Category Archives: Peace Love Art and Activism

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

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

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February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Fourth Amendment

February 1, 1886:  in Boyd v US, the US Supreme Court held that “a search and seizure [was] equivalent [to] a compulsory production of a man’s private papers” and that the search was “an ‘unreasonable search and seizure’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”

This case began the development of right to privacy protections. The U.S. Supreme Court held, in overturning a statute, that the forced production of, in this case, business records violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fifth Amendment protection against forced self incrimination. (see December 24, 1914)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

February 1, 1943: in Tileston v. Ullman, the Supreme Court upheld a Connecticut law banning the use of drugs or instruments that prevented conception. The attorney in the case was Morris Ernst  who was a pioneer in the fight for reproductive rights and against censorship. Twenty-two years later, in Griswold v. Connecticut, on June 7, 1965, the Court declared the Connecticut law unconstitutional and established a constitutional right to privacy.

Fuller Albright

In 1945: Harvard endocrinologist Fuller Albright wrote a seminal report that will come to be known as “Albright’s Prophecy.” As part of an analysis of serious menstrual disorders, he wrote that preventing ovulation prevents pregnancy and explored the possibility of “Women’s Health by hormone therapy.” (see August 30, 1949)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Pledge of Allegiance

Eisenhower baptized

February 1, 1953: President Eisenhower was baptized, confirmed, and became a communicant in the Presbyterian church in a single ceremony.

Boulder Valley School District

February 1, 2018: the Boulder Valley School District (CO) placed Karen Smith, on paid leave after a student accused her of forcibly lifting  the student to his feet by his jacket when he refused to stand for the pledge. Smith then removed the student from the class.

Smith had been employed for 20 years as a physical education teacher. (see Pledge for expanded chronology)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Henry Smith lynched

February 1, 1893: accused of raping and murdering a four-year-old girl, a posse hunted down Henry Smith was hunted down by a posse.

When returned to town, the local citizens proudly announced they would burn him alive. That boast was reported in news stories which traveled by telegraph and appeared in newspapers from coast to coast.

The killing of Smith was carefully orchestrated. On February 1, 1893, the townspeople constructed a large wooden platform near the center of town. And in view of thousands of spectators, Smith was tortured with hot irons for nearly an hour before being soaked with kerosene and set ablaze.

The extreme nature of Smith’s killing, and a celebratory parade that preceded it, received attention which included an extensive front-page account in the New York Times. And the noted anti-lynching journalist Ida B. Wells wrote about the Smith lynching in her landmark book, The Red Record.

“Never in the history of civilization has any Christian people stooped to such shocking brutality and indescribable barbarism as that which characterized the people of Paris, Texas, and adjacent communities on the first of February, 1893.”

Photographs of the torture and burning of Smith were taken and were later sold as prints and postcards. And according to some accounts, his agonized screams were recorded on a  primitive graphophone and later played before audiences as images of his killing were projected on a screen. (next BH & Lynching, see June 3, 1893 or see Chronology for expanded list of this era’s lynchings)

Montgomery Bus Boycott

February 1, 1956: on behalf of five African American women [Aurelia S. Browder, Claudette Colvin, Mary Louise Smith, Susie McDonald, and Jeanette Reese] who had been mistreated on city buses, Fred D. Gray and Charles D. Langford filed a Federal District Court petition that becomes Browder v. Gayle. It challenged the legality of separate seating on Montgomery’s municipal buses.  (BH, see Feb 2; B v G, see June 5, 1956; see MBB for expanded boycott chronology)

The Greensboro Four/1960

February 1 Peace Love Activism

February 1, 1960:  Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr. and David Richmond (The Greensboro Four) entered the F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, N.C., around 4:30 p.m. and purchased merchandise at several counters. They sat down at the store’s “whites only” lunch counter and ordered coffee, and were denied service, ignored and then asked to leave. They remained seated at the counter until the store closed early at 5 p.m. The four friends immediately returned to campus and recruited others for the cause. Greensboro chronology site  (BH, see Feb 2; sit-in victory, see Oct 17)

The Greensboro Four/1961

February 1, 1961: the students from Friendship Junior College and others who had picketed McCrory’s on Main Street in Rock Hill, North Carolina to protest the segregated lunch counters at the business on January 31, 1961 were convicted of trespassing and breach of the peace and sentenced to serve 30 days in jail or to pay a $100 fine. (BH, see Feb 9; Friendship 9, see January 28, 2015; see Greensboro for expanded chronology)

Voter registration arrests

February 1, 1965: Martin Luther King Jr, Ralph Abernathy, and more than 770 other Blacks were arrested in Selma while demonstrating against Alabama’s voter-registration requirements. About 500 of those arrested were students who stayed out of school and picketed a the Dallas County Courthouse. Neither King and Abernathy refused to be bonded out.  (MLK, see Feb 4)

