September 2, 1862: the Battle of Birch Coulee. Dakota fighters attacked a detachment of 150 American soldiers. Thirteen soldiers were killed and 47 were wounded. Two Dakota were killed. [MNOPEDIA article] (see September 23, 1862)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
US Labor History
Immigration History
September 2, 1885: 150 white miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, attacked their Chinese coworkers, killing 28, wounding 15 others, and driving several hundred more out of town.
The miners working in the Union Pacific coal mine had been struggling to unionize and strike for better working conditions for years. But at every juncture the powerful railroad company had bested them. Searching for a scapegoat, the angry miners blamed the Chinese. The Union Pacific had initially brought Chinese coal miners to Roc Springs as strikebreakers. Outraged by a company decision to allow Chinese miners to work the richest coal seams, a mob of white miners impulsively decided to strike back by attacking Rock Spring’s small Chinatown. Most of the Chinese abandoned their homes and businesses and fled, but those who failed to escape in time were brutally beaten and murdered. [Politico article] (see Sept 9)
New union
September 2, 1893: the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers was founded in Chicago. (see February 8, 1894)
Expanded Social Security
September 2,1954: President Eisenhower signed legislation expanding Social Security by providing much wider coverage and including 10 million additional Americans, most of them self-employed farmers, with additional benefits. (see February 8, 1955)
ERISA
September 2, 1974: The Employee Retirement Income Security Act set minimum standards for most private-sector pension and health plans. It provided key safeguards for employees.
By 1975 union membership had declined to 19.5% of employed workers. The first time it fell below 20% since 1942. [US DoL article] (percent see January 21, 2011; Labor, see Feb 19)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
Vietnam
Democratic Republic of Vietnam
September 2, 1945: Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. He paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!” and was cheered by an enormous crowd gathered in Hanoi.
Shortly after his proclamation Allied troops landed to disarm Japanese forces: the British into southern Indochina below the 16th parallel and Chinese into the north, (The now liberated) France’s Charles de Gaulle, ordered French soldiers to re-establish colonial rule. The British allowed the French to dislodge the Viet Minh from Saigon, triggering war below the 16th parallel. (next Vietnam, see Sept 13; next ID, see April 17, 1946)
Ho Chi Min
September 2, 1969: Ho Chi Min, leader of North Vietnam, died. [NYT article] (see Sept 5)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
World War II
September 2, 1945: Japan unconditionally surrendered to the US. (Cold War, see Sept 8; Vietnam, see Sept 13)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
BLACK HISTORY
Emmett Till
September 2, 1955: in Chicago, Mamie Till arrived at the Illinois Central Terminal to receive Emmett’s casket. She is surrounded by family and photographers who snap her photo collapsing in grief at the sight of the casket. The body is taken to the A. A. Rayner & Sons Funeral Home. (see Emmett Till)
Edward Judge Aaron
September 2, 1957: the Klu Klux Klan abducted and mutilated Edward Judge Aaron in Birmingham, Ala. Aaron was walking home when six hooded Klansmen abducted him, castrated him, and poured turpentine into his open wound. The Klansmen taunted Aaron, telling him they would do the same thing to anyone black who sought integration. Joe Prichett, one of the Klansmen involved, was convicted and sentenced him to 20 years in prison. [2014 US Prison Culture article] (see Sept 4)
School Desegregation
September 2, 1963: Alabama Governor George Wallace surrounded the Tuskegee high school with Alabama National Guard troops in an effort to prevent its integration pursuant to a federal court order in Lee vs. Macon County. In response, President John F. Kennedy federalized the Guard and sent it back to its barracks. [ABA Journal article] (BH, see Sept 4; School Desegregation, see Sept 9)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
Cultural & Technological Milestones
CBS Evening News
September 2, 1963: “The CBS Evening News” expanded from 15 to 30 minutes. (see February 4, 1964)
ATM
September 2, 1969: America’s first automatic teller machine (ATM) makes its public debut, dispensing cash to customers at Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, New York. [Smithsonian article] (see October 29, 1969)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
INDEPENDENCE DAY
September 2, 1983: Northern Cyprus declared itself independent from the Republic of Cyprus. Not recognized by all nations. (see Sept 19)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
Hurricane Katrina
September 2, 2005: President George W. Bush told Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job” during a tour of Hurricane Katrina damage in Alabama. (see Sept 4)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
Marijuana
September 2, 2013: in a controversial move said to raise funds for a possible war in Syria, President Obama announced plans to auction off all of the marijuana that had been seized in drug raids since he took office in 2008. The auctions were to be held only in states that had legalized the drug and only to users with a medical marijuana card. (see Nov 5)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
Nuclear/Chemical News
September 2, 2015: Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland came out in support of President Obama’s Iran nuclear accord, the 34th Democrat in favor. Her announcement gave Mr. Obama the votes to assure the deal will survive a Congressional challenge.
