As always, some events in history cannot be pinned down to a specific date either because there’s a lack of information or no one realized that the date might be important someday. In any case, here are some peace-, love-, art- and activism-related November events.
Feminism
Angelina Grimké
In November 1836: Angelina Grimké held her first “parlor talk” for women under the auspices of the American Anti-Slavery Society. Over the next year, she and her sister Sarah gave more than 70 lectures before an estimated 40,000 people. When criticized for speaking to audiences filled with men as well as women, Grimké launched a defense of the right of women to speak in public and participate as equals in public affairs. (see May 16, 1838)
Women’s Health
In November 1956: a Science magazine article informed readers that women had tested a synthetic hormone as an oral contraceptive and it had been effective. In the summer of 1957 the FDA approved the use of Enovid for the treatment of severe menstrual disorders and required the drug label to carry a warning that Enovid would prevent ovulation. [NCBI article] (see December 2, 1959)
November Peace Love Art Activism
Black History
Dred & Harriet Scott
In November 1837: the Army sent Dr. Emerson to Fort Jesup in Louisiana. The Scotts remained in Wisconsin Territory. (BH, see Nov 7; Scotts for expanded chronology)
Scottsboro Travesty
In November 1938,: Alabama Governor Graves denied all pardon applications. (full story)
Black Panthers
In November 1968: deeply influenced by the Black Panther leaders Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, John Sinclair and Lawrence “Pun” Plamondon founded the White Panther Party.
The ten-point program of the White Panther Party demanded economic and cultural freedom. “Everything free for everybody!” and a total “assault” on the culture by any means necessary were the essence of the White Panther program. [text of statement] (Black History, see Nov 5; Sinclair, see August 6, 1969)
George Whitmore, Jr
In November 1986: Richard Robles, who had himself protested his innocence over the original double-murders, admitted his guilt to a parole board hearing. He had broken into the flat in order to obtain money for drugs and had assumed at first it was empty. (see Whitmore for expanded story)
November Peace Love Art Activism
FREE SPEECH
Sidewalk Pulpit
In late November 1941: Walter Chaplinsky, a Jehovah’s Witness, was using a sidewalk as a pulpit in downtown Rochester, New Hampshire. Chaplinsky was passing out pamphlets and preached that organized religion was a “racket.” The rhetoric eventually sparked the gathering of a throng, which in turn, caused a scene. A police officer removed Chaplinsky. Along the way, he met the town marshal, who had earlier warned Chaplinsky to keep it down and avoid causing a commotion. Chaplinsky attacked him verbally. He was arrested. The complaint against Chaplinsky charged that he had shouted: “You are a God-damned racketeer” and “a damned Fascist”. Chaplinsky admitted that he said the words charged in the complaint, with the exception of the name of the deity. (see March 9, 1942)
Hustler magazine
In November 1983: Hustler magazine ran a piece parodying Rev Jerry Falwell‘s first sexual experience as a drunken, incestuous, childhood encounter with his mother in an outhouse.
Falwell was an important religious conservative and founder of the Moral Majority political advocacy group sued Hustler and its publisher, Larry Flynt, for libel.
Falwell would win the case, but Flynt appealed, leading to the Supreme Court’s hearing the casebecause of its constitutional implications. (next FS, see August 27, 1985; Flynt, see February 24, 1988)
November Peace Love Art Activism
Vietnam
In November 1946: a customs dispute between the French and Viet Minh in the port of Haiphong led to a day-long exchange of gunfire. Two hundred forty Vietnamese and seven Frenchmen were killed. The French followed by bombing Haiphong killing six thousand civilians. (see Dec 19)
In November 1960: Joan Baez (age 19) released her first album, Joan Baez.
Future Woodstock Performers/Ravi Shankar
In 1962 Ravi Shankar released his 4th album, Improvisations. He released his first at age 17 in 1937.
Future Woodstock Performers/Melanie
In November 1968 Melanie (age 21) released her first album, Born to Be.