George Whitmore, Jr

February 1, 1965: Whitmore’s former attorney, Jerome Leftow, and one of this current attorneys, Arthur H. Miller, revealed that Whitmore had been given “truth serum” (sodium amytal) at Bellevue Hospital and, while under the influence of the drug, had consistently maintained his innocence. The N.A.A.C.P. and ACLU asked Governor Nelson Rockefeller and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate the circumstances that led to Whitmore’s false confession in the Wylie-Hoffert case. (see Whitmore for expanded story) 

Harriet Tubman

February 1, 1978: Harriet Tubman became the 1st black woman honored on a US postage stamp. (see Feb 15)

Medgar Evers 1963 Assassination

February 1, 1994: the prosecution of Byron De La Beckwith finished with two more witnesses testifying that De La Beckwith had bragged about killing Evers. Mark Reiley was the sixth person to testify that Mr. Beckwith had boasted of or made reference to having killed Evers in 1963.  (see Feb 2)

Church Burning

February 1, 1996: in Louisiana four churches within a six-mile radius—Cypress Grove Baptist, St. Paul’s Free Baptist and Thomas Chapel Benevolent Society in East Baton Rouge as well as Sweet Home Baptist in Baker — were set on fire on the anniversary of the 1960 Greensborom, NC sit-in.  (BH see July 19; CB, see November 5, 2008)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

February 1 Music et al

Ken Kesey

February 1, 1962: Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest published. (see September)

Louie, Louie pornographic

February 1, 1964: Billboard  magazine reported that Indiana Governor Matthew E. Welsh had declared the song “Louie, Louie” by the Kingsmen pornographic. He requested that the Indiana Broadcasters Association ban the record. Governor Welsh claimed that hearing the song made his “ears tingle.” (see Louie Louie for expanded story) (next Teenage Culture, see Feb 8)

Beatles

February 1 Peace Love Activism

February 1 – March 30, 1964: “I Want To Hold Your Hand” by the Beatles #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first of 20 #1 Hot 100 Hits  and the first of 71 Hot 100 hits (see Feb 3)

Crimson and Clover

February 1 Peace Love Activism

February 1 – 14, 1969: “Crimson and Clover” by Tommy James and the Shondells #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

We Are The World 25 For Haiti

February 1 Peace Love Activism

February 1, 2010: “We Are The World 25 For Haiti” recorded

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

LBJ pledges more effort

February 1, 1964: President Johnson said that he saw no chance of negotiating a peace for Southeast Asia, as proposed by French President de Gaulle, and instead pledged a greater effort in Vietnam. (see Mar 17)

Nguyễn Ngọc Loan

 

February 1, 1968: Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief executed a Viet Cong officer named Nguyễn Văn Lém. The event was photographed by Eddie Adams and made headlines around the world. It won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize and swayed U.S. public opinion against the war. (see photo; see Eddie Adams for more) (see Feb 2)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

February 1 Peace Love Activism

February 1, 1970: the feminist news journal off our backs published its first issue. (see June 11)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Iran hostage crisis

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

February 1, 1979: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile. (see Feb 11)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Doctor-assisted Suicide

February 1, 1996: the New England Journal of Medicine published  studies of physicians’ attitudes towards doctor-assisted suicide in Oregon and Michigan. The studies demonstrated that a large number of the physicians surveyed support, in some conditions, doctor-assisted suicide. (see JK for expanded chronology)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

February 1, 1999: House prosecutors questioned Monica Lewinsky in a closed-door deposition; Clinton’s lawyer reads a statement to her expressing the president’s “regret” over what Lewinsky has gone through, but asks no questions. (see Clinton for expanded story)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

February 1, 2008: a New York State appeals court unanimously voted that valid same-sex marriages performed in other states must be recognized by employers in New York, granting same-sex couples the same rights as other couples. (see Feb 2)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

February 1, 2017: American University in Washington, DC, removed a statue of Native American activist Leonard Peltier–– incarcerated for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents––after the work prompted backlash from an organization representing federal officers as well as anonymous threats of violence. (see Mar 7)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Crime and Punishment

February 1, 2018: U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled that Florida’s system for barring former felons from voting was unconstitutional and potentially tainted by racial, political or religious bias.

Walker criticized the state panel led by Florida’s governor that decides whether to restore voting rights to people who have completed their sentences, saying their process is arbitrary and exceedingly slow.

“In Florida, elected, partisan officials have extraordinary authority to grant or withhold the right to vote from hundreds of thousands of people without any constraints, guidelines, or standards,” Walker wrote. “The question now is whether such a system passes constitutional muster. It does not.

