peace history may

May

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May 1, 1886

May Day was called Emancipation Day in 1886 when 340,000 went on strike (though it was Saturday it was a regular day of work) in Chicago for the 8-hour workday.

May 1, 1890
May Day labor demonstrations spread to thirteen other countries; 30,000 marched in Chicago as the newly prominent American Federation of Labor threw its weight behind the 8-hour day campaign.

May 1, 1933

The Catholic Worker newspaper was founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Dorothy Day said, "God meant things to be much easier than we have made them," and Peter Maurin wanted to build a society "where it is easier for people to be good."

read more about COSATU

May 1, 2003

Pres. George W. Bush landed in a jet on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast and, in a speech to the nation, declared major combat in Iraq over. The banner his staff posted on the ship read, “Mission Accomplished.”

Since that presidential declaration more than 4000 American and allied troops and nearly 8000 members of Iraqi security and police forces have lost their lives. In addition, tens of thousands (more than 30,000 Americans) injured in the hostilities. The number of Iraqi civilian deaths is open to dispute.

Details of Iraq military casualties: and

Civilian casualties

and

May 2, 1963

Hundreds of children ranging in age from six to eighteen were arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, as they marched from Kelly Ingram Park, across from 16th Street Baptist Church, to downtown singing, “We Shall Overcome.” Part of an ongoing effort to end segregation in that city, and following the arrests of many adults including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the children had volunteered to minimize the threat to families if a breadwinner were jailed. A judge had issued an order preventing any of 133 civil rights leaders from organizing a demonstration. Birmingham, the capital of Alabama, had been the site of 18 unsolved bombings in black neighborhoods over recent years, and the place where mobs had attacked Freedom Riders on Mother’s Day in 1961. Leaving the park in groups of fifty, the kids were put in vans by police, led by Eugene “Bull” Connor, until there were 959 filling the city jails.

May 2, 1968

The Poor People's Campaign began with groups from several locations around the U.S. setting out for Washington, D.C., to draw attention to the conditions of poorest in the United States. It was conceived and organized by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and, following his assassination the previous month, led by his successor at the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Rev. Ralph David Abernathy.

The first wave of demonstrators arrived in Washington on May 11. One week later, Resurrection City was built on the Washington Mall, a settlement of tents and shacks to house the protesters.

Resurrection City

May 3, 1808

Civilians were executed by Napoleonic forces putting down a rebellion by the citizens of Madrid, Spain on Principe Pio Hill. The event was memorialized in the painting by Francisco de Goya, “The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid.” Aspects of the painting inspired the design of the peace symbol by Gerald Holtom in 1958.

May 3, 1886

At Haymarket Square in Chicago, a rally was being held because of a strike at the McCormick Harvester plant and, just two days after the enormous May Day turnout. Though the mass meeting was peaceful, a force of 176 police officers arrived, demanding that the meeting disperse. Someone, unknown to this day, then threw a bomb at the police. In their confusion, the police began firing their weapons in the dark, killing at least three in the crowd and wounding many more. Seven police died (only one by the bomb), the rest probably by police fire.

May 3, 1963

In Birmingham, Alabama, Public Safety Commissioner and recently failed mayoral candidate Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor used fire hoses and police dogs on children near the 16th Street Baptist Church to keep them from marching out of the "Negro section" of town.

With no room left to jail them (after arresting nearly 1000 the day before), Connor brought firefighters out and ordered them to turn hoses on the children. Most ran away, but one group refused to budge. The firefighters turned more hoses on them, powerful enough to break bones. The force of the water rolled the protesters down the street. In addition, Connor had mobilized K-9 (police dog) forces who attacked protesters trying to re-enter the church. Pictures of the confrontation between the children and the police were televised across the nation.

May 3, 1968

More than 100 black students took over a building at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. They were demanding attention to their advocacy for inclusion of African-American history, literature and art in the curriculum. Their efforts led to the establishment of an African-American studies department which now offers a doctoral program.

How it happened

May 3, 1971

The Nixon administration ordered the arrest of nearly 13,000 anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe who had begun four days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C. on the first. They aimed to shut down the nation's capital by disrupting morning rush-hour traffic and other forms of nonviolent direct action, skirmishing with metropolitan police and Federal troops throughout large areas of the capital. The slogan of the Mayday tribe: "If the government won't stop the [Vietnam] war, we'll stop the government."

