This
Week in History is a collection designed to help us
appreciate 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.
July 26
•July 26 Movement
•SNCC leader arrested
•Rights of disabled Americans protected
Tuesday July 27
•Riot in Chicago
•Korean armistice
•Coup in Guatemala
•Weep and Disarm for Children
Wednesday
July 28
•Former slaves become citizens
•Bonus Army routed
•More troops to Vietnam
•San Francisco bans handguns
Thursday
July 29
•Grape boycott supports workers
•Death penalty declared unconstitutional
Friday
July 30
•Columbus sails; Jews expelled
•Action prevents greater crime
Saturday July 31
•African-American women organize
•Namibians resist occupation
•Start at arms reduction
Sunday Aug 1 •Peace urged in face of war
•Non-violent non-cooperation
•Warsaw rises up
•Helsinki Accords
•Action at Seabrook
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July
26, 1953
In his first move to overthrow the U.S.-backed
dictatorship of Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, 26-year-old
Fidel Castro led 134 other young revolutionaries to unsuccessfully
attack the Moncada military barrackshttp://www.cubahistory.org/fidel-castro-revolution.html in Santiago de Cuba.
Castro had concluded that armed struggle was the only way
to unseat Batista, who had taken power in a military coup
in 1952.
The Cuban Revolution is known as the July 26 Movement,
and is celebrated annually there.
The
Moncada Barracks, still showing a few bullet holes and pockmarks
from that fateful early morning assault in 1953, is now both
a historic site and an elementary school.
H. Rap Brown, then head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was ordered arrested by then-Gov. Spiro Agnew, who accused him of inciting a riot through his speech two days earlier at a civil rights rally in Cambridge, Maryland.
At the event, Brown declared, “Black folks built America, and if America don’t come around, we’re going to burn America down . . . If Cambridge doesn't come around, Cambridge got to be burned down.” Shortly after the speech, Brown was hit in the head by buckshot from a policeman’s shotgun. That night the segregated elementary school on the black side of town and 20 businesses burned down (there was no looting), some along Race Street, the racial divide which neither black nor white were expected to cross.
H. Rap Brown
following the disturbances in Cambridge, Maryland.
What
happened in Cambridge
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There's more peace and justice history to see for this week For a more complete listing for this week or to visit another month Jan • Feb • March April • May • June July • Aug • Sept Oct • Nov • Dec
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July
26, 1990
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law by Pres. George H.W. Bush. It prohibited discrimination based on disability in employment, in public accommodation (e.g., hotels, restaurants, retail stores, theaters, health care facilities, convention centers, parks), in transportation services, and in all activities of state and local governments.
July
27, 1919
A riot began in Chicago when police refused to arrest a white man who was responsible for the death of a young black man, Eugene Williams. The 29th Street Beach on Lake Michigan was used by both black and white Chicagoans. But the man had been throwing stones at the black boys swimming there before hitting Williams.
The Coroner’s report on the riot described the events as follows: “Five days of terrible hate and passion let
loose, cost the people of Chicago 38 lives (15 white and 23
colored), wounded and maimed several hundred, destroyed property
of untold value, filled thousands with fear, blemished the
city and left in its wake fear and apprehension for the future
. . . .”
The city’s booming economy, especially jobs in the stockyards, had drawn many blacks during the Great Migration from the South, more than doubling their population in just three years. Only one policeman died in the chaos, Patrolman John Simpson, 31, an African American working out of the Wabash Avenue Station.
Gangs and the 1919 Chicago Race Riot.
July
27, 1953
After three years of bloody and frustrating war leading to stalemate, the United States, the People’s Republic of China and North Korea agreed to a truce, bringing the Korean War—and America's first experiment with the Cold War concept of “limited war”—to an end (South Korean President Syngman Rhee opposed the truce and refused to sign). U.S. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower had taken office six months earlier, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin had died that March.
The armistice signed this day ended hostilities and created the 4000-meter-wide (2.5 miles) demilitarized zone (DMZ), a buffer between North and South Korean forces, but was not a permanent peace treaty. It also set up a system for exchanging prisoners of war: 12,000 held by the North, 75,000 by South Korea, the U.S. and the U.N. allied forces.
There were four million military and civilian casualties, including 16,000 from countries which were part of the U.N.-allied forces; 415,000 South and 520,000 North Koreans died.