“A person convicted of a crime may have long ago exited the prison cell and completed probation,” the judge continued in the 43-page order. “Her voting rights, however, remain locked in a dark crypt. Only the state has the key — but the state has swallowed it.”

“The judge did not rule on how the issue should be remedied — he will hold hearings on that in mid-February — but he said the voter restoration system must be changed as soon as possible.

Florida voters will restore the right to vote in the November 6 elections. (see Feb 21)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

February 1, 2019:  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US was suspending one of the last major nuclear arms control treaties with Russia after conversations between the two powers recently failed to resolve a long-running accusation that Moscow was violating the Reagan-era treaty.   Pompeo cast the Russian government as unwilling to admit that a missile it had deployed near European borders violatd the terms of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (see Feb 2)

February 1 Peace Love Art Activism
Lynching, Music et al, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

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January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Immigration History

January 31, 1848: the US Congress passed an  act exempting vessels employed by the American Colonization Society in transporting emigrants from the United States to the coast of Africa from the provisions of the acts of  February 22 1847 regulating the carriage of passengers in merchant vessels. (next IH, see Feb 2; BH, next BH, see Feb 15)

13th Amendment

January 31, 1865
  1. US Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.
  2. U.S. Army commissioned the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, a combat unit made up of those that escaped slavery. They helped to capture Jacksonville, Florida, in 1863 and were the first unit of African-American soldiers in the Civil War. (see Feb 24)
Friendship Junior College

 

Lunch counter demonstration

January 31, 1961: students from Friendship Junior College and others picketed McCrory’s on Main Street in Rock Hill, North Carolina to protest the segregated lunch counters at the business. They walked in, took seats at the counter and ordered hamburgers, soft drinks and coffee. The students were refused service and ordered to leave. When they didn’t, they were arrested. (see Feb 1)

Herbert Lee murder
Louis Allen

On September 25, 1961, E.H. Hurst – a local white state legislator – shot and killed Herbert Lee in an Amite County, Mississippi, cotton gin in front of several eyewitnesses. Louis Allen was the witness who came forward.  Allen had resigned himself to leaving Mississippi for his own safety.

On January 31, 1964, the night before he was set to move to Milwaukee, he was ambushed outside his property and shot twice in the face with a shotgun. Allen died almost instantly. Sheriff Daniel Jones was the main suspect, and later told Louis Allen’s widow, “if Louis had just shut his mouth, he wouldn’t be layin’ there on the ground.”

No one was ever charged or convicted for the murder. (see Mar 17)

Sharecropper demonstration

January 31, 1966: upset at poverty in the Mississippi Delta, civil rights activists joined forces with sharecroppers evicted from plantations, 50 of them entered the defunct Greenville Air Force base.

When a lone Air Force officer ordered them to leave, they told him, “We are here because we are hungry and cold, and we have no jobs or land. We don’t want charity. We are willing to work for ourselves if given a chance.”

A day later, Air Force officials escort or drag away the protesters. The story brought national attention to the plight of poverty. (see Feb 12)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Technological Milestone

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

January 31, 1930: Richard Dew of the 3M Company developed Scotch tape. (see Mar 6)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

January 31, 1938: in San Antonio, Texas Emma Tenayuca led some 12,000 pecan shellers—mostly Latino women—off their jobs at 400 factories protesting against wage cuts. Pecan shellers Strike at the Southern Pecan Shelling Company were protesting a wage reduction of one cent per pound of shelled pecans. Mexicana and Chicana workers who picketed were gassed, arrested, and jailed. The strike ended after thirty-seven days when the city’s pecan operators agreed to arbitration. In October that year, the National Labor Relations Act raised wages to twenty-five cents an hour. (see May 16)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Japanese Internment Camps

January 31, 1942: Caleb Foote, a pacifist and West Coast staff member for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), on this day denounced the developing plans to evacuate and intern all Japanese-Americans on the West Coast as “nothing could be more Hitlerian.”

Foote’s comment was one of the few during the war to draw the obvious comparison between the government’s plan and Adolph Hitler’s Nazi policiest: The very idea of stereotyping an entire group on the basis of their race, assuming that all members of the group posed a threat, and confining them to concentration camps without a trace of due process.

