September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
Feminism
Equal Rights Party
September 20, 1884: a group of American suffragists formed the Equal Rights Party in San Francisco, dedicated to “equal and exact justice to every class of our citizens, without distinction of color, sex, or nationality” and in support of the proposition that “the laws of the several states be so amended that women will be recognized as voters, and their property-rights made equal with that of the male population, to the end that they may become self-supporting – rather than a dependent class.”
The party nominated and ran Belva Ann Lockwood for President that year. (see March 1886)
“Battle of the Sexes”
September 20, 1973: in a highly publicized “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, top women’s player Billie Jean King, 29, beat Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men’s player. Riggs (1918-1995), a self-proclaimed male chauvinist, had boasted that women were inferior, that they couldn’t handle the pressure of the game and that even at his age he could beat any female player. The match was a huge media event, witnessed in person by over 30,000 spectators at the Houston Astrodome and by another 50 million TV viewers worldwide. King made a Cleopatra-style entrance on a gold litter carried by men dressed as ancient slaves, while Riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by female models. Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell called the match, in which King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. King’s achievement not only helped legitimize women’s professional tennis and female athletes, but it was seen as a victory for women’s rights in general. [NYT pdf: King defeats Riggs] (see Nov 12)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
BLACK HISTORY
US Labor History
September 20, 1891: African American sharecroppers affiliated with the Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Union go on strike for higher wages and an end to peonage in Lee County, Arkansas. By the time a white mob – led by the local sheriff – put down the strike, more than a dozen people had been killed. [TSHA article] (BH, see March 9, 1892; Labor, see Oct 31)
Emmett Till
September 20, 1955: Judge Curtis Swango recesses the court to allow more witnesses to be found. It is the first time in Mississippi history that local law enforcement, local NAACP leaders and black and white reporters team up to locate sharecroppers who saw Milam’s truck and overheard Emmett being beaten. (see Emmett Till)
see Martin Luther King, Jr assassination attempt for more
September 20, 1958: Dr Aubre de L Maynard, chief of surgery at Harlem Hospital, removed a letter opener from the chest of Martin Luther King, Jr. Izola Ware Curry had stabbed King with a steel letter opener while he signed copies of his book, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. Curry also carried a fully loaded .25-calibre automatic.
In 1968, the day before he was assassinated, King spoke to a group and referred to this incident:
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply,
| Dear Dr. King,
I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.” And she said, While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze. |
And I want to say tonight — I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. (BH, see Sept 27; MLK, see January 24, 1960; Curry, see March 7, 2015) (PDF NYT article: MLK stabbed)
James H Meredith
September 20, 1962: defying orders of the Federal courts, Mississippi Governor Ross R Barnett denied Meredith admission to the University of Mississippi. The Justice Department immediately obtained contempt of court citations against Dr J D Williams, university chancellor; Dr Robert B Ellis, registrar, and Dean Anthony B Lewis. (see September 25, 1962)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
Vietnam
September 20, 1965: eleven U.S. warplanes were shot down over North and South Vietnam. (see Sept 25)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
September 20 Music et al
Beatles break-up
September 20, 1969: John Lennon announced to the others that he was leaving the band. (see Sept 26)
Blind Faith
September 20, 1969 – October 3, 1969: Blind Faith’s Blind Faith is the Billboard #1 album. (article about cover)
“Sugar, Sugar”
September 20 – October 17, 1969: “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. This was the most successful song in the bubblegum rock genre. There was no actual Archies group but a group of studio musicians who played behind the animated Archie TV characters.
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
Calvin Graham
September 20, 1976: Graham again requested an honorable discharge from the Navy. (see Calvin Graham)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
TERRORISM
East Beirut, Lebanon
September 20, 1984: the Shi’a Islamic militant group Hezbollah, with support and direction from the Islamic Republic of Iran, carried out a suicide car bombing targeting the U.S. embassy annex in East Beirut, Lebanon. The attack killed 24 people. including 2 U.S. military. [NYT article] (see Dec 4)
Oklahoma City Explosion
September 20, 1994: Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh rented a storage shed and began gathering supplies for the truck bomb they would use in Oklahoma City.(see April 19, 1995)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
Native Americans
September 20, 1998: California made Native American Day an official state holiday. [Day’s site] (see March 22, 1999)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
Japanese Internment Camps
September 20, 2006: The Heart Mountain Relocation Center, which had held almost 11,000 Japanese-Americans interned during World War II, was designated a National Historic Landmark on this day, to be maintained by the National Park Service. The closest town to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center is Ralston, Wyoming, with a population of less than 300 people, about 76 miles from Billings, Montana. [HM site] (see Dec 21)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
LGBTQ
September 20, 2011: the US military officially ended its policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” allowing gay and lesbian personal to publicly declare their sexual orientation. [HRC article] (see Sept 29)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
Environmental Issues
People’s Climate March
September 20, 2014: hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from around the world turned out for the massive People’s Climate March, filling the streets of midtown Manhattan with demands for global leaders take action to avert catastrophic climate change. [Huff Post article] (see Dec 17)
States sue NHTFA
September 20, 2019: two days after Trump’s announcement, California, 22 other states and several major cities filed a lawsuit in federal court against the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is the division of the Department of Transportation that issued the rule revoking California’s authority.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the complaint stated that the move “exceeds NHTSA’s authority, contravenes Congressional intent, and is arbitrary and capricious, and because NHTSA has failed to conduct the analysis required under the National Environmental Policy Act.”
The NEPA, signed into law in 1970, was considered a kind of “national charter” for regulating the protection of the environment. (next EI, see Sept 25)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
FREE SPEECH & Colin Kaepernick
September 20, 2016: in support of Colin Kaepernick’s protest against racial injustice, several members of Oakland Unified School District’s Honor Band took a knee while playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It happened toward the end of the song.
Band director Zack Pitt-Smith said he didn’t know until rehearsal that the band was going to kneel, saying that the idea originally came from a few students and eventually spread around. John Sasaki, a spokesperson for the school district, stated that the organization was “proud” of its students for making the decision to kneel:
“They knew that this was a controversial issue across our nation, and yet they decided to go ahead with their protest knowing it would not be well-received by some Americans.”
That evening, during his appearance on Conan, Marshawn Lynch was asked about his thoughts on Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem. Lynch said he’d rather see Kaepernick “take a knee than stand up, put his hands up, and get murdered.” [East Bay Times article] (FS & CK, see Sept 21)
September 20 Peace Love Art Activism
Nuclear/Chemical News
Three-Mile Island
September 20, 2019: Three Mile Island’s single remaining reactor (Unit 1) generated its last kilowatt of energy and closed, a victim not of the anti-nuclear movement but rather of simple economics. Even though the plant is licensed to operate until 2034, Exelon Generation is ceasing operations after the state of Pennsylvania earlier this year refused to throw the company a financial lifeline that would have kept it open. (see Oct 5)