March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

License

March 14, 1835: the Missouri General Assembly passed a law that required free Black people to apply for a license to remain in the state. Black people who failed to do so faced fines up to $100, incarceration, and expulsion from Missouri. Fearful of a growing Black population, white legislators enacted the law in an attempt to force Black people out of the state and empowered authorities to seize any free Black person that they suspected lacked a license.

Missouri’s law imposed onerous requirements on applicants. Free Black residents had to establish continuous residency for at least a decade, and “produce satisfactory evidence… that [the applicant] is of good character and behavior, and capable of supporting [themselves] by lawful employment.” The law also obligated Black people to obtain a new license each time they moved to a different county.

In 1837, the Missouri Supreme Court upheld the license law. [EJI article] (next BH, see Oct 21)

March to Montgomery

March 14, 1965: SNCC staff members led 400 Alabama State University students, joined by a group of white students from across the country, on a march from the ASU campus to the Capitol. Although Montgomery police react peacefully to the march, as the students approach the Capitol, state troopers, the sheriff’s office, and a posse it had deputized attack the marchers. (BH, see Mar 15; see MM for expanded chronology).

School Desegregation

March 14, 1972: the Boston chapter of the NAACP filed a class action lawsuit against the Boston School Committee on behalf of 14 black parents and 44 children. Tallulah Morgan headed the list of plaintiffs and James Hennigan then chair of the School Committee, was listed as the main defendant. The case was called Morgan v. Hennigan. The plaintiffs’ legal team decided to pursue the case as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The School Committee was charged with violating the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments as well as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants, the School Committee, the Board of Education, and the Education Commissioner had “intentionally brought about and maintained racial segregation in the Boston Public Schools.” In short, while Boston was not experiencing “de jure” segregation (segregation as a result of the law), it was experiencing “de facto” segregation (segregation as a result of action).  (BH, see June 4 ; SD, see June 22)

BLACK & SHOT

March 14, 2016: nearly a year after the federal Justice Department declined to bring civil rights charges against white police officer Aaron Hess who fatally shot black college student Danroy Henry, Henry’s family has agreed to a $6 million settlement, a lawyer for the family announced. (see Apr 25)

6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion

March 14, 2022: President Joe Biden signed into law a bill awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion. The battalion was the only all-Black Women’s Army Corps unit to serve in Europe during World War II.  [Afro article; Smithsonian article] (next BH, see Mar 29 )

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

Technological Milestone

Henry Ford

March 14, 1914: Henry Ford announced the new continuous motion method to assemble cars. The process decreased the time to make a car from 12½ hours to 93 minutes. (Ford article) (see October 28, 1922)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

March 14 Music et al

Fear of Rock

see Keep the Air Clean Sunday Society  for more

March 14, 1927: the head of the New York City Keep-the-Air-Clean-Sunday Society objected to radio station WMCA’s playing of jazz music on Sunday nights, charging that it was “degrading” and “defaming.” In response, listeners flooded the station with letters stating they had no objection to the one-hour program from 6 to 7 p.m. on Sundays. The Federal Radio Inspector for the New York District explained that he had no power to censor the content of radio programs, but that he was referring the matter to the newly created Federal Radio Commission. In the 1920s and 1930s, many self-appointed guardians of public morals condemned this new music called “jazz.” The attacks were prompted by the rhythms that moralists feared would lead people to immoral behavior, and also because jazz was primarily an African-American music. In the 1950s and 1960s, the self-appointed guardians of public morals had the same objections to the new music “rock and roll.” (see January 28, 1944) 

LSD/ Humphry Osmond

March 14, 1957:  Humphry Osmond first proposed the term “psychedelic” at a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences. From his paper: “If mimicking mental illness were the main characteristic of these agents, “psychotomimetics” would indeed be a suitable generic term. It is true that they do so, but they do much more. Why are we always preoccupied with the pathological, the negative? Is health only the lack of sickness? Is good merely the absence of evil? Is pathology the only yardstick? Must we ape Freud’s gloomier moods that persuaded him that a happy man is a self-deceiver evading the heartache for which there is no anodyne? Is not a child infinitely potential rather than polymorphously perverse?

