September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Homestead, PA

September 30, 1892: authorities charged 29 strike leaders  with treason—plotting “to incite insurrection, rebellion & war against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania”—for daring to strike the Carnegie Steel Co. in Homestead, Pa. Jurors will refuse to convict them. (see March 25, 1893)

Mother Jones

September 30, 1899: seventy-year-old Mother Jones organized the wives of striking miners in Arnot, Pa. to descend on the mine with brooms, mops, and clanging pots and pans.  They frighten away the mules and their scab drivers.  The miners eventually won their strike. (see May 19, 1902)

National Farm Workers Association

September 30, 1962: The first convention of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) met with hundreds of delegates assembled in an abandoned movie theater in Fresno. CA. The group’s distinctive flag, a black eagle symbol on a white circle in a red field, was unveiled. (see NFWA for more)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

FEMINISM & Voting Rights

September 30, 1918:  President Wilson addressed the Senate asking for passage of federal woman suffrage amendment. Wilson’s words on failed to drum up the necessary votes to pass the amendment. (see Oct 1)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Black History

Elaine, Ark

September 30, 1919: Black farmers meet in Elaine, Ark., to establish the Progressive Farmers and Householders Union to fight for better pay and higher cotton prices.

White mobs descended on the black town destroying homes and businesses and attacking anyone in their path. Terrified black residents, including women, children, and the elderly, fled their homes and hid for their lives in nearby woods and fields. A responding federal troop regiment claimed only two black people were killed but many reports challenged the white soldiers’ credibility and accused them of participating in the massacre. Today, historians estimate hundreds of black people were killed in the massacre. .

When the violence was quelled, sixty-seven black people were arrested and charged with inciting violence, while dozens more faced other charges. No white attackers were prosecuted, but twelve black union members convicted of riot-related charges were sentenced to death. The NAACP represented the men on appeal and successfully obtained reversals of all of their death sentences.  (next BH & Lynching, see Oct 1; for for expanded chronology, see American Lynching 2)

Gary, Indiana school integration

September 30, 1927: an agreement was reached: three of the original six black students at Emerson would be transferred, while the remaining three seniors would be allowed to graduate. The 18 black students transferred into Emerson would again be transferred out to other schools. The sum of $15,000 was also allocated for temporary facilities until a new black high school could be constructed. (BH, see Nov 18; SD, see Nov 21)

Emmett Till

September 30, 1955:  Milam and Bryant were released on bond. Kidnapping charges were pending. (BH, see Oct 10; see Emmett Till for expanded story)

James H Meredith/Paul Guihard/Ray Gunter

September 30, 1962: hundreds of federal marshals and thousands of Army and National Guard troops met a violent mob of segregationists from all over the South and the University of Mississippi campus became a battleground.

Paul Guihard was a French journalist who covered the Civil Rights struggle during the 60’s for Agence France-Press. He had arrived in Oxford on September 29 on his day off. Guihard compared the atmosphere on the 30^th to that of a carnival, and wrote of spirited singing and speeches of Southern pride and tradition. As the day wore on, protesters became restless. Marshals arrested several students and protesters responded by shouting and throwing debris. Guihard waded into the crowd, shrugging off warnings of physical danger. Debris rained down on the marshals and they responded with tear gas. The mob fired back with guns and the marshals responded with gunfire of their own. Guihard was found several hundred yards away lying face-up next to some bushes less than an hour later, dying from a gunshot to the back. Help was called but nothing could be done to save him.

Another man, Ray Gunter, a 23-year-old white jukebox repairman who came by out of curiosity, was also killed in what became known as the Battle for Ole Miss. Gunter’s death was ruled accidental and investigations concurred that the bullet that killed him was a stray.

