view in web browser if not displaying properly

 



  History from the grass roots . . .

This Week in History is a collection designed to help us a ppreciate the fact that we are part of a rich history advocating peace and social justice. While the entries often focus on large and dramatic events there are so many smaller things done everyday to promote peace and justice.

To the real peace advocates - YOU!

 
Publisher, Carl Bunin • Editor, Al FrankDetroit, Michigan
view in web browser
This week at a glance.

Monday
May 13
•Brazil ends slavery
•Nixon Stoned
•Chicano Students Organize
•Workers Back Students
•Movement for a New Congress

Tuesday
May 14
•COs report for duty
•"Yankee"
nuke test
•Jackson State erupts and
2 dead

Wednesday
May 15

•Mother's Day
•Workers' rights under law
•Teach-in
•Washington picketing
•People's Park melee
•COs get their day

Thursday
May 16
•No slavery in Denmark
•Sedition Act
•Self-immolation
•Jubilee 2000

Friday
May 17
•Women form peace group
•Brown v. Board
•Catonsville 9
•Seattle die-in
•Watergate hearings
•Marriage in Massachusetts
Saturday
May 18
•Happy birthday, Sir Russell
•Gray Panthers
•Indian A-bomb
•Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee

Sunday
May 19
•'30s anti-war march
•Hellman won't name names

The little button with a BIG message

112,219 distributed! view list of where they are
Order some and make peace more visible.


 

Over 112,219
peace sign buttons
distributed so far!


The little button with a BIG message
click to get yours


 




Follow peacebutton.info on twitter or facebook



   
Two new buttons
< . . . Click on a button to get some . . . >

Save our Postal Service | KEEP Saturday mail delivery
Click to get stickers, window signs and buttons
peacebuttons depends on USPS to send your peace and justice items
visit website

SUPPORT OUR POSTAL SERVICE
Window signs
11 x 14
union printed

Click to order

 

Monday


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.

Visit our







click on button
to order

view all buttons
at our
button gallery



 


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, 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


Readers comment

"Buttons arrived in Monteverde, Costa Rica! Just in time, too, to distribute tomr at the Christmas Meeting. Will try to take some photos as well. Thanks so much, and have a happy and peaceful holiday."
-
Bill

 


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

Check it Out!

 

Tuesday


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
More on the CPS

Our take on
"All we are saying"

click to order
 


May 14, 1954

In the “Yankee” nuclear weapons test in the atmosphere above the South Pacific, a single detonation, expected to yield 9.5 megatons of force, actually yielded 13.5 megatons (equivalent to thirteen and a half million tons of TNT), the second largest ever by the U.S. The resultant mushroom cloud extended 25 miles up and spread 100 miles across.
"Yankee"

No Nuclear Weapons
reissued
from the '80s
Click to orderr



 


May 14, 1970

Phillip Lafayette Gibbs  

Two African-American students were shot to death and 30 others wounded by local police and state troopers and national guardsmen at primarily black Jackson State University in Mississippi. The two were watching demonstrators protesting the invasion of Cambodia and racial discrimination from a nearby dormitory tower. This happened shortly after the shooting of students at Kent State University in Ohio. Two days of riots ensued in Jackson resulting in curfews and sealing off of the city.

James Earl Green

Read more   

Readers comment

"I just placed an order for 100 "occupy" buttons and 50 "Nonviolence/occupy" buttons . . .
I always try to steer people to your site to buy buttons, telling them, "They don't sell Republican buttons like Cafe Press and others do!" Keep up the good work."

Linda, Henderson NV

 

Wednesday


May 15, 1870

 

Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe, suffragist, abolitionist and author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” proposed Mother's Day as a peace holiday.
She had seen firsthand some of the worst effects of war during the American Civil War—the death and disease which killed and maimed, and the widows and orphans left behind on both sides of the Civil War—and realized that the effects of the war go beyond the killing of soldiers in battle. Mother’s Day did not become a national holiday until declared by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.


Read her Mother’s Day Proclamation


This button originally issued in Detroit for Cindy Sheehan's September 2004 Bring Them Home Tour from Camp Casey outside of Bush's Texas ranch to the White House.
click to buy


 


May 15, 1935


The National Labor Relations Act was passed, recognizing workers' rights to organize unions and bargain collectively with their employers.

