During my shifts at the Museum at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts one of the most common questions is: Why weren’t the Beatles at Woodstock?
My first response is that the Beatles had stopped touring and performing live in August 1966. They had chosen to became a studio band.
My second response that throughout August 1969, the Beatles were finishing recording and mixing Abbey Road. They didn’t know it, of course, but August 20, 1969 was the last time the four would be together in the studio.
There is a story that Michael Lang had invited them. John Lennon had reportedly said they would not play unless Yoko and his Plastic Ono Band could also play. That story has never been authenticated, but lives on with other Beatle ephemera.
The Beatles released their “last” album, Let It Beon May 8,1970, six months after Abbey Road’s release, but they had recorded Let It Be beforeAbbey Road, so…
Beatles Officially Legally End
Whimper not a bang
So, when did the Beatles break up. This section’s heading is the answer: they broke up gradually.
Ringo Walks Out
On August 22, 1968 Ringo had left the Beatles because he felt his playing had gotten sub-par and that he’d become an outsider to the other three.
He went on vacation to Sardinia, wrote “Octopus Garden,” and with the encouragement of John, Paul, and George, returned on September 3.
Beatles Officially Legally End
Solo Projects
They had also begun working on solo projects before 1970 ended. George Harrison was the first in November 1968 with his Wonderwall Music soundtrack. Harrison had frequently felt like the Beatles’ third wheel because most of his offered songs were dismissed in favor of the so-called Lennon/McCartney tunes.
Harrison Leaves
Of course, a solo album does not mean a break up, but frustration does. On January 10, 1969 Harrison walked out, unable to tolerate any longer the tensions within the group and the other’s talk about playing a live show.
John Lennon reportedly said that the group should call Eric Clapton, saying, “He’s just as good and not such a headache.”
Like Starr, Harrison returned (January 15), but had he made it clear that he would leave the group unless the idea of a live show before an audience was dropped. They did.
Beatles Officially Legally End
Lennon Leaves
In September 1969, John Lennon told the others he was leaving. The other three, resigned to the group’s collapse, said that they would keep the break-up out of the news.
McCartney Talks
On April 10, 1970, in The Daily Mirror, Paul McCartney made the Beatles’ secret breakup public by issuing a press release to announce that he had left the group, done in the form of a fake interview: “Q: Is your break with the Beatles temporary or permanent, due to personal differences or musical ones? PAUL: Personal differences, business differences, musical differences, but most of all because I have a better time with my family. Temporary or permanent? I don’t really know.”
Lennon was angry, especially since the breakup, already agreed upon by the group, was announced just one week prior to the British release of McCartney’s first solo album. When a reporter tracked down Lennon for his thoughts, he replied, “Paul hasn’t left. I sacked him.”
Beatles Officially Legally End
Paul files
On December 31, 1970, Paul filed a lawsuit in London’s High Court to dissolve The Beatles’ partnership. He filed it against “John Ono Lennon of Ascot, Berkshire; George Harrison of Henley-on-Thames, Berkshire; Richard Starkey of Highgate, London; and Apple Corps of Savile Row, London.”
The writ gave three reasons for the suit:
The Beatles had ceased to perform together as a group, so the purpose of their partnership was no more
secondly, the other three Beatles had, despite McCartney’s opposition and in breach of their partnership agreement, appointed Allen Klein and his ABKCO as their exclusive business manager
and that McCartney had never been given audited accounts during the four years of their partnership. (see Beatles Bible site)
Beatles Officially Legally End
Four Years of Red Tape
On March 31, 1972, The Beatles Official Fan Club closed. The Beatles Monthly magazine had ceased three years previously.
Now it was December 19, 1974 and four had finally agreed that all was in place for the official and legal end to the Beatles. The meeting took place in New York City and Paul and George flew in just for the meeting. Ringo did not attend. He had already signed off.
