June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY & Feminism

Bridget Bishop

June 10, 1692: Chief Justice William Stoughton condemned  Bridget Bishop of Salem  for witchcraft after the special Court of Oyer, “to hear,” and Terminer, “to decide,” convened in Salem, Massachusetts.  She would become the first person executed for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials in 1692.  [Virginia edu article] (see September 22)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Norris Dendy Lynched

July 4, 1910: a white mob in Clinton, South Carolina, seized a 35-year-old Black man named Norris Dendy from a local jail cell, beat him, and hanged him. The mob then dumped Mr. Dendy’s brutalized body in a churchyard seven miles from Laurens County. Even though several Black people witnessed the mob seizing Mr. Dendy from the local jail, no one was ever held accountable. [EJI article] (next BH, see Sept 2; next Lynching, see May 24, 1911 or see AL2 for expanded chronology)

Marcus Garvey

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

June 10, 1940: Garvey died in London. [NYT obit] (next BH, see June 20; see MG for expanded story)

Fighting school desegregation

June 10, 1954: governors and representatives from twelve Southern states met in Richmond, Virginia, and resolved not to voluntarily comply with the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, released less than a month earlier. Virginia Governor Thomas Stanley called the meeting to discuss potential approaches the Southern states could take in responding to Brown. The governors of Georgia, South Carolina, and Mississippi had publicly stated their intent to maintain the separation of white and black students, even if it required them to dissolve the public education systems in their respective states. The governors of Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia had been less radical but had expressed an interest in legal methods of avoiding integration.

Representatives met for six hours to discuss their concerns. In the end, only representatives from Maryland, West Virginia, and Kentucky – states with comparatively small African American populations – indicated they would comply with the desegregation order.

Said Governor Stanley of the meeting, “No one had any thought of doing anything wrong. Everyone is just trying to find a solution to what they consider a major problem.” It was not until a later meeting of Southern governors, in January 1956, that Southern officials created a concrete plan for resisting Brown. At that meeting, four Southern governors agreed to interposition, by which a state can attempt to declare federal actions unconstitutional. (BH, see July 11; SD, see Aug 23)

Ben Chester White

June 10, 1966: three Klansmen approached Ben Chester White at his home near Natchez, Mississippi, and asked for him help in finding a lost dog.  The men  drove White, a 67-year old sharecropper,  to the Homochitto National Forest, where they shot him repeatedly, then dumped his body over a  bridge into the creek bed below.

The three men, Ernest Avants , Claude Fuller, and James Lloyd Jones, had allegedly killed White in an attempt to lure Martin Luther King, Jr. to Natchez, Mississippi.  Ernest Avants was tried in 1967 but acquitted.

In 2003, the New York Times described Chester this way: Ben Chester White used twists of wire to hold the soles on his shoes, patched his own clothes with scrap and said “yes, sir,” to white men, and when he made a little money, he wrapped the $1 bills in wax paper so they would not be ruined by his own sweat. He was not registered to vote, and had never fought against the segregation that was as much a fact of life for him as a hoe handle or cotton sack.  [Clarion Ledger article] (White, see February 2003; BH, see June 11; MLK, see Aug 5)

James Earl Ray escapes

June 10, 1977: Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Prison in Tennessee with six others; he was recaptured Jun 13. [Ozy dot com article] (see February 15, 1978)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

Cultural Milestone

Alcoholics Anonymous

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

June 10, 1935: Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith found Alcoholics Anonymous in Akron, Ohio. [AA site/history] (see June 4, 1937)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Republic Steel pays vigilantes

June 10, 1937: in an effort to break the picket line by striking steelworkers at Newton Steel – a subsidiary of Republic Steel – in Monroe, Michigan, city leaders deputized a vigilante mob who attack the strikers with tear gas and clubs. Eight people were injured and hospitalized. An inquiry later revealed that Republic Steel had paid the city for the purchase of the weapons. (see June 19)

Anderson v. Mt. Clemens Pottery Co

June 10, 1946: the US Supreme Court held that preliminary work activities, where controlled by the employer and performed entirely for the employer’s benefit, are properly included as working time under Fair Labor Standards Act. This decision is known as the “portal to portal case,” i.e., door to door: the worker’s presence inside the workplace can typically be considered time they should be compensated for. [Cornell law article] (see Nov 25)