Read more  


click to order

 


May 15, 1965

A National teach-in to oppose the Vietnam War was held in Washington, D.C.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall
never sit in."


 


May 15, 1966

The American Friends Service Committee, SANE (The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), and Women March for Peace, along with four other organizations, sponsored a 10,000+ person anti-war picket at the White House and a 60,000+ rally at the Washington Monument to oppose the Vietnam War.
. . . elsewhere the same day . . .
Buddhist altars were placed in streets to impede troops arresting dissidents in South Vietnam.

Peace quote


"The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence"
- Joan Baez

 


May 15, 1969

Governor Ronald Reagan sent in the National Guard to reclaim People's Park from 6,000 protesters in Berkeley, California, who had occupied the space and created the park.
Police gunfire killed a bystander, James Rector, blinded another, and injured dozens.

People's Park March, Friday May 30, 1969, at the intersection of Haste Street and Telegraph Avenue, in Berkeley

There's more peace and justice history to see


For a more complete listing for this week or to visit another month
JanFebMarch
AprilMayJune
JulyAugSept
OctNovDec

 


May 15 (since the 1980's)

International Conscientious Objectors Day, established to honor those who leave or refuse to enter their country’s armed forces for reasons of principle.

Read the stories of 4 Conscientious Objectors

 

Thursday


May 16, 1792
Denmark became the first country to outlaw the slave trade.

"No matter how deeply buried it is, the truth will always come to surface."

 


May 16, 1918

The U.S. Congress passed the Sedition Act, legislation designed to protect America’s participation in World War I. Along with the Espionage Act of the previous year, the Sedition Act was orchestrated largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general under President Woodrow Wilson. The Espionage Act, passed shortly after the U.S. entrance into the war in early April 1917, made it a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere with the U.S. armed forces’ prosecution of the war effort or to promote the success of the country’s enemies.

continued (info, photos, links). . .

Peace quote


“While there is a lower class I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free”
- Eugene V. Debs


 


May 16, 1967

Nhat Chi Mai immolates herself in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, to protest the war.

"I offer my body as a torch / to dissipate the dark / to waken love among men / to give peace to Vietnam."

Read more

The flower known as Nhat Chi Mai.
 


May 16, 1998
Tens of thousands of Britons supporting Jubilee 2000 formed a human chain around the meeting place of the G7 Summit (an annual meeting of the leaders of the largest industrial countries) in Birmingham, England. Jubilee 2000 urged the major international lending countries to relieve terms of and forgive the massive indebtedness of poor countries around the world.
Speech by Ann Pettifor, Co-founder of Jubilee 2000-UK





click on button
to order
 

Friday


May 17, 1919
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was formally established in Zurich, Switzerland.
 


May 17, 1954

In a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling "separate but equal" public education to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed equal treatment under the law. The historic decision, bringing an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.

 

Read more and more
continued (info, photos, links). . .

Peace quote


"Today's Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish."
- Justice Thurgood Marshall


 


May 17, 1968

A group of anti-war activists who came to be known as the "Catonsville Nine," including Philip and Daniel Berrigan, broke into the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board center and burned over 600 draft files.

The Catonsville Nine in a picture taken in the police station minutes after the action.

From left to right (standing) George Mische, Philip Berrigan, Daniel Berrigan, Tom Lewis. From left to right (seated) David Darst, Mary Moylan, John Hogan, Marjorie Melville, Tom Melville.  photo Jean Walsh

Read more about the Catonsville Nine

Peace quote


"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."

-Howard Zinn
1922-2010
 


May 17, 1970

 

100 protesters staged a silent "die-in" at Fifth Avenue and Pine Street in downtown Seattle to protest shipment through their city of Army nerve gas being transported from Okinawa, Japan, to the Umatilla Army Depot in eastern Oregon.

 

Read more

Because of your support peacebuttons has been able to donate to
Amnesty International MoveOn.org
Doctors without Borders
Peace Action
Habitat for Humanity
more . . .
see complete list

Thank you !
- - - - - - - - - -
and receive a

A PEACE PRESENT
with every order!

