September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Cold War

Korea divided

September 8, 1945: U.S. troops land in Korea to begin their postwar occupation of the southern part of that nation, almost exactly one month after Soviet troops had entered northern Korea to begin their own occupation. Although the U.S. and Soviet occupations were supposed to be temporary, the division of Korea quickly became permanent. [NYT article]  (see Nov 16)

SEATO

September 8, 1954: the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization  formed. It was an international organization for collective defense in Southeast Asia created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, or Manila Pact. It was primarily created to block further communist gains in Southeast Asia. [Study dot com article] (see Nov 27)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Clyde Kennard

September 8, 1959: in 1955, Clyde Kennard, a black U.S. Army veteran and Mississippi native, had attempted to enroll in Mississippi Southern College, an all-white public university in the city of Hattiesburg. Mr. Kennard’s credentials met the criteria for admission, but his application was denied because he was unable to provide references from five alumni in his home county.

In December 1958, in a letter to a local newspaper, Mr. Kennard announced his intent to re-apply to the university. In response, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission – a state agency formed to protect segregation – hired investigators to research Mr. Kennard’s background and uncover details that could be used to discredit him; these attempts were unsuccessful. Soon after, Mr. Kennard withdrew his application after the governor of Mississippi personally requested that he do so.

On September 8, 1959, Mr. Kennard once again tried to apply for admission to Mississippi Southern College. In a letter written to the college’s administration, he declared that, if again rejected, he would sue the University for denying him admission based on his race. After he unsuccessfully tried to register for courses on September 15, 1959, Mr. Kennard was charged with illegal possession of alcohol.

Despite this legal retaliation, Mr. Kennard continued his attempts to register at Mississippi Southern. In September of 1960, he was arrested and charged with assisting in stealing $25 worth of chicken feed from a local store. Although there was little evidence against him, an all-white jury convicted him of being an accessory to burglary, and he was sentenced to seven years in state prison. [Northwestern article] (BH, see January 5, 1960; Kennard, see July 4, 1963)

James H Meredith

September 8, 1965: Columbia University Law School accepted Meredith. (BH, see Sept 24; Meredith, see June 5, 1966)

Black Panthers

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

September 8, 1968: a jury deliberated for four days and in the end come up with a compromise verdict, convicting Huey Newton of voluntary manslaughter. He was acquitted of the assault charge and the kidnap charges were dropped. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared the Black Panther Party “greatest threat to the internal security of the country”. [jrank dot org article] (see Sept 28)

BLACK & SHOT

September 8, 2015: the city of Baltimore reached a $6.4 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by the family of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old man black man who died in April after suffering a critical injury while in police custody. The settlement plan would go to the city’s spending oversight board on the following day for formal approval, the mayor’s office said. Gray’s death triggered sometimes violent protests, accompanied by devastating looting and arson in Baltimore, and prompted a national outcry. It ultimately led to the firing of Police Commissioner Anthony Batts. [Washington Post article]  (see Nov 15)

Colin Kaepernick

September 8, 2020: Colin Kaepernick made his return as a playable character on the sport’s biggest video game, “Madden 21.”

EA Sports announced that an update that allowed players to add Kaepernick to any NFL lineup for the first time since 2016. [NBC News story] (next BH, see Nov 2; next CK, see Nov 23 or see Kaepernick for expanded chronology)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Consumer Protection

September 8, 1961: statistical evidence linking heavy smoking with heart disease was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Drs. Daniel J Nathan and Dr. David M. Spain had studied 3,000 men. They found that for smokers of over 40 cigarettes daily and aged under 51 years, their chance of having coronary heart disease almost doubled. Further, among those studied that had coronary heart disease, 57% of heavy smokers suffered heart attacks, as compared to only 31% of light smokers. The doctors said it remained an “open question” whether the statistics were proof that heavy smoking was a cause of hardening of coronary arteries. Only a four-sentence article on page 3 appeared in the New York Times. (see January 11, 1964)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

United Farm Workers

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

September 8, 1965: Filipino American grape workers walk out on strike against Delano, California, table and wine grape growers, protesting years of poor pay and working conditions. Latino farm workers soon joined them, and the strike and subsequent boycott lasted more than five years. [UFW article]  (see Sept 16, 1965)

NJ Unions

September 8, 2015: another 16 New Jersey public worker unions asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether the state’s highest court erred by declaring a pension funding agreement between the state and employees unenforceable.