Foote went on to a distinguished civil liberties career. As a pacifist, he refused to cooperate with the draft, and was convicted and sentenced to prison. He later became a law professor and, in the 1950s, wrote path-breaking articles on how the money bail system in America discriminated against the poor. His articles stirred interest in the problems with the American bail system and helped pave the way for the historic 1966 Bail Reform Act, signed on June 22, 1966. (see JIC for expanded chronology)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

Private Eddie Slovik

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

January 31, 1945: Private Eddie Slovik became the first American executed for desertion since the Civil War. During the Second World War 2,648 soldiers were tried by General Courts Martial, 49 being sentenced to death. They were all reprieved, their sentences being commuted to varying terms of imprisonment, but it was obviously felt that an example had to be made in Slovik’s case, and all appeals for clemency were denied. (see Mar 5)

Illinois death penalty

January 31, 2000: Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on the death penalty in response to the exonerations that revealed persistent errors in capital punishment’s administration. Since Illinois reinstated the death penalty in 1977, 12 death row inmates had been executed and 13 were exonerated. In 2003, Ryan granted clemency to all 167 persons on the state’s death row. His actions were fiercely attacked by capital-punishment advocates who accused him of abusing his power but were applauded both by legal scholars across country and by the growing movement to abolish the death penalty. (see Dec 21)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

The Cold War

January 31 Peace Love Activism

January 31, 1946: the Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was adopted, creating six internal republics. The constitution, modeled on that of the Soviet Union, would serve at the supreme law of Yugoslavia throughout the Cold War.  (Red Scare, see Mar 5; Yugoslavia, see December 23, 1990)

Hydrogen bomb

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

January 31, 1950:  President Truman announced that he had directed the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb. Truman’s directive came in response to evidence of an atomic explosion occurring within USSR in 1949.  (Red Scare  & NN, see Feb 3; Hydrogen bomb, see January 7, 1953)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Space Race

Explorer 1

January 31, 1958: Explorer 1, the first successful American satellite, entered orbit around Earth. (see July 29)

Ham the Chimp

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

January 31, 1961: NASA launched Ham the Chimp aboard a Mercury-Redstone rocket from Cape Canaveral; Ham was recovered safely from the Atlantic Ocean following his 16½-minute suborbital flight. (Ham bio via  Space Answers dot com) (see Apr 12)

Apollo 14

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

January 31 – February 9, 1971: Alan Shepard, the first American in space, commanded  Apollo 14 for the third lunar landing, on February 5. (Lunar Module Pilot, Edgar D Mitchell; and Stuart A Roosa, Command Module Pilot.) . (NYT article) (see July 26 – Aug 7)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

January 31 Music et al

Bob Dylan

January 21, 1959: Dylan attended a Buddy Holly concert  in Duluth, MN. Holly was a big favorite of Dylan. He stood right at the stage and was sure that at a point during the concert Holly looked down and made eye contact. That Holly died only two days later made the event even more memorable. (see June 5)

For the benefit…

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

January 31, 1967: while looking through different kinds of shops and stores in Sevenoaks, Kent, England, John Lennon visited an antique shop and purchased a circus poster from 1843. (see Feb 10)

Dead arrested

January 31, 1970: 19 members of the Grateful Dead and crew were busted at a French Quarter hotel at 3 AM after returning from a concert at “The Warehouse” in New Orleans, Louisiana for a combination of drugs. Everybody in the band, except Pigpen and Tom Constanten, was included in the bust, along with several members of their retinue, including Owsley Stanley. Stanley was charged with illegal possession of narcotics, dangerous non-narcotics, LSD, and barbiturates. Stanley had identified himself to the police as “The King of Acid” and technician of the band. From this incident, the song “Truckin'” was written by the Grateful Dead that same year.  (LSD, see June 12; GD, see Apr 1)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

LBJ/bombing

January 31, 1966: President Johnson announce that bombing of North Vietnam would recommence. (NYT article) (see Feb 6)

Winter Soldier Investigation

January 31 – February 2, 1971: the Winter Soldier Investigation. Members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) met in a Detroit hotel to discuss war crimes they claimed to have participated in or witnessed during their combat tours in Vietnam. During the next three days, more than 100 Vietnam veterans and 16 civilians gave anguished, emotional testimony describing hundreds of atrocities against innocent civilians in South Vietnam, including rape, arson, torture, murder, and the shelling or napalming of entire villages. The witnesses stated that these acts were being committed casually and routinely, under orders, as a matter of policy. (see Feb 8)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

January 31, 1968: Nauru independent from Australia, New Zealand, and United Kingdom. (see Mar 12)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

January 31 Peace Love Activism

January 31, 1969:  The radical feminist group, Redstockings employed consciousness raising tactics to address issues of sexism and abortion. They asserted their principles in “The Bitch Manifesto.” Their name combined the term bluestocking, a pejorative term for intellectual women, with “red”, for its association with the revolutionary left. (see Redstockings for more) (next Feminism, see Feb 14)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

January 31 Peace Love Activism

January 31, 1975: George Maynard didn’t want “Live Free or Die” on his New Hampshire license plate. Police pulled him over and ticketed him. Before that court appearance, he received a second ticket.

