October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Labor history

Working Man’s Advocate

October 31, 1829: George Henry Evans published the first issue of the Working Man’s Advocate, “edited by a Mechanic” for the “useful and industrious classes” in New York City. He focused on the inequities between the “portion of society living in luxury and idleness” and those “groaning under the oppressions and miseries imposed on them.” (see March 13, 1830)

Coal Creek War

October 31, 1891: during the spring of 1891, free miners working for the Tennessee Coal Mining Company went on strike in Briceville, Tennessee, after the company demanded that all miners sign an iron-clad contract with draconian terms. In response to the strike, the company evicted the miners from their homes, built a stockade, and leased dozens of state prisoners to replace the free workers. Using convict labor, the mine reopened on July 5, 1891.

Two weeks later, on July 14, three hundred armed miners stormed the stockade and marched the convicts out of the valley, shutting down the mine once more. In response, Governor John P. Buchanan marched the state militia into the valley and, on July 16, met the miners just north of Briceville to plead for peace. The miners refused to accept the mining company’s treatment, and instead demanded that the governor enforce the state’s laws against iron-clad contracts.

When the miners seized control of the Briceville mine again, on July 20, Governor Buchanan requested a 60-day truce so that he could present the miners’ claims to the Tennessee legislature. The legislature subsequently rejected the miners’ demands, and tensions flared once more.

On October 31, 1891, the miners stormed the Briceville mine and burned the stockades to the ground, freeing more than 500 leased convicts and placing them on trains headed out of the Coal Creek Valley. Free miners in other towns soon followed suit; the conflict spread across the Cumberland Plateau and lasted several months until the militia launched a crackdown in the summer of 1892, leading to the arrests of hundreds of miners. Known as the “Coal Creek War,” this clash ultimately brought about the miners’ goal: the Tennessee legislature abolished convict leasing to private companies on January 1, 1894.

While the free miners no longer had to compete with convict labor, the Coal Creek War did not end the practice of forcing state convicts – mostly “able bodied young colored men” – to labor in mines. Instead, convicts were now shipped to Brushy Mountain and forced to mine coal for the state of Tennessee. By 1904, the state claimed $200,000 per year in profits from convict labor.  (see January 7, 1892)

Chicago Teachers Strike

October 31, 2019: Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union agreed to a five-year contract agreement.

The city agreed to spend millions of dollars on reducing class sizes; promised to pay for hundreds more social workers, nurses and librarians; and approved a 16 percent salary increase over the coming five years. But not all union members were satisfied; a vote to approve a tentative deal was noticeably split, and some teachers wanted to press on to seek steeper reductions in class sizes, more teacher preparation time and aid for special education. [NYT story] (next LH, see Nov 25)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Silas Ester lynched

October 31, 1901: authorities in Hadgenville, Kentucky had arrested Silas Ester accusing him of coercing a young boy to commit a crime. At approximately 2:00 am a lynch mob of more than 50 white men tightened a noose around the neck Esters’s neck and dragged him from the LaRue County Jail.

Police officers at the jail had surrendered the keys and made no effort to protect  Esters.

In an attempt to escape his fate, Mr. Esters slipped free and began to run away – but made it only 100 yards before his body was riddled with bullets. The mob then placed the rope noose around the neck of his corpse, dragged the lifeless body to the courthouse, and swung it from the top steps. No one was ever held accountable for the lynching of Silas Esters. (next BH & Lynching, see February 6, 1902; for for expanded chronology, see American Lynching 2)

see George Whitmore, Jr for full story

October 31, 1964: police disclosed that they were questioning another unidentified suspect in the Wylie-Hoffert case. The suspect was identified as a white 19-year-old narcotics addict who had a record of burglary and sexual assault. (Evidently the suspect was Richard Robles, although Robles is not 19 but in his early 20s.

Jacksonville, FL race revolt

October 31, 1969: a race revolt in Jacksonville, FL. The trouble started when a white truck driver accused a 20-year-old black man of stealing from his truck. The white man shot the black man, triggering two hours of violence and looting.  Windows were smashed and TV sets, furniture and appliances were stolen, with losses estimated at $125,000. Three vehicles were burned. Two people were injured by gunfire and a policeman was struck by a brick.  The police arrested 11 people – 10 of them were charged not with vandalism or looting but with using profanity and failing to obey police officers. A teenager was charged with looting, but rather than calming matters, that arrest led to the gathering of an angry crowd that didn’t disperse until four squad cars arrived. (BH, see February 21, 1970; RR, see May 11, 1970) (NYT article)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

see October 31 Music et al for more

Quarry Men

October 31, 1959: Quarry Men auditioned for Carrol Levis Show in Liverpool. During this audition period, the band would change its name from “Quarry Men” to “Johnny and the Moondogs” by November 15. On that day, they lose out for the Carrol Levis finals. (see Nov 15)

Five years later…

October 31, 1963:  The Beatles were trying to walk through Heathrow Airport, London, where they’d just returned from a successful tour of Sweden. Also at Heathrow that particular day, after a talent-scouting tour of Europe, was the American television impresario Ed Sullivan. The pandemonium that Sullivan witnessed as he attempted to catch his flight to New York would play a pivotal role in making the British Invasion possible. Sullivan had his staff make inquiries about the Beatles following his return to the United States, and Brian Epstein arranged to travel to New York to open negotiations. (see Nov 2)

Nice ‘n’ Easy

October 31 – November 6, 1960: Frank Sinatra’s Nice ‘n’ Easy Billboard #1 album.

“Baby Love”

October 31  – November 27, 1964: “Baby Love” by the Supremes #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

People

October 31 – December 4, 1964: Barbara Streisand’s People is the Billboard #1 album.

LSD

October 31, 1966:  San Francisco, California (Acid Test Graduation at Winterland) (see Graduation for expanded story)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Cold War  & Nuclear News

October 31, 1961, : Soviet Union above-ground nuclear test. 5 megaton. (NYT article) (see Dec 1)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Americans with disabilities

Community Mental Health Act

October 31, 1963: The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 (CMHA) (also known as the Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act, Mental Retardation Facilities and Construction Act, Public Law 88-164, or the Mental Retardation and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act of 1963) was an act to provide federal funding for community mental health centers. This legislation was passed as part of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. It led to considerable de-institutionalization. In 1984 it was renamed the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act.

TTY

In 1964 in California, deaf orthodontist Dr. James C. Marsters of Pasadena sent a teletype machine to deaf scientist Robert Weitbrecht, asking him to find a way to attach the TTY to the telephone system. Weitbrecht modified an acoustic coupler and gave birth to “Baudot,” a code that is still used in TTY communication. (ADA, see July 2, 1964; TM, see April 30)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

Bien Hoa Air Base

October 31, 1964: three days before the U.S. presidential election, Vietcong mortars shelled Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon killing five Americans and wounding 30. Five B-57 bombers are destroyed, and 15 are damaged. (see Nov 10)

LBJ

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

October 31, 1968: President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam, saying he hoped for fruitful peace negotiations. (NYT article) (see Nov 1)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH & Pledge of Allegiance

October 31, 1969: two 12-year-old girls in Brooklyn went to court on this day to assert their right to remain seated in class while other students recited the Pledge of Allegiance. One of the students, Mary, said she refused to recite the pledge because she doesn’t believe that “the actions of this country at this time warrant my respect.” (The Vietnam War was still raging at this time.) The seventh graders had been suspended four weeks earlier in what the school board’s attorney described as a simple matter of school discipline and not one of First Amendment law. Allowing the girls to remain seated, he claimed, would be “disruptive.”

The girls were represented by lawyers for the New York Civil Liberties Union, who cited the famous Supreme Court case of West Virginia v. Barnette, decided on June 14, 1943, in which the Court upheld the right of Jehovah’s Witness’s children not to salute the American flag as required by their school.(FS, see March 18, 1970; see Pledge for expanded story)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

October 31, 1972: The Trail of Broken Treaties was a twenty-point manifesto adopted by Native American activists at a meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on this day. The twenty points/demands included a Commission to Review Treaty Commitments & Violations, and that All Indians to be Governed by Treaty Relations. (link to manifesto) (see Nov 2)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Pregnancy Discrimination Act

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

October 31, 1978: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act amended Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, making it unlawful for an employer to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions. (see Dec 4)

Women’s Health

October 31, 2013:  a federal appeals court ruled that the part of a Texas anti-abortion law that was struck down by a district court would be allowed to take effect while legal challenges proceed. The provisions will cause at least one-third of the state’s licensed health centers that currently provide abortion to stop offering the service immediately. [NYT article] (BC, see Nov 4; Texas, see June 27, 2016)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Stop and Frisk Policy

Fourth Amendment

October 31, 2013: the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that Judge Scheindlin “ran afoul” of the judiciary’s code of conduct by showing an “appearance of partiality surrounding this litigation.” The panel criticized how she had steered the lawsuit to her courtroom when it was filed in early 2008. The ruling effectively puts off a battery of changes that Judge Scheindlin, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, had ordered for the Police Department. Those changes include postponing the operations of the monitor who was given the task to oversee reforms to the department’s stop-and-frisk practices, which Judge Scheindlin found violated the Fourth and 14th Amendments of the Constitution. [NYT PDF] (next S & F, see Nov 6; next 4th, see Dec 31)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Cannabis

October 31, 2018:  Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that an absolute ban on recreational use of marijuana was unconstitutional, effectively leaving it to lawmakers to regulate consumption of the drug.