A federal investigation was initiated re the Guihard death, but neither killer nor motive was ever found. the second victim was 23-year-old Ray Gunter, a white jukebox repairman who came by out of curiosity. (see October 1, 1962)

Huey Newton

September 30, 1978: Huey Newton convicted in Oakland, Ca. on weapons charges. (see August 29, 1979)

Medgar Evers assassination

September 30, 1991: Nashville, TN. The Tennessee State Supreme Court ruled that Byron de la Beckwith must be extradited to Mississippi to stand trial a third time. Mr. Beckwith’s lawyer then took the case to the Federal courts, asking for a temporary restraining order to block the extradition. Tennessee agreed to hold Mr. Beckwith until then. (Evers, see October 3)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

September 30, 1942: until the early 1940s, the FBI had not taken much interest in pornography. That changed on this day, when it opened an “Obscene File” and began a decades-long crusade against sexually oriented materials. The federal laws justifying this effort involved use of the mails, interstate commerce and, by the 1970s, the federal RICO (Racketeer influenced and Corrupt Organizations) law. (see June 14, 1943)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

September 30, 1964: University of California at Berkeley students and faculty opposed to the war staged the first large-scale antiwar demonstration in the US. Polls showed that a majority of Americans supported President Lyndon Johnson’s war policy. (see Nov 1)

News Music

September 30, 1965: Donovan appeared on Shindig! and plays Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Universal Soldier”. (V, see Oct 15; NM, see Jan 15, 1966)

Video of Donovan (may or may not be from Shindig!)

Buffy Saint-Marie

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

LSD

September 30 – October 2, 1966:  Acid Test. San Francisco State College. Whatever It Is Festival.  A  disguised Ken Kesey (just back from fugitive adventures in Mexico), the Grateful Dead, Hugh Romney, and others are there. [MJK article] (see Oct 6)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

September 30, 1966: Botswana independent from United Kingdom. (see ID for full list of 1960s’ new countries)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

Oliver W. Sipple

September 30, 1975: Oliver W. Sipple filed a $15-million lawsuit against the press for reporting that he was homosexual. (next LGBTQ, see Oct 22; assassination attempt, see Nov 26)

In 1984 the California Supreme Court dismissed Sipple’s suit, which upheld a lower court’s finding that the sexual orientation of Oliver W. Sipple (the former marine who thwarted an assassination attempt on President Gerald R. Ford) had been known to ”hundreds of people” before the news accounts, but Mr. Sipple’s protest spurred a debate among news organizations about the individual’s right to privacy versus freedom of the press. (next LGBTQ, see November 14, 1985; see Sipple for more)

Roy S. Moore

September 30, 2016: Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary, a nine-member body made up of selected judges, lawyers and others suspended chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy S. Moore for the remainder of his term in office for ordering the state’s probate judges to defy federal court orders on same-sex marriage. While the court did not remove Chief Justice Moore from the bench entirely, as it did in 2003 after he defied orders to remove a giant monument of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building, it effectively ended his career as a Supreme Court justice. His term would end in 2019, and Chief Justice Moore, 69, will be barred by law from running again at that time because of his age.  [NYT article] (see Dec 22)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

The Cold War

September 30, 1978: the Belmont Report, issued on this day, was the official report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. The Commission had been established by Congress with the National Research Act on July 12, 1974, following revelations of abuse of people in biomedical research. The most notorious case was the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which involved grotesque abuses of African-Americans in a research study that began in the 1930s. That experiment was exposed on July 26, 1972, and President Bill Clinton issued an official apology to the survivors on May 16, 1997.

The exposé of the Tuskegee Experiment played a major role in forcing Congress to act on human subjects’ protection. The Belmont Report helped establish the current standards for the protection of human subjects.Universities, for example, are required to maintain an Institutional Review Board (IRB) to review and approve research on human subjects.

Another of the  notorious experiments on human subjects without informed consent involved the CIA’s MKULTRA project, which it began on April 13, 1953. [text] (see Dec 15)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

September 30, 1999: five people died in an accident at the Mihama power plant (Japan) in the Fukui province. Seven people are also injured when hot water and steam leaks from a broken pipe. Officials insist that no radiation leaked from the plant, and there is no danger to the surrounding area. (see December 13, 2001)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

September 30, 2017: the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida struck down the Brevard County, Fla., Board of County Commissioners’ exclusion of nontheists from giving pre-meeting invocations. In its ruling, the court said a local governing body cannot limit invocation officiants exclusively to those from monotheistic traditions.

