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.
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.
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 1980s
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 at 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
Hear
Michael Moore sing Bob Dylan's
The Times They Are A-Changin' listen here
on anew album to support the occupy movement He has a great voice with
passion too.
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
Tuesday
May
15, 1870
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 Pres.
Woodrow Wilson in 1914.
Julia Ward Howe
"Disarm!
Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.”
Read
her Mother’s Day Proclamation
May
15, 1935
The National Labor Relations Act
was passed, recognizing workers' rights to organize unions
and bargain collectively with their employers.
Read
more
What the F**k
has Obama
done so far? click to see
and there is so much more to be done
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.
Buttons from the '60's - reissued click on image to order
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
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
Wednesday
May
16, 1792
Denmark became the first country
to outlaw the slave trade.
“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, 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.
Aimed at socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists,
the Sedition Act imposed harsh penalties on anyone found
guilty of making false statements; insulting or abusing the
U.S. government, conscription, the flag, the Constitution
or the military; agitating against the production of necessary
war materials; or advocating, teaching or defending any of
these acts.
Read
more
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."
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
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Thursday
May
17, 1919
The Women's International League
for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was formally established in Zurich,
Switzerland.
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
Above:
Nettie Hunt and her daughter Nickie on the
steps
of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1954.
George
E. C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall and James M. Nabrit (left
to right), the successful legal team, celebrate the Brown
decision
.
. . three years later . . .
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 see more quotes
May
17, 1957
Martin
Luther King, Jr. led 30,00 on a Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington,
D.C. to mark the third
anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education decision in which
the Supreme Court declared racial segregation in education
unconstitutional
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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
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
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
Friday
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
He became the founding president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958. He resigned in 1960, however, and formed the more militant Committee of 100 with the overt aim of inciting mass civil disobedience, and he himself with Lady Russell led mass sit-ins in 1961 that brought them a two-month prison sentence, at the age of 89.
Bertrand Russell in front of the British Ministry of Defence,
Whitehall, London
Peace quote . . .
"War does not determine who is right, only who is left."
- Bertrand Russell
Gerald Holtom,
the designer of the peace symbol at work read more
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
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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
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
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Saturday
May
19, 1934
10,000
participated in a "No
More War" march in New York City.
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
Sunday
May
20, 1961
A mob of 300 white segregationists, with the tacit assent of the local police, attacked a busload of both black and white “Freedom Riders” in Montgomery, Alabama’s bus depot.
Among those beaten was Justice Department official John Seigenthaler who had tried to negotiate their safety. Attention to the violence forced Attorney General Robert Kennedy to send in U.S. Marshals to protect the Riders. They had been seeking to guarantee equal access to interstate transportation by riding the bus but had been met by violence elsewhere in Alabama as well as South Carolina.
Freedom
Riders challenged racial segregation at Montgomery bus
depot.
The
Freedom Rides discussed NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry
Gross
(with transcript)
Robert
Kennedy and John Seigenthaler
The
Freedom Rider story
May
20, 1968
In the first such instance during the Vietnam War, Arlington Street Unitarian-Universalist Church in Boston offered sanctuary to Robert Talmanson and William Chase, both of whom had refused to participate in the war.
Talmanson had been convicted of refusing induction, and Chase had gone AWOL (absent without leave) as an army private after having served nine months at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.
Church leaders had declared theirs a “liberated zone” on the first day of the trial of Dr. Benjamin Spock and four others in federal court for counseling draft resistance. They believed that individuals had a right to decide not to kill as nonviolent persons, most especially in a war they considered unjust.
May
20, 1971
A
delegation of U.S. pacifists traveled to Cuba to exchange
children's art.
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Phillip
Lafayette Gibbs 
James
Earl 
with any
"We shouldn't be exporting uranium because you're exporting cancer."
Robert
Kennedy and John Seigenthaler