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

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

August 26, 2017 Woodstock Whisperer Leave a comment

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Amistad

August 26, 1839: Americans captured the Amistad (“Friendship”), a Spanish slave ship seized by the 54 Africans who had been carried as cargo on board, which had landed on Long Island, N.Y.

At the time, the transportation of slaves from Africa to the U.S. was illegal so the ship owners lied and said the Africans had been born in Cuba [National Archives article] (BH, see May 1840; next Slave Revolts, & Amistad, see March 9, 1841)

Black lives don’t matter

August 26, 1874: sixteen African American men held in the Gibson County Jail in Trenton, Tennessee had been arrested and accused of shooting at two white men.

Around 2:00 a.m. that morning, 400 – 500 masked men, mounted on horses and armed with shot guns, demanded entrance to the jail. The men confronted the jailer and threatened to kill him if he did not relinquish the keys to the cell holding the men. After the jailer gave the leader of the mob the key, the members of the mob bound the men by their hands and led them out of the jail cell.

The jailer later testified that he soon heard a series of gun shots in the distance. Upon investigation soon after the kidnapping, the jailer found six of the men lying along nearby Huntingdon Road – four were dead, their bodies “riddled with bullets.” Two of the men, found wounded but alive, later died before receiving medical attention. The bodies of the ten remaining men were later found at the bottom of a river about one mile from town. Local white officials denounced the lynching and held an inquest that concluded the men were killed by “shots inflicted by guns in the hands of unknown parties.” The town mayor also expressed local whites’ fears that black people throughout the county were arming themselves in plans to exact retaliatory violence.

One day after the mass murder of sixteen black men by hundreds of white men who remained unidentified and free, the mayor ordered police to take all guns belonging to Trenton’s black residents and threatened to shoot those who resisted. [Black Then article] (next BH, see Aug 27; see expanded chronology of 19th century Lynching)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

FEMINISM

Voting Rights

August 26, 1918: suffragists (arrested Aug. 12) tried, convicted, and sentenced to 10 to 15 days in old District workhouse. (see Sept 30)

19th Amendment

August 26, 1920: Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote, signed into law. [Our Documents article] (see Nov 6; 19^th amendment, see Feb 27, 1922)

Women’s Strike for Equality

August 26, 1970: the Women’s Strike for Equality celebrated the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment. The rally was sponsored by the National Organization for Women (NOW). [My Life Time article] (see Nov 3)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Fannie Sellins murdered

August 26, 1919: while leading strikers in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, United Mine Workers’ organizer Fannie Sellins, a widowed mother of four, was shot to death by coal company guards when she intervened in the beating of a picketing miner. (see Aug 31)

UFW

August 26, 1970: the strike by the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee forced lettuce prices up by as much as 100% around the US. [PA History article] (see September 14, 1970)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

Technological Milestone

August 26, 1939: the first televised Major League baseball game broadcast on station W2XBS, the station that was to become WNBC-TV.

Announcer Red Barber called the game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York.

At the time, television was still in its infancy. Regular programming did not yet exist and very few people owned television sets–there were only about 400 in the New York area. Not until 1946 did regular network broadcasting catch on in the United States, and only in the mid-1950s did television sets become more common in the American household. (see December 2, 1942)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

August 26 Music et al

Fear of Rock

August 26, 1955: the Venice Film Festival removed Blackboard Jungle because of objections by the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Clare Boothe Luce. A noted playwright, she was married to the publisher of Time and Life magazines, Henry Luce. The film famously opened with the recording of Bill Haley’s classic, Rock Around the Clock.

In the U.S., local communities tried to ban the film because they felt the soundtrack and the film’s portrayal of juvenile delinquents would incite delinquency. On March 28, 1955, the city of Memphis banned Blackboard Jungle. And on May 17, 1955, students at Princeton University staged a “riot” by blasting Rock Around the Clock simultaneously from many dormitory windows. LINK (see February 24, 1956)

Ode to Billy Joe

August 26 – September 22, 1967: “Ode to Billy Joe” by Bobbie Gentry #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Hey Jude

August 26, 1968: “Hey Jude” released. It will spend nine weeks as number one in the United States—the longest run at the top of the American charts for a Beatles’ single. [see Jude for more] (see Aug 28)

Jimi Hendrix

August 26, 1970: Hendrix hosted the grand opening of his psychedelic studio lair, Electric Lady, to fellow musicians and friends. Guests included Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Ron Wood, and Patti Smith. [Studio site] (see Sept 6)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