 


May 17, 1973

In Washington, D.C., the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, began televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair. One week later, Harvard Law Professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as Watergate special prosecutor.
Flashback: On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. with the intent to set up wiretaps. One of the suspects, James W. McCord, Jr., was revealed to be the salaried security coordinator for President Richard Nixon's reelection committee.
 


May 17, 2004

Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52, of Malden, Massachusetts, were married at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts, becoming the first legally married same-sex partners in the United States. Over the course of the day, 77 other such couples tied the knot across the state, and hundreds more applied for marriage licenses. The day was characterized by much celebration and only a few of the expected protests materialized.
Read more


click to order
button

 

Saturday


May 18, 1872

Bertrand Russell

Birthday of Sir Bertrand Russell, British philosopher, logician, essayist, and social critic, a leading figure in his country’s anti-nuclear movement. In 1954 he delivered his “Man's Peril [from the Hydrogen Bomb]” broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-bomb tests, and warning of the threat to humanity from the development of nuclear weapons: “. . . as a human being to other human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”
A year later, together with Albert Einstein nine other scientists, he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto calling for the curtailment of nuclear weapons.

Text of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto
continued (info, photos, links). . .

Peace quote


“War does not determine who is right, only who is left."

- Bertrand Russell

 


May 18, 1972

Margaret (Maggie) Kuhn founded the Gray Panthers (originally called the Consultation of Older and Younger Adults for Social Change) to consider the common problems faced by retirees — loss of income, loss of contact with associates, and loss of one of society's most distinguishing social roles, one's job. The members discovered a new kind of freedom in their retirement — the freedom to speak personally and passionately about what they believed in, such as their collective opposition to the Vietnam War.

Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers

Gray Panther history

Peace quote


“Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many.”
-
Maggie Kuhn

 


May 18, 1974

In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. 
The test fell on the traditional anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received the message "Buddha has smiled" from the exuberant test-site scientists after the detonation. The test, which made India the world's sixth nuclear power, broke the nuclear monopoly of the five members of the U.N. Security Council—the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France.
Detailed background on India’s nuclear weapons program and its first test

Peace quote


"If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created.
If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is
4,600,000,000 years old. It could end in an afternoon."

- Arundhati Roy, 1998







click to order


 


May 18, 1979

A jury in a federal court in Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee established a company’s responsibility for damage to the health of a worker in the nuclear industry. Karen Silkwood worked for the Kerr-McGee Nuclear Corporation at their Cimmaron, Texas, plant where plutonium was manufactured.

Silkwood had become the first female member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers bargaining committee, focusing on worker safety issues, but had suffered radiation exposure in a series of unexplained incidents. The jury in Judge Frank G. Theis’s court awarded her estate $505,000 in actual damages, and $10 million punitive damages.
She had died in a car accident on her way to a meeting with a The New York Times reporter five years earlier.

Karen Silkwood's sisters and parents

Karen Silkwood remembered

The Supreme Court upheld the decision and the award
 

Sunday


May 19, 1934

10,000 participated in a "No More War" march in New York City.


click to order


 


May 19, 1952

Playwright and activist Lillian Hellman advised the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) that she refused to testify against friends and associates, saying, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.”

Learn more about Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman

Text of her letter to HUAC

Have an idea for a button?
Your art or we'll design
see some
sizes 1"-6" dia
any quantity
Union made
Detroit
email us


 

If you are not already on our email list and would like to have this

free calendar delivered to your inbox weekly then please

Sign up for our peace history newsletter
just send me an
email

and have it sent to your friends.

And please remember . . .
If you change your address send an email and let us know so you won't miss a single issue!
 

Reproduction of this calendar for non-profit purposes

is permitted and encouraged. Please credit/link to www.peacebuttons.info

If you do not wish to receive further mailings from peacebuttons.info,

respond to this email with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line and you will be removed from our mail list.
It is important that you reply from the email address that you want removed.

©2013 peacebuttons.info


The little button with a BIG message


A PEACE PRESENT
with every order