Monthly Archives: August 2017

Music et al, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

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August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

August 3, 1882: Congress passed a law regulating immigration. Under the statute, state-run boards under contract to the US Secretary of the Treasury were to inspect immigrants according to rules that were uniform in all ports. Boards were prohibited from admitting any immigrant found to be a “convict, lunatic, idiot or any person unable to take care of him or herself without becoming a public charge.” (see January 1, 1892)

DACA

August 3, 2018: a U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates in the District of Columbia ruled that the Obama-era program offering temporary protected status to a cohort of immigrants brought here illegally as children must remain in place despite efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle it.

Bates excoriated Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s arguments to end the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

” … The Nielsen Memo offers nothing even remotely approaching a considered legal assessment that this Court could subject to judicial review,” Bates wrote. He added, later, “The Nielsen Memo demonstrates no true cognizance of the serious reliance interests at issue here — indeed, it does not even identify what those interests are … ”

However, he ruled that the administration would have until August 23 to appeal the decision before the order to reanimate the program and allow new applications goes into effect. [NBC News story] (next IH, see Aug 16; next DACA, see Aug 31)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Richie “Blackie” Ford

August 3 Peace Love Activism

August 3, 1913: fighting broke out when sheriff’s deputies attempted to arrest Wobbly leader Richie “Blackie” Ford as he addressed striking field workers at the Durst Ranch in Wheatland, Calif. Four persons died, including the local district attorney, a deputy and two workers. Despite the lack of evidence against them, Ford and another strike leader were found guilty of murder by a 12-member jury that included eight farmers (see Sept 23)

Philadelphia Transportation Company strike

August 3, 1944: the third day of the strike, President Roosevelt authorized the War Department to take control of the Philadelphia Transportation Company . Two days later, 5000 United States Army troops moved into Philadelphia to prevent uprisings and protect PTC employees who crossed the picket line. Despite the military presence, the strike sparked thirteen acts of racial violence, including several non-fatal shootings.

After more than a week, the strike ended and PTC employees returned to work after being threatened with termination, loss of draft deferments, and ineligibility for unemployment benefits. By September 1944, the PTC’s first black trolley drivers were on duty.  [Temple U article] (see January 8, 1945)

Air controllers strike

August 3, 1981: some 15,000 air traffic controllers strike. President Reagan threatened to fire any who do not return to work within 48 hours, saying they “have forfeited their jobs” if they do not. Most stay out. [Politico article]  (see Aug 5)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

August 3, 1922: John Sumner, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, announced plans for a committee representing publishers and authors that would screen all literary manuscripts to ensure they were not immoral. The Authors League supported this voluntary censorship idea. The leaders were concerned that sexually oriented and other immoral works were bringing the book industry into “disrepute.” It was suggested that the effort would be led by a prominent “proconsul,” such as Will Hays, then the head to the movie industry’s self-censorship effort or Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who was famous for his actions regarding the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal in professional baseball. The self-censorship idea never came to fruition, however. (see Aug 12)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

The Red Scare

August 3, 1948: after being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, Whittaker Chambers later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent. Chambers testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming Alger Hiss—an important figure in Franklin Roosevelt’s State Department—as a Communist agent.  [1961 NYT obit] (see August 5, 1948)

Technological Milestone

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

August 3, 1958: the U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus accomplished the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole. The world’s first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus dived at Point Barrow, Alaska, and traveled nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of the world. It then steamed on to Iceland, pioneering a new and shorter route from the Pacific to the Atlantic and Europe. [Nautilus dot org article] (see December 10, 1959)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

August 3, 1960:  Niger independent from France. [SAHO article] (see ID for the many nations that became independent in the 1960s)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

August 3 Music et al

Dylan/Baez

August 3, 1963: Dylan and Joan Baez, a couple, begin a tour together. She is the headline name, but Dylan is the star. The tour provided a huge boost to Dylan’s career.

That same summer, manager Albert Grossman bought a house in Bearsville, NY near Woodstock. He converted space above the barn as a guest room for Dylan. Both he and Baez will be frequent visitors. (see Aug 17)

Cavern Club

August 3, 1963, The Beatles performed at The Cavern Club for the final time. (see Sept 16)

So Much In Love

August 3 – 9, 1963,  “So Much In Love” by The Tymes #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

see Newport Pop Festival for more

August 3 & 4, 1968 – The first Newport Pop Festival started at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, California. It is believed to have been the first pop music concert attended by more than 100,000 paying concertgoers.

Doors

August 3 – 16, 1968: “”Hello, I Love You” by the Doors #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Bumpy Road to Bethel

August 3, 1969:  from Dale Bell’s book Woodstock (quoting John Roberts): “Over the course of the spring and summer we had gone to several meetings with film makers like Pennebaker and the Maysles Brothers, and they had all expressed interest in making our movie. But talks had languished and then died when it became clear that we would have to finance their efforts ourselves. Bob Maurice and Mike Wadleigh had been latecomers to this process. I had seen some of Wadleigh’s work and thought it to be original and clever, but noting I had seen altered my fundamental view that financing a documentary was a sane use of my vanishing resources. 