Lawyers for each were present. Cameras were ready. John, living in NYC, was late. Well, not late, absent. They made a phone call. Lennon’s then girlfriend May Pang (he and Yoko had separated) answered. She said he said he wasn’t coming. “The stars weren’t right.”
It was George Harrison’s turn to explode. It was unusual for such anger from him, but under stress from a poorly reviewed tour was the straw that broke his back.
He apologized to all the following day.
In fact the three amicably met the next night at a club.
Beatles Officially Legally End
John Lennon and May Pang, took John’s son Julian to Walt Disney World for the week of Christmas, 1974. They stayed at the Polynesian Village Resort.
Lennon was apparently finally ready.
On December 29, 1974 while ironically or appropriately at DisneyWorld, Apple lawyers met Lennon to sign off.
John told May to take a picture, but delayed signing until he spoke to Harrison’s lawyer by phone. According to May, he looked out his window at the Polynesian Village Hotel several moments before signing.
The signature page of the Treaty of New Echota. Image from the National Archives.
December 29, 1835: U.S. government officials and about 500 Cherokee Indians claiming to represent their 16,000-member tribe, met at New Echota, Georgia, and signed a treaty. The agreement led to the forced removal of Cherokees from their southeastern homelands to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.
The Treaty of New Echota gave the Cherokees $5 million and land in present-day Oklahoma in exchange for their 7 million acres of ancestral land. Though the majority of Cherokees opposed the treaty, and Principal Chief John Ross wrote a letter to Congress protesting it, the U.S. Senate ratified the document in March 1836.
Approximately 2,000–8,000 of the 16,543 relocated Cherokee perished along the way. (Treaty, see August 29, 2019)
American bison
1850s – 1870s: systematic military campaigns to destroy subsistence base of Plains people. e.g. near extinction of American bison. [Once numbering in the hundreds of millions in North America and basis of life for the Plains Indians, the population of the American Bison decreased to less than 1000 by 1890.] (see July 23, 1851)
Wounded Knee Massacre
December 29, 1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre occurred on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota It was the last battle of the American Indian war.
Troops went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. After an initial scuffle over a rifle, a shot was fired which resulted in the 7th Cavalry’s opening fire indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their own fellow troopers. Those few Lakota warriors who still had weapons began shooting back at the attacking troopers, who quickly suppressed the Lakota fire. The surviving Lakota fled, but U.S. cavalrymen pursued and killed many who were unarmed.
By the time it was over, at least 150 men, women, and children of the Lakota Sioux had been killed and 51 wounded (4 men, 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300. Twenty-five troopers also died, and 39 were wounded. At least twenty troopers were awarded the Medal of Honor.(see January 3, 1895)
December 29, 1952: on July 5, 1952, as part of the Cold War anti-Communist mania, Congress passed the Gwinn amendmentrequiring that residents of federally supported public housing swear to a loyalty oath and not be a member of an organization on the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations. James Kutcher, a World War II veteran who lost both legs in the 1943 Battle of San Pietro, Italy, was a member of the Socialist Workers Party, whose name was listed. Kutcher was living with his 73-year-old father, who was the official resident in a Newark Housing Authority apartment. It was reported on this day that the elder Kutcher faced the choice of evicting his son or moving out of public housing himself.
Kutcher turned to the American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully persuaded a court to issue a restraining order saving the Kutcher’s apartment and eleven other families who refused to swear that they were “loyal Americans.” (NYT article on the “legless veteran”)(see January 22, 1953)
December 29 Peace Love Art Activism
December 29 Music et al
Beatlemania percolates
December 29, 1963: New York city radio station WMCA joined others broadcasting “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” Back in London, the Sunday Times critic Richard Buckle praised the Beatles as the greatest composers since Beethoven. (see America Meets Beatlemania)
December 29, 1974: John Lennon, son Julian, and May Pang were at Disney World. A lawyer bearing the revised contract (breaking up the Beatles) turned up, and Lennon asked Pang to take out her camera. As Pang describes the scene in “Instamatic Karma,” Lennon had a last-minute telephone conference with his own lawyer.
