February
February is Black History Month

February 1, 1960
Four black college students sat down at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and were refused service because of their race. To protest the segregation of the eating facilities, they remained and sat-in at the lunch counter until the store closed.

Greensboro first day: Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond leave the Woolworth store after the first sit-in on February 1, 1960.

Four students returned the next day, and the same thing happened.
Similar protests subsequently took place all over the South and in some northern communities.
By September 1961, more than 70,000 students, both white and black, had participated, with many arrested, during sit-ins.

On the second day of the Greensboro sit-in, Joseph A. McNeil and Franklin E. McCain are joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.
February 1, 1961
On the first anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in, there were demonstrations all across the south, including a Nashville movie theater desegregation campaign (which sparked similar tactics in 10 other cities). Nine students were arrested at a lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and chose to take 30 days hard labor on a road gang. The next week, four other students repeated the sit-in, also chose jail.

February 1, 1961
On the first anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in, there were demonstrations all across the south, including a Nashville movie theater desegregation campaign (which sparked similar tactics in 10 other cities). Nine students were arrested at a lunch counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and chose to take 30 days hard labor on a road gang. The next week, four other students repeated the sit-in, also choose jail.
February 1, 1968


Saigon police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executed Nguyen Van Lem, suspected leader of a National Liberation Front (NLF aka Viet Cong) assassination platoon, with a pistol shot to the head on the street. AP photojournalist Eddie Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the incident became one of the most famous, ubiquitous and lasting images of the war in Vietnam, affecting international and American public opinion regarding the war.
General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes Nguyen Van Lem a NLF officer.

February 2, 1779

Anthony Benezet and John Woolman, both prominent Quakers (Society of Friends), urged refusal to pay taxes used for arming against Indians in Pennsylvania. Since William Penn established the state two generations before, the Friends had dealt with the Indian tribes nonviolently, and had been treated likewise by the native Americans. Quakers were also early and consistent opponents of slavery.

read more about Anthony Benezet

February 2, 1848
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed in the Mexican city of the same name ending the Mexican War. In 1845 Congress had voted to annex Texas, and Pres. James K. Polk sent Gen. Zachary Taylor and troops to patrol the border newly defined by Congress as the Rio Grande, though it previously was the Nueces River.
Following an encounter between Mexican and U.S. troops, Polk called for Congress to declare war on Mexico. General Winfield Scott and troops eventually seized Mexico City.
The treaty’s provisions called for Mexico to cede 55% of its territory (present-day California, Nevada and Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona, and portions of New Mexico, Wyoming and Colorado) in exchange for fifteen million dollars in compensation for war-related damage to Mexican property. According to the treaty, U.S. citizenship was offered to any Mexicans living in the area.
Land ceded to the U.S. after the Mexican War.
February 2, 1931
The first of well over 400,000 Mexican-Americans from across the country, many U.S. citizens living here as long as 40 years, were "repatriated" as Los Angeles Chicanos were deported to Mexico.
more on Los Repatriados
February 2, 1932
The Conference on the Reduction and Limitation of Arms, the world’s first disarmament convention, opened in Geneva, Switzerland. Sponsored by the League of Nations, and attended by delegates from 60 nations, no agreement was reached. The U.S. delegation called for the abolition of all offensive weapons as the basis for the negotiations but found little support.
February 2, 1966

 

The first burning of Australian military conscription papers as a protest against the Vietnam War occurred in Sydney, Australia.
February 2, 1970

Bertrand Russell, mathematician, Nobel laureate in literature and philosopher of peace, died in Penryndeudreaeth, Merioneth, in Wales at age 97.