May 3, 1971

The first broadcast of National Public Radio’s evening news and public affairs program, "All Things Considered," was aired on about 90 public radio affiliates around the country. The main story was the disruptive anti-Vietnam protests in Washington. It is now the third most listened-to radio program in the U.S.
Listen to that first program

May 3, 1980

Sixty thousand marched on the Pentagon to urge the end of U.S. military involvement in El Salvador.

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).

read more about the freedom riders

The Freedom Riders dining at a lunch counter in Montgomery before traveling to Jackson, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana.

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.

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.

May 5, 1818

Political philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany. His ideas, laid out in the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, and in many other publications, considered the state, class divisions, the nature of industrial capitalism, and culture and religion as oppressive forces.
A young Karl Marx

May 5, 1925

Biology teacher John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in a Dayton, Tennessee, high school in violation of state law. Working in a public school, he was prohibited by statute “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

John Scopes

May 5, 1981

Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died in Northern Ireland’s Maze Prison; it was his 66th day without food. He had just been elected to a seat in the British Parliament for the district of Fermanagh while still serving the last of a 14-year sentence for possession of firearms.

Read more on Bobby Sands, including some of his poetry

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” - Bobby Sands

May 5, 1983

Over one million Sicilians, a fifth of the Italian island’s population, signed a petition against the deployment of more than 100 U.S. cruise missiles at the Comiso Air Base.

May 5, 1991

The last U.S. cruise missile left Greenham Common Air Base in England, the site of a decade of women's anti-nuclear protests. The encampment persisted for nearly another decade until it was returned to public access.
Protesters leave Greenham Common for the last time

peace link

May 5, 2000

Reformers allied with President Mohammed Khatami swept run-off elections, winning control of the 290-seat Majlis of Iran (parliament) from hard-liners for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Results were subject to certification by the Guardian Council which reversed the results in eleven of the original February contests.

May 6, 1916

Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman started the No Conscription League in the U.S. This was prior to American troops’ being sent to Europe in what is known as World War I.

read the No-Conscription League Manifesto

Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman

May 6, 1944

Mohandas Gandhi, due to declining health, was released from his last imprisonment in India, having spent 2,338 days in jail during his lifetime.

May 6, 1954

Two American pilots and most of their crew died flying ammunition supply missions to French colonial troops under siege by Vietnamese insurgent troops under Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap. James “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern and Wallace Buford became the first U.S. aviators to die in Vietnam. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower had not wanted to commit the U.S. military to Vietnam so shortly after the end of the war in Korea, so McGovern and Buford were working for an organization contracted by the CIA.

May 6, 1970

U.S. Senate hearings began on ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Similar amendments had been introduced in every Congress since 1923.

Writer and editor Gloria Steinem testified: “During twelve years of working for a living, I've experienced much of the legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country. I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places, and turned away from apartment rentals, all for the clearly stated, sole reason that I am a woman.”
Gloria Steinem in 1970

Steinem’s full testimony

FAQ on the ERA

May 6, 1973

14 cities across France saw demonstrations against their country’s nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific Ocean.

May 6, 1979

125,000 rallied in Washington, D.C. to oppose nuclear power.

May 7, 1954

The battle at Vietnam’s Dien Bien Phu ended after 55 days with Viet Minh insurgents overrunning French colonial forces, and forcing their surrender. An agreement for complete French withdrawal was negotiated within two months in Geneva, Switzerland.
The battle began in March, when a force of 40,000 Vietnamese troops armed with heavy artillery surrounded 15,000 French soldiers holding the French position under siege. The Viet Minh guerrillas had been fighting a long and bloody war against French colonial control of Vietnam since 1946.

French prisoners being marched by Viet Minh out of Dien Bien Phu, May 7, 1954

May 7, 1955

The Rev. George Lee, one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County, Mississippi, and who used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote, was murdered in his hometown of Belzoni.

	The county sheriff had initially refused to accept Rev. Lee’s poll tax (a tax collected before someone was allowed to vote, which became unconstitutional in 1964), but he was later allowed to vote after contacting federal authorities. That, and the subsequent registration of 92 other negro citizens he helped register, angered some white residents of the county. His assailants were never caught, and Rev. Lee is considered the first martyr of the civil rights movement.
Rev George Lee
More on Rev. Lee

May 7, 1984

American veterans of the Vietnam War reached a $180-million out-of-court settlement with seven chemical companies in a class-action suit relating to use of the herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam. The veterans charged they had suffered injury and illness from exposure to the defoliant used widely in the war to eliminate jungle cover for Vietnamese forces opposing the U.S. military presence.