August 26, 1957: the Soviet Union announced that it had successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of being fired “into any part of the world.” The announcement caused great concern in the United State, and started a national debate over the “missile gap” between America and Russia. (Cold War, see Sept 4; NN, see Sept 19, 1957; Red Scare, see June 25, 1963)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

AIDS & Ryan White

August 26, 1985: first day of school. White allowed to listen to his classes via telephone. (see White for more)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

Hurricane Katrina

August 26, 2005: Katrina was again downgraded to a tropical storm. At 5:00 AM EDT, the eye of Hurricane Katrina was located just offshore of southwestern Florida over the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles (80 km) north-northeast of Key West, Florida. (see Aug 27)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

Murder of Luis Ramirez

August 26, 2008: Brandon Piekarsky and Colin Walsh, charged with murder and ethnic intimidation in the beating death of Luis Ramirez were granted bail. Bail was set at $50,000 each for Piekarsky and Colin Walsh. The two, who are white, were accused in the July 12 beating of Ramirez in Shenandoah. Mr. Piekarsky and Mr. Walsh had been held without bail since their arrests on July 25. A third defendant, Derrick Donchak, 18, is charged with aggravated assault and other offenses. He posted bail soon after his arrest. All three teenagers attended Shenandoah Valley High School. Mr. Ramirez, 24, died after he crossed paths with a group of teenagers in a darkened park. The attack drew condemnation from immigrants’ rights groups, who have held vigils in Shenandoah. The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the case. (see Ramirez for expanded story)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

Terry Jones

August 26, 2010: the New York Times reports that Jones planned a bonfire of Korans because, he said, it is “full of lies.” (see Sept 4)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

New Mexico

August 26, 2013: New Mexico District Judge Alan Malott New Mexico ruled New Mexico’s constitution prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and declared same-sex marriage legal, ordering the clerk of the state’s most populous county to join two other counties in issuing licenses for gay and lesbian couples.

The Bernalillo County clerk’s office in Albuquerque planned to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples at 8 a.m. Tuesday.

The decision came after a judge in Santa Fe directed the county clerk there to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Friday. But Malott’s ruling was seen as more sweeping because he directly declared that gay marriage was legal.

Laura Schauer Ives, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, called it “monumental” and said the group didn’t expect such a broad decision by Malott. The judge had been asked only to order that the state recognize, on her death certificate, a dying woman’s marriage Friday in Santa Fe to her longtime partner.

But after a short hearing in which neither the counties nor the state objected to the request, Malott also ruled on the broader lawsuit by that couple and five others seeking marriage licenses. [USA Today article] (see Aug 28)

Kentucky

August 26, 2015: a federal appeals court upheld a ruling ordering a Rowan County (Kentucky) Clerk Kim Davis to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.

Davis objected to same-sex marriage for religious reasons. She stopped issuing marriage licenses the day after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state bans on same-sex marriage. Two straight couples and two gay couples sued her. A U.S. district judge ordered Davis to issue the marriage licenses, but later delayed his order so that Davis could have time to appeal to the 6th circuit. The appeals court denied Davis’ request for a stay.

“It cannot be defensibly argued that the holder of the Rowan County Clerk’s office, apart from who personally occupies that office, may decline to act in conformity with the United States Constitution as interpreted by a dispositive holding of the United States Supreme Court,” judges Damon J. Keith, John M. Rogers and Bernice B. Donald wrote for the court. “There is thus little or no likelihood that the Clerk in her official capacity will prevail on appeal.” [Guardian article] (see Aug 27)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH & Colin Kaepernick

August 26, 2016: Kaepernick gained attention for his protest. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said. (FS & CK, see Aug 28)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

Sexual Abuse of Children

August 26, 2018: an Archbishop Viganò claimed that the Vatican hierarchy was complicit in covering up accusations that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had sexually abused seminarians and that Pope Francis knew about the abuses by McCarrick years before they became public. The letter contended, Francis did not punish the cardinal, but instead empowered him to help choose powerful American bishops.