 I have tried to find an appropriate name for the agents under discussion: a name that will include the concepts of enriching the mind and enlarging the vision. Some possibilities are: psychephoric, mind moving; psychehormic, mind rousing; and psycheplastic, mind molding. Psychezynic, mind fermenting, is indeed appropriate. Psycherhexic, mind bursting forth, though difficult, is memorable. Psychelytic, mind releasing, is satisfactory. My choice, because it is clear, euphonious, and uncontaminated by other associations, is psychedelic, mind manifesting. One of these terms should serve.”

 He said the term was “clear, euphonious and uncontaminated by other associations.” Aldous Huxley had sent Osmond a rhyme containing his own suggested invented word: “To make this trivial world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme” (thymos meaning ‘spiritedness’ in Greek.) Osmond countered with “To fathom Hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic.”  (Osmond’s NYT obit)

Josiah Macy Foundation

In 1959: Josiah Macy Foundation sponsored major scientific congress on LSD. (JMF site)

Allen Ginsberg

In 1959: beat poet Allen Ginsberg tried LSD for the first time. (see April 22 – 24)

The Beatles

March 14, 1964: Billboard reported that sales of Beatles records made up 60% of the entire singles market. (see Mar 19)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

JFK Assassination

Jack Ruby

March 14, 1964: Jack Ruby was found guilty of the “murder with malice” of Oswald and sentenced to die in the electric chair. It was the first courtroom verdict to be televised in U.S. history. (see September 27, 1964)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

My Lai Massacre

March 14, 1968: while Charlie Company was on a patrol, Sergeant George Cox was killed by a booby trap and two other GI’s were seriously injured. In one of the first documented instances of outright aggression, frustrated and angry members of Charlie Company lash out – while passing through a Vietnamese village on their return to camp, troops shoot and kill a woman civilian working in a field. (Vietnam, see Mar 16 ; see My Lai for expanded story)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

Jack Kevorkian

March 14, 1998 – Jack Kevorkian’s 100th assisted suicide: a 66-year-old Detroit man. (see Kevorkian for expanded story)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

“Mixed” marriages

March 14, 2006: the Pew Research Center reported that more than one-fifth of all American adults (22%) say that they had close relative who is married to someone of a different race. (2015 PEW study on mixed race marriage)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

STAND YOUR GROUND LAW

March 14, 2012: In Flagler Beach, FL, Paul Miller, 66, shot and killed Dana Mulhall, 52. Mulhall was unarmed when Miller opened fire as the two argued across a front yard fence about Miller’s barking dogs, investigators said. (Flaglerlive dot com article)  (Stand Your Ground, see Mar 21; Paul Miller, see Feb 4, 2013)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

Stop and Frisk Policy

March 14, 2013: the 5,000,000^th person was stopped in NYC with its stop-and-frisk program. (2016 ACLU article) (see Aug 12)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

Same-sex marriage Tennessee

March 14, 2014: federal judge Judge Aleta Trauger granted a preliminary injunction against Tennessee’s ban on same-sex marriage in certain instances.

In October three same-sex couples filed a lawsuit asking the state to recognize their marriages that had been performed in states where gay marriage was legal. The four couples taking part in the suit were living and had been married in New York or California but had moved to Tennessee.

“At this point, all signs indicate that, in the eyes of the United States Constitution, the plaintiffs’ marriages will be placed on an equal footing with those of heterosexual couples and that proscriptions against same-sex marriage will soon become a footnote in the annals of American history,” Trauger wrote in the order. (see Mar 21)

Kedarie Johnson’s murder

March 14, 2017: the Iowa Attorney General’s office was asked to lead the prosecution of Jorge “Lumni” Sanders-Galvez, 22, one of two men accused of killing Burlington High School student Kedarie Johnson.

