchamber.com/history/mmosaddeq/mohammad_mosaddeq.php The real story according to CIA records: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/ciacase/EXL.pdf
======================================================== August 16, 1963 Buddhists staged protests across South Vietnam against the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, a Catholic who removed Buddhists from important government positions and replaced them with Catholics. Buddhist monks protested Diem’s intolerance of other religions and the methods he used to silence them. Several Buddhist monks immolated themselves in protest of the war being waged against insurgents in the south, and against North Vietnam. The Buddist monk Quang Duc became the first to kill himself in an anti-government protest in Vietnam in June, 1963 20,000 Buddhists in silent march for peace, Hue, South Vietnam. 1966
It’s a busy date, but 3 cheers for Social Security!
August 14, 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, creating unemployment compensation, old-age benefits and aid to dependent children.“We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.” President Roosevelt signing Social Security Act of 1935 in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Library of Congress photo A comprehensive history: https://www.ssa.gov/history/
August 14, 1941 In the German Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, a group of prisoners had been chosen by the camp’s commander for death by starvation. Roman Catholic Fr. Maximilian Maria Kolbe offered himself for death instead of one of the condemned because the man had a family he needed to be alive to support. Fr. Kolbe was put to death on this day by lethal injection following two weeks of starvation. Pope John Paul II declared him a Saint in 1982.
August 14, 1945 President Harry Truman announced that Japan, one week following the atomic bomb attacks on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
August 14, 1966 Twenty people were arrested for trying to attend services at the white First Baptist Church in Grenada, Mississippi. They were charged with “disturbing divine worship.” Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) field staff member Jim Bulloch was arrested and his car fire-bombed while he was in jail.
August 14, 1968 400 anti-apartheid students occupied the university in Cape Town, South Africa, to protest its refusal to hire a black professor.
August 14, 1976 Majella O’Hare, a young Catholic girl, was shot dead by British soldiers while walking with other children to confession near her home in Ballymoyer, Whitecross, County Armagh.The soldiers, initially denying they had fired any weapons, claimed that the patrol had been fired upon by an unidentified gunman. But there were serious doubts about the army’s claim. Eyewitness reports failed to confirm it and, unofficially, police investigating the case referred to the army’s “phantom gunman.” The same day 10,000 Northern Irish gathered at a demonstration in Andersontown, organized by the Women’s Peace Movement (later known as Peace People).Majella O’Hare How it happened from people who were there: https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/other/1976/murray76.htm
August 14, 1980 After months of labor turmoil, more than 16,000 Polish workers seized control of the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk. They helped form Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity), the first independent labor union anywhere in the Soviet bloc, as the Warsaw Pact nations were known. Under the leadership of Lech Valensa [lek va wen´suh] and others, it helped unite the broad political, social and religious opposition to the Communist government. Long-range look at Solidarity: https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/21746
August 12, 1953 The first Soviet hydrogen (thermonuclear or fusion) bomb, far more potentially damaging than those dropped on Japan, was exploded in the Kazakh desert, then part of the Soviet Union. Igor Vasziljevics Kurcsatov, head of the Soviet Uranium Committee, said to Josef Stalin at the time: “The atomic sword is in our hand. It is time to think about the peaceful use of nuclear energy.” The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program: https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Russia/Sovwpnprog.html
August 12, 1982 Open missile tubes on Trident sub Twelve were arrested in an attempted blockade of the first Trident submarine, the USS Ohio, entering the Hood Canal in the state of Washington. In motorboats, sailboats and small handmade wooden vessels, the demonstrators were objecting to the presence of nuclear weapons in Seattle. The Coast Guard overturned some of the vessels with water cannon.
August 12, 1995 Thousands demonstrated in Philadelphia and other cities in support of journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal (on death row for murder since 1982) in the largest anti-death-penalty demonstrations in the U.S. to date. Who is Mumia Abu-Jamal? https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/amr510012000en.pdf
August 10, 1883 Adrian “Cap” Anson refused to field his visiting Chicago White Stockings team in an exhibition baseball game if the Toledo Mud Hens included star catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker in their lineup. Chicago’s Captain Anson, who grew up in slaveholding Iowa, said he wouldn’t share the diamond with a non-white player. After more than an hour’s delay, Charlie Morton, the Toledo manager, insisted that if Chicago forfeited the game, it would also lose its share of the gate receipts; Anson relented. Moses Fleetwood Walker Morton had not planned to have Walker catch due to injury, but insisted on putting him in at centerfield, despite Cap Anson’s objections.
August 10, 1948 Gay rights activist Harry Hay organized what later became the Mattachine Society (originally ~ Foundation), a groundbreaking 1950s gay rights organization. The group was named after the Mattachines, a medieval troupe of men who went village-to-village advocating social justice. Mattachine: Radical Roots of Gay Liberation: https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Mattachine:_Radical_Roots_of_the_Gay_Movement
August 10, 1984 Two Plowshares activists, Barb Katt and John LaForge, damaged a guidance system for a Trident submarine with hammers at a Sperry plant in Minnesota. In sentencing them to six months’ probation, U.S. District Judge Miles W. Lord commented, “Why do we condemn and hang individual killers, while extolling the virtues of warmongers?“ “ Barb Katt More plowshares actions: https://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue42/articles/a_history_of_direct_disarmament.htm
August 10, 1988 President George H.W. Bush signed legislation apologizing and compensating for the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. President Franklin Roosevelt had authorized the round-up of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry, some of whom were American citizens, as security risks. Most lost all their property and were moved to relocation camps for the duration of the war (though not in Hawaii, then not yet a state, where public opposition would not allow it).
August 10, 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second woman and 107th Justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
August 10, 2005 Mehmet Tarhan was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on two charges of “insubordination before command” and “insubordination before command for trying to escape from military service” because he refused to serve in the Turkish Army. He would not sign any paper, put on a uniform, nor allow his hair and beard to be cut. He went on two extended hunger strikes to protest his arrest and abuse while in Sivas Military Prison. War Resisters International has supported his efforts throughout his ordeal. He was released unexpectedly from prison after one year. Read more: https://wri-irg.org/en/story/2005/turkey-conscientious-objector-mehmet-tarhan-hunger-strike-more-32-days
The speech: https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety
organizing to build the march
Betty Williams
Mairead Corrigan
Prime Minister Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq
Clara Luper
James Meredith
Majella O’Hare
The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program: 
Open missile tubes on Trident sub
Moses Fleetwood Walker
Barb Katt
Read more: 
Scottie's Playtime 