“Some have suggested we reject this deal and impose unilateral sanctions to force Iran back to the table. But maintaining or stepping up sanctions will only work if the sanction coalition holds together,” wrote Ms. Mikulski, the longest serving female senator in history.
“It’s unclear if the European Union, Russia, China, India and others would continue sanctions if Congress rejects this deal. At best, sanctions would be porous, or limited to unilateral sanctions by the U.S.” [CNN article] (next N/C N, see January 6, 2016; next Iran, see September 26, 2017)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
Environmental Issues
September 2, 2015: part of the Mississippi River was closed as crews investigated an oil spill caused by the collision of two tow boats, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The collision near Columbus, Kentucky, damaged at least one barge carrying clarified slurry oil. The cargo tank was ruptured, causing thousands of gallons of oil to spill into the river, the Coast Guard said. No injuries were reported.
The barge was carrying approximately 1 million gallons, but the breach was only in one area, affecting just one of its six tanks. That tank holds 250,000 gallons, a little more than 120,000 gallons spilled into the river. The Coast Guard said it was working with the barge owner, Inland Marine Services, and an oil spill response organization. Inland Marine Services referred calls to its public relations person, Patrick Crowley, who did not return repeated calls seeking comment. [Chicago Tribune article] (see Sept 21)
September 2 Peace Love Art Activism
Immigration History
September 2, 2019: the Trump administration announced that it would reconsider its August 7 decision to force immigrants facing life-threatening health crises to return to their home countries, an abrupt move that generated public outrage and was roundly condemned by the medical establishment. (see Sept 9)
In September – October 1821 : the London Magazine published Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. It was an autobiographical account about DeQuincey’s laudanum addiction and its effect on his life. [text]
Fitz Hugh Ludlow
In 1857: Fitz Hugh Ludlow published The Hasheesh Eater, an autobiographical book in which Ludlow described his altered states of consciousness and philosophical flights of fancy while he was using a cannabis extract. In the United States, the book created popular interest in hashish, leading to hashish candy and private hashish clubs. [text]
Charles Baudelaire
In 1860: French poet Charles Baudelaire published Les Paradis Artificiels (Artificial Paradises), a book about the state of being under the influence of opium and hashish.
Baudelaire described the effects of the drugs and discussed the way in which they could theoretically aid mankind in reaching an “ideal” world.
Baudelaire analyzed the motivation of the addict, and the individual psychedelic experience of the user. His descriptions have foreshadowed other such work that emerged later in the 1960s regarding LSD. [Parisian Review article]
Louis Lewin
In 1886: Louis Lewin, a German pharmacologist, published the first systematic study of the the cactus from which the mescal buttons were obtained (his own name was subsequently given to the plant: Anhalonium lewinii.
