April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Reparations

April 17, 1878: freed slave Henrietta Wood sued Zebulon Ward, a white man who had re-enslaved Wood 25 years before. Wood was suing him for $20,000 in reparations

Twelve white jurors in Cincinnati, Ohio, ruled in Wood’s favor and awarded her $2,500. [Smithsonian story] (next BH, see April 5, 1880)

Caesar Sheffield lynched

April 17, 1915: a mob of white men near Lake Park, Georgia took 17-year-old Black boy Caesar Sheffield from jail and shot him to death. Police had arrested Caesar for allegedly stealing meat from a smokehouse owned by a local white man.

When the mob took Caesar from the jail, prison officials had abandoned the building despite being charged with protecting those inside the jail,  allowing the mob to easily force its way into the jail. The men took Caesar to a nearby field and shot him to death. His body was found later that day, riddled with bullets.

No arrests were made following his murder and no one was ever held accountable. [EJI article] (next BH, see June 21; next Lynching, see Dec 8 or see AL2 for expanded lynching chronology)

Little Palace Cafeteria

April 17, 1943: a sit-in by African-American students at Howard University students challenged racial segregation at the Little Palace Cafeteria, on 14th and U Streets in Washington, D.C. This event and a similar sit-in in Chicago on May 8, 1943, were signs of the rising demands for racial equality in 1943.

Howard University students staged a second sit-in the following year, on April 22, 1944. The sit-ins were soon quashed by pressure from Southerners in Congress who controlled the budget for the District of Columbia and Howard University. Restaurants in Washington, D.C., remained racially segregated for another decade, until a court ordered them integrated on June 8, 1953, in the case of District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson. (SNCC article) (see May 5)

Muhammad Ali

April 17, 1967: the U.S. Supreme Court barred Muhammad Ali’s request to be blocked from induction into the U.S. Army. (see Apr 28)

BLACK & SHOT/Ralph Yarl

April 17, 2023: on Thursday 6 April in Kansas City, MO , 16-year-od Ralph Yarl had gone to pick up his twin brothers at a friend’s house, but he mixed up the address. He went to Northeast 115 Street instead of Northeast 115th Terrace.

The owner, Andrew D. Lester, 84, came to the door and shot Yarl twice: once in the head and once in the arm. Yarl survived. Police took Lester into custody, but released him the next day without charges.

Over the weekend, anger began to spread in the community. Protesters marched on Lester’s home on Sunday 16 April while the Kansas City police chief, Stacey Graves, acknowledged the public frustration at a news conference. Yarl was released from the hospital that  evening.

As pressure mounted,  the Police Department said in a statement that it had submitted the case file to the Clay County prosecuting attorney’s office. The prosecutor, Zachary Thompson, publicly identified Mr. Lester a few hours later and announced that he had been charged, saying what many already believed: “There was a racial component to the case.”

Thompson said Lester had been charged with assault in the first degree, a class-A felony, and could face life in prison if convicted. He also was charged with armed criminal action, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, Mr. Thompson said. [NYT article] (next B & S and Yari, see Aug 31)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash

April 17, 1945:  U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash commandeered over half a ton of uranium at Strassfut, Germany, in an effort to prevent the Russians from developing an A-bomb. Pash was head of the ALSOS Group, organized to search for German scientists in the postwar environment in order to prevent the Russians, previously Allies but now a potential threat, from capturing any scientists and putting them to work at their own atomic research plants. Uranium piles were also rich “catches,” as they were necessary to the development of atomic weapons. (Atomic Heritage Foundation article) (see Apr 24)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

 Syria

April 17, 1946: Evacuation Day (Arabic: عيد الجلاء‎‎), also called Independence Day, is Syria’s national day commemorating the evacuation of the last French soldier and Syria’s proclamation of full independence and the end of the French mandate of Syria (see August 14, 1947)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

April 17 Music et al

Lawrence Welk

April 17 – May 21, 1961: Lawrence Welk’s Calcutta is Billboard’s #1 album.

The Apartment

April 17, 1961: 1960 Oscars held. Bob Hope hosts. The Best Picture Award winner was director/producer/writer Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (with a total of ten nominations and five wins – Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing: Story and Screenplay, Best B/W Art Direction, and Best Film Editing).