“When John hung up the phone,” she wrote, “he looked wistfully out the window. I could almost see him replaying the entire Beatles experience.” Pang then photographed him signing just beneath the clearly legible signatures of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey ( Starr’s real name), the shutter clicking between the “h” and “n” of his first name.
Given that Lennon had been particularly militant about leaving the Beatles in 1969, it might seem odd to learn that he did so wistfully. Not to Pang.(next Beatles, see January 1975)
December 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Vietnam
December 29, 1964: South Vietnamese ranger units sent to help at Binh Gia were defeated. Another counterattack was also defeated. (VietnamGear.com article) (see Dec 30)
December 29 Peace Love Art Activism
BLACK HISTORY
Segregationist Federal Judge William Harold Cox
December 29, 1967: Federal Judge William Harold Cox, an ardent segregationist (Cox had criticized the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying in court, ”I don’t know anybody down here who don’t oppose it.”) sentenced the men who had been involved in the murders of the three Freedom Summer volunteers: James E. Chaney, 21, Andrew Goodman, 21, and Michael Schwerner, 24.
He imposed sentences of ten years on two men, six years on two other men, and the other three received four years.
Judge Cox said of his sentences, “They killed one nigger, one Jew, and a white man– I gave them all what I thought they deserved.”(next BH, see January 23, 1968; see next Murders for expanded chronology)
BLACK & SHOT/Tamir Rice
December 29, 2020: citing a lack of evidence, the US Justice Department announced that Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback would avoid federal criminal charges for their role in the killing of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Black boy who had been carrying a pellet gun when he was shot in 2014,
The announcement drew to a close a five-year federal investigation into the actions of then-Officer Loehmann and Garmbac, his partner.
Justice Department officials said that they could not establish that the officers involved in Tamir’s killing willfully violated his civil rights or that they knowingly made false statements with the intent of obstructing a federal investigation. [NYT article] (next B & S, see February 23, 2021)
December 29 Peace Love Art Activism
US Labor History
December 29, 1970: after years of intensive lobbying by the labor movement, a comprehensive national safety law is enacted as President Nixon signed the Occupational Safety & Health Act of 1970, creating the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. (see June 8, 1971)
United Mine Workers of America
December 29, 2014: the last union coal mine in Kentucky, a state where workers fought and died for the right to organize, closed. Patriot Coal announced the closing of its Highland Mine, which employed about 400 hourly workers. According to the Associated Press union leaders and retirees argued that increasing environmental regulations, a chaotic coal market, and anti-union political operatives have all contributed to the union’s undoing in Kentucky.
For the first time in about a century, in the state that was home to the gun battles of “Bloody Harlan,” not a single working miner belongs to a union. That has left a bad taste in the mouths of retirees: men like Charles Dixon, who heard the sputter of machine gun fire and bullets piercing his trailer in Pike County during a long strike with the A.T. Massey Coal Company in 1984 and 1985.
“I had my house shot up during that strike,” said Dixon, the United Mine Workers local president at the time. “I was just laying in bed and next thing you know you hear a big AR-15 unloading on it. Coal miners had it tough buddy, they sure have.” (next LH, see February 20, 2015)
December 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Daniel Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers
December 29, 1971: Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo were indicted on charges of theft of government documents and espionage for copying the Pentagon Papers and leaking them to the news media. The New York Times published the first story based on the Papers on June 13, 1971, creating a national sensation for its revelations about the history of American involvement in Vietnam. The Nixon administration obtained an injunction blocking further publication on June 15, 1971, but the Supreme Court declared the injunction unconstitutional in a historic freedom of the press case, United States v. New York Times, on June 30, 1971, which ruled the injunction an unconstitutional prior restraint of the press. Ellsberg and Russo were brought to trial; but in the middle of the trial, government misconduct against them was revealed and the charges were dismissed on May 11, 1973. The misconduct included the burglary of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist by the infamous “Plumbers” unit of President Nixon’s administration on September 9, 1971. (see Ellsbergfor expanded chronology)
December 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Crime and Punishment
December 29, 2016: the Department of Justice announced that the U.S. prison population had fallen the most in almost four decades to 1.53 million inmates in 2015, resulting in the lowest rate of incarceration in a generation.