Korean
War Memorial
photo:
Heather Stanfield
There were also an estimated 900,000 Chinese casualties. 36,516 died out of the nearly 1.8 million Americans who served in the conflict.
July
27, 1954
The democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, after receiving 65% of the vote, was overthrown by CIA-paid and -trained mercenaries. There followed a series of military dictatorships that waged a genocidal war against the indigenous Mayan Indians and against political opponents into the ‘90s. Nearly 200,000 citizens died over the nearly four decades of civil war.
“They have used the pretext of anti-communism. The truth is very different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company [United Fruit, which controlled more land than any other individual or group in the country. It also owned the railway, the electric utilities, telegraph, and the country's only port at Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic coast.] and the other U.S. monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by other Latin countries . . . I took over the presidency with great faith in the democratic system, in liberty and the possibility of achieving economic independence for Guatemala.”
Jacobo Arbenz
More about Arbenz
The real coup story through official U.S. documents
July
27, 1996
Known as the “Weep for Children Plowshares,” four women were arrested for pouring their own blood on weaponry at the Naval Submarine Base at Groton, Connecticut, on the morning of the launch of the last-built Ohio-class submarine, the U.S.S. Louisiana. The 18 such submarines carry about half of the U.S. nuclear deterrent – 24 Trident I & II missiles with a range of 7400 km (4600 miles), each with several warheads known as MIRVs (multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles).
Details of the action
Trident
sub being loaded
re-issued
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
July
28, 1868
Passed in the wake of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing due process, equal protection of the law, and full citizenship to all males over 21, including former slaves, went into effect.
More on the amendment and
the context of post-Civil War Reconstruction
Booklet on the 14th Amendment from the Damon Keith Collection of
African-American Legal History at Wayne State University Law School
July
28, 1932
Federal troops, under command of General Douglas MacArthur, forcibly dispersed the so-called “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” or Bonus Army. They were World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand money they had been promised but weren't scheduled to receive until 1945. Most of the marchers were unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits during the Great Depression.
More on the Bonus Army
Film of the
confrontation in Washington
Bonus Marchers on the Capitol Steps
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July
28, 1965
President Lyndon Johnson ordered 50,000 troops to Vietnam to join the 75,000 already there. By the end of the year 180,000 U.S. troops will have been sent to Vietnam; in 1966 the figure doubled. In addition to countless Vietnamese deaths, close to 1900 Americans were killed in 1965; the following year the number more than tripled. President Johnson explained: “We intend to convince the communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power.”
David Douglas Duncan, photographer.
Lyndon Johnson told the nation
Have no fear of escalation
I am trying everyone to please
Though it isn’t really
war
We’re sending fifty thousand more
To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese
"Pfc.
John L. Lewis decorates his helmet with good luck tokens.
[Khe Sanh, February 1968.]" Life [Asia edition]. 18 Mar.
1968. cover.
— part of Tom Paxton’s anti-Vietnam-war song, “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” Full lyrics of the song
NO WAR
Very popular image
(at least in Michigan) as a button and yard sign prior to and during the Iraq war. click to buy
July
28, 1982
San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban the sale and possession of handguns. The law was struck down by state courts, which ruled the local law to be in violation of the California constitution which gives the state the sole power to regulate firearms.
July
29, 1972
After a five-year strike, the United Farm Workers (UFW) signed a contract with the table grape growers in California, ending the first grape boycott.
Exploring the United Farm Workers' History
Signing the contract
July
29, 1972
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment by a 5-4 vote. The Court called the wide discretion in application of capital punishment, including the appearance of racial bias against black defendants, “arbitrary and capricious” and thus in violation of due process guarantees in the 14th Amendment [see July 28, 1868 above].
Influence
of race on imposition of the death penalty
Sunflower/Peace
button
July
30, 1492
The same month Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain for his “expedition of discovery to the Indies” [actually the Western Hemisphere], was the deadline for all “Jews and Jewesses of our kingdoms to depart and never to return . . .” lest they be executed. Under the influence of Fr. Tomas de Torquemada, the leader of the Spanish Inquisition, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had ordered the expulsion of the entire Jewish community of 200,000 from Spain within four months. Spain’s Muslims, or Moors, were forced out as well within ten years.
