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Lynching, Music et al, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

October 5, 2015 Woodstock Whisperer Leave a comment

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

Tecumseh

October 5, 1813: during the War of 1812, General William Harrison’s American army defeated a combined British and Indian force at the Battle of the Thames near Ontario, Canada. The leader of the Indian forces was Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief who organized inter-tribal resistance to the encroachment of white settlers on Indian lands. He was killed in the fighting. Tecumseh’s death marked the end of Indian resistance east of the Mississippi River and soon after most of the depleted tribes were forced west. (see March 3, 1819)

Chief Joseph

October 5, 1877: Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians surrendered to U.S. General Nelson A. Miles in the Bear Paw mountains of Montana, declaring, “Hear me, my chiefs: My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

Earlier in the year, the U.S. government broke a land treaty with the Nez Perce, forcing the group out of their homeland in Wallowa Valley in the Northwest for relocation in Idaho. In the midst of their journey, Chief Joseph learned that three young Nez Perce warriors, enraged at the loss of their homeland, had massacred a band of white settlers. Fearing retaliation by the U.S. Army, the chief began one of the great retreats in American military history.

For more than three months, Chief Joseph led fewer than 300 Nez Perce Indians toward the Canadian border, covering a distance of more than 1,000 miles as the Nez Perce outmaneuvered and battled more than 2,000 pursuing U.S. soldiers. During the long retreat, he treated prisoners humanely and won the admiration of whites by purchasing supplies along the way rather than stealing them. Finally, only 40 miles short of his Canadian goal, Chief Joseph was cornered by the U.S. Army, and his people were forcibly relocated to a barren reservation in Indian Territory. (see November 1, 1879)

Nicole Aunapu Mann

October 5, 2022: NASA’s Nicole Aunapu Mann became the first Native American woman ever to travel to Earth’s orbit. Mann served served as mission commander. NASA explained that Mann, a former US Marine Corps pilot, can be thought of as the crew’s quarterback.

It was her first trip to space since joining NASA’s astronaut corps in 2013. [CNN article] (next NA, see Nov 11)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

White terrorist vigilantism

October 5, 1920: four black men were killed in Macclenny, Florida, following the death of a prominent young white local farmer named John Harvey. According to news reports at the time, Harvey was shot and killed at a turpentine camp near MacClenny on October 4, 1920. The suspected shooter, a young black man named Jim Givens, fled immediately afterward and mobs of armed white men formed to pursue him. Givens’s brother and two other black men connected to him were questioned and jailed during the search, though there was no evidence or accusation that they had been involved in the killing of Harvey.

Those three men – Fulton Smith, Ray Field, and Ben Givens – were held in the Baker County Jail late into the night until, around 1:00 a.m. on October 5, a mob of about 50 white men overtook the jail and seized the men from their cells. The mob forced the men to the outskirts of town, where they were tied to trees and shot to death. A fourth lynching victim, Sam Duncan, was found shot to death nearby later in the day. Also with no alleged ties to the killing of John Harvey, Duncan was thought to be an unfortunate soul who had encountered a mob seeking Jim Givens and been killed simply for being a black man.

Three days later, the Chicago Defender, a Northern black newspaper, reported that most of the black community of Macclenny had deserted the area in fear of further violent attacks while whites posses continued to search for Jim Givens. [EJI article] (next BH & next Lynching, see Nov 2 or see AL2 for expanded chronology)

School Desegregation

October 5, 1957: early in the morning a series of dynamite explosions severely damaged the Clinton High School building [Clinton, TN] An estimated 75 to 100 sticks of dynamite had been placed in three locations in the building. No one was injured.