 

Bertrand Russell later in life

 

Bertrand Russell at age 10
“ Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.”
— Bertrand Russell
more of Russell’s wisdom
February 2, 1980

Reports surfaced that the FBI had conducted a sting operation targeting members of Congress. In what became known as ''Abscam,'' members suspected of taking bribes were invited to meetings with agents posing as Arab businessmen, offering $50,000 and $100,000 payments for special legislation. Audio and video recordings of the meetings were made surreptitiously. Six members of the house were convicted of accepting bribes. Another member of the House and one senator were targeted but took no money.
FBI agents in Abscam sting operation
watch one of the videotapes

February 2, 1989

Soviet participation in the war in Afghanistan ended as Red Army troops withdrew from the capital city of Kabul. They left behind many of their arms for use by Afghan government forces. They were driven out principally by the insurgent mujahadin, armed through covert U.S. funding.
read or see “Charlie Wilson’s War”

February 2, 1990

South African President F.W. De Klerk unbanned (lifted the legal prohibition on) opposition parties: the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-Africanist Congress and the South African Communist party were now legal. He also announced the lifting of restrictions on the UDF, COSATU and thirty-three other anti-apartheid organizations, as well as the release of all political prisoners and the suspension of the death penalty.

February 3, 1893
Abigail Ashbrook of Willingboro, New Jersey, refused to pay taxes because she was denied the right to vote as a woman.

February 3, 1964

In New York City, more than 450,000 students, mostly black and Puerto Rican, comprising nearly half the citywide enrollment, boycotted the New York City schools to protest segregation.

February 3, 1973
Three decades of armed conflict in Vietnam officially ended when a cease-fire agreement signed in Paris the previous month went into effect. Vietnam had endured almost uninterrupted hostility since 1945, when a war for independence from France was launched. A civil war between northern and southern regions of the country began after the country was divided by the Geneva Convention in 1954, with American military "advisers" arriving in 1955.
Between 1954 and 1975, 107,504 South Vietnamese government troops, approximately 1,000,000 North Vietnamese and National Liberation Front soldiers, and 58,209 American troops died in combat. The number of Vietnamese civilian deaths is unknown, estimated between one and four million killed, and millions more wounded or affected by defoliants such as Agent Orange.

February 3, 1988

President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act, intended to avoid species extinction, especially through loss of habitat.
Endangered species elsewhere in the world

February 3, 1988

 

The U.S. House of Representatives rejected President Ronald Reagan's request for at least $36.25 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, an insurgent group trying violently to overthrow the elected Sandinista government.

February 3, 1994
President Bill Clinton lifted the trade embargo against Vietnam, which had been in place since the end of the Vietnam war.

February 4, 1822

The American Colonization Society established the first settlement in what would become the west African state of Liberia. The new arrivals to the island they called Perseverance were freeborn blacks from the U.S. who had emigrated with the encouragement of influential white Americans and funding from Congress. The colony was governed by whites for twenty years.
read more
American Colonization Society ship leaving New York City bound for Liberia.

February 4, 1913


Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama.

She grew up to become civil rights leader Rosa Parks.



A teenage Rosa Parks poses with friend Samson Smith.

February 4, 1987
The U.S. House of Representatives overrode Pres. Ronald Reagan’s (second) veto (401-26) of the Clean Water Act. The law provided funds for communities to build waste treatment facilities and to clean up waterways. Reagan described it as ''loaded with waste and larded with pork.''

February 4, 1990

The Colombian government recognized native rights to half of its 69,000 square miles of forest in the Amazon River basin, home to 55,000 indigenous people. In addition to the official Spanish, as many as 200 languages or dialects are spoken among Colombia’s peoples.


U'wa people
Boys on the Amazon
More on Colombia’s indigenous peoples
Substantial background on Colombia

February 4, 1996
Start of a week of marches for peace by thousands in Grozny, the embattled capital of Chechnya.

February 4, 2004

 

The Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that gays were entitled to nothing less than marriage under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. They ruled that Vermont-style civil unions would not suffice, declaring they created an "unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples."

 

read more


February 5, 1830

America’s first daily labor newspaper began publication in New York City. George Henry Evans, a 29-year-old journeyman printer, was the publisher of "New York Daily Sentinel."