On this date he appeared in court  and chose to represent himself; he was found guilty, fined $50, and sentenced to six months in the Grafton County House of Corrections. The court suspended this jail sentence but ordered Maynard to also pay the $25 fine for the first offense. Maynard informed the court that, as a matter of conscience, he refused to pay the two fines. The court thereupon sentenced him to jail for a period of 15 days. He served the full sentence. (see Free Speech v License Plates for the whole story or this NPR story)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

January 31, 1998: immunity discussions between Monica Lewinsky’s attorney, William Ginsburg, and Ken Starr’s office stalled. Ginsburg says Lewinsky plans to go to California in the coming week to visit her father. (see CI for expanded chronology)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

January 31, 2006: two federal appeals courts upheld rulings that the Partial Birth Abortion Act passed by Congress in 2003 was unconstitutional because it did not include an exception when the health of a pregnant woman was at risk. (see April 18, 2007)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

Illinois same-sex marriage

January 31, 2011: Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed a civil union bill into law after its approved by the state Senate and House of Representatives. Later in 2011, civil union laws were also approved in Hawaii, Delaware, and Rhode Island. (see Feb 23)

Virginia same-sex marriage

January 31, 2014:  U.S. District Court Judge Michael Urbanski certified as a class action a lawsuit filed by two Shenandoah Valley couples challenging the Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriages. The order added to growing momentum to end the state’s prohibition of same-sex marriage. Urbanski said in the order that same-sex couples seeking to marry in the state as well as those married in states where gay marriage is legal could challenge Virginia’s ban as a group. (see Feb 5)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

Syrians given reprieve

January 31, 2018: in an acknowledgment that Syria continued to be rattled by conflict, the Trump administration announced that the nearly 7,000 Syrians granted temporary permission to live and work in the United States as a civil war devoured their country will be allowed to stay for at least another 18 months.

The decision came as a major relief to Syrians and their advocates. Over the past year, the administration has ended Temporary Protected Status, as the humanitarian program is known, for Salvadorans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, decisions that would collectively expose more than 326,000 people to deportation. (see Feb 8)

Increased travel restrictions

January 31, 2020: President Trump added six countries to his list of nations facing stringent travel restrictions, a move that will virtually block immigration from Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria, and from Myanmar, where the Muslim minority is fleeing genocide.

Beside Nigeria, three other African countries, Eritrea, Sudan and Tanzania, will face varying degrees of restrictions, as will one former Soviet state, Kyrgyzstan. Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims could also be caught in the crossfire.

All six countries have substantial Muslim populations. The total number of countries now on the restricted travel list stands at 13.

Immigrant visas, issued to those seeking to live in the United States, will be banned for Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan. The ban will also prevent immigrants from Sudan and Tanzania from moving to the United States through the diversity visa lottery, which grants green cards to as many as 50,000 people a year. [NYT article] (next IH, see Feb 5)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Cannabis

January 31, 2018:  San Francisco district attorney’s office announced that thousands of people with misdemeanor convictions for marijuana possession dating back 40 years would have their criminal records cleared. San Diego also forgave old convictions.

When recreational marijuana became legal in California the law allowed those with prior low-level offenses to petition for expungement, a process that could be costly, but in San Francisco and San Diego, people need not ask. George Gascón, San Francisco’s district attorney, said his office would automatically erase convictions there, which total about 3,000.

An additional 4,900 felony marijuana charges would be examined by prosecutors to determine if they should be retroactively reduced to misdemeanors.

San Diego had identified 4,700 cases, both felonies and misdemeanors, that would be cleared or downgraded. (see Feb 26 or see CCC for expanded chronology)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment

January 31, 2020: from the NYT, the Senate brought President Trump to the brink of acquittal of charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress, as Republicans voted to block consideration of new witnesses and documents in his impeachment trial and shut down a final push by Democrats to bolster their case for the president’s removal.

In a nearly party-line vote after a bitter debate, Democrats failed to win support from the four Republicans they needed. With Mr. Trump’s acquittal virtually certain, the president’s allies rallied to his defense, though some conceded he was guilty of the central allegations against him.

The Democrats’ push for more witnesses and documents failed 49 to 51, with only two Republicans, Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, joining Democrats in favor. The vote on the verdict was planned for February 5. (see Trump for expanded chronology)

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism
Lynching, Music et al, Peace Love Art and Activism, Today in history

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

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January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

January 30, 1844: Richard Theodore Greener was born.  In 1870 he will  become the first African American to graduate from Harvard University. (see February 4, 1846)

Robert Johnson lynched

January 30, 1934: Deputy Constable Thomas Grave, assigned to move  Robert Johnson (see Jan 28), decided to do so after midnight; this was not standard procedure, and Graves later claimed he opted for a late night transfer to avoid waking up early in the morning. Around 2:30 a.m. on January 30th, Graves placed Johnson in the front seat of the police car and began driving to the county jail; on the way, Graves’s vehicle was stopped by three cars full of white men who allegedly disarmed Graves and made him lie face down in the backseat of his car while they kidnapped Robert Johnson.