The pope did not deny the accusation, but sidestepped questions by insisting he would not dignify them with a response.[NYT article] (next SAoC, see Sept 12; McCarrick, see Oct 12)

August 26 Peace Love Art Activism

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

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

August 25, 2017 Woodstock Whisperer Leave a comment

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

White League

August 25, 1874: the White League was a group of white southerners who wanted to rid the south of Black emancipation and the influence of northern Republicans who had come south (aka, Carpetbaggers). Marshall H. Twitchell, formerly a white officer in the U.S. Colored Troops, had helped form the Red River Parish.

In the summer of 1874 a chapter of the White League formed in the Red River Parish of Louisiana under the leadership of Thomas Abney.

Around midnight on August 25, the White League under Abney’s leadership murdered Thomas Floyd, a black Republican in the Brownsville community, south of Coushatta. Floyd’s murder set in motion the violent events that followed. [Facing History dot org article] (BH, see Aug 26; White League, see Aug 27)

Marcus Garvey

August 25, 1919: Garvey held a mass meeting at Carnegie Hall in New York to promote the sale of Black Star Line stock. (BH, see Sept 28; see MG for expanded story)

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

August 25, 1925: the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) organized. It was the first labor organization led by African Americans to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). [Black Past article] (BH, see Sept 9; Labor, see February 16, 1926)

Pastor Robert Graetz

August 25, 1956: several sticks of dynamite were thrown into the yard of Pastor Robert Graetz’s Montgomery, Alabama, home where they exploded, breaking the home’s front windows and damaging the front door. A young white minister serving the city’s primarily African American Trinity Lutheran Church, Pastor Graetz was a member of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the community group that had planned and guided the city’s bus boycott to protest racially discriminatory treatment toward black bus riders. Pastor Graetz had been an outspoken supporter of the ongoing bus boycott since it began on December 5, 1955, and was known to regularly provide transportation to boycott participants traveling to and from work.

At the time of the explosion, Pastor Graetz was attending an integration workshop in Tennessee. His wife and children were not at home and no one was injured in the blast. In January 1956, the Montgomery homes of local minister Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and E.D. Nixon, former president of the local NAACP, were bombed. Both men were active boycott leaders.

In response to the bombing of Paster Graetz’s home, Montgomery Mayor W. A. Gayle called it an inside job and claimed the attack was “just a publicity stunt to build up interest of the Negroes in their campaign . . . This latest bombing follows the usual pattern. It’s a strange coincidence that when interest appears to be flagging in the bus boycott something like this happens.” No one was arrested, charged, or convicted for the attack. [2015 Montgomery Advertiser article] (see Aug 30)

Fannie Lou Hamer

August 25, 1964: the Democratic National Convention’s credentials committee seated the all-white regular Democrats from Mississippi. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party rejected the offer of two at-large seats with civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer explaining, “We didn’t come all this way for no two seats, ’cause all of us is tired.” All but three of the regular Mississippi Democrats walked out of the convention. (see Aug 28 – 30)

Black Panther Party

August 25, 1967: FBI Director J Edgar Hoover authorized a COINTELPRO operation against the Black Panther Party, directing FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect [and] discredit” the militant African-American group. (see Aug 30)

Lena Baker

August 25, 2005: the State of Georgia granted Lena Baker a posthumous pardon for killing a white man she said enslaved her (see March 5, 1945). Lena Baker said she acted in self-defense, but a jury of white men convicted her after a one-day trial. Baker was the only woman to have been executed in the state’s electric chair. On Aug. 30, Georgia authorities presented a proclamation to her descendants, including her grandnephew Roosevelt Curry, who led the drive to clear her name. [NPR story] (see Sept 9)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

August 25, 1914: Margaret Sanger had coined the term “birth control” and used the phrase in the June 1914 issue of The Woman Rebel. On this date she was indicted for publishing three issues of her magazine.

The Comstock Act (March 3, 1873) had made it a crime to send information about birth control or abortion through the U.S. mails.

The indictment was one of a long series of events in the first half of the twentieth century involving the suppression of information about birth control. In October 1914, having obtained a postponement of her trial, Sanger fled the country, taking the train to Canada and then sailing to England. In the fall of 1915, after her husband William Sanger was convicted of violating the Comstock Act, she felt compelled to return to the US and arrived in New York that October. The charges from the 1914 indictment were dropped in early 1916. (BC, see March 1915; Sanger, see September 10, 1915)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

NPS

August 25, 1916: the National Park Service was established within the Department of the Interior. [NPS site] (see January 15, 1919)

California Emissions Vote

August 25, 2022: California air regulators voted on a plan to address climate change and harmful pollution by moving the nation’s largest auto market away from the internal combustion engine.