In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, lawyers for 16 labor groups — including the New Jersey Education Association, Communications Workers of America and the Policemen’s Benevolent Association — argued that the New Jersey Supreme Court should have applied the protections of the federal Contract Clause to the deal.

Hetty Rosenstein, state director for the CWA, that the organizations will “leave no stone unturned.”

“One way or another we will protect these pensions. We will never allow the state of New Jersey to destroy the pensions that 800,000 people depend on,” she said. (see Dec 4)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Cultural Milestone

September 8 Peace Love Activism

September 8, 1966: the TV series “Star Trek” premiered on NBC. (see February 5, 1967)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Watergate Scandal

September 8, 1974: though never indicted of any crimes, Gerald Ford gave an unconditional pardon to Richard Nixon.  [Ford’s pardon proclamation] (see Watergate for expanded story)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Religion and Public Education

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

September 8, 1981: voters in the Clear Creek, Iowa, school district voted overwhelmingly on this day to reject a proposal to make the Bible a textbook in the district’s schools. The vote was 689 to 90. The Iowa Civil Liberties Union hailed the vote as a victory over “religious zealots.” (Religion & Separation see January 6, 1983)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Dissolution of Yugoslavia

INDEPENDENCE DAY

September 8, 1991: the Republic of Macedonia becomes independent. [NYT article] (Yugo, see Oct 8; ID see Sept 9)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Iraq War II

September 8, 2006:  a Senate report faulted intelligence gathering in the lead-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. [NYT article] (see Nov 5)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Terry Jones

September 8, 2010:  Jones remained steadfast, claiming he has received more than 100 death threats and that he has begun carrying a pistol. That evening, Imam Muhammad Musri emerges from a meeting with Jones, saying he is hopeful Jones will change his mind. (see Sept 9)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Occupy Wall Street

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

September 8, 2011: “Chris” launched the Tumblr page, “We Are the 99 Percent,” (see Sept 17)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Westboro Baptist Church

September 8 Peace Love Activism

September 8, 2014: a new billboard with the message “Gods Loves Gays” debuted in Topeka, Kansas, the home city of the Westboro Baptist Church. “The Facebook God,” a satirical Facebook page with more than 1.7 million “likes,” raised more than $80,000 on the crowd-funding platform Indiegogo in order to mount the billboard. “This hate group goes around saying that God hates gay people,” an animated depiction of God says in a YouTube video uploaded to the Indiegogo page. “Nonsense! I love gay people. These Westboro psychos protest at the funerals of soldiers, murdered children and more. How dare they!” (see March 24, 2016)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

September 8, 2015: Kim Davis was released from jail but would not say whether she would begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, was not at work the next day. A lawyer for Ms Davis, Mathew D Staver, said Ms. Davis would “return soon.”. After spending five nights in jail, he said, Ms Davis “needs some rest and time with the family.”

Ms. Davis spoke at a rally after she was ordered freed, saying: “I just want to give God the glory. His people have rallied, and you are a strong people.” Kim Davis has emerged as a heroine to religious conservatives.

The Federal District Court judge who ordered Ms. Davis detained, David L Bunning, said she could go free because her office was “fulfilling its obligation to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.” But he warned Ms Davis not to interfere “directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.” [Washington Post article] (see Sept 14)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Sexual Abuse of Children & BSA

September 9, 2022: federal judge Laurie Selber Silverstein  gave final approval to the Boy Scouts of America’s plan to exit bankruptcy, marking an end to the largest sexual abuse case against a single organization in American history.

Silverstein confirmed the plan a little more than a month after signaling she would do so in a 300-plus page opinion that found a trust at the heart of Scouts’ proposal would be adequate to compensate victims of abuse.