The mob carried Johnson off to a wooded part of town along the Hillsborough River near Sligh Avenue, where about thirty people were gathered to watch the lynching. Johnson was killed with four shots to the head and one to the body, all fired from the pistol the mob had taken from Deputy Constable Graves.

Governor David Sholtz called for an investigation of the lynching and a grand jury was convened. Though Deputy Constable Graves testified that he was beaten by the mob, the grand jury noted that he bore no bruises or other signs of injury. Nevertheless, the grand jury’s investigation didn’t produce any charges of conspiracy, and no one was prosecuted for Robert Johnson’s murder. (next BH & Lynching, see Oct 26; for expanded chronology of lynching, see also AL4)

Martin Luther King, Jr home bombed

January 30, 1956: speaking at an afternoon meeting held after his arrest on speeding charges and following reports of MIA dissension had appeared in the press, King insisted that MIA leaders should continue the bus boycott. He told the Executive Board members of the Montgomery Improvement Association, “If we went tonight and asked the people to get back on the bus, we would be ostracized….My intimidations are a small price to pay if victory can be won.”

At 9:15 p.m., while King spoke at a mass meeting, his home was bombed. His wife and daughter were not injured. Later King addressed an angry crowd that gathered outside the house, pleading for nonviolence. (see Boycott for expanded chronology; bombing, see Aug 25)

George Whitmore/Death Penalty

January 30, 1965: The New York Times published an editorial praising both Stanley J. Reiben (Whitmore’s lawyer) and Frank Hogan (NY prosecutor)  for acting “in the highest tradition of the bar.” The editorial said that the case “provokes fresh doubt” about the validity of the death penalty and urged its abolition. (BH, see Feb 1; see Whitmore for expanded story;  DP, see May 13)

Mississippi officially ratifies abolition of slavery

January 30, 2013: after viewing the popular film, Lincoln, Dr. Ranjan Batraafter, an associate professor of neurobiology and anatomical sciences at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, did research about how an amendment is ratified. He found that although Mississippi had ratified the 13th amendment in 1995, the state never officially notified the US Archivist. Therefore, Mississippi’s the ratification was not official.

On this date Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann agreed to file the paperwork and make it official and sent the Office of the Federal Register a copy of the 1995 Senate resolution, adopted by both the Mississippi Senate and House. (Guardian article) (see Feb 7)

SOUTH AFRICA/APARTHEID

January 30, 2015:  the South African government granted parole to Eugene de Kock, a death squad leader for the apartheid state, after two decades in jail. “In the interest of nation building and reconciliation, I have decided to place Mr. de Kock on parole,” said Justice Minister Michael Masutha. (next SA/A, see December 26, 2021)

BLACK & SHOT

January 30, 2015: the family of slain Bronx teen Ramarley Graham agreed to accept $3.9 million from the city to settle their wrongful death lawsuit.  (B & S, see April 2; Graham, see March 26, 2017)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

USSR & Hanoi

January 30, 1950: the Soviet Union extended diplomatic recognition to Hanoi . The Chinese and the Soviet military and economic assistance enabled North Vietnam to fight first the French and then the Americans. (see Feb 7)

General Nguyễn Khánh

January 30, 1964: General Nguyễn Khánh ousted the military junta led by General Dương Văn Minh from the leadership of South Vietnam without firing a shot. It came less than three months after Minh’s junta had themselves come to power in a bloody coup against then President Ngô Đình Diệm. The coup was bloodless and took less than a few hours—after power had been seized Minh’s aide and bodyguard, Major Nguyễn Văn Nhung was arrested and summarily executed.

The New York Times reported, ““The bloodless coup d’état executed by the short, partly bald general apparently took Saigon by surprise.”  (V, see Feb 1; SVL, see Sept 13 – 14)

Tet Offensive

January 30, 1968: Viet Cong and NVA troops launched the Tet Offensive attacking a hundred cities and towns throughout South Vietnam. The surprise offensive was closely observed by American TV news crews in Vietnam which filmed the U.S. embassy in Saigon being attacked by 17 Viet Cong commandos, along with bloody scenes from battle areas showing American soldiers under fire, dead and wounded.