The department said in its year-end report on prison populations that changes in federal and state corrections policies that included drug treatment programs and the sentencing of fewer nonviolent drug offenders to federal prisons drove the drop. (see January 1, 2017)
December 29 Peace Love Art Activism
LGBTQ
Native Americans/Cherokee Same-sex marriage
December 29, 2016: Cherokee National Attorney General Tom Hembree declared unconstitutional the tribal ban on marriage between “parties of the same gender.” The decision carries the force of law and legalizes same-sex marriage in the Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation, the second largest tribe in the United States, with about 300,000 members. (LGBTQ, see January 6, 2017; NA, see February 1, 2017)
Transgender & the military
December 29, 2017: the Trump administration decided not to appeal the December 22 rulings that blocked his ban of transgender persons in the military allowing the U.S. military to formally allow transgender citizens to sign up for service on January 1, 2018. (see January 8, 2018)
The notice “thanked me for my past service and said that my appointment was terminated, effective immediately,” said Patrick Sullivan, an epidemiologist at Emory University who worked on HIV testing programs. He was appointed to a four-year term in May 2016.
The council, known by the acronym PACHA, had advised the White House on HIV/AIDS policies since its founding in 1995. Members, who were not paid, offered recommendations on the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, a five-year plan responding to the epidemic. (see March 4, 2019)
December 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Voting Rights
December 29, 2017: Pennsylvania Judge P. Kevin Brobson of Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg said that the state’s Congressional districts were drawn to give Republicans an advantage, but they did not violate the state Constitution, ruling in a high-profile gerrymandering case with the potential to have major consequences on the 2018 midterm elections.
Brobson noted that Republicans hold 13 out of 18 Congressional seats in Pennsylvania, a perennial swing state that has one of the most extensively gerrymandered maps in the country. Nonetheless, the judge said that Democrats who brought suit had failed to articulate a legal “standard” for creating nonpartisan maps. [NYT report] (VR & PA, see January 22, 2018)
December 29 Peace Love Art Activism
Sexual Abuse of Children
December 29, 2021: the NY Times reported that Ghislaine Maxwell, the former companion to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, was convicted of conspiring with him for at least a decade to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
A federal jury in Manhattan found Ms. Maxwell, 60, the daughter of a British media mogul, guilty of sex trafficking and four of the five other charges against her. She was acquitted of one count of enticing a minor to travel across state lines to engage in an illegal sexual act.
Maxwell’s trial was widely seen as the courtroom reckoning that Mr. Epstein never had. Mr. Epstein, who was arrested in July 2019 at the age of 66, killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell the following month, the medical examiner ruled, while awaiting his own trial on sex trafficking charges. Ms. Maxwell was arrested a year later. (next SaoC, see January 20, 2022)
December 28, 1869: Uriah Stephens formed the Knights of Laborin Philadelphia. Initially a secret society, the Knights were able to organize workers around the country under the radar of management. They became an important force in the early days of labor organizing. (see January 13, 1874)
December 28 Peace Love Art Activism
BLACK HISTORY
TERRORISM
December 28, 1871: in Columbia, S.C., Sherod Childers, Evans Murphy, Hezekiah Porter, and William Montgomery received their sentencing for the Ku Klux Klan conspiracy in South Carolina. (BH, see May 22; Terrorism, see November 25, 1915)
Café Society
December 28, 1938: Café Society, a racially integrated nightclub opened in New York City on this evening. Primarily a jazz venue, Café Society had an avowed political purpose — including operating on an integrated basis. It is hard for many people to believe it, but nightclubs in New York City though the late 1930s were not racially integrated. Even the celebrated Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington established his national reputation, did not admit African-American customers. (The exception to this rule were some African-American clubs in Harlem, where whites seeking out jazz music were admitted.) Café Society, which advertised itself as “the right place for the wrong people,” poked fun at clubs that catered to the rich (referred to as “café society”). It had a shabbily dressed “doorman” who refused to open the doors of limousines.