Jimi Hendrix
In November 1961, Hendrix met fellow serviceman Billy Cox. He was walking past the service club and heard Hendrix playing guitar inside. Cox, intrigued by the proficient playing, which he described as a combination of “John Lee Hooker and Beethoven”, immediately checked-out a bass guitar and the two began to jam. Soon after, they began performing at the base clubs on the weekends with other musicians in a loosely organized band called the Casuals. (see Hendrix Military for expanded story)
LSD
In November 1967, authorities released Ken Kesey and he moved to Oregon. (LSD see February 4, 1968; KK, see November 10, 2001)
Forever Changes
In November 1967: Love released its classic album, Forever Changes.
Van Morrison
In November 1968, Van Morrison released his classic album, Astral Weeks
Steppenwolf
In November, 1969: Steppenwolf released the album Monster contained epic song by same name.
November Peace Love Art Activism
AIDS
In November 1985, San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve Jones conceived the idea of an AIDS Quilt. Since the 1978 assassinations of gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, Jones had helped organize the annual candlelight march honoring the men. While planning the 1985 march, he learned that AIDS had killed over 1,000 San Franciscans . He asked each of his fellow marchers to write on placards the names of friends and loved ones who had died of AIDS. At the end of the march, Jones and others stood on ladders taping these placards to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building. The wall of names looked like a patchwork quilt. [aidsquilt.org article] (see Nov 25)
November Peace Love Art Activism
DEATH PENALTY
In November 1987, Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet published a landmark study in the Stanford Law Review documenting 350 cases involving defendants convicted of capital crimes in the United States between 1900 and 1985 and who were later found to be innocent.
In the decade following the publication of that study, scores of additional death row inmates were discovered to have been falsely convicted, largely through the emergence of DNA evidence. (see June 29, 1988)
November Peace Love Art Activism
Sexual Abuse of Children
Reverend James Porter
During 1992 – 1993, the Reverend James Porter [timeline] of Fall River diocese, Massachusetts accused of abusing children in five US states in the 1960s and 1970s. He later pleaded guilty to 41 counts of abuse.
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
In November 1992, SNAP members traveled to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington D.C. At first, bishops refused to see them. Finally, three agreed to listen to their stories. The bishops said they would take what they learned “under consideration.”
Rudolph Kos
In 1993, authorities brought the first legal proceedings against the Dallas diocese over sex abuse by the priest Rudolph Kos. [timeline]
SNAP press conference
In November 1993, SNAP leaders from several cities traveled to Chicago to hold the organizations first ever national press conference. (see September 26, 1996)
November Peace Love Art Activism
CLINTON IMPEACHMENT
In November 1995, according to audiotapes secretly recorded later by a Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton began a sexual relationship. (see Clinton for expanded impeachment story)
November Peace Love Art Activism
Cannabis
In November 2011, according to a study, States that had legalized medical marijuana saw fewer fatal car accidents in part because people might be substituting marijuana smoking for drinking alcohol.
Comparing traffic deaths over time in states with and without medical marijuana law changes, the researchers found that fatal car wrecks dropped by 9% in states that legalized medical use — which was largely attributable to a decline in drunk driving.
The authors also found that in states that legalized medical use, there was no increase in marijuana smoking by teenagers — a finding seen in other studies as well. But, in many cases, the laws were linked with an increase in marijuana smoking among adults in their 20s; this rise was accompanied by a reduction in alcohol use by college age youth, suggesting that they were smoking weed instead…” [Time article] (see Nov 30)
November Peace Love Art Activism
Fair Housing
In November 2019: the National Fair Housing Alliance‘s 2019 Fair Housing Trends Report showed the different forms of harassment, hate crimes, and housing discrimination—illegally restricting access to housing due to membership in a protected legal class, such a being a person of color or having a disability—that took place in the U.S.
The report showed the nation moving backwards, not forwards, in the fight to guarantee equal access. In 2018, the nation saw an 8 percent year-to-year increase in fair housing cases, the largest since the group began keeping records in 1995, as well as a 14.7 percent increase in hate crime offenses linked to housing.