February 5, 1991

49 German troops conscientiously objected to serving in Turkey during the Gulf War. The German peace movement actively supported U.S. soldiers stationed there by helping them file for conscientious objector (CO) status. By the end of the month, there were nearly 30,000 civilian COs refusing to serve in the military.

February 6, 1943


The U.S. government required the 110,000 dispossessed Japanese Americans forcibly held in concentration (internment) camps to answer loyalty surveys.

February 6, 1956

Autherine Lucy was excluded from classes just three days after becoming the first black person to attend the University of Alabama. Her suspension "for her own safety" followed three days of riots over her Supreme Court-ordered enrollment. Crows of sudents, townspeople and members of the Ku Klux Klan shouted “Kill her!” among other things. It is unclear why the University did not suspend the students who were among the rioters.

read more  
Autherine J. Lucy and her attorney Thurgood Marshall
Lucy had originally applied for graduate study in library science in 1952, and had been accepted until the University realized her race, and claimed state law prevented her admission. A graduate of traditionally black Miles College, she was only admitted with the help of the NAACP and lawyers Thurgood Marshall (later a Supreme Court justice), Constance Baker Motley (future federal judge) and Arthur Shores (elected to Birmingham City Council).
February 6, 1959
The United States successfully test-fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), known as Titan, from Cape Canaveral. It was a two-stage rocket designed to carry nuclear warheads.
Titans were also capable of boosting satellites and spacecraft into orbit. Before the last was produced in 2002, they launched several two-man Gemini missions in the 1960s and launched the first spacecraft to land on Mars.
First test launch of Titan booster rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
February 6, 1961
The civil rights jail-in movement began when ten negro students in Rock Hill, South Carolina, were arrested for requesting service at a segregated lunch counter. They refused to post bail and demanded jail time rather than paying fines, refusing to acknowledge any legitimacy of the laws under which they were arrested.
Rev. Martin Luther King wrote to Charles Sherrod, Diane Nash and the others in jail, ‘‘You have inspired all of us by such demonstrative courage and faith. It is good to know that there still remains a creative minority who would rather lose in a cause that will ultimately win than to win in a cause that will ultimately lose.’’
February 6, 1985

The Molesworth Common Peace Camp, just outside the Royal Air Force Base there, was evicted by the British Army. The 300 inhabitants and their many supporters were nonviolently protesting the siting of U.S. cruise missiles at the base. Peace camps were established at several locations in Europe in the early 1980s to protest the destabilizing nuclear weapons buildup.

Molesworth Common peace camp

 February 7, 1926
"Negro History Week" was observed for the first time, conceived by Dr. Carter G. Woodson as an opportunity to study the history and accomplishments of African Americans.
Dr. Woodson was the founder, in 1915 Chicago, of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. There he first published the Journal of Negro History — a publication still in existence. 

Top L-R: Frederick Douglass, former slave and abolitionist leader; Muhammad Ali, poet, World Champion, the greatest; Maya Angelou, poet, novelist, voice of wisdom; Malcolm X, strong and clear-eyed brother seeking freedom and honor and dignity ; Harriet Tubman, liberator and conductor on the Underground Railroad.
Below: Jimi Hendrix, prolific guitar genius, rock ‘n’ roll writer; Nat “King” Cole, jazz composer, pianist and singer; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor, scholar and author, leader of a people, inspiration to peacemakers.

 Woodson was a graduate of the University of Chicago, the Sorbonne, and was the second black man to receive his doctorate from Harvard.
He chose February because it is the birth month of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass; now it is considered Black History Month.

 

read more about
Dr. Carter G. Woodson


Bio-Bibliography of
Carter Woodson

February 7, 1971

Women in Switzerland were granted the right to vote in national elections and to stand for parliament for the first time in their nation's history. This happened through a national referendum in which only men could vote, passing 621,403 to 323,596. A previous referendum in 1959 failed 2-1.