Clinton High School did not reopen until 1960. (BH, see Oct 10; SD, see February 20, 1958)

Laquan McDonald

October 5, 2018: Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder in the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Van Dyke, who was also found guilty of 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm. He was found not guilty of official misconduct. Van Dyke’s bond was revoked and sentencing was scheduled for October 31. He left the courtroom with an officer. (B & S, see Oct 25; McDonald, see Nov 27)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

Technological Milestone

Televised presidential address

October 5, 1947: President Harry Truman made the first-ever televised presidential address from the White House, asking Americans to cut back on their use of grain in order to help starving Europeans. In 1947, television was still in its infancy and the number of TV sets in U.S. homes only numbered in the thousands. (see Oct 14)

Space Race

October 5, 1957: the Soviet daily newspaper Pravda mentioned Sputnik in a short piece at the bottom of page one. When bold headlines and major stories run in British and American newspapers, the U.S.S.R. realized that the Sputnik program was a huge propaganda tool. (see Nov 3)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

see October 5 Music et al for more

see Wynonie Harris for more

October 5, 1948: Wynonie Harris’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight” hits #1 on the R&B chart. (see March 31, 1949)

“Love Me Do“/”P.S. I Love You“

October 5, 1962: Beatles released first single, “Love Me Do“/”P.S. I Love You” in the UK. (see Oct 27)

Otis Redding

October 5, 1966: Otis Redding released Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul album, his fifth.

Jimi Hendrix

October 5, 1966: Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding played together for the first time. (see Dec 26)

Waiting for the Sun

October 5 – 11, 1968: The Doors’ Waiting for the Sun returned to the Billboard #1 album position.

October 5 Peace Love Activism

World Series

Pirates v Yankees

October 5 – 13, 1960: the 1960 World Series [Pittsburgh Pirates (NL) vs. NY Yankees (AL)] is notable for the Game 7, ninth-inning home run hit by Bill Mazeroski, which won the game for the Pirates 10–9. [ESPN article]

Orioles v Dodgers

October 5 – 9, 1966: Baltimore Orioles against the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers, with the Orioles sweeping the Series in four games to capture their first championship in franchise history. [Baltimore Sun article]

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

JFK Assassination

October 5, 1966: the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the murder conviction of Jack Ruby, who was sentenced to death in for the slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin of President Kennedy. (NYT article) (see January 3, 1967)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

Fermi Station

October 5, 1966: The Fermi Nuclear Generating Station, less than 40 miles from Detroit, suffered a partial fuel meltdown, although no radioactive material was released. It operated for another nine years before being deactivated. [LAT article] (see January 27, 1967)

Korea

October 5, 2019: the first negotiations in eight months between the Trump administration and North Korea aimed at breaking the logjam over dismantling the North’s nuclear program broke down only hours after they began in Stockholm, the North Koreans said.

“The negotiation did not live up to our expectations and broke down,” the chief North Korean negotiator, Kim Myong-gil, said, according to Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. Mr. Kim added that the United States had arrived “empty-handed” and had “not discarded its old stance and attitude.” (next N/C N, see Dec 13)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam & Weather Underground

October 5, 1969: the Haymarket Police Statue in Chicago was bombed; Weathermen claim credit for the bombing in their book, Prairie Fire. [NYT article] (see Oct 8 – 11)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

Iran–Contra Affair

October 5, 1986: Eugene Hasenfus is captured by troops of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua after the plane in which he is flying is shot down; two others on the plane die in the crash. Under questioning, Hasenfus confessed that he was shipping military supplies into Nicaragua for use by the Contras, an anti-Sandinista force that had been created and funded by the United States. Most dramatically, he claimed that operation was really run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (see Nov 3)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

October 5, 1990: Cincinnati jurors took about two hours to acquit the Contemporary Arts Center and its director, Dennis Barrie, of the charge of pandering obscenity for showing sexually explicit photographs that were part of Mapplethorpe’s traveling retrospective, ”The Perfect Moment.” The acquittal was resounding because it took place in a city that has tough laws and a record of vigorously prosecuting obscenity. [NYT article] (see June 22, 1992)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

October 5, 1998: on a 21-16 vote, the House Judiciary Committee recommends a full impeachment inquiry. (see CI for expanded story)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

California supermarket janitors

October 5, 2004: some 2,100 supermarket janitors in California, mostly from Mexico, win a $22.4 million settlement over unpaid overtime. Many said they worked 70 or more hours a week, often seven nights a week from 10 p.m. to 9 a.m. Cleaner Jesus Lopez told the New York Times he only had three days off in five years. (see March 23, 2005)

Occupy Wall Street

October 5, 2011: thousands of union workers joined protesters marching through the Financial District, resulting in about 200 arrests later in the same evening when dozens of protesters stormed barricades blocking them from Wall Street and the Stock Exchange. Police responded with pepper spray and penned the protesters in with orange netting. (NYT article) (see Oct 25)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

October 5, 2020: the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in the case of former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who was jailed in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, after gay marriage became legal.

Although Supreme court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they agreed with the decision not to hear the case, they said it was a “stark reminder of the consequences” of the court’s 2015 Obergefell v Hodges decision. Davis, they claimed, “may have been one of the first victims of this court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision” and warned: “She will not be the last.”

LGBTQ campaigners and legal experts told of their fears and outrage regarding Thomas and Alito’s “appalling” attack on the 2015 landmark decision enabling same-sex couples to marry. [Guardian article] (next LGBTQ, see Oct 21)

October 5 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

October 5, 2023: President Joe Biden said that he doesn’t believe border walls work, even as his administration said it will waive 26 laws to build additional border barriers in the Rio Grande Valley amid heightened political pressure over migration.

According to a notice posted to the Federal Register on October 4, construction of the wall would be paid for using already appropriated funds earmarked specifically for physical border barriers. The administration was under a deadline to use them or lose them. But the move comes at a time when a new surge of migrants is straining federal and local resources and placing heavy political pressure on the Biden administration to address a sprawling crisis, and the notice cited “high illegal entry.” [CNN article] (next IH, see Oct 16)

Birthdays, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

October 4, 2015 Woodstock Whisperer 1 Comment

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Happy birthday

October 4, 1947

Jim Fielder’s musical path has been a great one. Not surprisingly, it parallels many musicians’ stories and most interesting of all are the bands and performers he has played with as well as simply crossing paths with.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Texas to California

Fielder was born in Denton, TX. He started playing guitar at the age of seven. His early influences in the 1950s were people like Elvis and the Everley Brothers.

In high school he started playing an upright acoustic bass. Ralph Pena, Frank Sinatra’s bassist, tutored him. As a young bassist he listened to musicians such as Ray Brown, Ron Carter, and Charles Mingus.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Tim Buckley

In the 60s his first band was “The Bohemians” a group that Tim Buckley was in as well. They went to amateur nights at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Buffalo Springfield was one of the groups playing there.

Tim Buckley got a recording contract with Electra Records and Fielder played on some of the tracks on Buckley’s first two albums.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Frank Zappa

Fielder also played with Mastin & Brewer (later evolved into Brewer & Shipley). The drummer of M & B knew Frank Zappa and an introduction led to Fielder playing with Zappa’s Mothers of Invention as a guitarist. He was with the Mothers when they recorded the Absolutely Free album, but his name does not appear on the album because he’d left the band before the album’s release and Zappa excluded Fielder’s name.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Buffalo Springfield

The band Fielder joined after the Mothers was Buffalo Springfield. He played bass for them while their original bassist, Bruce Palmer, was out of the country in Canada due to visa issues. When Palmer resolved those issues and returned to the band, Fielder left. He did get a shout out on the back of the Springfield’s second album, Buffalo Springfield Again, amongst the many names the band thanked.

Al Kooper > Blood, Sweat and Tears

Another path. Another relationship. Jim Fielder was “in between” bands. While playing at the Fillmore in San Francisco with Buffalo Springfield and the Mothers, Fielder had met Al Kooper and Steve Katz from the Blues Project. When Kooper left the Project he lived with a neighbor of Fielder’s. Drummer Bobby Colomby joined the nascent group with Katz forming a quartet.

Saxophonist Fred Lipsius joined two months later. They played at the Fillmore East. Lipsius recruited New York jazz horn players he knew. The final Blood, Sweat and Tears lineup debuted late November ’67 at “The Scene” in New York.

The band released its first album, Child Is Father To the Man, on February 21, 1968. Kooper left soon after, but the band continued with David Clayton Thomas as its lead singer. Their second album, Blood Sweat and Tears, was a huge success and a big part of their invitation to the…

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Fielder’s memories: “We played late Sunday night between Johnny Winter and Crosby, Stills & Nash. The crowd was down to about 50,000 by then, but it still felt like were playing to the whole world. Backstage was like old home week. I got to see a lot of old friends and people I had played with over the years. It was probably the highlight of my career.”