The
edict of expulsion from Spain signed by
King Ferdinand
and Queen Isabella
All were forced to sell off their houses, businesses and possessions, were pressured to convert to Christianity, and to find a new country to live in. Those who left were known as Sephardim (Hebrew for Spain), settling in North Africa, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe and the Arab world.
Most went to Portugal, were allowed to stay just six months, and then were enslaved under orders of King John. Those who made it to Turkey were welcomed by Sultan Bajazet who asked,“How can you call Ferdinand of Aragon a wise king, the same Ferdinand who impoverished his own land and enriched ours?”
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Peace quote . . .
" We are justified in believing that the success of this movement for equality of the sexes means more progress toward equality of the races." Josephine Ruffin, see more quotes
July
31, 1896
The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was established in Washington, D.C. Its two leading members were Josephine Ruffin and Mary Church Terrell. Founders also included some of the most renowned African-American women educators, community leaders, and civil-rights activists in America, including Harriet Tubman, Frances E.W. Harper, Margaret Murray Washington, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett.
Mary Church Terrell
The original intention of the organization was “to furnish evidence of the moral, mental and material progress made by people of colour through the efforts of our women.” However, over the next ten years the NACW became involved in campaigns favoring women's suffrage and opposing lynching and Jim Crow laws. By the time the United States entered the First World War, membership had reached 300,000.
The NACW and its founders
July
31, 1986
25,000 people rallied in Namibia for freedom from South African colonial rule. In June, 1971 the International Court of Justice had ruled the South African presence in Namibia to be illegal. Eventually, open elections for a 72-member Constituent Assembly were held under U.N. supervision in November, 1989. Three months later Namibia gained its independence, and maintains it today.
More on Namibia’s independence
Namibian flag
Learn more about peacemakers
in Africa:
Peace quote . . .
"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of human rights." Desmond Tutu, January 1985 see more quotes
July
31, 1991
The United States and the Soviet Union, represented by Pres. George H.W. Bush and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as START I. It was the first agreement to actually reduce (by 25-35%) and verify both countries’ stockpiles of nuclear weapons at equal aggregate levels in strategic offensive arms.
The Soviet Union dissolved several months later, but Russia and the U.S. met their goals by December, 2001. Three other former republics of the U.S.S.R., Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine, have eliminated these weapons from their territory altogether.
Comprehensive
info from the Federation of American Scientists:
August
1, 1914
As World War I began, Harry Hodgkin, a British Quaker, and Friedrich Siegmund-Schulte, a German Lutheran pastor, attending a conference in Germany, pledged to continue sowing the “seeds of peace and love, no matter what the future might bring,” germinating the idea for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR).
History of the Fellowship of Reconciliation
FOR's Mission: FOR seeks to replace
violence, war, racism, and economic injustice with nonviolence,
peace, and justice. We are an interfaith organization committed
to active nonviolence as a transforming way of life and as
a means of radical change. We educate, train, build coalitions,
and engage in nonviolent and compassionate actions locally,
nationally, and globally.
August
1, 1920
Mohandas Gandhi began the movement of "non-violent non-cooperation" with the British Raj (ruling colonial authority) in India. The strategy was to bring the British administrative machine to a halt by the total withdrawal of Indian popular support, both Hindu and Muslim. British-made goods were boycotted, as were schools, courts of law, and elective offices.
More
on the Non-Cooperation Movement
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August
1, 1944
The Polish underground army began its battle to liberate Warsaw, the first European city to have fallen to the Germans in World War II.
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August
1, 1975
The U.S. and the U.S.S.R, represented by Pres. Gerald Ford and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, along with 33 other nations, signed the Helsinki Accords at the close of the Finland meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The agreement recognized the inherent relationship between respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the attainment of genuine peace and security.
All signatories agreed to respect freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, as well as freedom of religion and belief, and to facilitate the free movement of people, ideas, and information between nations.
August
1, 1976
200 people, organized by the Clamshell Alliance, occupied the site of a new nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire. They were attempting to halt construction the same day the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission had issued a construction license. Eighteen were arrested. Eventually, only one of two planned reactors was built.
To
the Village Square: Nukes, Clams & Democracy – Clamshell
veterans today
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