Book review about the ongoing effects of Agent Orange

May 7, 1996

15,000 protesters demonstrated against the import of French nuclear waste to Gorleben, Germany. Water cannons were used to disperse the crowd.

May 8, 1882

The American Peace Society was established when the peace societies of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania merged to become a national organization. Currently based in Boston, the merged organization was a result of the leadership of William Ladd, an advocate of a "Congress and High Court of Nations" for solving international disputes.
William Ladd, one of the founders of the American Peace Society
read more

May 8, 1933

Mohandas Gandhi began a 21-day fast to support political rights for the Dalit (or untouchables) whom he called Harijans, the children of God. He had been jailed by the British to interfere with his movement to end colonial control of India. He was released the day after he began his personal purification because the colonial authorities were afraid he might die in prison.

May 8, 1962

An estimated 9,000,000 people in Belgium participated in a ten-minute work stoppage to protest nuclear weapons.

May 8, 1971

Nguyen Thi Co immolated herself where in protest of the Vietnam War, as did Thich Nu Tinh Nhuan later that month.

May 8, 1984

Presbyterian minister Reverend Benjamin Weir was kidnapped in Beirut, Lebanon, while out walking with his wife, Carol. Members of Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group in Lebanon, held Weir for sixteen months-twelve of them in solitary confinement-along with six other Americans who were released later, including journalist Terry Anderson. Before the kidnapping, Weir had spent nearly three decades in Lebanon as a Christian missionary and a teacher at the Near East School of Theology. In his various positions in the Presbyterian church since his release, Weir has been a voice of reconciliation and tolerance.

Rev. Benjamin Weir

May 9, 1967

In April, World Heavyweight Boxing Champion Muhammad Ali had refused induction into the U.S. Army based on his religious convictions. He claimed, "I ain't got no quarrel with those Vietcong." On this day, following his indictment by 24 hours, he was stripped of his title and his license to fight by the World Boxing Association.
In June, a court found him guilty of draft evasion, fined him $10,000, and sentenced him to five years in prison. He remained free, pending numerous appeals, but was still barred from fighting for three years.

“Ali's toughest foe: the Army” from the St. Petersburg Times

May 9, 1969

The New York Times revealed the United States had been secretly bombing Cambodia—officially a noncombatant, neutral country—during the Vietnam War.

May 9, 1970

Five days after the Kent State killings [see May 4, 1970], 100,000 marched in Washington, D.C. against the Vietnam War. On the same day, about 600 Canadian protesters defaced the Peace Arch at the U.S.-Canadian border in Blaine, Washington.

May 9, 1979

At least 18 demonstrators were killed and many wounded after police opened fire on anti-government protesters outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.

More (including graphic video) on the cathedral bloodbath

CBS reporter: "The police continued to fire as bodies piled up on the cathedral steps"

May 9, 1996

In San Salvador six soldiers were arrested in the slaying of Catholic church workers from the U.S.

May 10, 1857

The Sepoy Rebellion was triggered in Meerut, India, when native troops (known as Sepoys, which also designated a rank equivalent to private) turned on their British officers. It was the first instance of armed resistance against colonial rule. Indians constituted 96% of the 300,000-man British Army. Loading the Lee-Enfield Rifled Musket assigned to the Sepoys involved biting the end of a cartridge greased in a combination of pig fat and beef tallow.

"Attack of the Mutineers," a British illustration of the Sepoy Rebellion

The former is haraam (forbidden) under Islamic law, the latter offensive to Hindus who consider the cow as aghanya (that which may not be slaughtered). When the Sepoys, including both Hindu and Muslim Indians, became aware of this, some refused to load their weapons. Mangal Pandey, a soldier in the Army shot his commander for forcing the Indian troops to use the controversial rifles. When others were charged with mutiny for refusing, Sepoys turned on their officers and released the imprisoned soldiers.
The rebellion is now considered the first Indian war for independence.