In a summation, the NFHA said renters had faced “a resurgence of horrific hate activity,” and that “it can sometimes seem like we are living in a nightmare.” [CURBED.com article] (next FH, see July 23, 2020)
Nixon’s Watergate Scandal is a long story, but here is the chronology of Nixon’s predicament that led to his resignation.
I will briefly include two other incidents that occurred during this time: the resignation of Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro T Agnew, and the publication of the so-called Pentagon Papers.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
The improbable election
November 5, 1968: Richard Milhous Nixon, the 55-year-old former vice president who lost the presidency for the Republicans in 1960, reclaimed it by defeating Hubert Humphrey in one of the closest elections in U.S. history.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
1971
February 16, 1971: Nixon began secret recordings using a newly installed taping system in White House.
September 3, 1971: the White House “plumbers” unit – named for their orders to plug leaks in the administration – burglarized a psychiatrist’s office to find files on Daniel Ellsberg, the former defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
1972
May 28, 1972: bugging equipment is installed at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington DC.
June 17, 1972: at 2:30 in the morning, police arrested five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office and apartment complex in Washington, D.C. James McCord, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, and Eugenio Martinez after a security guard at the Watergate noticed that several doors leading from the stairwell to various hallways had been taped to prevent them from locking. The intruders wore surgical gloves and carried walkie-talkies, cameras, and almost $2,300 in sequential $100 bills. A subsequent search of their rooms at the Watergate turned up an additional $4,200, burglary tools, and electronic bugging equipment.
June 19, 1972: a GOP security aide is among the Watergate burglars, The Washington Post reported. Former attorney general John Mitchell, head of the Nixon reelection campaign, denied any link to the operation.
June 23, 1972: President Nixon had a conversation with his Chief of Staff, H R Haldeman. Two years later, the tape of the conversation was released, following an order by the Supreme Court. The Smoking Gun tape revealed that Nixon had ordered the FBI to abandon its investigation of the Watergate break-in. (transcript of video )
August 1, 1972: the Washington Post reported that a $25,000 cashier’s check, apparently earmarked for the Nixon campaign, wound up in the bank account of a Watergate burglar.
August 30, 1972: Nixon claimed that White House counsel John Dean had conducted an investigation into the Watergate matter and found that no-one from the White House was involved.
September 15, 1972: the first indictments in Watergate were made against the burglars: James W. McCord, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Eugenio Martinez and Virgilio Gonzalez. Indictments are also made against E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy.
September 29, 1972: the Washington Post reported that John Mitchell, while serving as attorney general, controlled a secret Republican fund used to finance widespread intelligence-gathering operations against the Democrats. October 10, 1972: the Washington Post reported that FBI agents had established that the Watergate break-in stemmed from a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted on behalf of the Nixon reelection effort.
Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were two young Washington Post reporters who were covering the expanding story. During October and until November 1963, the reporters met with an informant code named “Deep Throat” who provided much of the vital information that led to Nixon himself.
November 7, 1972: Nixon reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60 percent of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.
1972 (55.22% voter age turnout*)
Candidate
Popular vote
% popular vote
Electoral vote
% electoral vote
Richard Nixon
47,168,710
60.67%
520
96.7%
George McGovern
29,173,222
(-17,995,488)
37.52%
17
3.2%
* first time that 18 year olds were eligible to vote in presidential election
November 22, 1972: Walter Cronkite devoted 15 minutes to Watergate on the CBS Evening News. The scandal becomes a mainstream media issue.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
January 1973
January 3. 1973: The United States v Anthony Joseph Russo and Daniel Ellsberg trial began in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, hearings and trials associated with the Watergate break-in begin in Washington, D.C.
January 8, 1973: in Washington, DC, the trial of the Watergate Seven (Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, E Howard Hunt, G Gordon Liddy, Eugenio Martinez, James McCord and Frank Sturgis) began in Washington with Judge John Sirica presiding. January 11, 1972: E Howard Hunt pleads guilty.