Silverstein had rejected one portion of the plan in her July opinion: A $250 million settlement with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which she said would protect the church from claims of abuse that weren’t directly tied to Scouting. Scouts subsequently scrapped the settlement, leaving victims with claims against the church free to pursue them outside the bankruptcy.

Central to the bankruptcy plan was a $2.46 billion trust fund for survivors — down from $2.7 billion without the contribution from the Mormon church. In return, the Boy Scouts of America and local councils, troops’ sponsors and insurance companies that contributed to the fund can no longer be sued for past abuse. Abuse victims will be able to file separate claims against the Mormon church and insurance companies who did not settle.  [USA Today article] (next BSA, see ; next SAoC, see )

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

September 8, 2023: Mexico’s supreme court decriminalized abortion nationwide.

The judgement came two years after the court ruled in favor of a challenge to the existing law in the northern state of Coahuila. It had ruled that criminal penalties for terminating pregnancies were unconstitutional.

Mexico’s states and the federal government had since been slow to repeal penal codes. The new ruling legalized abortion across all 32 states.

The supreme court said the denial of the possibility of a termination violated the human rights of women. [BBC article] (next WH, see Sept 28)

September 8 Peace Love Art Activism

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959

When we boomers fell in love with the Beatles and enthusiastically poured more gasoline on Beatlemania’s already raging conflagration, we congratulated ourselves on finding such wonderful new music.

Ah, youth! forever dear, forever kind.

And forever naive.

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

American music

The Beatles, of course, like most of the world’s young people who loved rock and roll, fell in love with American rock music: the descendant and combination of the blues, country, and gospel music. I imagine that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were a bit dumbfounded to hear our discovery of their “new” music. They knew that they were doing their best to come up with something new, yes, but thoroughly based on the American music they so loved.

Like that of Charles Hardin Buddy Holly.

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

Buddy Holly

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

Charles Hardin Holley was born on September 7, 1936  in Lubbock, Texas and played several instruments as a child, but it was the guitar that he settled on.

And he dropped the e from his last name.

He and his band, the Western and Bop Band, performed throughout the southwest. Nashville’s Decca Records signed Holly: Buddy Holly and the Two Tunes, later Buddy Holly and the Three Tones.

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

Success then release

Decca released a few singles before dropping the band. Holly and his band mates returned to Lubbock. During this time Holly developed his singer-songwriter skills and the band became a local favorite to open for touring musicians. The most important gig was opening for Elvis. That experience shifted Holly to rock and roll.

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

Norman Petty

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

On February 25, 1957 Buddy Holly and the Crickets were in Norman Petty’s Clovis, NM studio. They recorded another version of: “That’ll Be the Day.”

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

Peggy Sue

The song attracted national attention and a national tour. “Peggy Sue” was a #3 hit here and a hit in the UK where young musicians like John, Paul, George, and Ringo were just starting out. A 1958 tour in England gave Holly and even bigger presence there.

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

It was while on the 1958 Winter Dance Party Tour that Holly decided to take the plane and not the bus.

On February 3, 1959 that plane crashed just outside Mason City, Iowa killing all on board including the Big Bopper and Richie Valens.

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

Quarrymen

Holly’s influence continued beyond his death. The Quarrymen eventually changed their name to the Beatles in homage to Holly’s Crickets. They also slowly developed their own singer-songwriter abilities, the hallmark of the most successful musicians whom the 1960s–and beyond–produced.

Charles Hardin Buddy Holly

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Avondale Mine disaster

September 6, 1869: one of the worst disasters in the history of U.S. anthracite mining occurred at the Avondale Mine, near Scranton, Pa., when a fire originating from a furnace at the bottom of a 237-foot shaft roared up the shaft, killing 110 miners. (see Dec 28)

National textile strike of 1934

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

September 6, 1934: strikebreakers and special deputies opened fire on the 300 textile workers picketing the Chiquola Mill in Honea Path, South Carolina, killing six people and wounding dozens of others; a seventh man died the next day from his wounds. The national textile strike of 1934 saw nearly half a million textile workers from New England, the Mid Atlantic, and the South walk off the job to demand better wages and working conditions. (see Sept 12)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Anarchism in the US