Laura Roan, an assistant attorney general, entered the case and Des Moines County Attorney Amy Beavers would likely serve as co-counsel.

Sanders-Galvez filed a written plea of not guilty rather than appear as scheduled.

The co-defendant, Jaron “Wikked West” Purham, 27, remained in the St. Louis County, Mo., jail in St. Louis on charges there. Purham would be returned to Des Moines County to face murder charges in the killing of Johnson when the Missouri cases are resolved. (Des Moines Register article) (LGBTQ, see Mar 14; Johnson, see Oct 15)

Beauty and the Beast

March 14, 2017: Walt Disney Studios refused to cut a brief, gay-themed scene from “Beauty and the Beast” as demanded by government censors in Malaysia, meaning the film would not open as scheduled.

The Film Censorship Board of Malaysia had ruled that a shot involving two male characters dancing in a ballroom must be cut from the movie, on the grounds that it promoted homosexuality. The sequence was three seconds long.

“The film has not been and will not be cut for Malaysia,” Disney said in a statement.

The film’s director, Bill Condon, called the scene in question — involving a character named LeFou, manservant to the villain, Gaston — an “exclusively gay moment.” (see Mar 15)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

Religion and Public Education

FREE SPEECH

March 14, 2014: a federal district court approved a consent decree requiring the Sabine Parish School Board (Louisiana) to cease a variety of unconstitutional practices that impose religion on students at Negreet High School and other Sabine Parish Schools.

The consent decree, a court order agreed to by both parties, ended a lawsuit filed in January by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana on behalf of a Buddhist sixth-grader of Thai descent, “C.C.,” who was harassed by staff and students because of his faith.

“No child should feel that a teacher is trying to impose religious beliefs, and this agreement ensures that this will no longer be the case at Sabine Parish schools,” said Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “We’re glad the school board worked with us to bring this matter to a quick and amicable resolution.”

Under the consent decree, the school board must end official prayers during class and school events, refrain from disparaging any particular faith, and prohibit staff from teaching creationism and other biblical doctrine as fact. The consent decree also protects students’ rights to express their faith and pray privately and of their own volition. To ensure that the consent decree is carried out properly and that the constitutional violations do not recur, the board will also conduct in-service training for staff on First Amendment issues and the effects of religious discrimination on students.  (Religion and.. see ; FS, see Sept 17 )

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

March 14, 2014: U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright struck down Arkansas’ attempt to ban most abortions beginning 12 weeks into a woman’s pregnancy, saying viability, not a heartbeat, remained the key factor in determining whether abortions should be allowed.

In  2013, Wright had stopped enforcement of the law while she reviewed it, and with her ruling declared that it was unconstitutional. She cited previous court decisions that said abortions shouldn’t be restricted until after a fetus reaches viability, which is typically at 22 to 24 weeks.

 “The state presents no evidence that a fetus can live outside the mother’s womb at twelve weeks,” the judge wrote.

By adopting a ban based on a fetal heartbeat, and not the ability to survive, the Arkansas Legislature had adopted the nation’s toughest abortion law last March. Two weeks later, North Dakota lawmakers passed a bill restricting abortions at six weeks — or before some women would know they’re pregnant. That law is on hold.    

Wright said only a doctor could determine viability. “The Supreme Court has … stressed that it is not the proper function of the legislature or the courts to place viability at a specific point in the gestation period,” Wright wrote. (see July 28)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

Consumer Protection

March 14, 2017: a federal court in San Francisco unsealed documents raising questions about the safety of Roundup and the research practices of Monsanto, its manufacturer.

Roundup and similar products are used around the world on everything from row crops to home gardens. It is Monsanto’s flagship product, and industry-funded research had long found it to be relatively safe. A case San Francisco challenged that conclusion, building on the findings of an international panel that claimed Roundup’s main ingredient might cause cancer.

The court documents included Monsanto’s internal emails and email traffic between the company and federal regulators. The records suggested that Monsanto had ghostwritten research that was later attributed to academics and indicated that a senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency had worked to quash a review of Roundup’s main ingredient, glyphosate, that was to have been conducted by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

The documents also revealed that there was some disagreement within the E.P.A. over its own safety assessment. (see May 1, 2018)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

Crime and Punishment

March 14, 2018: the National Registry of Exonerations  reported that at least 139 convicted defendants in the United States were exonerated in 2017 and most owed it to the work of lawyers in prosecutors’ offices and private organizations dedicated to finding wrongful convictions. (see May 13)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History & Trump’s Wall

March 14, 2019: the Senate easily voted to overturn President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the southwestern border, delivering a bipartisan rebuke to what lawmakers in both parties deemed executive overreach by a president determined to build his border wall over Congress’s objections.

The 59-41 vote on the House-passed measure set up the first veto of Trump’s presidency. It was not overwhelming enough to override Mr. Trump’s promised veto, but Congress has now voted to block a presidential emergency declaration for the first time — and on one of the core promises that animated Mr. Trump’s political rise, the vow to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.

“Never before has a president asked for funding, Congress has not provided it, and the president then has used the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to spend the money anyway,” Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said. “The problem with this is that after a Revolutionary War against a king, our nation’s founders gave to Congress the power to approve all spending so that the president would not have too much power. This check on the executive is a crucial source of our freedom.” (see Mar 15)

March 14 Peace Love Art Activism

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Rat

March 13, 1830: the term “rat,” referring to a worker who betrays fellow workers, first appears in print in the New York Daily Sentinel.  The newspaper was quoting a typesetter while reporting on replacement workers who had agreed to work for two-thirds of the going rate. (see January 29, 1834)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Cultural Milestones

Uncle Sam

March 13, 1852: the first illustration of ‘Uncle Sam’ was published in a political cartoon by satirist Frank Bellew in the ‘New York Lantern’. (see May 16, 1966)

Encyclopedia Britannica

March 13, 2012: after 244 years of publication, Encyclopedia Britannica announced it would discontinue its print edition. (Guardian article) (see July 10, 2019)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

Dien Bien Phu

March 13, 1954: a force of 40,000 Viet Minh with heavy artillery surrounded 15,000 French troops at Dien Bien Phu. French General Henri Navarre had positioned these forces 200 miles behind enemy lines in a remote area adjacent to the Laotian border. He hoped to draw the communists into a set-piece battle in which he hoped superior French firepower would destroy the enemy. He underestimated the enemy. (NPR story) (see Mar 20)

Campaign 275

March 13, 1975: Ban Me Thuot, capital of Darlac Province in the Central Highlands, fell to North Vietnamese troops. In late January 1975, just two years after the cease-fire established by the Paris Peace Accords, the North Vietnamese launched Campaign 275. (see Mar 24)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

March 13, 1944: Odell Lachney, a white bus driver employed by the city of Alexandria, Louisiana, shot and killed Private Edward Green, a 23-year-old Black soldier from New York, after he refused to sit in the segregated section of a city bus.

Green was stationed with an army field artillery unit at Camp Livingston, Louisiana. He boarded city bus no and took a seat near the front of the bus. As soon as Lachney saw  Green, Lachney shouted at him to move. When Green remained in his seat, Lachney stopped the bus, got up from the driver’s seat, and walked toward Green brandishing a club.

Lachney, who later claimed Green had reached into his pocket, then grabbed a pistol. A white passenger sitting directly behind the driver’s seat, cautioned Lachney: “Don’t shoot him on the bus.” Apparently heeding this advice, Lachney forced Green onto the street as he pleaded, “Don’t kill me, I’ll get off.” Despite the Black soldier’s words, Lachney shot Private Green, killing him with a bullet in the heart.

The coroner held an inquest the afternoon after Private Green was shot and killed. Though five white jurors returned a verdict that “Private Edward Green came to his death from gunshot wounds at the left breast by the hand of Odell Lachney,” no criminal charges were filed. Lachney was released from police custody and the local media did no subsequent reporting on Private Green’s death. [EJI article] (next BH, see Mar 26)

Clinton Melton murder

On December 3 Otis Kimball had killed Clinton Melton in cold blood. On March 13, 1956 an all-white, all-male jury acquitted Otis Kimbell, despite the weight of the testimonial and physical evidence contradicting Kimbell’s claim that he acted in self-defense. (nuweb article) (see March 22)

Freedom Rider

March 13, 1961:  the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE] announced Freedom Ride. (BH, see Mar 29; Freedom Riders, see May 4)

Albany Movement

March 13, 1963: Blacks resumed a 16 month fight against segregation in Albany, GA, embittered by the realization that a seeming victory was only a legal maneuver. (next BH, see Apr 4;  see Albany for expanded post) 

March to Montgomery

March 13, 1965:  President Johnson met with Alabama’s Governor Wallace to decry the brutality surrounding the protests and ask him to mobilize the Alabama National Guard to protect demonstrators.  (next BH, see Mar 15; see MM for expanded chronology)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

The Beatles

Eight Days a Week

March 13 – 26, 1965: “Eight Days a Week” #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. (see April 13)

Mary Poppins soundtrack

March 13 –19, 1965: the Mary Poppins soundtrack is the Billboard #1 album.

see John Lennon Meets Brandy Alexander for expanded story

March 13, 1974: when John Lennon arrived in LA in 1973, he looked up Nilsson, a prodigious drinker who also did cocaine.

According to May Pang, John…”loved his energy; he loved his writing. What he loved in Harry was the beauty of his friendship and relaxed personality. That’s what he saw. Harry drank, a lot. But Harry was the type of guy that if you go out drinking with him, he’d be sure at the end of the night that there would be a big brawl and that you are the one who’s in trouble, even though he started it. Harry would keep feeding John drinks until it was too late.”

On March 13 at the Troubadour during a show by the Smothers Brothers. Lennon, drunk on Brandy Alexanders, disrupted the comedians’ act with relentless heckling. Smothers’ manager Ken Fritz said, “I went over and asked Harry to try to shut up Lennon. Harry said, ‘I’m trying – don’t blame me!’ When Lennon continued, I told him to keep quiet. He swung and hit me in the jaw.” Lennon and Nilsson were hustled out of the Troubadour, knocking over a few tables in the process. “It was horrendous,” Tom Smothers recalled. (next Beatles, see Mar 28)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

ADA

Student Rights

March 13, 1988: after students, faculty, and the community at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. organized a week-long protest called “Deaf President Now” on campus demanding the selection of a deaf president for the university, the trustees of Gallaudet University, the nation’s only institution of higher learning for the hearing impaired,  picked I. King Jordan, Dean of the Gallaudet college of arts and sciences, to be the eighth president of the 2,200-student institution. The 124-year-old university had never before had a deaf president. (Gallaudet article) (ADA,  see Sept 13; SR, see September 1989)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

Valdez oil spill

March 13, 1991: the US Dept of Justice announced that Exxon had agreed to pay $1 billion for the clean-up of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. (see June 13, 1994)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

March 13, 2000: Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray began filing a series of final reports that detail the office’s six-year investigation of President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. (see Clinton for expanded story)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Marijuana

March 13, 2007: New Mexico’s Senate Bill 523 “The Lynn and Erin Compassionate Use Act” was approved by the House (36-31) and the Senate (32-3) on Mar. 13, 2007 and took effect on July 1, 2007. The act removed state-level criminal penalties on the use and possession of marijuana by patients “in a regulated system for alleviating symptoms caused by debilitating medical conditions and their medical treatments.” The New Mexico Department of Health was designated to administer the program and register patients, caregivers, and providers. (see, CC2 for expanded cannabis chronology) next Marijuana, see February 15, 2008)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Great Recession

March 13, 2009: a report by the Federal Reserve said that U.S. families lost a record 18% of their wealth in 2008.

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Kandahar massacre

March 13, 2012:  the soldier suspected in the Kandahar killings was moved to Kuwait. President Barack Obama said that the military would conduct a thorough investigation into the rampage. He said he has told Afghan President Hamid Karzai that the United States “takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who were murdered.” (see Mar 16)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Sgt. Rebekah Havrilla

March 13, 2013: former Army Sgt. Rebekah Havrilla, an Army rape victim, testified about how a military chaplain told her the alleged rape “was God’s will” and was intended to “get my attention so I would go back to church.”

Havrilla was a key witness at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing focusing on sexual assault in the military. She told the military personnel subcommittee that she delayed filing formal charges for an alleged rape by a fellow soldier in Afghanistan because she did not trust the system, and that after she finally reported it nothing happened. (NYT article) (see July 11)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Affordable Care Act

March 13, 2017: the House Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act would raise the number of people without health insurance by 24 million within a decade, but would trim $337 billion from the federal deficit over that time, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said.

Republicans had been bracing for what was almost certain to be a bleak accounting of the legislation’s projected effects. The American Health Care Act, as Republicans call their bill, was already facing widespread criticism from providers of health care, some conservatives, and a united Democratic Party. The numbers released Monday will only make it more difficult for Republicans to explain why their legislation would bring positive change to the country’s health care system. (see Mar 23)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

Sanctuary Cities

March 13, 2018:  the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Texas’ ban on so-called sanctuary cities could take effect while legal challenges proceeded, concluding that opponents of the measure were not likely to succeed on the merits of their case.

In a unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel almost completely reversed an August ruling by a federal judge in San Antonio, who had temporarily blocked Texas officials from enforcing the ban.

The law in question — Senate Bill 4, passed by the Texas Legislature in May 2017 — required police chiefs and sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials, and allowed the police to question the immigration status of anyone they arrest. It was passed in response to the proliferation of sanctuary cities, which restrict such cooperation and have gained national attention as President Trump pursues stricter immigration policies.

Trump’s Wall

March 13, 2018: President Trump reviewed eight prototypes  for the wall in San Diego during a visit to the border.

All of the designs were concrete, but only one included the see-through component Trump said was necessary. He also repeated the need for a tall wall, comparing some migrants to “professional mountain climbers.”

“We want to make it perfecto,” he said of the wall. (IH, see Mar 15; TW, see Dec 21)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

March 13, 2019: California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on capital punishment granting a temporary reprieve for the 737 inmates who wait on the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere.

The move was highly symbolic because legal challenges had already stalled executions in California; the last one was in 2006. But death penalty opponents hope that because of California’s size and political importance, the governor’s action would give new urgency to efforts to end executions in other states as popular support for the death penalty wanes.

Supporters of capital punishment said the move went against the will of the state’s residents. California voters had rejected an initiative to abolish the death penalty and in 2016, they approved Proposition 66 to help speed it up. (see Mar 28)

March 13 Peace Love Art Activism

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

US Labor History

Exclusion Act

March 12, 1888: six years after the Exclusion Act (May 6, 1882) the Chinese government agreed to its fundamental principles. Under pressure from the U.S., the Chinese signed a treaty agreeing not to allow any laborers to immigrate to America. Only in 1943, when China became a valuable ally in the war against Japan, did the U.S. finally abandon this policy. (text of act) (LH, see August 29, 1889; IH, see January 1, 1892)

Unaccompanied Minors Permitted

March 12, 2022: following a public health reassessment, the CDC Director terminated with respect to unaccompanied noncitizen children an Order under Title 42 that had suspended the right to introduce certain persons into the United States. In effect, this meant that unaccompanied noncitizen children would no longer be expelled from the United States under CDC’s order.