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Neil Sedaka

Fielder stayed with the band until 1974. He returned to Los Angeles in 1974 and began freelancing. He worked with Danny O’Keefe and Chris Hillman and was the musical director for Bing Crosby’s grandson Chris.

Then the opportunity to work with Neil Sedaka was on Fielder’s path in 1976. It was an offer he couldn’t and didn’t refuse and Fielder has basically worked with Sedaka since.

Here is an article about an August 2017 Neil Sedaka show in NJ in which the reporter writes about a song Sedaka performed with “expert musician Jim Fielder’s bass part which includes an impossibly difficult slap bass line and an ongoing sequence of electric guitar-inspired figures played simultaneously on his bass!”

Much of the information for this entry came from this article.

Blood Sweat Tears Jim Fielder

Music et al, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

October 4, 2015 Woodstock Whisperer Leave a comment

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism & Matilda Josyln Gage

October 4, 1850: Gage [24 years old] signed petition stating that she would face a 6-month prison term and a $2,000 fine rather than obey the Fugitive Slave Law. (F, see June 21, 1851; see Gage for expanded story)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

National Convention of Colored Men

October 4, 1864: 150 black men representing seventeen states and Washington, D.C., assembled in Syracuse, New York, for the National Convention of Colored Men in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, in Syracuse, N.Y at 7 o’clock, P.M.

Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, of Washington, D.C., called the Convention to order, and read the call. John M. Langston, Esq., of Oberlin, O., was chosen temporary Chairman; and Wm. Howard Day, of New Jersey, and St. George R. Taylor, of Pennsylvania, Secretaries.

Frederick Douglass, the formerly enslaved man who had become a leader in the abolitionist movement, opened the convention by proclaiming, “We are here to promote the freedom, progress, and perfect enfranchisement of the entire colored people of the United States.” Although the Civil War did not end for another six months, historians have referred to this four-day gathering as “the first Reconstruction convention.”

In its Declaration of Wrongs and Rights, convention members summarized the rights they believed necessary to ensure freedom, progress, and meaningful citizenship:

The right to be heard in Congress[;] the right to respect; that due attention should be given to our needs; that proper rewards should be given for our services, and that the immunities and privileges of all other citizens and defenders of the nation’s honor should be conceded to us.

The Declaration’s first point read: As a branch of the human family, we have for long ages been deeply and cruelly wronged by people whose might constituted their right; we have been subdued, not by the power of ideas, but by brute force, and have been unjustly deprived not only of many of our natural rights, but debarred the privileges and advantages freely accorded to other men.

The Convention lasted until October 7. [Convention’s complete proceedings] (next BH, see Dec 30)

William Spencer lynched

October 4, 1916: William Spencer, a 30-year-old Black man and a husband and father of four children, was lynched by a white mob near Graceton, Texas. Mr. Spencer, who was a farmhand, had a confrontation with the constable and was arrested and taken to a local jail, where a white mob seized and lynched him. [EJI article](next BH, see In May 1917; next Lynching, see July 28, 1917 or see AL2 for expanded chronology)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Emma Goldman

October 4 – 16,1893: Goldman was tried and found guilty of inciting to riot. She was sentenced to one year in the penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island in New York’s East River. (see Goldman for expanded story)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Calvin Graham

October 4, 1944: Graham wrote to the Chief of Naval Personnel requesting a discharge certificate. Each of Graham’s requests was denied upon the basis that his enlistment was void and therefore canceled. Also that month, Graham’s claim for arrears of pay and mustering-out pay was presented to the General Accounting Office. (full story see Calvin Graham)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

October 4, 1945: French troops, under the leadership of General Jacques-Philippe Leclere, arrived in Saigon to take over from the British. (see March 2, 1946)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

Space Race

Sputnik 1

October 4, 1957: the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into earth orbit. The first man-made satellite passes overhead, making one revolution every 90 minutes. [NASA article] (see Oct 5)

Luna 3

October 4, 1959: the Soviet Luna 3 flew around the moon, taking the first photographs of the far side of the moon. Two more Soviet launches the following year will not achieve proper flight paths. Information about them will be suppressed. (article) (see April 13, 1960)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

Lenny Bruce

October 4, 1961: police arrested comedian Lenny Bruce at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco on obscenity charges for saying the word “cocksucker.” Bruce was a pioneer in aggressive, politically oriented stand-up comedy, using humor to attack racism, sexual prudery, and religious hypocrisy in American life. Today’s tradition of boundary-breaking stand-up comedy, with respect to language, sex, politics, race, and religion, originated with Lenny Bruce.