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

The Road to Bethel

April 17, 1969

• Michael Lang and Joel Rosenman co-sign a $10,000 check to construct offices for Woodstock Ventures at 47 W 57^th Street in NYC. Bert Cohan in charge. They also put down $4,500 as a deposit on a property in Woodstock for the recording studio (the Tapooz property).
• a $14,000 check given to Alexander Tapooz for deposit on Woodstock retreat studio. (see Road to Bethel for expanded story)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

The Cold War

April 17, 1961: a group of Cuban exiles backed by the U.S. government and trained by the CIA lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. The failed coup further heightened Cold War tensions and diverts President Kennedy’s attention from domestic policy. (see Bay of Pigs for expanded story)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

April 17, 1965: Paul Kuntzler and nine other people picketed the White House in what advocates believe was the first gay rights demonstration. The group was mostly fighting for gays and lesbians to keep their government jobs. (see May 29)

Vietnam

Daniel Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers

April 17, 1965: the  SDS led an anti-Vietnam war march in Washington. 15,000 attend including Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and Judy Collins. Daniel Ellsberg and Patricia Marx go on their first date…this rally. For the next two years Ellsberg served in Vietnam as a civilian on special assignment for the U.S. Department of State, studying counter-insurgency. (next Vietnam, see Apr 21; see DE/PP for expanded story)

LGBTQ

April 17, 1966: Donald Slater, a spokesman for the Committee to Fight Exclusion of Homosexuals From the Armed Forces, explained the beginning of a 6-day campaign to support that committee’s goal. Slater stated that the campaign represented the first manifestation of a new militancy in “the homosexual movement.” (tangentgroup dot org committee statement) (LGBTQ, see Apr 21; Vietnam, see Apr 29)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

Sirhan Sirhan

April 17, 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy. (see Apr 23)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Boston Marathon

In 1967 Kathrine Switzer registered as K.V. Switzer for the Boston Marathon. Race Official Jock Semple grabbed her and tried to tear off her number. Other runners helped push Semple away and Switzer finished the race. (Switzer’s story)

On April 17, 1972,  for the first time, the Boston Marathon officially permitted  women to compete. (see June 23)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

Appeal denied

April 17, 2017: the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from detained immigrant mothers and their children who claimed they would be persecuted if they were returned to their Latin American homelands. The decision left in place a lower court ruling that said the families did not have a right to contest their deportation in federal court.

The 28 mothers and their 33 children were arrested in Texas soon after crossing the border illegally, and immigration officials rejected their asylum claims. The immigrants came from Honduras, Guatemala and Ecuador. They had argued they were entitled to a hearing before an independent federal judge. (KAAL TV article) (see Apr 25)

Mandatory Deportation

April 17, 2018: the US Supreme Court invalidated a provision of federal law that required the mandatory deportation of immigrants who had been convicted of some “crimes of violence,” holding that the law was unconstitutionally vague.

The case, Sessions v. Dimaya, had originated during the Obama administration but had been closely watched to see if the justices would reveal how they will consider the Trump administration’s overall push to both limit immigration and increase deportations.

As expected after the oral argument, Justice Neil Gorsuch joined with the more liberal justices for the first time since joining the court to produce a 5-4 majority invalidating the federal statute. In doing so, Gorsuch was continuing the jurisprudence of Justice Antonin Scalia, who also sided with liberals when it came to the vagueness of statutes used to convict criminal defendants. (see Apr 24)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

April 17, 2020: for nearly a century, an illustration of a Native American woman with a feather in her hair has adorned the packaging of Land O’Lakes cheese and butter products.

The company, founded in 1921 by a group of Minnesota dairy farmers, announced that it was phasing in a new design ahead of its 100th anniversary. Instead of the depiction of the woman, some products will be labeled “Farmer-Owned” and feature an illustration of a field and lake, or photographs of its farmers, the company announced. [NYT article] (next NA, see July 9)

April 17 Peace Love Art Activism

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Lincoln

April 16, 1862: President Lincoln signed an act abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. (see May 1)

Boston Red Sox “Tryouts”

April 16, 1945: the Boston Red Sox reluctantly held a Major League tryout for Black ballplayers in the Negro Baseball League that many regarded as some of the best players in the world, but refused to sign any of them due to “an unwritten rule at that time against hiring Black players.”

Future Hall-of-Famer Jackie Robinson, along with Marvin Williams and Sam Jethroe, traveled thousands of miles to attend the tryouts. During the workout, which was attended only by Red Sox team management, players were taunted and endured shouts from the stands including “get those niggers off the field.”  Red Sox managers abandoned all three Black ballplayers and sent them home without contracts or even the courtesy of a response from the team managers.