The regulation would phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered cars, trucks and SUVs culminating in a total ban of new sales of the vehicles by 2035. The ban will not prevent people from using gas-powered vehicles or apply to the used car market, but California officials say it would dramatically cut the state’s climate-warming emissions by speeding the transition to electric vehicles.

“California now has a groundbreaking, world-leading plan to achieve 100% zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035,” said the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom. “It’s ambitious, it’s innovative, it’s the action we must take if we’re serious about leaving the planet better off for future generations.” [NPR article] (next EI, see Oct 26)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Battle of Blair Mountain

August 25 – September 2, 1921: Battle of Blair Mountain was one of the largest civil uprisings in United States history and the largest armed rebellion since the American Civil War. For five days in Logan County, West Virginia, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers, called the Logan Defenders, who were backed by coal mine operators during an attempt by the miners to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired and the United States Army intervened by presidential order.

Up to 30 deaths were reported by owners’ side and 50–100 on the union miners’ side, with hundreds more injured. 985 miners were indicted for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, accessory to murder, and treason against the State of West Virginia. Though some were acquitted by sympathetic juries, many were also imprisoned for a number of years, though they were paroled in 1925. [Progressive dot org article] (see Sept 21)

Sacco and Vanzetti

August 25, 1927: the Commonwealth of Massachusetts executed Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for their alleged participation in a murderous payroll heist in 1920. The two men were anarchists and labor activists. (see Oct 6)

Federal worker protections

August 25, 2018: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in Washington struck down most of the key provisions of three executive orders that President Trump signed in late May that would have made it easier to fire federal employees.

The ruling was a blow to Republican efforts to rein in public-sector labor unions, which states like Wisconsin had aggressively curtailed in recent years. Om June 27, the Supreme Court had dealt public-sector unions a major blow by ending mandatory union fees for government workers nationwide.

Amid these setbacks, the fight against Mr. Trump’s executive orders had taken on an existential importance in the minds of some public-sector union leaders.

“We are very pleased that the court agreed that the president far exceeded his authority, and that the apolitical career federal work force shall be protected from these illegal, politically motivated executive orders,” Sarah Suszczyk, the co-chair of a coalition of government-workers unions, said in a statement. (see Aug 30)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Cultural Milestone

August 25, 1939: “The Wizard of Oz”, which will become one of the best-loved movies in history, opened in theaters around the United States. Based on the 1900 children’s novel ”The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919), the film starred Judy Garland as the young Kansas farm girl Dorothy, who, after being knocked unconscious in a tornado, dreams about following a yellow brick road, alongside her dog Toto, to the Emerald City to meet the Wizard of Oz.

Along the way, Dorothy encounters a cast of characters, including the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Wicked Witch of the West. Though the scenes in Kansas were shot in traditional black and white, Oz appears in vivid Technicolor, a relatively new film process at the time.

Nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Picture category, The Wizard of Oz lost to the Civil War-era epic “Gone With the Wind.””The Wizard of Oz” won a Best Song Oscar for “Over the Rainbow,” which became one of Garland’s signature hits. Garland won a special award at that year’s Oscar ceremony, for Best Juvenile Performer. Filmed at MGM Studios in Culver City, California, “The Wizard of Oz” was a modest box-office success when it was first released, but its popularity continued to grow after it was televised for the first time in 1956.

An estimated 45 million people watched that inaugural broadcast, and since then ”The Wizard of Oz” has aired on TV countless times. Today, some of the film’s famous lines, including “There’s no place like home” and “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” are well-known to several generations of moviegoers. (see June 19, 1941)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

The Red Scare

August 25, 1948: Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers both testified in a televised hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee. It is the first time any Congressional hearing was broadcast over television. (Hiss: see January 21, 1950; Red Scare, see November 1, 1948)

Loyalty Oath

August 25, 1950: the University of California Regents voted to fire 31 faculty members who refused to sign a Loyalty Oath. The Regents had adopted a final version of the oath on April 21, 1950 (after much protest and debate that began in 1949). The University of California Loyalty Oath was one of the major controversies of the Cold War era. (Red Scare, see Sept 22; U of C, see October 17, 1952)

Nuclear/Chemical News

August 25, 1962: Soviet Union above ground nuclear test. 1.5 – 10 megaton. (see Aug 27)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Clarence Earl Gideon

August 25, 1961: five days before his 51st birthday, Judge McCrary sentenced Gideon to the maximum sentence: five years in prison. (see Gideon for expanded story)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

August 25 Music et al

The Loco-Motion

August 25 – 31, 1962: “The Loco-Motion” by Little Eva #1 Billboard Hot 100. The Carole King and Gerry Goffin song was offered to Dee Dee Sharp (Mashed Potatoes), who turned it down. The writers had their babysitter record it who took it to No.1.