The plant was new to science, but not to the Indians of Mexico and the American Southwest. It was (according to Aldous Huxley’s 1954 essay, The Doors of Perception, “a friend of immemorially long standing. Indeed, it was much more than a friend. In the words of one of the early Spanish visitors to the New World, “they eat a root which they call peyote, and which they venerate as though it were a deity.” [Psychedelic Press UK article] (see April 3, 1896)
Timothy Leary
In September, 1962: Timothy Leary founded International Foundation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) to promote LSD research & publishes The Psychedelic Review. [Harvard Crimson article]
Mainstream media
In 1963: LSD first appeared on the streets as liquid on sugar cubes. Articles about LSD first appeared in mainstream media Look, Saturday Evening Post. (see May, 6, 1963)
Millbrook, New York
In September 1963: Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and other Harvard alumni LSD researchers moved to the Hitchcock estate in Millbrook, New York. [Shadow Vue article] (see Nov 22)
Owsley Stanley
In September 1965: Owsley Stanley became the primary LSD supplier to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. [NYT obit] (see Oct 15)
League for Spiritual Discovery
In September 1966: Timothy Leary held a press conference at NY Advertising Club, to announce the formation of a psychedelic religion – League for Spiritual Discovery (“Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present—turn on, tune in, drop out”) [LSD site]
September Peace Love Art Activism
Feminism
Matilda Joslyn Gage
In September 1852: Gage gave her first public address at the third national women’s rights convention in Syracuse stating: While so much is said of the inferior intellect of woman, it is by a strange absurdity conceded that very many eminent men owe their station in life to their mothers. (next Feminism, see May 1, 1855)
Gage disputes Lincoln
In 1862 Gage gave Flag Presentation Speech to 122nd regiment as they went off to the Civil War. Opposing President Lincoln, who said the war was being fought to preserve the union, Gage tells soldiers they were fighting for an end to slavery and freedom for all citizens. (next Feminism, see June 25, 1863)
New York State Woman Suffrage Association
In 1869 Gage helped found New York State Woman Suffrage Association; served as president for nine years. (next Feminism, see April 1869)
Gage on Native Americans
In the 1870s, Gage wrote a series of articles speaking out against United States’ unjust treatment of American Indians and describing superior position of native women. “The division of power between the sexes in this Indian republic was nearly equal,” Gage wrote of the Iroquois. In matters of government, “…its women exercised controlling power in peace and war … no sale of lands was valid without consent” of the women, while “the family relation among the Iroquois demonstrated woman’s superiority in power … in the home, the wife was absolute … if the Iroquois husband and wife separated, the wife took with her all the property she had brought … the children also accompanied the mother, whose right to them was recognized as supreme.” “Never was justice more perfect, never civilization higher,” Gage concluded. (next Feminism, see February 3, 1870; see Gage for expanded story)
September Peace Love Art Activism
Black History
Colored Caulkers’ Trade Union Society
In September 1866: the first African-American trade union called the Colored Caulkers’ Trade Union Society of Baltimore was founded, with Isaac Myers as the union’s first president.
Isaac Myers grew up in Baltimore as the son of poor free parents. By 1841 Myers was apprenticed to James Jackson, a prominent black ship caulker. Within 20 years Myers was working as a skilled caulker and supervising other men in the caulking of clipper ships within the harbor. However, black workers, noticeably in the shipbuilding and maritime industries, were regularly dismissed from their jobs to make room for the growing number of whites looking for work. This unjust, but frequently occurring, situation led Myers and others to organize the black workers. (see Oct 26)
Afro-American Council
In September 1898: the Afro-American Council (AAC) was established in Rochester, New York, by newspaper editor T. Thomas Fortune and Bishop Alexander Walters of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. They envisioned the organization as a revival of the earlier National Afro-American League (NAAL), which in 1890 became the first national black organization specifically created to challenge racial segregation and discrimination. [Black Past article] (see Nov 8)
Scottsboro Travesty/Charlie Weems
In September 1943 Charlie Weems was paroled.
Scottsboro Travesty/Charlie Norris and Andy Wright
In September 1944 Charlie Norris and Andy Wright left Montgomery in violation of their paroles. (see Scottsboro Travesty for full story)
School Desegregation
In September 1946: Gary, Indiana school district adopted a new policy that dictated, ”children may not be discriminated in the school district in which they live, or within the schools in which they attend, because of race, color or religion.”
The policy did not take effect until the following 1947 school year to allow the community time to adjust. (BH, see Dec 5; SD, see April 14, 1947)
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR
In September 1957: King visited Highlander Folk School. Pete Seeger introduced “We Shall Overcome” to him. Vernon Jordan, a Georgia activist at that time, remarked: “The people were cold with fear until music did what prayers and speeches could not do in breaking the ice.” [Stanford U article](BH, see Sept 2; MLK, see April 6, 1958)
Jimmie Lee Jackson murder
In September 1965: a grand jury declined to indict James Fowler in the shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson. (next BH, see Sept 6; see Jackson for expanded story)
Muhammad Ali
In September 1984: Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. (BH, see May 13, 1985; Ali, see July 19, 1996)
Stop and Frisk Policy
In September 2009: Stop-and-Frisk became an issue in the mayoral race, as well as the Manhattan DA’s race. (see December 2009)
September Peace Love Art Activism
September Music et al
Ornette Coleman
In September 1961: Free Jazz by Ornette Coleman released. According to the Internet site, allmusic: As jazz’s first extended, continuous free improvisation LP, Free Jazz practically defies superlatives in its historical importance. Ornette Coleman’s music had already been tagged “free,” but this album took the term to a whole new level. Aside from a predetermined order of featured soloists and several brief transition signals cued by Coleman, the entire piece was created spontaneously, right on the spot.
News Music
Bob Dylan &The Road to Bethel
In September 1962: Dylan wrote A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall in the basement of the Village Gate, in a small apartment occupied by Chip Monck, later to become one of the most sought-after lighting directors in rock music and a voice associated with the Woodstock Festival. (Dylan, see Dec 14; see Woodstock, Chronology for expanded story)
Janis Ian
In September 1966: Society’s Child released. Recorded in 1965, 15-year-old Janis Ian’s song about teenage interracial romance was daring even in an age of openness. She was criticized by both conservatives because of the song’s topic and by folk musicians because of the song’s use of drums and harpsichord. (see Sept 10)
2009 interview with Ian
September Peace Love Art Activism
September Music et al
Beatles
In September 1966: George Harrison went to India for 6 weeks to study sitar with Ravi Shankar (see Sept 10)
Arlo Guthrie
In September 1967: Arlo Guthrie (age 20) released first album, Alice’s Restaurant. (see “in October”)
Rock Against Racism
In September 1976: Rock Against Racism (RAR) founded by Red Saunders, Roger Huddle and others in the United Kingdom as a response to an increase in racial conflict and the growth of white nationalist groups such as the National Front. The campaign involved pop, rock, punk rock and reggae musicians staging concerts with an anti-racist theme, in order to discourage young people from embracing racist views. David Widgery, active with the RAR, wrote, “We want Rebel music, street music, music that breaks down people’s fear of one another. Crisis music. Now music. Music that knows who the real enemy is.”
September Peace Love Art Activism
Vietnam
Daniel Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers
in September 1969: Ellsberg met draft resister and antiwar activist Randy Kehler, whose willingness to go to prison based on his opposition to the war has a great impact on Ellsberg. Shortly thereafter, Ellsberg finishes reading a copy of the entire McNamara study, which revealed a pattern of escalation of the war, even in the face of evidence that the war is unwinnable. The study also revealed lies told to the public about U.S. military actions. Ellsberg was inspired to take action against what he now sees as “a wrongful war.” (see Ellsberg for full story)
September Peace Love Art Activism
AIDS & Ryan White
in September, 1986: White attended Western Middle School for eighth grade for the entire 1986–87 school year, but was deeply unhappy and had few friends. In 1988 White would speak before President Reagan’s AIDS Commission. At it he would state:
Even though we knew AIDS was not spread through casual contact. Nevertheless, parents of twenty students started their own school. They were still not convinced. Because of the lack of education on AIDS, discrimination, fear, panic, and lies surrounded me:
I became the target of Ryan White jokes
Lies about me biting people
Spitting on vegetables and cookies
Urinating on bathroom walls
Some restaurants threw away my dishes
My school locker was vandalized inside and folders were marked FAG and other obscenities.