January 15, 1972: Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez and Frank Sturgis plead guilty. January 30, 1973: former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident. (NYT article)
January 30, 1973: former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident. (NYT article)
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
February/March 1973
February 7, 1973: the Senate voted (70-0) to create the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. The Committee is chaired by Senator Sam Ervin (Democrat, North Carolina). Ervin cultivated a folksy image as a country lawyer, but his supervision of this committee is crucial to the outcome. His deputy is Senator Howard Baker (Republican, Tennessee). (NYT article)
February 28, 1973: confirmation hearings begin for confirming L. Patrick Gray as permanent Director of the FBI. During these hearings, Gray revealed that he had complied with an order from John Dean to provide daily updates on the Watergate investigation, and also that Dean had “probably lied” to FBI investigators.
March 21, 1973: White House counsel John Dean had the “Cancer in the Whitehouse” conversation. Dean recalled, “I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and if the cancer was not removed that the president himself would be killed by it. I also told him that it was important that this cancer be removed immediately because it was growing more deadly every day…
“I told the president about the fact that there was no money to meet their [the Watergate burglars] demands. He asked me how much it would cost. I told him I could only make an estimate that it might be as high as a million dollars or more. He told me that that was no problem. He also looked over at [Chief of Staff H.R.] Haldeman and repeated the same statement.”
March 23, 1973: in a letter to Judge John Sirica, Watergate burglar James W. McCord Jr. claimed that the defendants had pleaded guilty under duress. He says they committed perjury and that others are involved in the Watergate break-in. He claims that the burglars lied at the urging of John Dean, Counsel to the President, and John Mitchell, the Attorney-General. These allegations of a cover-up and obstruction of justice by the highest law officers in the land blew Watergate wide open. (link to letter)
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
April 1973
April 6, 1973: John Dean, the White House Counsel, began to co-operate with the Watergate prosecutors.
April 17, 1973: Nixon announced that White House staff would appear before the Senate Committee. He promised “major new developments” in the investigation and said there had been real progress towards finding the truth.
April 17, 1973: an official statement from the White House claimed Nixon had no prior knowledge of the Watergate affair.
April 22, 1973 (Easter Sunday): Nixon asked John Dean to prepare a report about the Watergate affair. He sent Dean to Camp David to write the report.
April 30, 1973: Nixon appears on national television and announced the dismissal of Dean and the resignations of Haldeman and Erlichman, describing them as two of his “closest advisers”. The Attorney-General, Richard Kleindienst, also resigned and was replaced by Elliot Richardson. (transcript)
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
May 1973
May 4, 1973: Nixon appoints General Alexander Haig as White House Chief of Staff, in place of Haldeman.
May 18, 1973: the Senate Watergate committee began its nationally televised hearings. Attorney General-designate Elliot Richardson selected former solicitor general Archibald Cox as the Justice Department’s special prosecutor for Watergate. May 25, 1973: the former Solicitor-General, Archibald Cox, is sworn in as the Justice Department’s special prosecutor for Watergate. Attorney General-designate Elliot Richardson nominated him.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
June 1973
June 3, 1973: the Washington Post reported that John Dean told Watergate investigators that he discussed the Watergate cover-up with President Nixon at least 35 times.
June 13, 1973: the Washington Post reported that Watergate prosecutors had found a memo addressed to John Ehrlichman describing in detail the plans to burglarize the office of Pentagon Papers defendant Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.
June 13, 1973: Alexander Butterfield, former presidential appointments secretary, revealed in congressional testimony that since 1971 Nixon had recorded all conversations and telephone calls in his offices.
June 23, 1973: Nixon’s adviser, H.R. Haldeman, told the president to put pressure on the head of the FBI to “stay the hell out of this [Watergate burglary investigation] business.” In essence, Haldeman was telling Nixon to obstruct justice.
June 26, 1973: former White House counsel John W. Dean told the Senate Watergate Committee about an “enemies list” kept by the Nixon White House.
cartoon by Ted Strickland
June 27, 1973: CBS reporter Daniel Schorr obtained a copy of Nixon’s infamous “enemies list” and read names from the list live on CBS television. In the midst of reading, he discovered that his own name was on the list. The “enemies list” was one of the abuses of power by the Nixon administration that were exposed as a result of the Watergate scandal and which eventually led to Nixon’s resignation. In fact, there was no single list, but several different versions that continued to grow in length.
Names on the original “enemies list” included reporter Daniel Schorr (number 17), actor Paul Newman, columnist Mary McGrory, labor union leader Leonard Woodcock, and African-American Congressmen John Conyers (Detroit) and Ron Dellums (Oakland).
June 27, 1973: John Lennon (still in the process of appealing his deportation) and Yoko Ono attended Watergate Hearings.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
July 1973
July 7, 1973: Nixon told the Senate Committee that he would not testify before it and would not grant access to Presidential documents, claiming Executive Privilege.
July 16, 1973: former White House aide Alexander Butterfield informs the United States Senate Watergate Committee that President Richard Nixon had secretly recorded potentially incriminating conversations.
July 18, 1973: Nixon reportedly ordered the White House taping system disconnected.
July 23, 1973: The Senate Committee and Archibald Cox demand that Nixon hand over a range of White House tapes and documents. Nixon refused.
July 26, 1973: the Watergate Committee subpoenas several White House tapes.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
August 1973
August 8, 1973: Vice President Spiro T. Agnew branded as “damned lies” reports he had taken kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland and vowed not to resign. (see Oct 10)
August 9, 1973: the Senate Committee took legal action against Nixon for failure to comply with the subpoena.
August 15, 1973: Nixon delivered a second on Watergate. He claimed executive privilege for the tapes and argued that he should not have to hand them over. Archibald Cox and the Senate Watergate committee request that the Supreme Court instruct Nixon to surrender the tapes.
August 29, 1973: Judge Sirica ordered Nixon to hand over 9 tapes for Sirica to review in private. This was the first of a number of court battles that Nixon is to lose. (NYT article)
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
October 1973
October 10, 1973: Spiro Agnew resigned the vice presidency and appeared in US District Court in Baltimore on the same day to plead nolo contendere to a single federal count of failing to report on his income-tax return $29,500 in income.
October 12, 1973: following the October 10 resignation of vice president Sprio Agnew, Nixon nominated House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford, R-Mich., to succeed Agnew as vice president.
At the same time, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld Judge Sirica’s ruling that Nixon should surrender tape recordings relevant to Watergate.
October 19, 1973: Nixon offered a compromise to the Senate Watergate Committee, proposing that the Democratic Senator from Mississippi, John Stennis, be permitted to listen to the tapes and prepare summaries for Special Prosecutor Cox.
October 20, 1973: “Saturday Night Massacre”: Solicitor General Robert Bork fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox at the direction of President Richard Nixon after Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Assistant Attorney General Ruckelshaus had refused and resigned.
October 23, 1973: Nixon agreed to turn White House tape recordings requested by the Watergate special prosecutor over to Judge John J. Sirica.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
November 1973
November 1, 1973: Leon Jaworski is named as the new Watergate Special Prosecutor.
November 17, 1973: President Nixon told an Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Fla., that “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”
November 21, 1973: President Richard Nixon’s attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18 1/2-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate. (2014 Washington Post article)
November 26, 1973: President Richard Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, told a federal court that she’d accidentally caused part of the 18 1/2-minute gap in a key Watergate tape.
November 27, 1973: the Senate voted 92–3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
December 1973
December 6, 1973: the House of Representatives voted 387–35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President; he was sworn in the same day.
December 7, 1973: the White House can’t explain the 18 1/2 -minute gap in one of the subpoenaed tapes. Chief of staff Alexander Haig said one theory was that “some sinister force” erased the segment.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
1974
January 4, 1974: citing executive privilege, Nixon refused to surrender 500 tapes and documents which have been subpoenaed by the Senate Watergate Committee.
February 6, 1974: The House of Representatives voted to authorize the House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether grounds exist for the impeachment of President Nixon.
March 1, 1974: seven people, including former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, former Attorney General John Mitchell and former assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian, were indicted on charges of conspiring to obstruct justice.
April 16, 1974: Special Prosecutor Jaworski issued a subpoena for 64 White House tapes.
April 30, 1974: the White House released more than 1,200 pages of edited transcripts of the Nixon tapes to the House Judiciary Committee, but the committee insisted that the tapes themselves must be turned over.
May 9, 1974: The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opened formal and public impeachment hearings against Nixon.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
July 1974
July 24. 1974: the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon must turn over the tape recordings of 64 White House conversations, rejecting the president’s claims of executive privilege. (text of order via NY Times)
July 25, 1974: Barbara Jordan, a Democratic Party member of the House Judiciary Committee, makes a famous speech reminding her colleagues of the constitutional basis for impeachment of the President.
July 27, 1974: The House Judiciary Committee adopted the first Article of Impeachment by a vote of 27-11, with 6 Republicans voting with the Democrats. The Article charges Nixon with obstruction of the investigation of the Watergate break-in. July 29, 1974: the House Judiciary Committee adopts the second Article of Impeachment that charges Nixon with misuse of power and violation of his oath of office.
July 30, 1974: Nixon released subpoenaed White House recordings–suspected to prove his guilt in the Watergate cover-up–to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. The same day, the House Judiciary Committee voted the third article of impeachment against the president: contempt of Congress in hindering the impeachment process. The previous two impeachment articles voted against Nixon by the committee were obstruction of justice and abuse of presidential powers.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
August 1974
August 5, 1974: the “smoking gun” tape of June 23, 1972, was revealed, in which U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman discuss using the CIA to block a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry into Watergate. Nixon’s support in Congress collapses.
August 7, 1974: Three senior Republican congressmen meet with Nixon, advising him that his chances of avoiding impeachment by the House and removal from office by the Senate are “gloomy”. Around the country, calls mount for Nixon’s resignation, and speculation builds about Nixon’s intentions.
August 8, 1974: President Richard M. Nixon announced his resignation effective Aug 9 .
August 9, 1974: Gerald Ford becomes president.
Richard Nixon Watergate Scandal
Aftermath
September 8, 1974: though never indicted of any crimes, Gerald Ford gave an unconditional pardon to Richard Nixon.
October 4, 1974: the trial of Watergate conspirators HR Haldeman, John Erlichman, John Mitchell, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson began, Judge John Sirica presiding.
December 19, 1974: Nelson A. Rockefeller sworn in as vice president, replacing Gerald R. Ford, who became president when Richard M. Nixon resigned.
January 27, 1975: in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the attendant abuses of power by the Nixon administration, and also recent revelations of illegal CIA spying on Americans [in The New York Times on December 22, 1974], the Senate created the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with respect to the Intelligence Agencies. Known as the Church Committee after its chair, Senator Frank Church (D–Idaho), the committee held public hearings about abuses by the intelligence agencies, and eventually published 14 reports on violations of the rights of American citizens by the intelligence agencies. The vote to create the committee was 82–4, indicating the depth of disgust over alleged abuses by the FBI and the CIA in the Senate.
The Church Committee reports are still an extremely valuable resource on the history of violations of American rights in the twentieth century. The Church Committee was paralleled by the Pike Committee, created by the House of Representatives on February 19, 1975. Following the revelations about the CIA by the Times, President Gerald Ford tried to head off Congressional investigations by creating the Rockefeller Commission to investigate the CIA on January 4, 1975, but that effort failed when Congress created the two committees.
The Church Committee hearings created sensation after sensation, with revelations of CIA assassination plots, and more. The Church Committee reports are still an invaluable source of information about the abuses of the CIA, the FBI, and other federal agencies. The reports also document the involvement of presidents, both Republican and Democratic, in approving many if not most of the abuses by the intelligence agencies.
February 21, 1975: former US Attorney General John N. Mitchell, and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, were sentenced to between 30 months and 8 years in prison.