September 6, 1901: Leon Czolgosz, a Polish citizen associated with the Anarchist movement  shot President William McKinley twice in the stomach while McKinley was attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley had been greeting the public in a receiving line. Czolgosz later confessed to the crime, signing a statement saying that the last public speaker he had heard was Emma Goldman, but added she had never told him to kill the president. (Biography article) (see Sept 10, 1901)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Cultural Milestone

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

September 6, 1916: Clarence Saunders opened the first self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, in Memphis, Tenn. [Piggly Wiggly site] (see October 28, 1919)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

12 Prisoners suffocated

September 6, 1913: twelve Black men held at a prison farm in Richmond, Texas, were placed in an underground cell as punishment for not picking cotton fast enough. Eight of those men died of asphyxiation. The cell was nine feet long, seven feet wide, and seven feet high, and temperatures outside neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The only ventilation in the cell came from four small holes connected to pipes in the ceiling that were “just large enough to admit a quarter.” The next day, inspectors found that one of the holes had been plugged. [EJI story] (next BH, see March 31, 1914)

Emmett Till

September 6, 1955: Emmett Till was buried at Burr Oak Cemetery. The same day, a grand jury in Mississippi indicted Milam and Bryant for the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till. They both plead innocent. They will be held in jail until the start of the trial.  (see Emmett Till)

Mississippi Southern College

September 6, 1965: after previous failed attempts, Clyde Kennard, Raylawn Young Branch, and Elaine Armstrong became the first African-American students enrolled at Mississippi Southern College (now University of Southern Mississippi). Branch had served as Forrest County NAACP secretary and as an active member of SNCC, CORE and SCLC. [more on Clyde Kennard] (see Sept 8)

Atlanta revolt

September 6, 1966: 4 days of rioting in Atlanta, GA. Authorities blamed without evidence SNCC and its leader Stockley Carmichael. (BH, see Sept 12; RR, see June 2, 1967)

Equal Justice Initiative

September 6, 2010: in September 2010, lawyers at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a nonprofit civil rights law firm in Montgomery, Alabama, mailed a copy of Slavery by Another Name to client Mark Melvin, then incarcerated at Kilby Correctional Facility. Written by award-winning journalist Douglas Blackmon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book documents the little known history of convict leasing in Alabama in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As the book’s title suggests, the exploitative and inhumane convict leasing system strongly resembled slavery. Under the pretext of criminal punishment, African Americans arrested on frivolous charges were sold to plantations, turpentine farms, mining companies, and railroads and forced to work in perilous conditions to pay off “debt” accumulated from unjust court costs and fines.

Deciding that the book’s title was “too provocative,” Kilby prison officials prohibited Mark Melvin from receiving Slavery by Another Name when it arrived in the mail. When Melvin used the internal grievance process to appeal the book’s banning, prison officials defended their decision and insisted the book was properly banned under a rule prohibiting material that incites “violence based on race, religion, sex, creed, or nationality, or disobedience toward law enforcement officials or correctional staff.” Alabama prison officials had previously limited prisoners’ access to portrayals of Southern racial history; in the early 2000s, wardens in some Alabama prisons prohibited prisoners from watching a re-broadcast of the Roots miniseries.

In September 2011, represented by EJI lawyers, Mark Melvin sued the Alabama Department of Corrections to be able to read Slavery By Another Name. The civil litigation was settled in February 2013, when state officials finally agreed to allow prisoners to read the book.  [EJI site] (see Nov 15)

BLACK & SHOT

September 6, 2018: Dallas police officer Amber Guyger fatally shot Botham Shem Jean, a neighbor inside his apartment. Police said that Guyger claimed that she mistook his apartment for her own and believed he was an intruder.

After completing her shift, Guyger, still in her uniform, went to her apartment building across the street from the Dallas Police Department’s headquarters, but she  did not go to her own unit and instead tried to enter the residence of Jean.