I was labeled a troublemaker, my mom an unfit mother, and I was not welcome anywhere.
People would get up and leave so they would not have to sit anywhere near me. Even at church, people would not shake my hand. [entire text]
Threats continued. When a bullet was fired through the Whites’ living room window, the family decided to leave Kokomo. [Elton John loaned $16,500 to put toward a down payment on the Cicero home, and rather than accept repayment placed the repaid money into a college fund for Ryan’s sister.] (see Ryan White for full story)
September Peace Love Art Activism
Student Rights
In September 1989: the Veronia, OR school district, in order to prevent student athletes from using drugs, to protect their health and safety, and to provide drug users with assistance programs, instituted a random drug testing regimen. (see June 26, 1995)
September Peace Love Art Activism
Religion and Public Education
In September 1996: Ohio began the “Pilot Project Scholarship Program” which allowed parents of students in the Cleveland School District to use public monies to pay for tuition at private schools, including religious schools. Aid was give to parents according to financial need, and where the aid was spent depended only upon where parents chose to enroll their children. [Princeton U article] (Religion, see June 23. 1997; Ohio, see June 27, 2002)
September Peace Love Art Activism
Operation Popeye
In September 2010: James Rodger Fleming published Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control. In it he wrote: Although some claimed that [Operation Popeye] induced from 1 to 7 inches of additional rainfall annually along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, no scientific data were collected to verify the claim. General Westmoreland thought there was “no appreciable increase” in rain from the project. Even if the cloud seeding had produced a tactical victory or two in Vietnam (it did not), the extreme secrecy surrounding the operation and the subsequent denials and stonewalling of Congress by the military resulted in a major strategic defeat for military weather modification.(Vietnam, see May 23, 2016; see Operation Popeye for expanded story)
August 31, 1874: the Coushatta White League conducted a mock trial of two of the black prisoners, Louis Johnson and Paul Williams, allegedly for shooting a white man. Captain Jack’s mob, returned from their bloody work upriver, seized Johnson and Williams and hanged them. [Facing History article] (see Sept 14)
Lynchings
August 31, 1889: after a white man was killed while interrupting a burglary, a group of armed white men searched the area around Montevallo, Alabama and apprehended two unidentified Black men as suspects. When the two men were brought to town, hundreds of angry white citizens gathered, demanding revenge.
Before the two men could be transferred to the Columbiana jail, local officers turned them over to the mob, claiming they feared a “bloody riot” if they did not allow the mob to abduct the two men. Under the threat of lynching, one of the men reportedly confessed to the crime. The other man, known only as “Big Six,” insisted upon his innocence.
The mob lynched the two–whose names were not recorded by contemporary news accounts.
They were two of at least nine African American victims of racial terror lynching killed in Shelby County between 1889 and 1923. (next BH & next Lynching, see Nov 8 or see Lynching for expanded chronology)
Houston Riot
August 31, 1918: President Wilson granted clemency to ten other soldiers involved in the Houston Riot (see August 23, 1917) by commuting their death sentences to life in prison. [POTUS Geeks article] (next BH, see February – August 1919; next HR/RR, see Sept 29)
Emmett Till
August 31, 1955: Emmett Till’s decomposed corpse was pulled from Mississippi’s Tallahatchie River. Moses Wright identified the body from a ring with the initials L.T. (see Emmett Till)
Albany Movement
August 31, 1962: Judge J Robert Elliot denied lawyers a preliminary injunction to stop Albany, GA from practicing segregation. ML King asked President Kennedy to intervene in the racial troubles in Albany. (see AM for expanded story)
School desegregation
August 31, 1966: a decade after the United States Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, many school districts throughout the South still maintained segregated public schools. In 1964, the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which contained a provision that conditioned federal funding for school districts on integration.