October 28, 1976: John Ehrlichman entered the Swift Trail Federal Prison Camp in Safford, Arizona on October 28, 1976 and was released on April 27, 1978. He died of diabetes-related complications at his home in Atlanta, Georgia on February 14, 1999.
June 21, 1977: HR Haldeman, former White House chief of staff, entered prison. He will be paroled on On December 20, 1978, after serving 18 months. Haldeman will die on November 12, 1993 of abdominal cancer after refusing medical treatment in accordance with his Christian Science beliefs.
June 22, 1977: John N. Mitchell became the first former U.S. Attorney General to go to prison as he began serving a sentence for his role in the Watergate cover-up. After serving 19 months, Mitchell was released on parole for medical reasons on January 19, 1979. He was the only US attorney general to serve a prison sentence. Mitchell died November 9, 1988.
April 12, 1996: historian, Stanley I. Kutler won a legal victory that would lead to the slow but steady release of more than 3,000 hours of secretly recorded Nixon White House tapes. In a deal struck with the estate of former President Richard M. Nixon and the National Archives, the first set of the tapes — more than 200 hours chronicling the abuses of power known collectively as the Watergate scandals – were to be released by November, 1996. The agreement came 21 years after Congress ordered that the tapes be made public.
Kutler his lawyer, Alan Morrison of the advocacy group Public Citizen, and the National Archivist, John Carlin, said that the rest of the tapes, which cover almost everything of importance that Mr. Nixon and his aides said at the White House, at the Old Executive Office Building next door and at Camp David, Md., from February 1971 to July 1973, when their existence was disclosed, will gradually be released in the coming years. (NYT article)
May 31, 2005: W. Mark Felt’s family ended 30 years of speculation, identifying Felt, the former FBI assistant director, as “Deep Throat,” the secret source who helped unravel the Watergate scandal. The Felt family’s admission, made in an article in Vanity Fair magazine, took reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had promised to keep their source’s identity a secret until his death, by surprise. Tapes show that Nixon himself had speculated that Felt was the secret informant as early as 1973.
Watergate Investigation marker approved by Arlington Co, VA in 2008 and erected in 2011.
July 29, 2011 U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted a request by historian Stanley Kutler, and others to unseal the testimony given by President Richard Nixon on June 23 and 24 in 1975. Nixon had been questioned about the political scandal during the 1970s that resulted from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington.
Lamberth ruled in the 15-page opinion that the special circumstances, especially the undisputed historical interest in Nixon’s testimony, far outweighed the need to keep the records secret. “Watergate significance in American history cannot be overstated,” Lamberth wrote, adding that the scandal continues to attract both scholarly and public interest. “The disclosure of President Nixon’s grand jury testimony would likely enhance the existing historical record, foster scholarly discussion and improve the public’s understanding of a significant historical event,” he said.
I once did a project on what is usually called protest music of the 1960s. What I quickly discovered was that protest music is not limited to the 1960s (as much as we Boomers would like to think it is since we “invented” it–insert funny face emoji).
Eventually, I also realized that protest music comes in a variety of approaches. The 1960s protest music was typically obvious in its approach: Masters of War, I Ain’t a’Marchin’ Anymore, Eve of Destruction, et cetera.
Earlier versions were equally powerful in their own way and I eventually settled on the term “News Music” to describe the genre. I’m not sure whether it is be best description, but one of the things that the songs and songwriters seemed to share was a reaction to current conditions. In other words, they were reacting to a current situation far more often than a past occurrence. Thus “News Music.”
Here are some examples of what are early 20th century news music:
Early 20th Century News Music
Harry Dixon
Around 1920: Harry Dixon (1895 – 1965) wrote “This Little Light of Mine” as a gospel song. It became a common one sung during the civil rights gathering of the 1950s and 1960s. It continues to be a song of hope today. (BH, see January 4, 1920)
Early 20th Century News Music
Fats Waller
In 1929: composed by Fats Waller with lyrics by Harry Brooks and Andy Razaf, Edith Wilson (1896 – 1981) sang “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue.”. It is a protest song that did not speak of how something should change so much as it spoke of what life was like for those who suffered inequities.
Early 20th Century News Music
Blind Alfred Reed
In 1929: Blind Alfred Reed (1880 – 1956) wrote “How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?” The song describes life during the Great Depression.
Early 20th Century News Music
Florence Reece
In 1931: Florence Reece (1900-1986) “was a writer and social activist whose song ‘Which Side Are You On?’ became an anthem for the labor movement. Borrowing from the melody of the old hymn ”Lay the Lily Low,” Mrs. Reece wrote the union song…to describe the plight of mine workers who were organizing a strike in Harlan County, Ky. Mrs. Reece’s husband, Sam, who died in 1978, was one of those workers. Pete Seeger, the folk singer, recorded the song in 1941. It has since been used worldwide by groups espousing labor and social issues.” — New York Times Obituaries, August 6, 1986. (Labor, see March 3; Feminism, see Dec 10)
Early 20th Century News Music
Brother Can You Spare a Dime
In 1931: “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” by lyricist E. Y. “Yip” Harburg and composer Jay Gorney., the song asked why the men who built the nation – built the railroads, built the skyscrapers – who fought in the war (World War I), who tilled the earth, who did what their nation asked of them should, now that the work is done and their labor no longer necessary, find themselves abandoned, in bread lines.
Harburg believed that “songs are an anodyne against tyranny and terror and that the artist has historically always been on the side of humanity.” As a committed socialist, he spent three years in Uruguay to avoid being involved in WWI, as he felt that capitalism was responsible for the destruction of the human spirit, and he refused to fight its wars. A longtime friend of Ira Gershwin, Harburg started writing lyrics after he lost his business in the Crash of 1929.
Early 20th Century News Music
Jimmie Rodgers
In 1932: Jimmie Rodgers (1897 – 1933) was born in Meridian, Mississippi worked on the railroad as his father did but at the age of 27 contracted tuberculosis and had to quit. He loved entertaining and eventually found a job singing on WWNC radio, Asheville, North Carolina (April 18, 1927). Later he began recording his songs. The tuberculosis worsened and he died in 1933 while recording songs in New York. In 1932 he recorded “Hobo’s Meditation.”
Early 20th Century News Music
Lead Belly
In 1938: Lead Belly (born Huddie William Ledbetter) (1888 – 1949) sang about his visit to Washington, DC with his wife and their treatment while in the nation’s capitol in his song, “Bourgeois Blues.” (BH, see Nov 22)
Early 20th Century News Music
Woody Guthrie
“Do Re Mi”
In 1939: During the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) wrote many songs reflecting the plight of farmers and migrant workers caught between the Dust Bowl drought and farm foreclosure. One of the best known of these songs is his “Do Re Mi.”
Tom Joad
In 1940: Woody Guthrie wrote Tom Joad, a song whose character is based on John Steinbeck’s character in The Grapes of Wrath. After hearing it, Steinbeck reportedly said, “ That f****** little b******! In 17 verses he got the entire story of a thing that took me two years to write.”
Early 20th Century News Music
This Land Is Your Land
February 23, 1940: Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics to ‘This Land Is Your Land‘ in his room at the Hanover House Hotel in New York City. He would not record the song until 1944. It was a musical response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”: “We can’t just bless America, we’ve got to change it.”
Early 20th Century News Music
In 1941: the Almanac Singers (Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie) released Talking Union, an album containing pro-union songs. One was Florence Reece’s Which Side Are You On? Another was I Don’t Want Your Millions, Mister (written by Jim Garland), a song that was used by Occupy Wall Street protestors.
During World War II, Guthrie printed the words, “This Machine Kills Fascists” on his guitar as a sign of his support of the war cause. Shortly afterwards, Pete Seeger printed the words, “This Machine Surrounds hate and Forces It to Surrender” on his banjo. Current guitarist, Tom Morello, often uses a guitar with the words, “Arm the Homeless” printed on it.
Early 20th Century News Music
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