CDC initially temporarily excepted unaccompanied noncitizen children from expulsion in January 2021, and later formally excepted such children from subsequent orders.  On March 4, 2022, the District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction “enjoining and restraining” CDC from enforcing its orders to the extent that they except unaccompanied noncitizen children from the Title 42 procedures based solely on their status as unaccompanied children.  The court found that CDC had not adequately explained its decision to treat unaccompanied noncitizen children differently than other non citizens subject to the CDC orders.  [CDC announcement] (next IH, see Mar 24)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Feminism

March 12, 1912: the Lawrence, Mass., “Bread and Roses” textile strike ended when the American Woolen Co. agreed to most of the strikers’ demands, (DPLA article) (LH, see June 4; Feminism, see March 3, 1913)

Oregon Steel Mills, Inc.

March 12, 2004: steelworkers approved a settlement with Oregon Steel Mills, Inc and its CF & I Steel subsidiary, ending the longest labor dispute in the USWA’s history and resulting in more than $100 million in back pay for workers. (see Jul 15)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Cold War

March 12, 1947: in a speech to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S. Truman asked for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations. Historians have often cited Truman’s address, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, as the official declaration of the Cold War. (text of speech) (see Mar 21)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

School Desegregation

March 12, 1956: ninety-six U.S. congressmen from eleven southern states signed the “Southern Manifesto,” a pledge to resist the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared segregated schools unconstitutional (May 17, 1954). Notably, three Southern Senate Democrats did not sign the Manifesto: Sen. Estes Kefauver (D–Tennessee); Sen. Albert Gore, Sr. (D–Tennessee), father of future Vice President Al Gore, Jr.; and most important, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D–Texas). Historians believe that Johnson’s refusal to sign was an indication of his ambitions to become president of the U.S. and his need to disavow segregation.  (PBS article) (BH, see Mar 13; SD, see February 20, 1958)

Albany Movement

March 12, 1963: in Albany, GA, five Black high school-age girls were turned away from two white theaters by the assistant manager of the chain. “We don’t want your business,” the manager told them. (see Albany for expanded story)

Malcolm X

March 12, 1964: though remaining a Muslim, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam. (BH, see Mar 20; Malcolm X, see Mar 26)

Mississippi Sovereignty Commission

March 12, 1998: many of the long-sealed records of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a state segregationist spy agency, were opened after a federal judge’s order. The records showed that the commission infiltrated civil rights groups, smeared African Americans and, at times, cooperated with members of the Ku Klux Klan. (Mississippi Department of Archives and History article) (see May 28)

Medgar Evers

March 12, 2019: the home of Medgar and Myrlie Evers became a national monument. The federal government will take over the three-bedroom, ranch-style home from Tougaloo College, a historically black institution that has maintained the Evers home since 1993, when the property was donated to the school by the Evers family. The home was designated a national historic landmark in 2016 and is open by appointment for tours. (see ME for expanded Evers chronology)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

March 12 – April 15, 1966:  SSgt Barry Sadler’s  Ballad of the Green Beret  the Billboard #1 album. (see Mar 25)

Senator Eugene McCarthy

March 12, 1968: Senator Eugene McCarthy (D-Minnesota), an outspoken critic of the Johnson administration’s policies in Vietnam, polled 42 percent of the vote in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary. President Lyndon B. Johnson got 48 percent. A Harris poll later showed that anti-Johnson, rather than antiwar, sentiment provided the basis for McCarthy’s surprisingly strong performance. (see Mar 14)

First Australian Task Force

March 12, 1972: the last remnants of the First Australian Task Force withdrew from Vietnam. The Australian government had first sent troops to Vietnam in 1964 with a small aviation detachment and an engineer civic action team. In May 1965, the Australians increased their commitment with the deployment of the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (RAR). The formation of the First Australian Task Force in 1966 established an Australian base of operations near Ba Ria in Phuoc Tuy province. The task force included an additional infantry battalion, a medium tank squadron, and a helicopter squadron, as well as signal, engineer, and other support forces. By 1969, Australian forces in Vietnam totaled an estimated 6,600 personnel. (see Mar 30)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

March 12 Music et al

Velvet Underground

March 12, 1967: the Velvet Underground and Nico released first album.