The graphic color film footage was then quickly relayed back to the states for broadcast on nightly news programs. (see Feb 1)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

January 30 Music et al

Billboard #1 Single

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

January 30 – February 12, 1961: “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” by the Shirelles #1 Billboard Hot 100. Carole King and Jerry Goffin’s first #1 hit. Also, the first song to reach #1 by an all-girl group.

Velvet Underground

January 30, 1968: Velvet Underground released White Light/White Heat album. One of the album”s songs is “Sister Ray” – The song concerns drug use, violence, homosexuality and transvestism. Reed said of the lyrics: “‘Sister Ray’ was done as a joke—no, not as a joke—but it has eight characters in it and this guy gets killed and nobody does anything. It was built around this story that I wrote about this scene of total debauchery and decay. I like to think of ‘Sister Ray’ as a transvestite smack dealer. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear.”

The recording engineer is famously rumored to have walked out while recording the song. Lou Reed recalled: “The engineer said, ‘I don’t have to listen to this. I’ll put it in Record, and then I’m leaving. When you’re done, come get me.'”

The Beatles

January 30, 1969: atop the Apple building at 3 Savile Row, London, the Beatles, with Billy Preston, gave their final live performance, in what became the climax of their Let It Be film.  George Harrison later said, “We went on the roof in order to resolve the live concert idea, because it was much simpler than going anywhere else; also nobody had ever done that, so it would be interesting to see what happened when we started playing up there. It was a nice little social study.We set up a camera in the Apple reception area, behind a window so nobody could see it, and we filmed people coming in. The police and everybody came in saying, ‘You can’t do that! You’ve got to stop.’

It was a cold day, and a bitter wind was blowing on the rooftop by midday. To cope with the weather, John Lennon borrowed Yoko Ono’s fur coat, and Ringo Starr wore his wife Maureen Starkey’s red mac. The 42-minute show was recorded onto two eight-track machines in the basement of Apple, by George Martin, engineer Glyn Johns and tape operator Alan Parsons. (see Feb 15)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Irish Troubles

see Sunday Bloody Sunday for more

January 30

January 30, 1972:  in Derry (Londonderry) Northern Ireland, British paratroopers responded to a civil rights march by Catholics, in defiance of a ban against marches, and shot dead thirteen unarmed marchers. The day became known as “Bloody Sunday” or the “Bogside Massacre.” (see IT for expanded chronology)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Watergate Scandal

January 30, 1973: former Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy and James W. McCord Jr. convicted of conspiracy, burglary and wiretapping in the Watergate incident. (see Watergate for expanded chronology)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Iran hostage crisis

January 30, 1981: an estimated 2 million New Yorkers turned out for a ticker-tape parade honoring the freed American hostages from Iran. (see IHC for expanded coverage]

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

January 30, 1989 American Indian Movement leader Russell C Means told Congress that there was ”rampant graft and corruption” among tribal governments and in Federal programs intended to assist American Indians.

”Graft and corruption is rampant through the contracting auspices of the B.I.A. and its surrogate tribal governments,” Means said. ”Indian-front contractors bid for and receive Government contracts only to proceed to build shoddy, dangerous bridges, buildings, schools, roads and dams.”  (see Nov 28)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Cannabis

January 30, 1997: The New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial written by Jerome P. Kassirer, MD, titled “Federal Foolishness and Marijuana.” The article stated: “Federal authorities should rescind their prohibition of the medicinal use of marijuana for seriously ill patients and allow physicians to decide which patients to treat. The government should change marijuana’s status from that of a Schedule 1 drug (considered to be potentially addictive and with no current medical use) to that of a Schedule 2 drug (potentially addictive but with some accepted medical use) and regulate it accordingly.” (see October 29, 1998 or see CCC for expanded chronology)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

TERRORISM

January 30 Peace Love Activism

January 30, 2003: “Shoe Bomber,” Richard Reid, sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole with three life sentences to be served consecutively. (see Mar 1)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Japanese Internment

January 30, 2011: the first Fred Korematsu Day was celebrated (see Korematsu vs United States) to commemorate Korematsu, who was evacuated and interned during World War II along with about 120,000 other Japanese-Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor. California established the day in September 2010. (see JI for expanded chronology)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

2011 Union membership

January 30, 2012: the Department of Labor released a report stating that the union membership rate–the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union–was 11.8 percent essentially unchanged from 11.9 percent in 2010.

The number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.8 million, also showed little movement over the year.

In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers. (see Apr 30)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear News

 Byron nuclear power plant

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

January 30, 2012: in Illinois, the Byron nuclear power plant accidentally released radioactive steam. (see Mar 5)

Hawaii false alarm

January 30, 2018: officials said that the Hawaii emergency management services worker who sent a false alert warning of an incoming ballistic missile on January 13 had a long history of poor performance and sent the warning Officials said that the worker thought the state faced an actual threat.