Star performers at Café Society included Billie Holiday, Josh White and other jazz greats. It was widely believed that the initial funding for Café Society was secretly provided by the Communist Party. A second club, Café Society Uptown, opened in 1940. Both clubs closed during the Cold War in part because of attacks on founder/owner/manager Barney Josephson.
One of the star performers at Cafe Society was Hazel Scott, and African-American jazz pianist. Scott was the first African-American entertainer to have her own television network show, on the small and long-defunct Dumont Network. She was also active in left-wing political events and was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in July 1950. Her television show was cancelled a week later on July 29, 1950.
Augusta Savage
In 1939: the New York World’s Fair commissioned Augusta Savage to create a sculpture. She created a 16-foot plaster sculpture called Lift Every Voice and Sing. The piece was was destroyed at the close of the Fair. (next BH, see, Mar 19; see Savage for expanded story)
Snipers shot at desegregated busses
December 28, 1956: after Browder v Gayle ordered bus desegregation, the black community returned to the Montgomery buses but faced the threat of violence from some whites who resented the boycott and its results. In a terrifying development, snipers began to target the buses soon after integrated riding commenced.
On the evening of December 28, 1956, shots were fired into a desegregated bus traveling through an African American neighborhood. Rosa Jordan, a 22-year-old black woman who was eight months pregnant, was shot in both legs while sitting in the rear of the bus. She was transported to Oak Street General Hospital, but doctors were hesitant to remove a bullet lodged in her leg, fearing it could cause Jordan to give birth prematurely. She was told she would have to remain in the hospital for the duration of her pregnancy.
After the bus driver and passengers were questioned at police headquarters, the bus resumed service. Less than an hour later, in approximately the same neighborhood, the bus was again targeted by snipers but no one was hit. These shootings followed two earlier sniper attacks on Montgomery buses that occurred the week before but targeted buses carrying no passengers and resulted in no injuries.
On the night of Jordan’s shooting, Montgomery Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers ordered all buses to end service for the night. The following day, three city commissioners met with a bus company official and decided to suspend all night bus service after 5:00 p.m. until after the New Year’s holiday. The curfew policy did not end until January 22, 1957. (see MBB for expanded chronology)
Louis Armstrong
In 1957: although the blues and folk music had traditionally been associated with protest music, jazz had its contributors. The usually low-key Louis Armstrong cancelled a State Department-sponsored tour of the USSR in `957. “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell. The people over there ask me what’s wrong with my country. What am I supposed to say?” [NYT report] (see January 10, 1957)
Project for an Alabama Political Freedom Movement
December 28, 1964: Martin Luther King, Jr presented the Southern Christian Leadership Conference the “Project for an Alabama Political Freedom Movement,” a plan conceived by James Bevel that called for mass action and voter registration attempts in Selma and Dallas County. (see January 2, 1965)
December 28 Peace Love Art Activism
Technological Milestones
December 28, 1895: the world’s first commercial movie screening took place at the Grand Cafe in Paris. The film was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, two French brothers who developed a camera-projector called the Cinematographe. The Lumiere brothers unveiled their invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief film showing workers leaving the Lumiere factory. On December 28, the entrepreneurial siblings screened a series of short scenes from everyday French life and charged admission for the first time.(see December 2, 1901)
Elizabeth Jordan Carr
December 28, 1981: the first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, is born in Norfolk, Virginia.