The Beatles/“Help”

August 25, 1965: “Help” movie released in US

The Beatles/Marharishi

August 25, 1967: left for Bangor, North Wales for mediation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. (see MMY for expanded story)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Announcements & Nominations

Robert F Kennedy

August 25, 1964, Robert F Kennedy announced his candidacy for the US Senate representing the State of New York.

Barak Obama

August 25 – 28, 2008, Democratic National Convention held in Denver, CO. Barak Obama and Joe Biden nominated for President and Vice-President.

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

August 25 – 29, 1968: Democratic Convention in Chicago demonstrations & police riot 10,000 +/- demonstrators vs. 11,000 Chicago police, 6,000 National Guard, 7,500 U.S. army troops, and 1,000 FBI, CIA & other services agents. (see September 4)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Dissolution of the USSR & INDEPENDENCE DAY

August 25, 1991: Belarus declared independence from Soviet Union. [RFE article] (see Aug 27)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Consumer Protection

August 25, 1997: the tobacco industry agreed to an $11.3 billion settlement with the state of Florida. [Washington Post article] (see September 1, 1998)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Hurricane Katrina

August 25, 2005: At 6:30 PM EDT Hurricane Katrina made its first landfall in Florida as a Category 1 hurricane near Hallandale Beach, Florida on the Miami-Dade/Broward county line. After landfall, instead of travelling as originally forecast, Katrina moved hard left (south/southwest) almost parallel to the coastline in densely-populated metropolitan Miami, Florida. As many as six people were killed, including three people killed by falling trees and two boaters that attempted to ride out the storm in their crafts. (see Aug 26)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

August 25, 2017: President Trump directed the military not to move forward with an Obama-era plan that would have allowed transgender individuals to be recruited into the armed forces, following through on his intentions announced a month earlier to ban transgender people from serving.

The presidential memorandum also banned the Department of Defense from using its resources to provide medical treatment regimens for transgender individuals currently serving in the military.

Trump also directed the departments of Defense and Homeland Security “to determine how to address transgender individuals currently serving based on military effectiveness and lethality, unitary cohesion, budgetary constraints, applicable law, and all factors that may be relevant,” the White House official said. [CNN article] (LGBTQ, see Aug 29; Transgender, see Oct 30)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

August 25, 2017: President Trump pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio after being found guilty in July on criminal contempt charges stemming from his refusal to stop imprisoning suspected illegal immigrants.

“Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now eighty-five years old, and after more than fifty years of admirable service to our Nation, he is [a] worthy candidate for a Presidential pardon,” the White House said in part in a press release. [Washington Post article] (see Aug 30)

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

August 25, 2021: the Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment declaring that the United States had a duty to provide “competent physician-led healthcare” to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe and its members. In light of the promises the United States made to the Tribe more than 150 years ago in the Fort Laramie Treaty, and relevant legislation since that time, such as the Snyder Act and the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, the district court correctly articulated the existence and scope of the duty and declaratory judgment was proper. [Justia article] (next NA, see January 25, 2022) )

August 25 Peace Love Art Activism

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

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

August 24, 2017 Woodstock Whisperer Leave a comment

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

August 24, 1877: The Gatling Gun Co.—manufacturers of an early machine gun— wrote to B&O Railroad Co. President John W. Garrett during a strike, urging their product be purchased to deal with the “recent riotous disturbances around the country.” Said GGC, “Four or five men only are required to operate (a gun), and one Gatling … can clear a street or block and keep it clear” [Popular Mechanics story] (see July 1881)

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

The Road to Bethel and the Woodstock Festival

First annual Maverick Festival

August 24, 1915: (from The Road to Woodstock, by Michael Lang) the first annual Maverick Festival. A flyer promised “wild sports going on” and the dancer Lada, who “illumes beautiful music like poems, and makes you feel its religion…you cry, it is so esquisite to see….All this in the wild stone-quarry theatre, in the moonlight, with the orchestra wailing in rapture, and the jealous torches flaring int eh wind! In the afternoon, there is also a concert, with a pageant, and strange doings on the stage….There will be a village that will stand but for a day, which mad artists have hung with glorious banners and blazoned in the entrance through the woods.”