The continuing commission investigation had revealed a series of missteps that led to the false alert, including major gaps in Hawaii’s protocol for handling public safety alerts.

The state reported that the employee had been fired. [NYT article] (see Mar 1)

North Korea/Iran

January 30, 2019: Daniel R. Coats, the director of national intelligence concluded that North Korea was “unlikely to give up” all of its nuclear stockpiles, and that Iran was not “…undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activity” needed to make a bomb. Both evaluations directly contradicted two top tenets of President Trump’s foreign policy. [NYT article]

Weapons grade plutonium

January 30, 2019: the U.S. Department of Energy disclosed that it already had shipped one-half metric ton of weapons-grade plutonium from South Carolina to the Nevada National Security Site. The Justice Department notified a federal judge in Reno the government had already trucked the radioactive material to the site 70 miles north of Las Vegas when Nevada filed a request for an injunction to block the move in November. Department lawyers said in a nine-page filing that the previously classified information about the shipment from South Carolina can be disclosed now because enough time has passed to protect national security. They didn’t specify when the transfer occurred (next N/C N, see Feb 1; next Iran,  see July 1)

January 30, 2022: North Korea fired what was presumed to be its longest range ballistic missile since 2017, an escalation of its weapons program and a possible sign of larger tests to come, according to South Korea’s President.

Both the South Korean and Japanese governments reported the launch of an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), with officials in Tokyo saying the missile reached a height of 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) with a range of 800 kilometers (497 miles), before falling into waters off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula.

“If the missile were fired at a normal apogee, its range would be up to 3,500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers, making it an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile and North Korea’s longest test since 2017,” Joseph Dempsey, research associate for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, told CNN. (next N/C N, see July 6, 2023)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Stop and Frisk Policy

January 30, 2013: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced  the city had reached an agreement with civil rights lawyers who had challenged the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices, which would allow the sweeping reforms ordered by federal judge Shira A. Scheindlin last summer to be carried out. Those reforms, which included the appointment of a federal monitor, were blocked last fall after the Bloomberg administration appealed the judge’s rulings, which found that the city’s stop-and-frisk policies were unconstitutional and that the department had resorted to “a policy of indirect racial profiling.” (see June 18)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

Maine Supreme Court

January 30, 2014: in a 5-1 decision the Maine Supreme Judicial Court guaranteed the right of a transgender child to use the school bathroom designated for the gender with which he or she identifies. It is the first time any court in the nation has ruled it is unlawful to force a transgender child to use the school bathroom designated for the sex he or she was born with rather than the one with which the child identifies, according to the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders of Boston, which represented the girl and her family.

The court’s carefully worded majority opinion focused on students’ educational needs as well as anti-discrimination laws. “Our opinion must not be read to require schools to permit students casual access to any bathroom of their choice,” Justice Warren Silver wrote for the majority. “Decisions about how to address students’ legitimate gender identity issues are not to be taken lightly. Where, as here, it has been clearly established that a student’s psychological well-being and educational success depend upon being permitted to use the communal bathroom consistent with her gender identity, denying access to the appropriate bathroom constitutes sexual orientation discrimination in violation of the MHRC.” (see Jan 31)

BSA

January 30, 2017: the Boy Scouts of America communications director Effie Delimarko announced that the Scouts would allow transgender children who identify as boys to join its troops. Previously the group had used the gender assigned on one’s birth certificate to determine a member’s eligibility. However, the group felt “that approach is no longer sufficient as communities and state laws are interpreting gender identity differently.” (LGBTQ, see Feb 22; BSA, see May 11)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

January 30, 2017: the acting Attorney General Sally Yates told Justice Department lawyers not to make legal arguments defending President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees. Yates, an Obama appointee who was serving until Trump attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions was confirmed, did not believe the substance of the order was lawful.

Within four hours, President Trump fired Yates, saying she had betrayed the administration. Trump replaced Yates with Dana J. Boente, the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, saying that Boente would serve as attorney general until Congress acted to confirm Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. In his first act in his new role, Mr. Boente recinded Yates’s order. (NYT article) (see Feb 3)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment

January 30, 2020:  the NYT reported that Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said that although he believed that Democrats had proved their case that President Trump acted “inappropriately” in his dealings with Ukraine, he did not think the president’s actions were impeachable and would vote against considering new evidence in the impeachment trial.

Alexander’s statement was a strong indication that Republicans had lined up the votes to block a call for more witnesses and documents and press toward a quick acquittal. His opposition was a significant victory for the White House and Republican leaders.

“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did,” Alexander said. (next Trump Impeachment, see Jan 31 or see TI for expanded chronology)

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism