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, 1961: the Soviet Union performed an above-ground nuclear test of 50 megatons—3,800 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, 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”
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, 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, 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)