Announcing it had found in favor of two legal challenges filed against prohibition of recreational marijuana use, Mexico’s top court crossed the threshold needed to create jurisprudence: five similar rulings on the matter. (see Nov 6 or see CCC for expanded cannabis chronology)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

TERRORISM

October 31, 2018: court papers submitted by authorities showed that Cesar Sayoc, Jr had been planning his campaign for at least three months. [NYT article] (next Terrorism, see Dec 7; Sayoc, see March 21, 2019)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment Inquiry

October 31, 2019: the House of Representatives voted to endorse the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry into President Trump, in an action that set up a critical new public phase of the process.

The vote was 232-196 to approve a resolution that set out rules for an impeachment process for which there were few precedents and which promised to consume the country a little more than a year before the 2020 elections. It was only the third time in modern history that the House had taken a vote on an impeachment inquiry into a sitting president.

Two Democrats broke with their party to vote against the measure, while Republicans — under immense pressure from Trump to shut down the impeachment inquiry altogether — unanimously opposed it.

Minutes after the vote, the White House press secretary denounced the process as “a sham impeachment” and “a blatantly partisan attempt to destroy the president.” [NYT article] (see TII for expanded chronology)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

October 31, 2019: North Dakota state environmental regulators said that the Keystone pipeline system leaked about 383,000 gallons of crude oil. The spill occurred in a low-gradient drainage area near the small town of Edinburg in northeast North Dakota, less than 50 miles from the Canadian border, according to Karl Rockeman, the director of the state Department of Environmental Quality’s division of water quality.

“It is one of the larger spills in the state,” he said. [NYT story] (see Nov 4)

October 31 Peace Love Art Activism

October 31 Music et al

October 31 Music et al

Quarrymen

October 31, 1959: the Quarry Men auditioned for Carroll Levis Show in Liverpool. During this audition period, the band would change its name from “Quarry Men” to “Johnny and the Moondogs” by November 15. On that day, they lose out for the finals. (see Nov 15)

Frank Sinatra, Nice ‘n’ Easy

October 31 – November 6, 1960: Frank Sinatra’s Nice ‘n’ Easy Billboard #1 album. Sinatra sang all the songs, with the exception of the title song, as ballads. Nelson Riddle arranged and conducted the album The title song was a last-minute substitute for the originally planned “The Nearness of You”, that did not appear on the original LP.

October 31 Music et al

The Supremes, Baby Love

October 31 Music et al

October 31 Music et al

October 31  – November 27, 1964: “Baby Love” by the Supremes #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was Written and produced by Motown’s main production team Holland–Dozier–Holland.

October 31 Music et al

Ed Sullivan meets the Beatles

October 31, 1963:  The Beatles were trying to walk through Heathrow Airport, London, where they’d just returned from a successful tour of Sweden. Also at Heathrow that particular day, after a talent-scouting tour of Europe, was the American television impresario Ed Sullivan. The pandemonium that Sullivan witnessed as he attempted to catch his flight to New York would play a pivotal role in making the British Invasion possible. Sullivan had his staff make inquiries about the Beatles following his return to the United States, and Brian Epstein arranged to travel to New York to open negotiations. (see Nov 2)

Barbara Streisand, People

October 31 – December 4, 1964: Barbra Streisand’s People is the Billboard #1 album. Jule Styne composed the song with lyrics by Bob Merrill for the 1964 Broadway musical Funny Girl.