In 1966, twelve years after Brown, the United States Office of Education issued regulations to segregated districts that provided guidance on school desegregation and required that segregated districts submit integration plans to the federal government. Noncompliant districts risked losing federal funds under the Civil Rights Act.
Alabama’s legislature responded by passing a bill proposed by Governor George Wallace, forbidding Alabama school districts from entering into desegregation agreements with the federal government. At legislative hearings, representatives of Alabama’s teachers’ unions spoke against the bill and warned that it would put twenty-four million dollars of federal funding for Alabama schools at risk. Nevertheless, the bill passed the Alabama Senate almost unanimously on August 31, 1966, with only seven members voting against it. Shortly after, the Alabama House of Representatives passed the bill, and Governor Wallace signed it into law on September 9, 1966.
In the wake of the law’s passage, several Alabama school districts revised or rejected previously-negotiated desegregation plans. (BH, see Sept 6; SD, see Sept 12)
SOUTH AFRICA/APARTHEID
August 31, 1977: Ian Smith, espousing racial segregation, won the Rhodesian general election with 80% of overwhelmingly white electorate’s vote. [SAHO article] (see Sept 11)
BLACK & SHOT/Ralph Yarl
August 31, 2023: Clay County, Missouri Judge Louis Angles ruled that the Andrew Lester, who shot Ralph Yarl after he mistakenly went to the man’s house must stand trial.
Angles issued the ruling after hearing from several witnesses at a preliminary hearing, including Yarl. [AP article] (next B & S and Yari, see Sept 12)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
US Labor History
August 31, 1919: John Reed formed the Communist Labor Party in Chicago. The Party’s motto: “Workers of the world, unite!” [People’s World article] (see Nov 11)
Solidarity Day
August 31, 1991: an estimated 325,000 unionists gathered in Washington, D.C., for a Solidarity Day march and rally for workplace fairness and healthcare reform. [IATSE article] (see Sept 2)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Cultural Milestone
August 31, 1920: patent issued to John Lloyd Wright for “Toy-Cabin Construction,” which are known as Lincoln Logs. (U.S. patent 1,351,086). (see June 13, 1923)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Cannabis
August 31, 1948: local Los Angeles and Federal narcotics officers arrested 31-year-old film star Robert Mitchum,and Lila Leeds, 20- year-old actress, and two other persons in a raid at Miss Leeds’ Hollywood cottage in which a quantity of marijuana cigarettes were seized. [LA Times article] (see February 25, 1949 or see CCC for expanded cannabis history)
August 31, 1962: Trinidad and Tobago independent from United Kingdom. [Commonwealth article]
North Borneo
August 31, 1963: North Borneo independent from United Kingdom. [British Empire story] (see ID for complete list of 1960s Independence days)
Dissolution of the USSR/Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan
August 31, 1991: Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan declared independence from the Soviet Union. (Dissolution, see Sept 9; ID, see Sept 8)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
August 31 Music et al
Max Roach
August 31 –September 6, 1960: Max Roach recorded We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite album. The Penguin Guide to Jazz has awarded the album one of its rare crown accolades, in addition to featuring it as part of its Core Collection. (see Sept 5)
My Boyfriend’s Back
August 31 – September 20, 1963: the Angels started a three week run at Billboard No.1 with ‘My Boyfriend’s Back’. The writers of the song Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer were a trio of Brooklyn songwriter/producers who went on to write the hits ‘Sorrow’ and have the 1965 US No.11 single as The Strangeloves with ‘I Want Candy’.