“The great promise of the Establishment Clause is that religion will not operate as an instrument of division in our nation,” the court stated in its concluding section. “Regrettably, religion has become such an instrument in Brevard County. The county defines rights and opportunities of its citizens to participate in the ceremonial pre-meeting invocation during the county board’s regular meetings based on the citizens’ religious beliefs. As explained above, the county’s policy and practice violate the First and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution and Article I, Sections 2 and 3 of the Florida Constitution.”  [ACLU-Florida article] (see Oct 18)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Student Rights

September 30, 2019:  Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed into law a plan to allow college athletes to strike endorsement deals, intensifying the legal and political clashes that could ultimately transform the economics of college sports.

The governor’s signature opened a new front of legal pressure against the amateurism model that had been foundational to college sports but had restricted generations of students from earning money while on athletic rosters. [NYT article] (next SR, see Oct 24; NCAA, see Oct 29)

September 30 Peace Love Art Activism

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

September 28, 1842: in New York, the first grand jury indictments in America against publishers of obscene books were issued: People v. Richard Hobbes and People v. Henry R. Robinson. In addition, indictments were issued against the five print shop owners and bookstand operators used by the two publishers.

Titles named in the indictments: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure; Memoirs of the Life and Voluptuous Adventures of the Celebrated Courtesan Mademoiselle Celestine of Paris; The Cabinet of Venus Unlocked; The Curtain Drawn Up, or The Education of Laura; The Confessions of a Voluptuous Young Lady of High Rank; The Amorous Songster or Jovial Companion; The Lustful Turk; The Amorous History and Adventures of Raymond De B— and Father Andouillard; The Auto-Biography of a Footman.  (see July 19, 1911)

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Opelousas Massacre

September 28, 1868:  one of the worst outbreaks of violence during Reconstruction took place in Opelousas, La. The event started with three local members of the KKK-like Knights of the White Camelia beating newspaper editor Emerson Bentley, who had promoted voter registration and education for all. After some African Americans came to his rescue, bands of armed white mobs roamed the countryside and began killing. It is estimated that more than 200 blacks and 30 whites died in the Opelousas Massacre [Black Past article]. (next BH, see January 5, 1869; next Lynching, see August 26, 1874; see Never Forget for expanded 19th century lynching history)

Omaha, Nebraska race revolt

September 28, 1919: a major race riot erupted in Omaha, Nebraska. A white mob of about 4,000 people lynched and burned the body of Willie Brown, an African-American who was being held in the county jail. The mayor of Omaha, who was white, was almost lynched by the mob, which set fire to the county courthouse.

The origin of the revolt lay in racial conflict in the extensive city stockyards and meat packing plants. (A similar conflict underlay the East St. Louis race revolt that began on July 2, 1917.)  Rumors that Willie Brown had raped a white woman spurred the lynching. Later reports by the police and U.S. Army investigators determined that the victim had not made a positive identification. The riot lasted for two days, and ended when over 1,200 federal troops arrived to restore order. Although martial law was not formally proclaimed, for all practical purposes it existed, with troops remaining in the city for several weeks. [Black Past article] (next BH, see Oct 1; next Lynching, see Sept 30; for for expanded chronology, see American Lynching 2)

Gary, Indiana integration protests

September 28, 1927: student against integration in Gary, Indiana continued to protest and now numbered over 1300. Family and other local citizen also protested the proposed school integration. City, school, and district officials met with protesters to begin negotiations for bringing the strike to an end. (see Sept 30)

James H Meredith

September 28, 1962: federal marshals, patrolmen from the Texas – Mexico border, and 110 Army engineers with 49 trucks, van, tractor-trailers, and Jeeps loaded with equipment arrived in Memphis, TN in anticipation of a showdown regarding the admission of Meredith. (see September 29, 1962)

Black Panthers

September 28, 1968: a judge sentenced Huey P. Newton to 2 to 15 years in state prison. [PBS story] (BH, see Oct 16; Black Panthers, see “In November”)

Muhammad Ali

September 28, 1976:  Ali defeated Ken Norton in the fifteenth and final round at Yankee Stadium. Though Norton was ahead through the first eight rounds, Ali pulls through to win all but one of the subsequent rounds. As with Frazier the year before, this bout ended the three-fight series between Ali and Norton. (NYT article) (Ali, see February 15, 1978; BH, see Nov 12)

Johnnie Mae Chappell

September 28, 2005:  retired detectives Lee Cody and Don Coleman, who had led the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office investigation into the 1964 murder of Johnnie Mae Chappell, answered subpoenas sent by the state attorney’s office.