More on the rebellion

May 10, 1967

Army Captain Howard Levy, a physician, was imprisoned three years for refusing to train U.S. Special Forces soldiers for Vietnam. He refused an order to perform the training as he considered it a violation of his medical ethics.
"The United States is wrong in being involved in the Viet Nam War. I would refuse to go to Viet Nam if ordered to do so. I don't see why any colored soldier would go to Viet Nam: they should refuse to go to Viet Nam and if sent should refuse to fight because they are discriminated against and denied their freedom in the United States, and they are sacrificed and discriminated against in Viet Nam by being given all the hazardous duty and they are suffering the majority of casualties.”
-From the Supreme Court case, Parker, Warden, et al. v. Levy.

May 10, 1968

Peace talks began in Paris between the U.S. and North Vietnam with businessman, former New York governor, ambassador and cabinet secretary W. Averell Harriman representing the United States. Former Foreign Minister Xuan Thuy, heading the North Vietnamese delegation, immediately demanded cessation of U.S. bombing.

May 10, 1980

The National Organization for Women (NOW) organized 85,000 people to march in Chicago in support of Illinois’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

a chronology of the Equal Rights Amendment, 1923-1996
visit NOW home

May 10, 1980

A federal judge in Salt Lake City, Utah, found the U.S. government negligent for its above-ground testing of nuclear weapons in Nevada from 1951 to 1962.

The land of the Nevada Test Site is scarred with craters from nuclear testing

May 10, 1994

	Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president. He had won the country’s first election in which all South Africans could vote, regardless of race. Mandela had spent nearly three decades imprisoned for his part in the struggle to attain political and civil rights for black and colored citizens. This ended more than three centuries of white rule, beginning with the Dutch in 1652.
	Brief biography of Nelson Mandela	South African chronology

May 11, 1973

Charges against former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg (including conspiracy, espionage, and larceny) for his role in the release of The Pentagon Papers (a comprehensive classified study of the origins and conduct of the Vietnam War) were dismissed. Judge William M. Byrne, citing government misconduct, including attempts to bribe him with an appointment as FBI Director, and previously undisclosed wiretaps of Ellsberg. His compatriot, Tony Russo, a former RAND Corporation analyst, was also released.

read chapters from the Pentagon Papers history of the war

Daniel Ellsberg's book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

May 11, 1975

80,000 turned out in New York City's Central Park to celebrate the end of the Vietnam War.

May 12, 1968

The Poor People's Campaign, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) began when contingents of the poor, mainly from the south, began pitching tents in a "Resurrection City" near the Lincoln Memorial. It was dismantled by police on June 24.

Aerial view of Resurrection City, next to the Lincoln Memorial

May 13, 1888

Brazil, which had imported more African slaves than any other country (nearly 40% of the 11 million Africans shipped to the western hemisphere), abolished slavery.

May 13, 1932

" We Want Beer" marches were held in cities all over America, with 15,000 unionized workers demonstrating in Detroit. Prohibition (the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring “the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors”) was repealed the following year.

May 13, 1954

Natives of the Marshall Islands pleaded for an end to atmospheric H-Bomb testing in the south Pacific.

National Cancer Institute’s study on excess incidence of cancer in the Marshall Islands

May 13, 1958

During a goodwill trip through Latin America, Vice President Richard Nixon's limousine was attacked with rocks and bottles by an angry crowd and nearly overturned while traveling through Caracas, Venezuela. The crowd was angered by U.S. Cold War policies and their effect on Latin America. Five days earlier in the trip, the Vice President had been shoved, stoned, booed, and spat upon by protesters in Peru.

Caracas demonstrators surround Nixon's limousine

May 13, 1967

250 Chicano students from Los Angeles colleges & universities met to form the United Mexican American Students (UMAS).

May 13, 1968

"We are the power"

Workers joined Paris students’ protest in a one-day general strike calling for the fall of the government and protesting police brutality. The protest by French students included occupation of The Sorbonne; by the end of the month over 10,000,000 French citizens had been involved in school and workplace occupations.

view and read about the great poster art from Paris ‘68

May 13, 1970

The Movement for a New Congress—to elect peace candidates—was founded at Princeton University.

May 1968, month of intense protest and political organizing around the country

May 13, 1992

Ecuador's government granted 148 native communities legal title to more than three million acres (slightly less than the size of the state of Washington) in the Amazon Basin.

May 14, 1941

The first groups of WWII conscientious objectors (COs) were ordered to report to camp at Patapsco, Maryland. They and others formed the Civilian Public Service (CPS) during the war. They performed various duties, among others being trained as smoke jumpers dealing with forest fires.

World War II COs

Conscientious objection in America