February 7, 1986
Haitian self-appointed President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled his country after being ousted by the military, ending 28 years of authoritarian family rule. Policies begun by his father, Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, had forced many to flee Haiti (the western portion of the island of Hispaniola), leaving it the poorest and most illiterate nation in the hemisphere. Deforestation (for cooking fuel and heat) eliminated forest cover on 98% of the country, in turn leading to significant annual loss of topsoil, often making agriculture unsustainable.


Jean-Claude `Baby Doc' Duvalier with his father Francois `Papa Doc' Duvalier.

February 7, 1991
The Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was sworn in as Haiti's president after winning the country’s first-ever democratic election. Haiti had achieved its independence from France in 1804 but had a long succession on unstable governments, as well as significant U.S. control in the first half of the 20th century, including military occupation from 1915 to 1934.

February 8, 1962

More than 20,000 attended a demonstration in Paris against the Secret Army Organization (Organisation de l'Armée Secrète or OAS), a group of European Algerians using terrorist methods to keep Algeria a French colony.

They set off bombs in Metropolitan France and made multiple attempts on President Charles DeGaulle’s life. DeGaulle had chosen a referendum among Algerians to decide their independence; Europeans were outnumbered 9:1 by the native population of Sunni Muslim Arabs and Berbers.
The demonstration was held in violation of a declared state of emergency (because of OAS actions) and, in the subsequent rioting, at least eight people were killed and 240 injured (half of them police officers).

February 8, 1968

The Orangeburg Masssacre

Three black students were killed and 50 wounded in a confrontation with highway patrolmen at a South Carolina State rally supporting arrested civil rights protesters. The town’s only bowling alley, the All Star, was still segregated years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race in such public accommodations.
On the previous two days, college students had entered the bowling alley, refusing to leave after they were not allowed to bowl. Fifteen of the second group were arrested.

read more

February 8, 1980
President Jimmy Carter unveiled a plan to re-introduce draft registration.

February 9, 1780

Capt. Paul Cuffee, his brother John, two free negroes and residents of Massachusetts, petitioned the state legislature for the right to vote. A few years earlier, Cuffee and his brother had refused to pay local taxes, reasoning that there was a connection between an obligation to pay taxes to a government and the right to vote for that government.
Captain Paul Cuffee
more on Cuffee
Cuffee’s memoir

February 9, 1950
United States Senator Joseph P. McCarthy (D-WI) accused more than 200 staff members in the State Department of being Communists, launching his anti-red crusade.

He made the allegation in a public speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, saying that State was infested with communists, and brandished a sheet of paper which purportedly contained the alleged traitors' names. "I have here in my hand," he said, "the names of 205 men that were known to the Secretary of State [Dean Acheson] as being members of the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department." Some years later, he confided the paper was actually just a laundry list.
what happened
The rebirth of McCarthyism
What the transcripts revealed 50 years later
February 9, 1964
  G.I. JOE action figure made its debut as an 11.5 inch "doll" for boys with 21 moving parts, named after the movie, "The Story of G.I. JOE."

 


Puts you in the action!

February 9, 1965
President Lyndon Johnson ordered a U.S. Marine Corps Hawk air defense missile battalion deployed to Da Nang, South Vietnam, to provide protection for the key U.S. air base there. American military advisers had been in country since the defeat and withdrawal of the French in 1954, but this was the first commitment of combat troops to South Vietnam.
There was considerable reaction around the world to this new level of U.S. involvement. Both the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union threatened to intervene if the United States continued its military support of the South Vietnamese government. In Moscow, some 2,000 demonstrators, led by Vietnamese and Chinese students and clearly supported by the authorities, attacked the U.S. Embassy. Britain and Australia supported the U.S. action, but France called for negotiations.
A Marine HAWK missile launcher is in position at the Danang Airfield.
February 9, 2002
Ten thousand, organized by Gush Shalom (the peace bloc in Hebrew), a coalition of Israeli peace groups, marched in Tel Aviv against the Ariel Sharon government's increasingly brutal attacks on Palestinian civilians during the continuing occupation of territory beyond Israel’s recognized 1967 borders.
February 9, 2003
Six weeks before the Iraq War began, Secretary of State Colin Powell on ABC's “This Week” dismissed the need for U.N. weapons inspectors to continue searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.

He said the administration saw no further need for ''inspectors to play detectives or Inspector Clouseau running all over Iraq.'' Clouseau was the bumbling detective played by Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films.

 

Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presenting evidence at the United Nations

 

U.N. weapons inspectors, left, and Iraqi National Monitoring Directorate members visit a Baghdad storage facility in this photo taken Feb. 5, 2003, just hours before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared at the U.N. Security Council to offer evidence of alleged Iraqi attempts to hide banned weapons.

February 10, 1961

 

The Voice of Nuclear Disarmament, a pirate radio station, began operation offshore of Great Britain.

 

 

Pirate radio ship

February 10, 1964


Bob Dylan's album ''The Times They Are A-Changin’'' was released. The title song captured the emerging, principally generational gap in American culture concerning war and racism.

 

read the lyrics

February 10, 2003
Iraq acceded to U-2 surveillance flights over its territory, meeting a key demand by U.N. inspectors searching for banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there. The 60 weapons inspectors in Baghdad and Mosul were under the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), led by Hans Blix, and the International Atomic Energy Agency under Mohamed ElBaradei.
U-2 spy plane

The U.N. had destroyed all of Iraq’s banned weapons by 1994, as well as production and development facilities later, though Saddam Hussein threw them out in 1998. The embargo during the inter-war period prevented resumption of the weapons programs. CIA and other intelligence estimates, however, insisted upon the existence of WMDs in Iraq. None have ever been found.
Hans Blix gives his report at the UN as Mohamed ElBaradei listens.

February 11, 1777
Vermont became the first of the United States to abolish slavery.

February 11, 1790

The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, composed mostly of Quakers and Mennonites, petitioned Congress for emancipation of all slaves. Benjamin Franklin had become vocal as an abolitionist and in 1787 began to serve as President of the Society which not only advocated the abolition of slavery, but made efforts to integrate freed slaves into American society.
The proposed resolution was immediately denounced by pro-slavery congressmen and sparked a heated debate in both the House and the Senate.

more on early Abolitionist and Anti-Slavery Movements

February 11, 1911
Emma Goldman was arrested for lecturing on birth control, presumed a violation of the 1873 Comstock Law prohibiting distribution of literature on birth control.

Goldman considered this knowledge essential to women's reproductive and economic freedom; she had worked as a nurse and midwife among poor immigrant workers on the Lower East Side in the 1890s. She also organized for womens’ suffrage, later opposed U.S. involvement in World War I and was imprisoned for allegedly obstructing military conscription.

 

more on Goldman’s efforts

Emma Goldman speaking on Birth Control -Union Square, New York City May 20, 1916

February 11, 1937

Forty-eight thousand General Motors workers won a 44-day sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan. On December 30 workers at Fisher Plants 1 & 2 sat down and refused to leave, forcing workers around them to stop work and preventing the next shift from starting.

The sit-down strike ended when the company agreed to recognize the United Automobile Workers union as the representative bargaining agent for the striking hourly employees. Other automakers gradually accepted the legitimacy of the union. The success of the sit-down was an inspiration to workers in other industries to organize their own unions.