The Boston Red Sox remained segregated until 1959—14 years after Jackie Robinson’s original tryout and two seasons after Mr. Robinson retired. The team rostered its first Black player, Pumpsie Green, only after the NAACP charged them with racial discrimination and the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination forced them to integrate. They were the last team in MLB to accept Black players. [EJI article] (next BH, see June 12)

 The Greensboro Four

April 16 – 17, 1960: Easter weekend, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized a meeting of sit-in students from all over the nation at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. Leader Ella Baker encouraged students to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “snick”) to organize the effort.

SNCC helped coordinate sit-ins and other direct action. From their ranks came many of today’s leaders, including Congressman John Lewis and longtime NAACP leader Julian Bond. At the conference, Guy Carawan sang a new version of “We Shall Overcome,” which became the national anthem of the civil rights movement. Workers joined hands and gently swayed in time, singing “black and white together,” repeating, “Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome some day.” (see Greensboro for expanded story)

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR

April 16, 1963: King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” responding to eight white clergymen from Alabama who had chastised him breaking the law released. King reminded them that everything that Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” The letter was released on this date.

“While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely.” Martin Luther King writes “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws. “Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?”  [link to PDF of  Letter]  (BH, see Apr 23; MLK, see June 11)

George Whitmore, Jr

April 16, 1979: The NY Times reported that Whitmore’s $10 million claim against New York City for improper arrest and imprisonment and his request for a jury trial were dismissed for technical reasons the previous week by Justice William Bellard in State Supreme Court. (see Whitmore for expanded story)

Rodney King attack

April 16, 1993: federal jury convicted Sgt. Stacey Koon and Laurence Michael Powell on one charge of violating King’s civil rights. Officers Timothy Wind, and Theodore Briseno were found not guilty. No disturbances follow the verdict. (BH, see May 28; King, see Aug 4)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Int’l Ladies’ Garment Workers Union

April 16, 1916:  in a dispute over hiring practices,  employers locked out 25,000 New York City garment workers. The Int’l Ladies’ Garment Workers Union called a general strike and after 14 weeks, 60,000 strikers won union recognition and the contractual right to strike (see June 3)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

LSD

Albert Hoffman

April 16, 1943: In Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hoffman, a Swiss chemist working at the Sandoz pharmaceutical research laboratory, accidentally consumed LSD-25, a synthetic drug he had created in 1938 as part of his research into the medicinal value of lysergic acid compounds. After taking the drug, formally known as lysergic acid diethylamide, Dr. Hoffman was disturbed by unusual sensations and hallucinations. In his notes, he related the experience: “Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.” (see Hoffman for expanded story)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

Cold War

Bernard Baruch

April 16, 1947: multimillionaire and financier Bernard Baruch, in a speech given during the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives, coins the term “Cold War“ to describe relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. He said it was only through “unity” between labor and management that the United States could hope to play its role as the major force by which “the world can renew itself physically or spiritually.” He called for longer workweeks, no-strike pledges from unions, and no-layoff pledges from management. It was imperative that American business and industry pull itself together, Baruch warned. “Let us not be deceived-we are today in the midst of a cold war.” And thus the term was coined and the media adopted. (see May 22)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

Texas City explosion

April 16, 1947: 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate on board a ship docked in the port of Texas City detonate, setting off a chain reaction of explosions and fires on other ships and nearby oil storage facilities. The explosion killed at least 581 people and injured thousands in the deadliest industrial disaster in U.S. history. As a result, changes in chemical manufacturing and new regulations for the bagging, handling, and shipping of chemicals were enacted. (see March 24, 1955)

Mercury

April 16, 2020:  the NY Times reported that  the Trump administration had weakened regulations on the release of mercury and other toxic metals from oil and coal-fired power plants, another step toward rolling back health protections in the middle of a pandemic.

The final Environmental Protection Agency rule did not eliminate restrictions on the release of mercury, a heavy metal linked to brain damage. Instead, it created a new method of calculating the costs and benefits of curbing mercury pollution that environmental lawyers said would fundamentally undermine the legal underpinnings of controls on mercury and many other pollutants.