Bacchanalian fetes

In the 1920s, “there were bacchanalian fetes, with ecentric celebrants wearing handmade costumes for all-night revelry.” (see Chronology for expanded story)

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Ben Hart

August 24, 1923: from EJI story…a 34-year-old black farmhand Ben Hart was killed based on suspicion that he was a “Peeping Tom” who had that morning peered into a young white girl’s bedroom window near Jacksonville, Florida. According to witnesses, approximately ten unmasked men came to Hart’s home around 9:30 p.m. claiming to be deputy sheriffs and informing Hart he was accused of looking into the girl’s window. Hart professed his innocence and readily agreed to go to the county jail with the men, but did not live to complete the journey.

Shortly after midnight the next day, Hart’s handcuffed and bullet-riddled body was found in a ditch about three miles from the city. Hart had been shot six times and witnesses reported seeing him earlier that night fleeing several white men on foot who were shooting at him as several more automobiles filled with white men followed.

Police investigating Hart’s murder soon determined he was innocent of the accusation against him; he was at his home 12 miles away when the alleged peeping incident occurred. (next BH, see February 8, 1925; next Lynching, see May 4, 1927 or see AL3 for expanded chronology of early 20th century lynching)

SCOTTSBORO BOYS Travesty

August 24, 1952: Haywood Patterson died of cancer. He was 39 years old. (see SB for expanded story)

Emmett Till

August 24, 1955: Emmett Till and a group of teenagers entered Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Money, Mississippi to buy refreshments after a long day picking cotton in the hot afternoon sun. What exactly transpired inside the grocery store that afternoon is unknown. Till purchased bubble gum and some of the kids with him would later report that he either whistled at, flirted with, or touched the hand of Carolyn Bryant, the store’s white female clerk and wife of the owne. (see Till for more)

Medgar Evers assassination

August 24, 1992: the Mississippi Supreme Court delayed indefinitely the third trial of Byron De La Beckwith in the 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, civil rights leader. The court said it would decide later if the state may prosecute Beckwith in the 29-year-old case. Beckwith’s lawyers had asked the court to review a lower court’s refusal to dismiss the murder charge, which they say violated Beckwith’s right to a speedy trial and due process. [1994 NYT story] (BH, see, Nov 3; ME, see Dec 16)

Dee/Moore Murders

August 24, 2007: James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was sentenced to three life terms for his role in the 1964 abduction and murder of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore in Mississippi. [2016 San Diego Union Tribune story on Seale’s death] (BH, see Sept 27; D/M, see September 9, 2008)

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

The Red Scare

August 24, 1954: President Dwight Eisenhower signed into law [text of his statement] the Communist Control Act, outlawing the Communist Party. This was the first American law ever to outlaw a specific political party or group. The law also outlawed membership in the Communist Party or support for a “Communist-action” organization. Apart from two minor cases, no administration tried to enforce it, and the Supreme Court has never ruled on its constitutionality.

This law is not to be confused with the Smith Act, passed on June 29, 1940, which made it a crime to advocate the violent overthrow of the government. The top leaders of the Communist Party were convicted of violating the Smith Act, and on June 4, 1951, in Dennis v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions and the constitutionality of the Smith Act. NYT article (see Sept 4)

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

France

August 24, 1958: France became the world’s fourth thermonuclear power as it exploded a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific. (see Aug 27)

Korea

August 24, 2018: President Trump abruptly called off a trip to North Korea by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, citing a lack of progress in nuclear disarmament talks and acknowledging for the first time that his diplomatic overture to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had run into trouble.

Trump said the negotiations had been hindered by a lack of support from China, which he blamed on its bitter trade dispute with the United States. High-level talks with Pyongyang would not resume, he said, until the United States and China resolved those issues. [NYT article] (see Oct 20)

Fukushima Daiichi

August 24, 2023: workers in Japan started releasing treated radioactive water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

The Chinese government announced it was immediately suspending aquatic imports, such as seafood, from Japan.