 

read more

February 11, 1978
Native Americans began The Longest Walk, a march from Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay to Washington, D.C.
The Walk was intended to be a reminder of the forced removal of American Indians from their homelands across the continent, and drew attention to the continuing problems plaguing the Indian community, particularly joblessness, lack of health care, education and adequate housing.

photo Ilka Hartmann for larger image click
Indian activism

February 11, 1979

Poet John Trudell, a former national chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM), burned an upside-down flag on the steps of the FBI building in Washington, D.C. during a vigil for Leonard Peltier. Peltier, also a leader of AIM, was imprisoned (and is still today after 29 years), and considered a political prisoner by Amnesty International.
Twelve hours later Trudell’s wife Tina, her mother, and their three children died in an arsonist's attack on their home on the Duck Valley Reservation in Nevada. The FBI did not investigate even though the crime fell under its jurisdiction.
Learn about Leonard Peltier

February 11, 1990

Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in a South African prison following months of secret negotiations with South African President F.W. (Frederik Willem) de Klerk.
In 1952, Mandela became deputy national president of the African National Congress (ANC), the oldest black political organization in South Africa, having joined as a young lawyer in 1944.
He advocated nonviolent resistance to apartheid – South Africa's institutionalized system of white supremacy, black disenfranchisement and rigid racial segregation.
However, after the massacre of peaceful black demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960, Mandela helped organize a paramilitary branch of the ANC to engage in guerrilla warfare against the white minority government.
He and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1993 "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa.”
read more

February 12, 1809
Charles Robert Darwin, who first described the process of evolution of species in the plant and animal kingdoms through natural selection, was born.

It is now celebrated as Darwin Day, when the common language of science, bridging language and culture, is recognized and appreciated.
Darwin Day ideas

February 12, 1909
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded by sixty blacks and whites in a call to safeguard civil, legal, economic, human, and political rights of black Americans.


The call was partly in reaction to a race riot in 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, home of Abraham Lincoln.
The call was issued on the centennial of his birth, principally written by Oswald Garrison Villard, president of the N.Y. Evening Post Company: "If Mr. Lincoln could revisit this country in the flesh, he would be disheartened and discouraged.”
Oswald Garrison Villard
NAACP’s beginnings:

February 12, 1947

 

An estimated 400-500 veterans and conscientious objectors from World Wars I and II burned their draft cards during two demonstrations, in front of the White House and at New York City’s Labor Temple, in protest of a proposed universal conscription law. This was the first peacetime draft-card burning.

February 12, 1993

About 5,000 demonstrators marched on Atlanta's State Capitol to protest the Georgia state flag because its principal element was the Confederate battle flag (on left). That flag was adopted in 1956 by the state legislature in reaction to the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education ordering the racial integration of public schools. Several newspaper editorials opposed the flag as well as 18 local patriotic organizations, including the United Daughters of the Confederacy, stating the flag "would cause strife."


In 2001 the Georgia state flag was redesigned, shown on right.

February 12, 1997

In "Prince of Peace Plowshares," six activists poured blood and symbolically disarmed the U.S.S. The Sullivans, a nuclear-capable Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. All were eventually convicted of destruction of government property and conspiracy.
read more

February 13, 1960

 

France became the world’s fourth nuclear power, conducting its first plutonium bomb test at the Reggane base in the Sahara Desert in what was then French Algeria. "Gerboise Bleue" was detonated from a 330-foot tower and had a yield of 60-70 kilotons.

February 13, 1967

Carrying huge photos of Vietnamese children who had been victims of Napalm (a flammable defoliant), 2,500 members of the group Women Strike for Peace stormed the Pentagon, demanding to see "the generals who send our sons to Vietnam." When Pentagon guards locked the main entrance doors, the women took off their shoes and banged on the doors with their heels.


They were eventually allowed inside, but Defense Secretary Robert McNamara would not meet with them.

Sen. Jacob Javits (R-NY) agreed to meet a few hundred of the women, but he was booed by the women when he denied the U.S. was using toxic gas in Vietnam.
February 13, 1968
Five soldiers were arrested at a pray-in for peace in Vietnam at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Two were court-martialed for refusing to stop praying. The pray-in was repeated a year later.