My Son, the Nut
August 31 – October 25, 1963, Allan Sherman’s My Son, the Nut is the Billboard #1 album.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uMI8kSAvXo
Merry Pranksters
August 31, 1965: The Merry Pranksters attended the Beatle concert at the Cow Palace outside San Francisco. [SF Gate story] (Beatles, see Sept 4 – 24; LSD see Sept)
August 31 – September 1, 1969: Performers: White Fox, Snowrabbit, Deacon John and the Electric Soul Train, Whizbang, Axis, Sweetwater, Lee Michaels, Oliver, Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys, Spiral Staircase, It’s A Beautiful Day, Country Joe and the Fish, Byrds, Youngbloods, Canned Heat, Pot Liquor, Chicago (Transit Authority), Tyrannosaurus Rex, Santana, Iron Butterfly, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin. (see Sept 6)
Victor Jara
August 31, 1971: while travelling in Chile, Jerry Rubin, Stew Albert, and Phil Ochs met Victor Jara, the activist folk singer whose songs helped elect Allende. (see Jara for expanded chronology)
John Lennon testified
August 31, 1974: in federal court, John Lennon testified the Nixon administration tried to have him deported because of his involvement with the anti-war demonstrations at the 1972 Republican convention in Miami. [Ultimate Classic Rock story] (see Sept 23)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Vietnam
DRAFT CARD BURNING
August 31, 1965: President Johnson signed a law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense subject to a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine. In response to the law and in protest of the war in Vietnam, the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam will stage the first public burning of a draft card in the United States on October 15, 1965. The constitutionality of the federal law was upheld by the US Supreme Court in US v. O’Brien (May 27, 1968) (Draft Card Burning, see Oct 15; Vietnam, see Sept 25)
Senate Preparedness Investigating Committee
August 31, 1967: Senate Preparedness Investigating Committee issues a call to step up bombing against the North, declaring that McNamara had “shackled” the air war against Hanoi, and calling for “closure, neutralization, or isolation of Haiphong.” President Johnson, attempting to placate Congressional “hawks” and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expanded the approved list of targets in the north, authorizing strikes against bridges, barracks, and railyards in the Hanoi-Haipong area and additional targets in the previously restricted areas along the Chinese border.[Rallypoint dot com article] (see Sept 3)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Ryan White
August 31, 1987: White enrolled at Hamilton Heights High School, Cicero, IN and was greeted by school principal Tony Cook, school system superintendent Bob G. Carnal, and a handful of students who had been educated about AIDS and were unafraid to shake White’s hand. [In high school White drove a red Mustang convertible, a gift from Michael Jackson.] (AIDS, see Oct 11; see Ryan White for expanded story)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Irish Troubles
August 31, 1994: the Provisional Irish Republican Army announced a “complete cessation of military operations.” (from February 1996 until July 1997, the Provisional IRA called off its 1994 ceasefire because of its dissatisfaction with the state of negotiations.) (see Troubles for expanded story)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
IRAQ
Iraqi forces
August 31, 1996: Iraqi forces launched an offensive into the northern No-Fly Zone and capture Arbil. (see Sept 3)
Iraq War II
August 31, 2010: President Obama declared an end to the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq, saying that the United States had met its responsibility to that country and that it was now time to turn to pressing problems at home. [NYT article] (see December 18, 2011)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Cultural Milestone
August 31, 2001: the last new episode of Mr Roger’s Neighborhood broadcast. PBS will regularly broadcast reruns until August 2007. Fred Rogers died on February 27, 2003. [CNN article] (see April 28, 2003)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Hurricane Katrina
August 31, 2005: New Orleans’s Mayor Ray Nagin announced that the planned sandbagging of the 17th Street Canal levee breach had failed. At the time, 85% of the city was underwater. President Bush returned early to Washington from vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Though he did not stop in Louisiana, Air Force One flew low over the Gulf Coast so that he could view the devastation from Air Force One. (see Sept 1)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Stop and Frisk Policy
August 31, 2011: Stop-and-frisk stats continued to show that the NYPD was conducting a record number of stops in 2011. From January to June there were 362,150 reported stop-and-frisks. (see Sept 6)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
LGBTQ
Court orders Kim Davis
August 31, 2015: the Supreme Court refused to allow Rowan County (Kentucky) Clerk Kim Davis who objects to same-sex marriage on religious grounds to continue to deny marriage licenses to all couples, gay or straight. Ms. Davis’s lawyers filed an emergency application on Aug 28 with Justice Elena Kagan, the member of the Supreme Court who supervised cases arising from the judicial circuit that includes Kentucky. She referred the matter to the full court.