Sunday, August 3rd, 1969 was turning into another typical day at the office. …Around noon I decided to take a break and go someplace where the phones wouldn’t ring with Woodstock problems. I walked down to my dad’s apartment in mid-town. …The phone rang. It was Bob Maurice. …I said “What’s on your mind?” “About 90 grand,” he said. “That’s what it will take for you to own this movie.” I lectured him patiently on the economics of documentaries, concluding with a polite but firm refusal. “You’ll have to get it somewhere else, Bob, I’m pretty much tapped.

  “…a week later…” (film, see Aug 10)

Elliot Tiber

August 3, 2016: Elliot Tiber died in Boca Raton, Fla. from complications of a stroke. Tiber had helped introduce Woodstock Ventures to the Bethel area when he found out that Wallkill had kicked out the festival. (NYT obit) (see Chronology for expanded Woodstock story)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

Torching peasant homes

August 3, 1965: CBS-TV news showed pictures of men from the First Battalion, Ninth Marines setting fire to huts in the village of Cam Na, six miles west of Da Nang, despite reports that the Viet Cong (aka, National Liberation Front) had already fled the area. The film report sparked indignation and condemnation of the U.S. policy in Vietnam both at home and overseas. At the same time, the Department of Defense announced that it was increasing the monthly draft call from 17,000 in August to 27,400 in September and 36,000 in October. It also announced that the Navy would require 4,600 draftees, the first such action since 1956. (see Aug 12)

Troop increase

August 3, 1967: after weeks of internal discussions and disagreements, President Johnson agreed to send 45,000 to 50,000 troops to Vietnam which would bring up the total there to 525,000 by mid-1968. He also agreed to activate Reserve units, but kept them state-side fearing increased war protests. (see Aug 4)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Jersey City

August 3, 1964: local Black leaders presented Jersey City Mayor Whelan with a list of demands: accessible recreational areas for black youth; more black police officers; and better living conditions. NAACP and CORE leaders urged city officials to consider the demands, but Mayor Whelan was resistant and accused the leaders of bringing “hooligan youth” to meet with him. Held amidst continuing rioting, the meeting lasted just twenty-six minutes and made no progress. (see Aug 4)

Law Center for Constitutional Rights

August 3, 1967: William Kunstler and other lawyers formed the Law Center for Constitutional Rights, later known as the Center for Constitutional Rights. The group became one of the most important legal institutions for the civil rights movement. In 1961, Kunstler had traveled to Mississippi and began working in civil rights cases, helping to form the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee.  [CCR site] (see Aug 25)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

August 3, 1982: police arrested Michael Hardwick for sodomy after they observed him having sex with another man in his own bedroom in Georgia. Although the district attorney eventually dropped the charges, Hardwick decided to challenge the constitutionality of Georgia’s law. (LGBTQ, see July 4, 1983; Hardwick, see July 30, 1986)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Iran–Contra Affair

August 3, 1987:  the Iran-Contra congressional hearings ended with none of the 29 witnesses tying President Ronald Reagan directly to the diversion of arms-sales profits to Nicaraguan rebels.  (see Nov 18)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

August 3, 2015: in the strongest action ever taken in the United States to combat climate change, President Obama unveiled a set of environmental regulations devised to sharply cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from the nation’s power plants and ultimately transform America’s electricity industry.

The rules were the final, tougher versions of proposed regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency announced in 2012 and 2014. If they could withstand the expected legal challenges, the regulations would set in motion sweeping policy changes that could shut down hundreds of coal-fired power plants, freeze construction of new coal plant,s and create a boom in the production of wind and solar power and other renewable energy sources. [NYT article] (see Aug 5)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Crime and Punishment

August 3, 2016: President Obama commuted the sentences of 214 more federal inmates, the largest single-day grant of commutations in the nation’s history.

With 562 total commutations during his presidency — most of which have come in 2016 —Obama had used his constitutional clemency power to shorten the sentences of more federal inmates than any president since Calvin Coolidge.

The early release of the 214 prisoners, mostly low-level drug offenders, was part of Obama’s effort to correct what he viewed as unreasonably long mandatory minimum sentences. Some date back decades, including 71-year-old Richard L. Reser of Sedgwick, Kan., who was given a 40-year sentence for dealing methamphatamine and firearm possession in 1989. [Atlantic article] (see Dec 19)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Terrorism

August 3, 2019: in an El Paso, TX Walmart and armed with a powerful rifle, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius  killed 20 people and wounded 26 others.

Authorities took Crusius into custody after he surrendered to the police outside the Walmart. The authorities said they were investigating a manifesto Crusius  posted before the shooting, which described an attack in response to “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” [NYT article] (next T, see Aug 5)

August 3 Peace Love Art Activism
Cultural milestone, Evolution, History

John Scopes Monkey Trial

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John Scopes Monkey Trial

John Scopes, August 3, 1900 – October 21, 1970
“Evolution Mama” from Even Dozen Jug Band

Theory of Evolution

Charles Darwin is more widely known than Alfred Russell Wallace, but both men’s observations led them to independently propose the theory of evolution through natural selection.

John Thomas Scopes Monkey Trial

Wallace had published his paper (with some of Darwin’s writings) in 1858. It was called, “On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.” 

John Thomas Scopes Monkey Trial

The following year, Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life) or more commonly and simply known as On the Origin of Species.

And while both men are credited with the theory of evolution, they themselves had built on others’ empirical  observation.

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Butler Act

In certain parts of the United States, the ideas of natural selection and evolution became antithetical to those who believed that the world as they knew it had always been that way from the beginning.  And the beginning, for those who believers in the literal interpretation of the Bible, was relatively brief moments (“one week”) when God began the world.

Tennessee was one of those places and on  March 13, 1925, the state enacted the Butler Act names after John Washington Butler, the State Representative who had introduced it two months earlier.

The Butler Act stated: AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof.

The Act did not make it illegal to teach evolution regarding other animals, only humans, though John Butler’s intent was to keep the idea completely out of Tennessee’s academic institutions and to strictly adhere to the Bible’s story.

John Scopes Monkey Trial

John Thomas Scopes

John Thomas Scopes Monkey Trial

John T Scopes was born on August 3, 1900. Darwin had died just 18 years earlier; Wallace was still alive and would be so for another 13 years.

After he a degree from the University of Kentucky in 1924, with a major in law and a minor in geology, he moved to Dayton, Tennessee where he took a job as the Rhea County High School’s football coach and occasionally filled in as a substitute teacher when regular members of the staff were off work.

After the enactment of the Butler Act, the American Civil Liberties Union responded immediately with an offer to defend any teacher prosecuted under the law. John Scopes, who had covered evolution in a science class, agreed to stand as defendant in a test case to challenge the law.

He was arrested on May 7, 1925, and charged with teaching the theory of evolution. Three days later, Scopes was given a preliminary hearing before three judges and 15 days later,  he was indicted by a grand jury for violating Tennessee’s anti-evolution law.

John Scopes Monkey Trial
Darrow v Bryan
John Thomas Scopes Monkey Trial
Clarence Darrow, left, and William Jennings Bryan

The well-known and oft unsuccessful Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan was the lawyer for the prosecution. When the law had passed, Bryan had said, to Tennessee Governor Austin Peay, “The Christian parents of the state owe you a debt of gratitude for saving their children from the poisonous influence of an unproven hypothesis.”

Bryan chastised evolution for teaching children that humans were but one of (precisely) 35,000 types of mammals and bemoaned the notion that human beings were descended “Not even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys”

Clarence Darrow represented Scopes.

The trial was followed on radio transmissions throughout the United States.

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Trial begins

July 10, 1925: the trial began with jury selection. Judge John Raulston asks the Rev. Lemuel M. Cartright to open the proceedings with a prayer.

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Clarence Darrow

July 13, 1935: in an effort to have the Butler law declared unconstitutional, defense attorney Clarence Darrow delivered a long, fiery speech arguing that the law violates freedom of religion. Darrow argued that “we find today as brazen and as bold an attempt to destroy learning as was ever made in the Middle Ages.”

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Opening with prayer

July 14, 1925: the third day of the trial, Darrow objected to the practice of opening the trial with a prayer. Judge Raulston overruled the objection, noting that he has instructed the ministers who offer the prayer to “make no reference to the issues involved in this case.”

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Law not unconstitutional

July 15, 1925: Judge Raulston overruled the defense’s motion to have the Butler law declared unconstitutional. Raulston says in his ruling that the law “gives no preference to any particular religion or mode of worship. Our public schools are not maintained as places of worship, but, on the contrary, were designed, instituted, and are maintained for the purpose of mental and moral development and discipline.”

In an afternoon session that day, a not guilty plea is entered on Scopes’ behalf. Each side presents its opening statements. The prosecution questioned the superintendent of schools and two of Scopes’ students, who testified that Scopes taught his class about evolution. The defense questioned zoologist Maynard Metcalf, who testified that evolution was a widely embraced theory in the scientific community.

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Bar expert testimony

July 17, 1925: Judge Raulston ruled in favor of a motion by prosecutors to bar expert testimony by scientists. Raulston argued that the experts’ opinions on evolutionary theory would “shed no light” on the issue at hand in the trial — whether Scopes violated the state’s anti-evolution laws. Many reporters leave town, believing that the trial is effectively over. Scopes was recruited to write news stories on the trial for some of the delinquent journalists.

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Heat moves trial outdoors

John Thomas Scopes Monkey Trial

July 20, 1925: with the proceedings taking place outdoors due to the heat, the defense — in a highly unusual move — calls Bryan to testify as a biblical expert. Clarence Darrow asks Bryan a series of questions about whether the Bible should be interpreted literally. As the questioning continued, Bryan accused Darrow of making a “slur at the Bible,” while Darrow mocks Bryan for “fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.”

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Guilty

July 21, 1925: the final day of the trial opened with Judge Raulston’s ruling that Darrow could not call Bryan back to the stand and that Bryan’s testimony should be expunged from the record. Raulston declared that Bryan’s testimony “can shed no light upon any issues that will be pending before the higher courts.”

Darrow then asked the court to bring in the jury and find Scopes guilty — a move that would allow a higher court to consider an appeal. The jury returned its guilty verdict after nine minutes of deliberation. Scopes was fined $100, which both Bryan and the ACLU offer to pay for him.

After the verdict was read, John Scopes delivered his only statement of the trial, declaring his intent “to oppose this law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violation of my ideal of academic freedom — that is, to teach the truth as guaranteed in our constitution, of personal and religious freedom.”

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Bryan dies

John Thomas Scopes Monkey Trial

July 26, 1925: five days after the Scopes trial ends, Bryan died in his sleep in Dayton and on July 31 he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The words “He Kept the Faith” are inscribed on his tombstone.

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Appeal

January 15, 1927: the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the Butler law was constitutional. However, it overturned Scopes’ verdict on a technicality, ruling that his fine should have been set by the jury hearing the case instead of by Judge Raulston. The justices declared in their ruling that “[n]othing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case.”

John Scopes Monkey Trial

The end…sort of

May 17, 1967, more than 40 years later, Tennessee Governor Buford Ellington signed into law the repeal of the Butler Act

John Scopes Monkey Trial

John Scopes after trial

Scopes accepted a scholarship for graduate study in geology at the University of Chicago. Later he worked for Gulf Oil in Venezuela where he met and married his wife, Mildred.

In 1930, he returned to the University of Chicago for a third year of graduate study. In 1932 he took a position as a geologist with the United Gas Corporation, for which he studied oil reserves. He worked, in Houston, Texas then in Shreveport, Louisiana, until he retired in 1963.

He died on October 21, 1970, of cancer in Shreveport, Louisiana at the age of 70.

John Thomas Scopes Monkey Trial

John Scopes Monkey Trial

Legacies

Other state have since enacted laws that while not exactly copying the Butler Act, exactly copied its intent. These laws have met with resistance and typically failure after a court challenge.

Here are some examples:

Arkansas

November 12, 1968: the NY Times reported: “John Scopes hailed today the Supreme Court’s striking down Arkansas’s anti-evolution law.”

Tennessee, again

September 11, 1974 the NY Times reported:  Tennessee’s 1973 “Genesis law,” which rekindled memories of the John. Scopes monkey trial, has been held unconstitutional.

The. Tennessee Legislattire passed the law in 1973; specifying that all biology textbooks in the state’s public chools must give equal consideration to all theories of creation of man.

Nashville Chancellor Ben Cantrel ruled Yesterday that the law is an act “respectting the establishment Of religion” and thus runs counter to constititional doctrine of separation of state and Church. The Nashville Chancellery Court rules on all civi challenges to state laws.

The law decreed that the Adam and Eve theory of man’s origin be described in text books aongside the theory Of evolution.

Ohio

On February 15, 2006, the NY Times reported: The Ohio Board of Education voted 11 to 4…to toss out a mandate that 10th-grade biology classes include critical analysis of evolution and an accompanying model lesson plan, dealing the intelligent design movement its second serious defeat in two months.

And Tennessee yet again

On April 15, 2012, the NY Times reported: Eighty-seven years after Tennessee was nationally embarrassed for criminally prosecuting the teaching of evolution, the state government is at it again. This time it has enacted a law that protects teachers who invite students to challenge the science underlying evolution and climate change. The measure is a transparent invitation to indulge pseudoscience in the classroom and a transparent pandering to a vocal, conservative fringe.

Louisiana

On November 19, 2017, the NY Times reported, Darwinism has long been under siege in parts of the United States, even if its critics have practiced their own form of evolution, adapting their arguments to accommodate altered legal circumstances. This installment of Retro Report shows the enduring strength of the forces that embrace the biblical account of Creation or reasonable facsimiles of it. For some of them, the rejection of broad scientific consensus extends to issues like climate change and stem-cell research. And the beat goes on.

John Scopes Monkey Trial