Detective Lee Cody said that in all the years he’d been involved in the Chappell case, it was the first time he’d ever been under oath. Cody and Detective Don Coleman took confessions from the three men, but the charges against them were dropped. (BH & Chappell, see Oct 11)

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism

September 28 Music et al

Hey Jude

September  28 – November 29, 1968, The Beatles after live performances: “Hey Jude” #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Hey Jude” was released in August 1968 as the first single from the Beatles’ record label Apple Records. More than seven minutes in length, it was at the time the longest single ever to top the British charts.[1] It also spent nine weeks at number one in the United States, the longest for any Beatles single. “Hey Jude” tied the “all-time” record, at the time, for the longest run at the top of the US charts. The single has sold approximately eight million copies and is frequently included on professional critics’ lists of the greatest songs of all time. (see Oct 18)

see Time Peace: The Rascals Greatest Hits for more

September 28 – October 4, 1968: The Rascals’ Time Peace: The Rascals Greatest Hits is the Billboard #1 album.

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism

George Wallace

September 28, 1972: Arthur Bremer’s sentence reduced to 53 years after appeal. (NYT article) (see November 9, 2007)

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism

ADA

September 28, 1987: protesters demanded better access to mass transit systems by blocking buses at a transit association convention. The number of arrests in two days rose to at least 54. ”It’s a very emotional issue for disabled people to have to come out here and do this,” said Judy Heumann of the World Institute on Disability, an organization based in Berkeley. (see March 13, 1988)

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Violence Against Women Act

September 28, 1994: the House of Representatives passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), enhancing states’ ability to respond to domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault. (see In February 1995)

RU-486

September 28, 2000: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of mifepristone (RU-486) for the termination of early pregnancy, defined as 49 days or less. (see Nov 7)

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Iraq War II

September 28, 2004:  the same intelligence unit that produced a gloomy report in July 2004 about the prospect of growing instability in Iraq warned the Bush administration about the potential costly consequences of an American-led invasion two months before the war began, government officials said. [NYT article] (see Oct 7)

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment Inquiry

September 28, 2019: House Democrats subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, demanding that he promptly produce a tranche of documents and a slate of witnesses that could shed light on the president’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to help tarnish Joe Biden, Jr..

The subpoena and demands for depositions were the first major investigative actions the House took since it launched impeachment proceedings in light of revelations that Mr. Trump pushed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate Biden Jr., possibly using United States aid as leverage. [NYT article] (see TII for expanded chronology)

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Cannabis

September 28, 2021: Marijuana Moment reported that newly released FBI data showed that marijuana arrests had declined significantly in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic,.

There were 1,155,610 drug-related arrests overall in 2020, with cannabis sales and possession busts accounting for just over 30 percent (or 350,150) of those cases. The vast majority were for marijuana possession alone.

The agency’s data showed that there was a cannabis arrest every 90 seconds in the country in 2020, and there was a drug-related arrest every 27 seconds.

While these figures still highlighted the rampant, ongoing criminalization of cannabis in states across the U.S., it was a substantial de-escalation compared to 2019, when FBI reported a total of 545,601 marijuana arrests. That amounted to a cannabis bust every 58 seconds. (next Cannabis, see Oct 25, or see Cannabis for expanded chronology)

Women’s Health

September 28, 2023: after U.S. District Court Judge Alan B. Johnson had accepted Lorna Roxanne Green’s agreement with prosecutors at a change-of-plea hearing on July 20, on this date Johnson imposed a sentence of 60 months in prison with three years of supervised release, to follow her prison term for the arson of the Wellspring Health Access Clinic located in Casper. [FoxNews article] (next WH, see Oct 24)

Fair Housing

September 28, 2023: the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and seven other agencies across the federal government for the first time clarifyied in writing that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited antisemitism, Islamophobia, and related forms of discrimination. In addition to shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics, religion was also a protected class under the Fair Housing Act. [HUD press release] (next FH, see Oct 2)

September 28 Peace Love Art Activism