The Human Rights Campaign praised the Supreme Court’s decision. “Ms. Davis has the fundamental right to believe what she likes,” said JoDee Winterhof, the group’s senior vice president for policy and political affairs. “But as a public servant, she does not have the right to pick and choose which laws she will follow or which services she will provide.” (see Sept 1)
Student Rights/Gavin Grimm
August 30, 2021: the Gloucester County school board in Virginia agreed to pay $1.3 million in legal fees to resolve a discrimination lawsuit filed by Gavin Grimm, a former student, whose efforts to use the boys’ bathroom put him at the center of a national debate over rights for transgender people.
Grimm’s battle with the school board began in 2014, when he was a sophomore and his family informed his school that he was transgender. Administrators were supportive at first. But after an uproar from some parents and students, the school board adopted a policy requiring students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms for their “corresponding biological genders.”
Mr. Grimm sued the school board. The legal battle pushed him into the national spotlight as Republican-controlled state legislatures introduced a wave of “bathroom bills” requiring transgender people to use public restrooms in government and school buildings that correspond to the gender listed on their birth certificates.
“We are glad that this long litigation is finally over and that Gavin has been fully vindicated by the courts, but it should not have taken over six years of expensive litigation to get to this point,” Joshua Block, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented Mr. Grimm, said in a statement on Thursday. Mr. Block added that he hoped that the outcome would “give other school boards and lawmakers pause before they use discrimination to score political points.” [NYT article] (next SR, see ; next LGBTQ, see )
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Women’s Health
August 31, 2015: Judge Richard J. Leon of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that employers do not need to provide insurance coverage for contraception even if their objections were moral rather than religious.
The case concerned a group called March for Life, which was formed after the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to abortion in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. The group, Monday’s decision said, “is a nonprofit, nonreligious pro-life organization.”
It opposes methods of contraception that it says can amount to abortion, including hormonal products, intrauterine devices and emergency contraceptives. Many scientists disagree that those methods of contraception are equivalent to abortion. [NYT article] (see Nov 23)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Affordable Care Act
August 31, 2017: the Trump administration severely cut spending on advertising and promotion for enrollment under the Affordable Care Act. Officials with the Department of Health and Human Services said that the advertising budget for the open enrollment period that starts in November would be cut to $10 million, compared with $100 million spent by the Obama administration in 2016, a drop of 90 percent. Additionally, grants to about 100 nonprofit groups, known as navigators, that help people enroll in health plans offered by the insurance marketplaces would be cut to a total of $36 million, from about $63 million. [NYT article] (see Sept 26)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Immigration History
August 31, 2018: Judge Andrew S. Hanen of the Federal District Court in Houston. Texas declined to halt an Obama-era program that protected young undocumented immigrants from deportation, handing a temporary victory to activists who were waging a legal fight against the Trump administration to save it.
Hanen said the program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) had been relied upon by hundreds of thousands of immigrants since it was established almost six years ago, and should not be abruptly ended.
The ruling meant that young immigrants who were brought illegally to the US as small children could continue to apply for the program, which shielded them from immediate deportation and provides a permit to work legally in the United States. (next IH, see Sept 13); next DACA, see July 28, 2020)
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
War in Afghanistan
August 31, 2021: the United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending America’s longest war and closing a chapter in military history likely to be remembered for colossal failures, unfulfilled promises and a frantic final exit that cost the lives of more than 180 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members, some barely older than the war.
Hours before President Joe Biden’s August 31 deadline for shutting down a final airlift, and thus ending the U.S. war, Air Force transport planes carried a remaining contingent of troops from Kabul airport late Monday. Thousands of troops had spent a harrowing two weeks protecting the airlift of tens of thousands of Afghans, Americans and others seeking to escape a country once again ruled by Taliban militants. [AP article]
August 31 Peace Love Art Activism
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