George Harrison and Pattie Boyd

March 12, 1969:  the London drug squad raided George Harrison and Pattie Boyd’s home. Boyd immediately called Harrison who returned to find his home turned upside down. He is reported to have told the officers “You needn’t have turned the whole bloody place upside down. All you had to do was ask me and I would have shown you where I keep everything.”

Without his assistance, the constables, including Sergeant Pilcher who had directed the drug-related arrest of John Lennon the previous year, had already found a considerable amount of hashish. Harrison and Boyd were arrested and as they were being escorted to the police station, a photographer began shooting pictures of the famous couple. Harrison chased after the photographer, with the cops trailing right behind him down the London street. Finally, the man dropped his camera and George stomped on it before the officers subdued him.

Harrison and Boyd were released on bail. A few weeks later, Harrison and Boyd were allowed to plead guilty. Despite the rather large amount of hash recovered from their home, the authorities were satisfied that it was all for their personal use. They were fined 250 pounds each, and even had a confiscated pipe returned to them. 

Sergeant Pilcher, the man behind the raid, was convicted of planting drugs in other cases and went to jail in 1972. 

Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman

March 12, 1969: Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman at Marylebone Register Office. Harrison and Boyd missed the wedding. (see Mar 20)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Independence Day

Mauritius independent from United Kingdom (next ID, see Sept 6)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

ADA

The Capitol Crawl

March 12, 1990: hundreds of people with disabilities gathered at the foot of the Capitol building in Washington to protest the Americans with Disabilities Act bill’s slow movement through Congress. Dozens left behind their wheelchairs, got down on their hands and knees, and began pulling themselves slowly up the 83 steps toward the building’s west entrance, as if daring the politicians inside to continue ignoring all the barriers they faced. Among the climbers was Jennifer Keelan, an eight-year-old from Denver with cerebral palsy. “I’ll take all night if I have to!” she yelled while dragging herself higher and higher. (Mother Jones article) (see July 26)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Church of England

March 12, 1994: the Church of England ordained its first female priests. (next Feminism  see May 22)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Iraq War II

Muntader al-Zaidi

March 12, 2009:  Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a news conference in December 2008 was sentenced to three years in jail. Al-Zaidi, had pleaded not guilty, saying at a hearing that he was overcome by passion because of the suffering of the people of Iraq after the American-led invasion six years ago that toppled Saddam Hussein.  (2015 article) (see Apr 7)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Westboro Baptist Church

March 12, 2014:  U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr upheld a Missouri law requiring protesters to stay at least a 100 year away from funeral sites, beginning an hour before they start until an hour after the services end. The ruling capped a nearly eight-year legal fight over Missouri’s funeral protest restrictions that were prompted after members of a Kansas church opposed to homosexuality protested at the funeral of a Missouri solider who had been killed in Iraq. (see Mar 19)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

Charles Manson

March 12, 2018: in a messy legal battle over Charles Manson’s remains and belongings, Judge Alisa R. Knight of the Bakersfield Division of the Superior Court of California ruled that Jason L. Freeman, the apparent grandson of Manson, was entitled to the remains.

Three other men who had also staked claims — a purported friend who said he filed Mr. Manson’s will in court; and two people, including a purported son, who filed a joint petition — could not refute Freeman’s assertion, the judge said. (see Mar 17)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

March 12, 2018: U.S. District Court Judge George L. Russell III of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland ruled that federal law protected transgender students’ right to use the restroom and locker rooms in alignment with their gender identity.

In M.A.B. v. Board of Education of Talbot County, Talbot County Public Schools (MD) policy forced Max Brennan (M.A.B.), who is transgender, to use separate restrooms and locker rooms because he was transgender.

Russell was specific in his ruling: “M.A.B.’s claims come down to a boy asking his school to treat him just like any other boy. This court finds that Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause provide M.A.B. grounds to do so.” (see Mar 23)

March 12 Peace Love Art Activism