Many observers then and now argue that Bruce’s arrests, including those in Chicago and New York City, were prompted not by dirty words but by his comedy routines that made fun of the Catholic Church, which offended local politicians and police. For his New York City arrest, see November 4, 1964. For that arrest, he was pardoned by New York Governer Pataki 39 years later on December 23, 2003. (see June 25, 1963)

Nazi march

October 4, 1976: Frank Collin, leader of a band of Nazi sympathizers from Chicago’s South side, sends a letter to Daniel D. Brown, Director of Parks and Recreation, Skokie Park District, requesting that his group be permitted to march in Skokie’s “Birch Park” on November 6, 1976. (see Oct 25)

Colin Kaepernick

October 4, 2016: NBA’s Rockets and Knicks opened the season joined arm in arm The Celtics also showed unity as a team, standing together with their arms crossed and heads down. (FS & CK, see Nov 6)

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

World Series

Cold War: Yankees v Reds

October 4 – 9, 1961: World Series: NY Yankees vs. the Cincinnati Reds. Yankees won in five games to earn their 19th championship in 39 seasons. This World Series was surrounded by Cold War political puns pitting the “Reds” against the “Yanks”. next CW, see Oct 6)

Yankees v Giants

October 4 – 16, 1962: World Series matched the defending World Series champions NY Yankees against the San Francisco Giants. The Yankees took the Series in seven games for the 20th championship in team history.

Cardinals v Red Sox

October 4 – 12, 1967: World Series: St. Louis Cardinals against the Boston Red Sox in a rematch of the 1946 World Series, with the Cardinals winning in seven games.

October 4 Peace Love Art Activism

October 4 Music et al

Beatles Ready Set Go

October 4, 1963: appear on BBC’s Ready, Set, Go. Dusty Springfield does intros and asked fan questions. (see Oct 13)

Good Vibrations

October 4, 1966: after over six months of recording and production work, the Beach Boys (actually Brian Wilson) released “Good Vibrations.” (NPR story) (see December 10 – 16)

see Gold Rush Festival for more

October 4, 1969, Gold Rush Festival (Lake Amador, CA): 40,000 people attended. (see 43 for expanded list of 1969 festivals)

Green River

October 4 – 31, 1969: Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Green River is the Billboard #1 album.

Janis Joplin

October 4, 1970 – Janis Joplin, age 27, died. (27 Club) (Woodstock video)

INDEPENDENCE DAY

October 4, 1966: Lesotho independent from United Kingdom. [SAhistory article] (see IDs for expanded list of 1960 Independence days)

WAR POWERS ACT

October 4, 1973: Joint conference committee irons out differences between House and Senate War Powers Act bills. (NYT article) (see Oct 10)

Watergate Scandal

October 4, 1974: the trial of Watergate conspirators HR Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, Robert Mardian, and Kenneth Parkinson began, Judge John Sirica presiding. (see Watergate for expanded story)

TERRORISM

October 4, 2002: “Shoe bomber,” Richard Reid, pleaded guilty to all eight counts. (NYT article) (see Nov 4)

Immigration History

October 4, 2019: the Trump administration announced that it would deny visas to immigrants who could prove they would have health insurance or the ability to pay for medical costs once they became permanent residents of the United States.

Trump’s a proclamation ordered consular officers to bar immigrants seeking to live in the United States unless they “will be covered by approved health insurance” or can prove that they have “the financial resources to pay for reasonably foreseeable medical costs.” The program would become effective Nov. 3. [NYT article] (see Oct 11)

US Labor History

October 4, 2023: some 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers walked off the job in multiple states, kicking off a major health care strike. Kaiser Permanente is one of the country’s larger insurers and health care system operators, serving nearly 13 million people.

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, representing about 85,000 of the health system’s employees nationally, approved a strike for three days in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, and for one day in Virginia and Washington, D.C. [AP article] (next LH, see Oct 13)