In 2010 Carr gave birth to a baby boy. (TM, see December 2, 1982; WH, June 11, 1986)
December 28 Peace Love Art Activism
Pledge of Allegiance
Official
December 28, 1945: Congress officially recognized the Pledge of Allegiance and encouraged its recitation in schools. (see Pledge for expanded chronology)
Student Rights
December 28, 2018: Cypress Fairbanks ISD settled the case involving India Landry who was expelled (October 2, 2017) after she sat during the Pledge of Allegiance.
According to the student’s attorney, the district agreed to inform students of their right to not stand for the daily ritual with parental permission.
Landry’s case rested on the landmark 1943 U.S. Supreme Court case West Virginia v. Barnette. Justices ruled that schools could not require students to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. (SR & Pledge, see February 4, 2019; next Landry, see December 3, 2019)
December 28 Peace Love Art Activism
December 28 Music et al
December 28, 1959 – January 3, 1960: “Why” by Frankie Avalon [age 20] #1 Billboard Hot 100. “Why” is the last #1 of the 1950s. It was Avalon’s second and last #1 hit.
Brian Epstein
December 28, 1963: The New Yorker magazine published a Brian Epstein interview; regarded as first serious article in U.S. about the Beatles and their manager. (see Dec 29)
Miami Pop Festival 1968
December 28 – 30, 1968: The second Miami Pop Festival of 1968
Procol Harum
The Turtles
The Grass Roots
Three Dog Night
Jose Feliciano
The Blues Image
The Box Tops
Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Hugh Masekela
Pacific Gas and Electric
Fleetwood Mac
Richie Havens
The Sweet Inspirations
Joni Mitchell
Joe Tex
Jr. Walker & The Allstars
The McCoys
Sweetwater
The James Cotton Blues Band
Canned Heat
The Charles Lloyd Quartet
Booker T. & the M.G.’s
Ian & Sylvia
Country Joe and The Fish
Buffy St. Marie
Steppenwolf
The Amboy Dukes
Iron Butterfly
Chuck Berry
Flatt and Scruggs
Grateful Dead
Marvin Gaye
White album #1
December 28, 1968 – February 7, 1969: The Beatles, commonly known as the White Album, was the Billboard #1 album. (see January 13, 1969)
December 28 Peace Love Art Activism
Vietnam
December 28, 1964: advanced units of Viet Cong who had filtered unnoticed to the area around the strategic hamlet of Binh Giaattacked and overwhelmed the village militia. (see Dec 29)
December 28, 1974: George Maynard who had hidden the “Live Free or Die” motto on his New Hampshire license plate, was again charged with violating the license plate statute. (see Free Speech v License Platesfor expanded chronology)
December 28 Peace Love Art Activism
CLINTON IMPEACHMENT
December 28, 1997: Monica Lewinsky made her final visit to the White House, according to White House logs, and was signed in by Clinton secretary, Betty Currie. Lewinsky reportedly met privately with Clinton and he allegedly encouraged her to be “evasive” in her answers in the Jones’ lawsuit. (see Clinton Impeachment for expanded chronology)
December 28 Peace Love Art Activism
LGBTQ
December 28, 2017: the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld a $135,000 fine against two Christian bakers who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
The case had begun in January 2013, when Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of the since-closed Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery just outside Portland, Oregon, cited their religious beliefs when declining to make a wedding cake for Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer.
Following the incident, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries found the Kleins in violation of a 2007 state law that protects the rights of LGBTQ people in employment, housing and public accommodations. In 2015, the couple was ordered to pay the Bowman-Cryers emotional distress damages.
The Kleins appealed the decision in March 2017, arguing the state’s Bureau of Labor and Industries violated their rights as artists to free speech, their rights to religious freedom and their rights as defendants to a due process. [Statesman Journal report] (see Dec 29)
December 28 Peace Love Art Activism
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