She then shot him, the authorities said. (B & S and BSJ, see Sept 9)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

September 6, 1966: Margaret Sanger, the most famous advocate of birth control in American history, died on this day at age 86. She opened the first birth control clinic in the US, on October 16, 1916, and was arrested for doing so a week later, along with her sister. She rejected a plea bargain and served one month in jail. Sanger’s career as a birth control advocate was filled with many dramatic events in addition to her arrest and jailing. Her magazine, Woman Rebel, was banned from the mails.  After her release from jail in 1917, she produced a short film, Birth Control, which had one private showing on May 16, 1917, after which it was banned. No print is known to survive. She was prevented from speaking on a number of occasions. Sanger’s organization, the American Birth Control League, evolved into today’s Planned Parenthood Federation. (NYT obit) (next WH, see April 6, 1967; Sanger, see July 21, 2020)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

September 6, 1968: Swaziland independent from United Kingdom. [2018 Guardian article on name change] (see IDs for full list of 1960s Independence days)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

September 6 Music et al

Midwest Pop

September 6, 1969: First Annual Midwest Mini-Pop Festival, (Cleveland Zoo) (see Midwest for more))

Jimi Hendrix

September 6, 1970: Hendrix played at the Love and Peace Festival on the Isle of Fehmarn in Germany. He was supposed to play the day before but couldn’t because of bad weather. The festival was not very successful financially and many of the scheduled bands didn’t perform. Hendrix decided to stick around. He had been paid in advance. There were only about 10,000 people that saw him perform. They did not realize that they were watching history being made. It was the last concert Jimi would ever play. (see JH for more)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Technological Milestone

September 6, 1978: US scientists announced the production of human-type insulin by a strain of E. coli bacteria, that had been genetically engineered after months of creative use of gene-splicing techniques. The work was a joint effort by research teams in California at the biochemical firm, Genentech Inc, San Francisco and the City of Hope National Medical Center, Los Angeles. A normal body’s production of insulin takes place within cells of the pancreas, programmed by certain genes (segments of DNA). The scientists synthesized copies of these genes and inserted them into a weakened lab strain of the intestinal microbe Escherichia coli. In 1982, insulin was the first recombinant DNA drug to be marketed, Humulin by Eli Lilly & Co [Gene dot com article] (see July 2, 1979)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Cannabis

September 6, 1988: Administrative law judge Francis Young was asked by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1988 to comment on the merits of rescheduling marijuana in response to NORML’s 1972 petition. Young suggested that marijuana be rescheduled from schedule I to schedule II for nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy. He also concluded that the evidence was insufficient to warrant the use of crude marijuana for glaucoma or pain. (next Cannabis, see December 30, 1989 or see CCC for expanded chronology)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

September 6, 2005: the California legislature became the first state legislature to pass a freedom to marry bill. The landmark bill was vetoed soon after passage by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Two years later, the legislature again passed a marriage bill, and again, it was vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger.  [Washington Post article] (California, see May 15, 2008; LGBTQ, see Oct 1, 2005)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Terry Jones

September 6, 2010:  an Afghan imam in Kabul convened a demonstration in which protesters burn an effigy of Jones and chant “Death to America.” (see Sept 7)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Stop and Frisk Policy

September 6, 2011: a day after being stopped and detained by the NYPD, City Councilman Jumaane Williams and others urge for reforms to the stop-and-frisk policy. (see Oct 19)

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

September 6, 2023: the Biden administration announced that it would prohibit drilling in 13 million acres of pristine wilderness in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and cancel all drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The new regulations would ensure what the administration called “maximum protections” for nearly half of the petroleum reserve but would not stop the enormous $8 billion Willow oil drilling project in the same vicinity, which President Biden approved this year. [NYT article]

Hottest Summer on Record

September 6, 2023: according to data from the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2023’s June to August was the planet’s warmest such period since records began in 1940,.

The global average temperature for the summer was 16.77 degrees Celsius (62.19 Fahrenheit), according to Copernicus, which was 0.66 degrees Celsius above the 1990 to 2020 average – beating the previous record, set in August 2019, by nearly 0.3 degrees Celsius.

Typically these records, which track the average air temperature across the entire world, were broken by hundredths of a degree. [CNN article] (next EI, see Oct 11 )

September 6 Peace Love Art Activism