By reducing the positive health effects of regulations on paper, while raising their negative economic costs, the new method could be used to justify loosening restrictions on any pollutant that the fossil fuel industry has deemed too costly to control. (next EI, see July 6)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

Tybee bomb

April 16, 1958: the military announced that the search efforts for the Tybee bomb (see February 5, 1958) had been unsuccessful. Based upon a hydrologic survey, the bomb was thought by the Department of Energy to lie buried under 5 to 15 feet of silt at the bottom of Wassaw Sound. The Tybee Bomb remaining buried would be a positive thing because if the bomb’s alloy casing were exposed to seawater by the shifting strata in which it is presumed to be buried, rapid corrosion could occur. That would allow the highly enriched uranium to leach out of the device and enter the aquifer that surrounds the continental shelf in this area. (see Aug 24)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

April 16 Music et al

FREE SPEECH

April 16, 1961: about 500 persons attended a rally at in the Baptist Church near Washington Square to protest the the ban against Sunday singing and performing in Washington Square. (see NYC bans for expanded story)

Bob Dylan

April 16, 1962: Dylan debuted his song “Blowin’ in the Wind” at Gerde’s Folk City in New York. (see Apr 25)

Rolling Stones

April 16, 1964. the Rolling Stones released their début album, The Rolling Stones (England’s Newest Hitmakers).

Herb Albert

April 16 – May 20, 1966: Herb Albert’s Going Places returns as to the Billboard #1 album.

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

Space Race

Apollo 16

April 16 – 27, 1972: Apollo 16 voyage. It will land on the moon and travel almost 17 miles with the lunar rover. Commander, John W Young; Charles M Duke, Jr, Lunar Module Pilot; and Thomas K Mattingly II, Command Module Pilot. (see Dec 7 – 19)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

Resumed bombing Hanoi

April 16, 1972: in an effort to help blunt the ongoing North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, the US resumed bombing Hanoi and Haiphong after a four-year lull. In the first use of B-52s against both Hanoi and Haiphong, and the first attacks against both cities since November 1968, 18 B-52s and about 100 U.S. Navy and Air Force fighter-bombers struck supply dumps near Haiphong’s harbor. Sixty fighter-bombers hit petroleum storage facilities near Hanoi, with another wave of planes striking later in the afternoon. White House spokesmen announced that the US would bomb military targets anywhere in Vietnam in order to help the South Vietnamese defend against the communist onslaught. (see Apr 22)

My Lai Massacre

April 16, 1974: Lieutenant Calley’s sentence was further reduced from 20 years to 10 years. Calley will return to the stockade from house arrest, but will be released on parole that November. In total, Calley serves four months in a stockade. (see My Lai for expanded story; next Vietnam, see Sept 16)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

April 16, 1998: Ken Starr withdrew from consideration for the deanship at Pepperdine University Law School. Starr said an end to the Whitewater investigation “was not yet in sight.” Bernard Lewinsky lashed out at Kenneth Starr, calling the treatment of his daughter “unconscionable.” He also asked for help in paying the former intern’s legal bills. (see Clinton for expanded story)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

Dissolution of the USSR

April 16, 2003: 10 countries signed  the 2003 Treaty of Accession admitting them to the European Union (EU). After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU. (U of Pittsburgh article) (see USSR for expanded chronology)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

Iraq War II

 

April 16, 2007:  “As of Sunday, April 15, 2007, at least 3,300 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.” [AP, 4/16/07] (NBC News article) (see Apr 25)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

Baze v. Rees

April 16, 2008: in Baze v. Rees the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a particular method of lethal injection used for capital punishment. Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling (sentenced to death in Kentucky) had argued that executing them by lethal injection would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The governing legal standard required that lethal injection must not inflict “unnecessary pain”, and Baze and Bowling argued that the lethal chemicals Kentucky used carried an unnecessary risk of inflicting pain during the execution.

The case had nationwide implications because the specific “cocktail” used for lethal injections in Kentucky was the same that virtually all states used for lethal injection. (Oyez article) (see September 30, 2009)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

April 16, 2019: the Department of Justice issued an order that could keep thousands of asylum-seekers detained while they wait for their cases to be heard in immigration court — a wait that often lasted months or years.

The ruling by Attorney General William Barr was the latest step by the Trump administration designed to discourage asylum-seekers from coming to the U.S. hoping for refuge.

In a written decision that overturned a 2005 policy, Barr directed immigration judges not to release migrants on bail once their cases have been approved for expedited removal proceedings — a status granted only after an applicant successfully establishes “a credible fear of persecution or torture” in the home country. (see Apr 18)

April 16 Peace Love Art Activism