LSD

October 31, 1966:  San Francisco, California (Acid Test Graduation at Winterland) (see Graduation for full story)

October 31 Music et al

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Anarchism in the US and Emma Goldman

 October 30, 1906: police arrested Goldman in Manhattan while attending an anarchist meeting called to protest police suppression of free speech at a previous meeting. She was charged with unlawful assembly for the purpose of overthrowing the government under the new criminal laws against anarchy. (NYT article) (see Goldman for her story)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 30, 1947,  McCarthyism

HUAC
  • Ring Lardner, Jr., an Oscar-winning screenwriter, refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) about his political beliefs and associations. As a result, he was convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to prison. Lardner was one of the “Hollywood Ten,” who refused to cooperate with HUAC, went to prison, and were then blacklisted by the film industry. He famously told the committee that he could answer one of their questions, but “I would hate myself in the morning.” Variety magazine commented about the end of the HUAC Hollywood hearings: “Commie Carnival Closes: An Egg is Laid.” Lardner later earned his second Academy Award as the screenwriter of the enormously successful film M*A*S*H (1970), which then became the basis for the hugely successful and Emmy-winning television series of the same name.The Hearing.
  • The famous German playwright Bertolt Brecht testified before HUAC on this day as one of the hostile witnesses in the HUAC investigation of alleged Communist influence in Hollywood. The day after his testimony, Brecht left the U.S. for East Germany and never returned. Brecht is best known among Americans as the co-author of the musical, Threepenny Opera, with composer Kurt Weill, which features the now-famous song, Mack the Knife. One of the ironies of Threepenny Opera is the Brecht was a committed Marxist and yet earned considerable income from the original state production in Germany and then considerably more from the royalties from Mack the Knife. (see Nov 24)
The Photo League

October 30, 1951: The Photo League was a non-profit organization created in 1936 to promote photography as an art form. It conducted photography classes, held exhibitions, and sponsored photography projects.

A number of its members held left-wing political views and sought to use photography to promote social justice. Because of its members’ political views, the League was included in the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (ordered by President Harry Truman on March 21, 1947, and published on December 4, 1947). Membership and support quickly fell off, and the League formally disbanded on this day, a victim of the Cold War anti-Communist hysteria. [2012 Time article] (see Dec 13)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear  Weapons

NSC 162/2

October 30, 1953: President Eisenhower formally approved National Security Council Paper No. 162/2 (NSC 162/2). The top secret document made clear that America’s nuclear arsenal must be maintained and expanded to meet the communist threat. It also made clear the connection between military spending and a sound American economy. [PDF] (see Dec 8)

USSR/58 megaton

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 30, 1961: the Soviet Union performed an above-ground nuclear test of 58 megatons—4000 times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It is the most powerful human-made explosion in history. [Tsar Bomba] (see Oct 31)

US/8.3 megaton 

October 30, 1962: US detonated 8.3 megaton nuclear bomb above ground. (CW, see Nov 6; NN, see Dec 2)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Black History

Armed forces desegregated

October 30, 1954: the Department of Defense announced the armed forces had been fully desegregated — seven years after President Truman had instructed the Secretary of Defense to “take steps to have the remaining instances of discrimination in the armed services eliminated as rapidly as possible.” (see January 7, 1955)

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 30, 1967: Martin Luther King Jr. and seven other clergymen were jailed for four days in Birmingham, Ala. They served sentences on contempt-of-court charges stemming from Easter 1963 demonstrations they had led against discrimination. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor had twice denied them a parade permit. Two years later, the law was declared unconstitutional. (BH, see Nov 7; MLK, see April 3, 1968)

“Rumble in the Jungle”

ali forman rumble

October 30, 1974:  Muhammad Ali fought the reigning champion George Foreman in an outdoor arena in Kinshasa, Zaire, The fight is known as the “Rumble in the Jungle.”

Using his novel “rope-a-dope” strategy, Ali defeated Foreman and after seven years, reclaimed the title of Heavyweight Champion of the World. (NYT article) (see October 1, 1975)

FBI cover-up

October 30, 1982: a newly released report said the FBI  covered up the violent activities of their informant, Gary Thomas Rowe Jr., but his lawyer said the Government knew it was not getting ”a Sunday school teacher” when it asked Mr. Rowe to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Rowe, who was a Klan informant from 1959 to 1965, was charged with murder in the 1965 killing of Viola Liuzzo, a civil rights worker. A Federal appeals court barred him from being brought to trial because of an earlier agreement giving him immunity. The 1979 report was released publicly for the first time because the Justice Department lost a Freedom of Information suit filed by Playboy magazine. In the report department investigators said agents protected Mr. Rowe because the informant ”was simply too valuable to abandon.” (see Liuzzo for more about Liuzzo)

SOUTH AFRICA/APARTHEID

October 30, 1996: saying many of Eugene de Kock‘s actions had been cruel, calculated and without any sympathy for the victims Judge Willem van der Merwe sentenced the former head of a South African police assassination squad to two life sentences and more than 212 years in jail.