The Equal Pay Act of 1963

June 10, 1963:  President Kennedy signed The Equal Pay Act of 1963 prohibited discrimination in wages on the basis of sex. The result: women’s earnings will climb from 62% of men’s in 1970 to 80% in 2004  [EEOC article] (LH, see December 31, 1964; F, see July 2, 1964)

 

Voting Rights

Colegrove v. Green

June 10, 1946: the U.S. Supreme Court upheld uneven congressional redistricting plans in Colegrove v. Green. The case challenged an Illinois redistricting plan that concentrated voters into large districts in the center of the state and did not balance for population. The Court reasoned that districting was a political question for the states to decide without judicial interference. (VR, see August 29, 1957; Districting, see March 26, 1962)

Civil Rights Bill

June 10, 1964: the U.S. Senate voted to limit further debate on a proposed civil rights bill, shutting off a filibuster by southern lawmakers. (BH & VR, see June 14; Civil Rights Act, see June 19)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

June 10, 1963: at the commencement of American University President Kennedy spoke about service to country, but particularly about nuclear disarmament and announced that the US would stop above ground atomic testing as long as the other nuclear nations also did so. [JFK’s speech] (see June 20)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

see June 10 Music et al for more

Grateful Dead

June 10 – 11, 1966: the Dead played the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco The poster’s central image was a drawing of a skeleton with a disproportionately large skull. The skeleton is very smartly dressed, wearing a cowboy hat and smoking a cigar. This poster is significant historically because it represents the first use of a skeleton as an emblem for the Grateful Dead. It predates the iconic Skeleton and Roses poster by Mouse Studios by several months which eventually became the signature of the Grateful Dead. (see Sept 16)

see Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival for more

June 10 – 11, 1967: the KFRC Fantasy Fair and Magic Mountain Music Festival was held at the 4,000 seat Sidney B. Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre on the face of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, CA. At least 36,000 people attended the two-day concert and fair that was one of the first in a series of San Francisco area events that became known as the Summer of Love. (see June 16)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

Stop and Frisk Policy

Terry v. Ohio

June 10, 1968: the U.S. Supreme Court established a legal basis for officers to stop, question and frisk citizens. The Court  held that the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures was not violated when a police officer stopped a suspect on the street and frisked him without probable cause to arrest, if the police officer had a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, was committing, or was about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person “may be armed and presently dangerous.” [Oyez article] (S & F: see September 1, 1971; 4th, see January 26, 1971)

Whren v. United States

June 10, 1996: the US Supreme Court unanimously “declared that any traffic offense committed by a driver was a legitimate legal basis for a stop.

The case’s Supreme Court syllabus stated that the court held that “the temporary detention of a motorist upon probable cause to believe that he has violated the traffic laws does not violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable seizures, even if a reasonable officer would not have stopped the motorist absent some additional law enforcement objective.” In other words, it does not matter if the traffic stop was pretextual, so long as there was independent justification for the stop. [Oyez article] (see October 26, 2001)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

TERRORISM

June 10, 1986: a jury recommended the death sentence for David Lewis Rice who had murdered four members of the Goldmark family because he thought they were part of an international conspiracy among Communists, Jews and the Federal Reserve Board. (see May 17, 1987)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

SOUTH AFRICA/APARTHEID

Nelson Mandela

June 10, 1990:  the Central Intelligence Agency played an important role in the arrest in 1962 of Nelson Mandela. The intelligence service, using an agent inside the African National Congress, provided South African security officials with precise information about Mr. Mandela’s activities that enabled the police to arrest him. The report quoted an unidentified retired official who said that a senior C.I.A. officer told him shortly after Mr. Mandela’s arrest: ”We have turned Mandela over to the South African Security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be.” (see Mandela fro expanded chronology)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

June 10, 1998: former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Harold Ickes appears before the grand jury to testify about his involvement, if any, in the release of information from Linda Tripp’s personnel records. (see Clinton for expanded story)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

Dissolution of Yugoslavia

June 10, 1999: Yugoslav troops begin leaving Kosovo, prompting NATO to suspend its punishing 78-day air war. (see DoY for expanded chronology)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

Sexual Abuse of Children

June 10, 2015: the Vatican announced that Roman Catholic bishops accused of covering up or failing to prevent the sexual abuse of children by priests would be subject to judgment and discipline by a new Vatican tribunal.

The decision was a measure that abuse victims had urged for years. The church had judicial procedures for judging priests accused of abuse, but until this announcement bishops accused of negligence or cover-ups were almost never held accountable by the church itself.

The tribunal would also deal with the backlog of cases involving sexual abuse, “which are still very numerous,” a Vatican official said. The issue of accountability has been under discussion for some time, said the Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. “As you see, it didn’t remain on paper,” he said. [Guardian article]  (see June 15)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

June 10, 2019: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada would join a growing global movement with a plan to ban single-use plastics blighting the environment.

Trudeau noted that Canada threw away 8 billion Canadian dollars’ worth of plastic material each year and that, according to Environment and Climate Change Canada, the national environmental agency, that included more than 34 million plastic bags each day. By recycling and reusing plastic, Mr. Trudeau said, the country could reduce pollution, create 42,000 jobs and protect the environment. [NYT article]  (see June 17)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

June 10, 2019: Maine’s Gov. Janet Mills signed a bill allowing medical professionals who are not doctors to perform abortions.

The bill would allow nurse practitioners, physician assistants and certified nurse-midwives to provide abortion medication and perform in-clinic abortions, which typically involve suction.

Maine joined other Democrat-led states moving to protect and in some cases expand abortion rights as GOP-led states push tighter restrictions .

“Maine is defending the rights of women and taking a step toward equalizing access to care as other states are seeking to undermine, rollback, or outright eliminate these services,” Mills said. (see June 28)

June 10 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ+

June 10, 2022: according to a report the number of young people who identified as transgender nearly doubled in recent years.

The analysis, relying on government health surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020, estimated that 1.4 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds and 1.3 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were transgender, compared with about 0.5 percent of all adults.

The surveys, created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, did not ask younger teenagers about nonbinary or other gender identities, which also have been rising in recent years. But nearly one-quarter of the adults in the surveys who said they were transgender identified as “gender nonconforming.” [NYT article] (next LGBTQ+, see Dec 13)

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

The Irony of Woodstock

Though the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair is in our rear view mirror, many continue to reflect upon that iconic event and its impact.

Thank you to the late Charlie Maloney, Woodstock alum and a guy who “got it” when it came to what the spirit of the 60s and Woodstock has come to epitomize.

It was he, who while surfing the internet one night, found an article written by Robert Hilburn for the Los Angeles Times. It kept Charlie up later than he’d planned, but it was worth the lost sleep.

1989 was the 20th anniversary of Woodstock. Like 50, 20 was a number that summoned reflection as well.

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Robert Hilburn

Hilburn’s point was that if Woodstock had been held in 1989 it would have been a very different event. By 1989 the commercialization of rock music had gone from the 1950s fear of rock to a late-20th century commercial embrace with branded events.

The article’s first  example is Janis Joplin‘s bringing a bottle of Southern Comfort on stage with her in 1969. In 1989, such “product placement” would have cost the liquor-maker. For the article, famous concert promoter Bill Graham suggested that, “…Southern Comfort would pay her a million dollars for just holding that bottle….”

Hilburn wrote that Graham’s viewed Woodstock, “...not principally as a great musical moment, but as the day corporate America saw the big money to be made in rock. Indeed, Woodstock itself was a grand attempt to escalate the scale of rock.”

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Woodstock legitimized Rock

The article quotes Joe Smith, a Capital-EMI exec, “Woodstock legitimized rock ‘n’ roll, and it sent out the message that there was a lot of money to be made in it.”

Lou Adler, one of the organizers of rock’s “first” festival, the Monterey International Pop Festival, said, “If Monterey made rock ‘n’ roll an art form, Woodstock made it a business.”

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Really?

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Woodstock Ventures didn’t just lose its shirt that weekend, it lost its Army-surplus jacket, sandals, hat, and underwear. None of the four organizers, Michael Lang, Artie Kornfeld, John Roberts, or Joel Rosenman, ever got rich from it. They did continue to get plenty of grief and a mailbox full of lawsuits. Within days, Ventures sold the movie and music rights to to just begin to get out of the financial hole it found itself in. It was more than a decade later before that hole was filled. Not what I would call an acceptable rate of return.

If anything, it might be more accurate to say that corporate America saw the potential for “big money” in Woodstock’s muddy aftermath and its may brethren festivals that summer.

It’s many brethren? Until I began training as a docent at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts’ Museum, I had, as most recollect and the article implies, that Woodstock was one of the two memorable festivals that year. The other, the sad counterpoint, being Altamont and its association with Hell’s Angels violence and failed security.

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Where were…?

That was not the case.

My research led me to dozens of other festivals that summer. None had the huge attendance that Woodstock had, but many had the same names. In fact, the lack of Black artists and Black bands at Woodstock (given the number available and touring that summer), stands in contrast to those other festivals.

For example, none of the following were at Woodstock, but appeared throughout that summer at other festivals: The Chambers Brothers, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Taj Majal, Elvin Bishop, Sun Ra, Bukka White,  Carla and Rufus Thomas, Ike and Tina Turner, Marvin Gaye,  Albert King, Albert Collins, Edwin Starr, Slim Harpo, Big Mama Thornton,  Champion Jack Dupree, John Lee Hooker, Edwin Hawkins Singers, Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley, Charles Lloyd, BB King, Little Richard, James Cotton Blues Band, Sam and Dave, Fred McDowell, Deacon John and the Electric Soul Train,  or Junior Walker and the All Stars.

That same summer, Tony Lawrence helped created the Harlem Cultural Festival which featured  three days of Black artists. Summer of Love,” a movie of that event has been released.

I am not suggesting that Woodstock’s invited line-up was a biased or poor one. It was great (as were the many others). And I am certainly not suggesting that all of those listed above should have been there, otherwise the true musical coexistence that the spirit of Woodstock implies would ring hollow.

But why not any?

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Personal view

As a Woodstock alum, myself, it is a thrill to hear “my” festival so celebrated and anointed with such importance, yet when Lou Adler stated that, ““My feeling has always been that if it hadn’t rained, we may not have heard that much about Woodstock, or at least heard about it in a different way…..More than the music, it was the story of people pulling together against all these adverse elements. That’s what made it such a dramatic and universal story” I cringe a bit.

The rain did happen, but the weekend was not a wash-out by any means. Sunburned backs attest to that.

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Sense of Solidarity

That those of us who attended did return home with a sense of solidarity seems to be accurate. The most common theme I note after conversations with returning Woodstock alum at the Museum was the sense of “Us” that we had there and afterwards. Always remember that on that misty Monday morning when Hendrix finally closed the (actually) 4-day event, there were “only” 30- to 40-thousand people left.

Most of us had gone home. We were tired. We were hungry. We were wet. We were muddy. We wondered whether our car was still there. And we had to get back to our jobs–whether that was a full-time one or a summer job before college began.

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Love for Sale

Old Man Woodstock Reflections
Locals along 17B on Saturday 16 August selling hot dogs and soda. $1 each.

Woodstock’s mythic story intensified what had already begun. FM rock stations and college stations (always underrated in terms of their influence) became a bigger influences. Hillburn writes that, “Woodstock changed the progressive rock format from an experiment to a boom.”

The record industry did continue to increase its profits, but not, until the mid-70 did sales skyrocket: “$2.37 billion in 1975 . . . $2.73 billion in 1976 . . . $3.50 billion in 1977 . . . and $4.13 billion in 1978.” And those profits are credited to Woodstock’s fame.

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Mainstream

The end result by 1989 is that the counter-cultural music scene had gone mainstream. Stadium shows with commercial sponsors and ticket prices that make Woodstock ticket-buyer wax nostalgic.  The idealism of the 60s could still be found, but now part of a subset, not the primary aim.

A disillusioned Bill Graham quit the promotion business. Temporarily. He  returned to help create hundreds of stadium shows and help oversee a merchandising-related company. Ironically, he died in a helicopter accident after a successful meeting with Huey Lewis about doing a benefit concert.

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

Today’s economics

Nowadays, even a not-for-profit venue like Bethel Woods Center for the Arts has to charge what seems to many to be exorbitant ticket prices to make ends meet. Ends that aren’t meet by ticket sales alone and depend on the generosity of others to close the gap and finally end in the black.

The COVID pandemic was a death knell for so many businesses and it will take years for those like Bethel Woods to recover.

Apparently the intersection of Hurd and West Shore Roads will always be a beautiful, iconic, and historic site, but not a profit-making one.

Old Man Woodstock Reflections

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Cultural Milestone

Automat Restaurant

June 9, 1902: the first restaurant with vending machine service was the Automat Restaurant at 818 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was Horn & Hardart, a cavernous, waiterless establishment that was a combination of fast-food, vending and a cafeteria. Horn & Hardart Automats expanded into a chain reaching Manhattan in 1912. With their uniform recipes and centralized commissary system of supplying their restaurants, the Automats were America’s first major fast-food chain. Customers put nickels into slots in the Automats and turned a knob. In the compartment next to the slot, food revolved into place for the customer to receive through a small glass door. [Smithsonian article] (see February 19, 1906)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

McCarthyism

June 9, 1954: Army counsel Joseph N. Welch confronted Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy during the Senate-Army Hearings over McCarthy’s attack on a member of Welch’s law firm, Frederick G. Fisher. Said Welch: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” [Senate dot gov article]  (see July 28)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Fannie Lou Hamer

June 9, 1963: while returning from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina, Fannie Lou Hamer and other civil rights activists were arrested in Winona, Mississippi. Hamer and the other activists had been traveling in the “white” section of a Greyhound bus despite threats from the driver that he planned to notify local police at the next stop. When the bus arrived at the Winona bus depot, the activists sat at the “white only” lunch counter inside the terminal. Winona Police Chief Thomas Herrod ordered the group to go to the “colored” side of the depot and arrested them when one of the activists tried to write down his patrol car license number.

At the county jail, white jailers forced two African American prisoners to savagely beat Ms. Hamer and she was nearly killed. As she regained consciousness, she overheard one of the white officers propose, “We could put them SOBs in [the] Big Black [River] and nobody would ever find them.”

Lawyers with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee filed suit against the Winona police who brutalized the activists but an all-white jury acquitted them. [PBS article] (see June 11)

Officer Eric Casebolt

June 9, 2015:  Eric Casebolt, the police officer seen in a video throwing a 14-year-old girl in a swimsuit to the ground and pointing his gun at other teenagers resigned from the police force in McKinney, Tex. Chief Greg Conley of the McKinney Police Department said during a news conference Casebolt had resigned while under investigation.

The resignation came two days after Officer Casebolt had been put on administrative leave and amid growing cries by religious and civic leaders in the Dallas suburb for him to be fired. [family sued Casebolt and Dallas]

BLACK & SHOT

June 9, 2015: re the Ezell Ford shooting (Washington Post article), the Los Angeles the Board of Police Commissioners ruled  that officer Villegas was justified in the shooting, but officer Wampler violated Ford’s civil rights by detaining him. The commission rejected Beck’s conclusion that Wampler had adhered to LAPD policy. The investigation found that Villegas did not have a good reason to initially draw his gun, and that Wampler did not have grounds to reasonably suspect that Ford had been in possession of drugs. Nine different determinations were issued: Wampler was found in violation of policy in four areas (tactics, drawing of weapon, use of non-lethal force, use of deadly force), while Villegas was within policy in three areas (tactics, use of non-lethal force, and use of deadly force) and one part of another area (drawing of weapon on the second occasion) but in violation of policy in another part of the same area (drawing of weapon on the first occasion).[48] The Board’s decision to consider the “totality of the circumstances, and not just the moment in which force was used” marked a departure from its previous approach to police shootings, which involved assessing only whether officers faced a deadly threat at the moment they opened fire (B & S, see June 11; Ford, see January 24, 2017)

STAND YOUR GROUND LAW

June 9, 2017: Florida Governor Rick Scott signed amended “stand your ground” legislation, making it easier for defendants in the state to successfully claim they were protecting themselves when they commit violence.

Previously, the law required defendants to prove that they were using force in self-defense. The new law shifts the burden of proof in pretrial hearings to prosecutors, rather than defendants, to prove whether force was used lawfully. [Reuters article] (see July 3)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

Domino Theory

June 9, 1964: in reply to a formal question submitted by President Lyndon B. Johnson–“Would the rest of Southeast Asia necessarily fall if Laos and South Vietnam came under North Vietnamese control?”–the CIA submitted a memo that effectively challenged the “domino theory.

The CIA concluded that Cambodia was probably the only nation in the area that would immediately fall. “Furthermore,” the report said, “a continuation of the spread of communism in the area would not be inexorable, and any spread which did occur would take time–time in which the total situation might change in any number of ways unfavorable to the communist cause.” The CIA report concluded that if South Vietnam and Laos also fell, it “would be profoundly damaging to the U.S. position in the Far East,” but Pacific bases and allies such as the Philippines and Japan would still wield enough power to deter China and North Vietnam from any further aggression or expansion. (see July 27)

Weather Underground

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

June 9, 1970: Jane Alpert and Weather Underground accomplices bombed the New York City Police headquarters  Weathermen stated that the bombing was in response to “police repression.”

They made the bomb with ten sticks of dynamite. The explosion was preceded by a warning about six minutes prior to the detonation and subsequently by a WUO claim of responsibility. [NYT article] (Vietnam & Cambodia, see June 13; WU, see July 28)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

June 9 Music et al

Another Side of Bob Dylan

June 9, 1964: during an evening session that Bob Dylan recorded all of the tracks for his Another Side of Bob Dylan album at Columbia Recording Studios in New York City, Dylan also Mr. Tambourine Man. Dylan recorded fourteen original compositions that night. Ultimately, he did not include Mr Tambourine Man album. (Dylan, see “in August 1964”; Tambourine Man, see January 20, 1965)

Brian Jones

June 9, 1969: Brian Jones announced he was leaving the Rolling Stones. He announced his departure at his home in Hartfield, Sussex, stating: “I want to play my kind of music, which is no longer the Stones music.” Jones died less than a month later by drowning in the swimming pool at his home. (see Rolling Stone magazine article) (see July 3)

The Road to Bethel

June 9, 1969: an unnamed Wallkill official visited the construction site and said that the group did not have permission for the festival. (see Chronology for expanded story)

Dr Dylan

June 9, 1970: with wife Sara and friend David Crosby, Princeton University gave an honorary Doctorate of Music to Dylan. Some criticized the recognition, but Princeton President Robert Goheen’s response was that it might be true that Dylan “is a bad or mediocre musician, and his power with words obscures the fact for the multitudes,” but if so, “he seems to me remarkably expressive in this mode.” [Rolling Stone magazine article] (see November 12, 1971)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

Brandenburg v. Ohio

June 9, 1969: the US Supreme Court held that government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is directed to inciting, and is likely to incite, imminent lawless action. Specifically, it struck down Ohio’s criminal syndicalism statute, because that statute broadly prohibited the mere advocacy of violence. [Oyez article] (see June 18 – 22)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Equal Rights Amendment

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

June 9, 1978: nearly 100,000 demonstrators marched on Washington, DC for the ERA. [FMF article] (see Aug 6)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

June 9, 1998: Presidential friend Vernon Jordan testifies before Ken Starr’s grand jury for the fifth time. Lewinsky’s new lawyers say they are upset by her photo layout in Vanity Fair magazine. (see Clinton for expanded story)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Dissolution of Yugoslavia

June 9, 1999: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, signed the Kumanovo Treaty, ending the Kosovo War. The agreement also opened the way for the establishment of international security forces to maintain order in Kosovo and a UN protectorate over the region. The parliament of Kosovo subsequently declared independence in 2008. (see NYT article) (see DoY for expanded chronology)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

Exxon Stymied

June 9, 2015: Santa Barbara County rejected Exxon Mobil Corp’s emergency permit application to temporarily haul crude using tanker trucks following a recent pipeline rupture. Planning and Development assistant director Dianne Black denied Exxon’s request, saying the case did not warrant an emergency approval. [LA Times article] (EI, see June 18; Santa Barbara, see June 22)

Keystone Ends

June 9, 2021: TC Energy, the company behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline, said it was officially terminating the project. TC Energy already had suspended construction in January when President Biden revoked a key cross-border presidential permit. The announcement ended a more than decade-long battle that came to signify the debate over whether fossil fuels should be left in the ground to address climate change.  [NPR story] (next EI, see July 14)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

June 9, 2015: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a Texas law that required abortion clinics to qualify as “ambulatory surgical centers,” a decision opponents say will shut down most clinics in the state.

The plaintiffs, a group of abortion clinics and doctors, argued that the 2013 law unconstitutionally restricts the right to obtain an abortion, but in a ruling the Court said the plaintiffs failed to prove that and lifted an injunction issued by a lower court to prevent the enforcement of key elements of the law.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which helped represent the plaintiffs, said it would file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. “If permitted to take effect, the impact will be devastating for women in Texas seeking access to abortion services,” said Stephanie Toti,a center lawyer.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, praised the decision, saying the Texas law “both protects the unborn and ensures Texas women are not subjected to unsafe and unhealthy conditions.”  [NYT article] (WH, see June 15; Texas, see June 27, 2016)

June 9 Peace Love Art Activism