A review by the UN’s nuclear watchdog said that the discharge would have a negligible radiological impact to people and the environment, but some nations remain concerned. [NPR article] (next N/C N, see )

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

***Vietnam* & *South Vietnam Leadership***

Roger Hilsman Jr

August 24, 1963: assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, Roger Hilsman Jr, took it upon himself to draft a cable to new US Ambassador to Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, stating that the US government could no longer tolerate a situation in which “power lies in Nhyu’s hands.” Lodge was to tell key military leaders that “we must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved.” Kennedy on vacation and preoccupied with other domestic matters, approved the cable. South Vietnam’s military leaders backed off from a coup. [2014 NYT Hilsman obit] (Vietnam, see Sept 21; SVL, see Nov 1)

Sterling Hall Bombing

August 24, 1970: the Sterling Hall Bombing occurred on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. It was committed by four young people as a protest against the University’s research connections with the US military during the Vietnam War and resulted in the death of a university physics researcher, 33-year-old researcher Robert Fassnacht and injuries to three others. (Vietnam, see Sept 6; Cambodia, see Sept 25)

1964 Democratic National Convention

August 24 – 27, 1964: at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated for a full term with Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota as his running mate. NYT article

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

August 24 Music et al

The Beatles

Psychedelics

August 24, 1965: Roger McGuinn and David Crosby (of the Byrds) and Peter Fonda among others visited the Beatles in Beverly Hills, CA during a break in their tour. LSD was used by all except Paul McCartney. The Beatles credit the Byrd’s musical influence on the subsequent recording of their subsequent Revolver album. (Beatles, see Aug 25; LSD, see August 31; Revolver, see August 5, 1966)

Mark David Chapman

August 24, 1981: Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. [NY Daily News story] (see February 10, 1986)

Increase in use of psychedelics

August 24, 2022: data collected by the National Institutes of Health from April 2021 through October 2021 indicated that the percentages of young people who said they used hallucinogens in the past year had been fairly consistent for the past few decades, until 2020 when rates of use began spiking.

In 2021, 8% of young adults said they have used a hallucinogen in the past year, the highest proportion since the survey began in 1988.

Reported hallucinogens included LSD, mescaline, peyote, shrooms, PCP and MDMA (aka molly or ecstasy).

Only use of MDMA declined has decreased, from 5% in 2020 to 3% in 2021. [NPR article] (next LSD, see Dec 27 )

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

Dissolution of the USSR & INDEPENDENCE DAY

August 24, 1991: Ukraine declared independence from Soviet Union. (see Aug 25)

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

August 24, 2015: Mercy Medical Center in California, part of a Catholic hospital system, operated under binding “ethical and religious directives” issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Applying these directives, which refer to sterilization for the purpose of contraception as “intrinsically evil,” had denied Rachel Miller’s doctor’s request to perform a tubal ligation, but under the threat of a potential lawsuit from the ACLE approved a the doctor’s request. (see Aug 31)

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

August 24, 2021: the Supreme Court refused to block a court ruling ordering the Biden administration to reinstate a Trump-era policy that forces people to wait in Mexico while seeking asylum in the U.S.

With the three liberal justices in dissent, the court said the administration likely violated federal law in its efforts to rescind the program informally known as Remain in Mexico.

The justices said in their unsigned decision that the Biden administration appeared to act arbitrarily and capriciously by rescinding the policy, formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols. They also cited last year’s decision in the Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of University of California case. That decision blocked the Trump administration’s effort to undo the Obama-era program protecting young immigrants that came to the U.S. as children. [NPR story] (next IH, see Dec 9)

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism

Cannabis

August 24, 2022: data collected by the National Institutes of Health from April 2021 through October 2021 indicated that the amount of people from ages 19 to 30 who reported using marijuana were at the highest rates since 1988 when the NIH first began the survey. The amount of young adults who said in 2021 that they used marijuana in the past year (43%), the past month (29%) or daily (11%) were at the highest levels ever recorded. Daily use — defined in the study as 20 or more times in 30 days — was up from 8% in 2016. The amount of young adults who said they used a marijuana vape in the past month reached pre-pandemic levels, after dropping off in 2020. It doubled from 6% in 2017 to 12% in 2021. [NPR article] (next Cannabis, see Oct 6 or see CAC for expanded chronology )

Crime and Punishment

August 24, 2023: former President Donald J. Trump surrendered at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta and was booked on 13 felony charges for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia. [NYT article] (next C & P, see )

August 24 Peace Love Art Activism