He was paroled after 20 years. (SA/A, see Dec 10; EdK, see January 30, 2015)

Church Burning

October 30, 2015:  David Lopez Jackson was arrested and charged in connection with a pair of recent church fires in and around St. Louis. Authorities charged Jackson with two counts of second-degree arson. His bail was set at $75,000. Chief Sam Dotson of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said the investigation was ongoing, and that Jackson was a suspect in the other five fires that were set earlier that month. [St Louis Today article]

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 30 Music et al

The Beatles before their US appearance

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 30, 1961: two days after Beatles fan Raymond Jones (apparently) asked for The Beatles’ German single “My Bonnie” (recorded with Tony Sheridan) at Brian Epstein’s NEMS record store, two girls asked for the same record. Brian Epstein bgan to search foreign record company import lists to find the single. Since Epstein had already sold at least 12 dozen copies of Liverpool’s “Mersey Beat” magazine (and had written a column for it), it is highly unlikely that he doesn’t already know who The Beatles are. Still, Epstein’s difficulty in locating the record was probably due to his not knowing that the record was released, not by The Beatles, but by Tony Sheridan and ‘The Beat Brothers (‘Beatles’ resembles a vulgar slang word in German, so The Beatles’ name was changed for this historic single). (see Nov 9)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

March to support war

October 30, 1965: 25,000 marched in Washington in support of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. (see Nov 2)

DRAFT CARD BURNING

October 30, 1968: Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Spiro T. Agnew, was confronted at a disorderly Republican rally by the spectacle of youthful antiwar demonstrators burning a draft card. (Vietnam, see Oct 31; DCB, see May 29, 1969)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Jack Kevorkian

October 30, 1995: a group of doctors and other medical experts in Michigan announced its support of Jack Kevorkian , saying they will draw up a set of guiding principles for the “merciful, dignified, medically-assisted termination of life.” (see JK for expanded story)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History & AIDS

October 30, 2009: The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 signed by President Barack Obama, who announced plans to remove a ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by individuals with HIV. Obama called the 22-year ban a decision “rooted in fear rather than fact.” (LGBTQ, see Nov 3; AIDS, see January 5, 2010; IH, see Dec 10)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 30, 2013: a Gallop poll measured that sixty percent of Americans say they favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, the lowest level of support Gallup has measured since November 1972, when 57% were in favor. Death penalty support peaked at 80% in 1994, but it has gradually declined since then. (see Nov 18)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

October 30, 2017: in Washington, DC, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly barred PresidentTrump from changing the government’s policy on military service by transgender people.

Trump had announced in an August memo that he intended to reverse course on a 2016 policy that allowed troops to serve openly as transgender individuals. He said he would order a return to the policy prior to June 2016, under which service members could be discharged for being transgender.

Kollar-Kotelly wrote that transgender members of the military who had sued over the change were likely to win their lawsuit and barred the Trump administration from reversing course. [ChiTrib story] (next LGTBQ, see Nov 3; military transgender, see March 23, 2018)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment Inquiry

October 30, 2019: according to a copy of Anderson’s opening statement obtained by NPR, Christopher Anderson, a career foreign service officer in the State Department, told House impeachment investigators that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani stood in the way of the White House strengthening ties with Ukraine,.

Anderson, who spent five years working on Washington-Kyiv relations, described a meeting he had with former national security adviser John Bolton on the topic of having senior White House officials engage more with Ukraine. In it, Bolton noted a possible hitch.

“He cautioned that Mr. Giuliani was a key voice with the President on Ukraine which could be an obstacle to increased White House engagement,” Anderson told the House committee. [NPR story] (see TII for expanded chronology)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

October 30, 2023: the six-week wave of strikes that hobbled the three largest U.S. automakers put workers on track for new contracts — the third deal, with General Motors, was firming up on this date and would deliver the biggest pay raise workers would receive in decades while avoiding a protracted work stoppage that could have damaged the economy.

The separate but similar deals that the United Automobile Workers union recently reached with Ford Motor, G.M. and Stellantis, the maker of Ram, Jeep and Chrysler, would be costly for the automakers as they undertook a switch to electric vehicles. The deals would also set the stage for labor strife and demand for higher pay at nonunion automakers like Tesla and Toyota. [NYT article] (next LH, see Nov 1)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism