October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Anarchism in the US and Emma Goldman

 October 30, 1906: police arrested Goldman in Manhattan while attending an anarchist meeting called to protest police suppression of free speech at a previous meeting. She was charged with unlawful assembly for the purpose of overthrowing the government under the new criminal laws against anarchy. (NYT article) (see Goldman for her story)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 30, 1947,  McCarthyism

HUAC

• Ring Lardner, Jr., an Oscar-winning screenwriter, refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) about his political beliefs and associations. As a result, he was convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to prison. Lardner was one of the “Hollywood Ten,” who refused to cooperate with HUAC, went to prison, and were then blacklisted by the film industry. He famously told the committee that he could answer one of their questions, but “I would hate myself in the morning.” Variety magazine commented about the end of the HUAC Hollywood hearings: “Commie Carnival Closes: An Egg is Laid.” Lardner later earned his second Academy Award as the screenwriter of the enormously successful film M*A*S*H (1970), which then became the basis for the hugely successful and Emmy-winning television series of the same name.The Hearing.
• The famous German playwright Bertolt Brecht testified before HUAC on this day as one of the hostile witnesses in the HUAC investigation of alleged Communist influence in Hollywood. The day after his testimony, Brecht left the U.S. for East Germany and never returned. Brecht is best known among Americans as the co-author of the musical, Threepenny Opera, with composer Kurt Weill, which features the now-famous song, Mack the Knife. One of the ironies of Threepenny Opera is the Brecht was a committed Marxist and yet earned considerable income from the original state production in Germany and then considerably more from the royalties from Mack the Knife. (see Nov 24)

The Photo League

October 30, 1951: The Photo League was a non-profit organization created in 1936 to promote photography as an art form. It conducted photography classes, held exhibitions, and sponsored photography projects.

A number of its members held left-wing political views and sought to use photography to promote social justice. Because of its members’ political views, the League was included in the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (ordered by President Harry Truman on March 21, 1947, and published on December 4, 1947). Membership and support quickly fell off, and the League formally disbanded on this day, a victim of the Cold War anti-Communist hysteria. [2012 Time article] (see Dec 13)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear  Weapons

NSC 162/2

October 30, 1953: President Eisenhower formally approved National Security Council Paper No. 162/2 (NSC 162/2). The top secret document made clear that America’s nuclear arsenal must be maintained and expanded to meet the communist threat. It also made clear the connection between military spending and a sound American economy. [PDF] (see Dec 8)

USSR/58 megaton

October 30, 1961: the Soviet Union performed an above-ground nuclear test of 50 megatons—3,800 times stronger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It is the most powerful human-made explosion in history. [Tsar Bomba] (see Oct 31)

US/8.3 megaton 

October 30, 1962: US detonated 8.3 megaton nuclear bomb above ground. (CW, see Nov 6; NN, see Dec 2)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Black History

Armed forces desegregated

October 30, 1954: the Department of Defense announced the armed forces had been fully desegregated — seven years after President Truman had instructed the Secretary of Defense to “take steps to have the remaining instances of discrimination in the armed services eliminated as rapidly as possible.” (see January 7, 1955)

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR

October 30, 1967: Martin Luther King Jr. and seven other clergymen were jailed for four days in Birmingham, Ala. They served sentences on contempt-of-court charges stemming from Easter 1963 demonstrations they had led against discrimination. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor had twice denied them a parade permit. Two years later, the law was declared unconstitutional. (BH, see Nov 7; MLK, see April 3, 1968)

“Rumble in the Jungle”

October 30, 1974:  Muhammad Ali fought the reigning champion George Foreman in an outdoor arena in Kinshasa, Zaire, The fight is known as the “Rumble in the Jungle.”

Using his novel “rope-a-dope” strategy, Ali defeated Foreman and after seven years, reclaimed the title of Heavyweight Champion of the World. (NYT article) (see October 1, 1975)

FBI cover-up

October 30, 1982: a newly released report said the FBI  covered up the violent activities of their informant, Gary Thomas Rowe Jr., but his lawyer said the Government knew it was not getting ”a Sunday school teacher” when it asked Mr. Rowe to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Rowe, who was a Klan informant from 1959 to 1965, was charged with murder in the 1965 killing of Viola Liuzzo, a civil rights worker. A Federal appeals court barred him from being brought to trial because of an earlier agreement giving him immunity. The 1979 report was released publicly for the first time because the Justice Department lost a Freedom of Information suit filed by Playboy magazine. In the report department investigators said agents protected Mr. Rowe because the informant ”was simply too valuable to abandon.” (see Liuzzo for more about Liuzzo)

SOUTH AFRICA/APARTHEID

October 30, 1996: saying many of Eugene de Kock‘s actions had been cruel, calculated and without any sympathy for the victims Judge Willem van der Merwe sentenced the former head of a South African police assassination squad to two life sentences and more than 212 years in jail.

He was paroled after 20 years. (SA/A, see Dec 10; EdK, see January 30, 2015)

Church Burning

October 30, 2015:  David Lopez Jackson was arrested and charged in connection with a pair of recent church fires in and around St. Louis. Authorities charged Jackson with two counts of second-degree arson. His bail was set at $75,000. Chief Sam Dotson of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department said the investigation was ongoing, and that Jackson was a suspect in the other five fires that were set earlier that month. [St Louis Today article]

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 30 Music et al

The Beatles before their US appearance

October 30, 1961: two days after Beatles fan Raymond Jones (apparently) asked for The Beatles’ German single “My Bonnie” (recorded with Tony Sheridan) at Brian Epstein’s NEMS record store, two girls asked for the same record. Brian Epstein bgan to search foreign record company import lists to find the single. Since Epstein had already sold at least 12 dozen copies of Liverpool’s “Mersey Beat” magazine (and had written a column for it), it is highly unlikely that he doesn’t already know who The Beatles are. Still, Epstein’s difficulty in locating the record was probably due to his not knowing that the record was released, not by The Beatles, but by Tony Sheridan and ‘The Beat Brothers (‘Beatles’ resembles a vulgar slang word in German, so The Beatles’ name was changed for this historic single). (see Nov 9)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

March to support war

October 30, 1965: 25,000 marched in Washington in support of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. (see Nov 2)

DRAFT CARD BURNING

October 30, 1968: Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Spiro T. Agnew, was confronted at a disorderly Republican rally by the spectacle of youthful antiwar demonstrators burning a draft card. (Vietnam, see Oct 31; DCB, see May 29, 1969)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Jack Kevorkian

October 30, 1995: a group of doctors and other medical experts in Michigan announced its support of Jack Kevorkian , saying they will draw up a set of guiding principles for the “merciful, dignified, medically-assisted termination of life.” (see JK for expanded story)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History & AIDS

October 30, 2009: The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 signed by President Barack Obama, who announced plans to remove a ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by individuals with HIV. Obama called the 22-year ban a decision “rooted in fear rather than fact.” (LGBTQ, see Nov 3; AIDS, see January 5, 2010; IH, see Dec 10)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

October 30, 2013: a Gallop poll measured that sixty percent of Americans say they favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, the lowest level of support Gallup has measured since November 1972, when 57% were in favor. Death penalty support peaked at 80% in 1994, but it has gradually declined since then. (see Nov 18)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

October 30, 2017: in Washington, DC, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly barred PresidentTrump from changing the government’s policy on military service by transgender people.

Trump had announced in an August memo that he intended to reverse course on a 2016 policy that allowed troops to serve openly as transgender individuals. He said he would order a return to the policy prior to June 2016, under which service members could be discharged for being transgender.

Kollar-Kotelly wrote that transgender members of the military who had sued over the change were likely to win their lawsuit and barred the Trump administration from reversing course. [ChiTrib story] (next LGTBQ, see Nov 3; military transgender, see March 23, 2018)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment Inquiry

October 30, 2019: according to a copy of Anderson’s opening statement obtained by NPR, Christopher Anderson, a career foreign service officer in the State Department, told House impeachment investigators that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani stood in the way of the White House strengthening ties with Ukraine,.

Anderson, who spent five years working on Washington-Kyiv relations, described a meeting he had with former national security adviser John Bolton on the topic of having senior White House officials engage more with Ukraine. In it, Bolton noted a possible hitch.

“He cautioned that Mr. Giuliani was a key voice with the President on Ukraine which could be an obstacle to increased White House engagement,” Anderson told the House committee. [NPR story] (see TII for expanded chronology)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

October 30, 2023: the six-week wave of strikes that hobbled the three largest U.S. automakers put workers on track for new contracts — the third deal, with General Motors, was firming up on this date and would deliver the biggest pay raise workers would receive in decades while avoiding a protracted work stoppage that could have damaged the economy.

The separate but similar deals that the United Automobile Workers union recently reached with Ford Motor, G.M. and Stellantis, the maker of Ram, Jeep and Chrysler, would be costly for the automakers as they undertook a switch to electric vehicles. The deals would also set the stage for labor strife and demand for higher pay at nonunion automakers like Tesla and Toyota. [NYT article] (next LH, see Nov 1)

October 30 Peace Love Art Activism

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Abram Colby

October 29, 1869: Abram Colby was born into slavery in Greene County, Georgia, in approximately 1817. The son of an enslaved black woman and a white landowner, Colby was emancipated 15 years before the end of American slavery and worked tirelessly to organize freed slaves following the Civil War. A Radical Republican, Colby was elected to serve in the Georgia House of Representatives during Reconstruction. His impassioned advocacy for black civil rights earned him the attention of the local Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization founded in 1865 to resist Reconstruction and restore white supremacy through targeted violence against black people and their white political allies.

Klansmen attacked and brutally whipped 52-year-old Abram Colby on October 29, 1869. Three years later, when called to Washington, DC, to testify about the assault before a Congressional committee investigating reports of racial violence in the South, Colby bravely identified his attackers as some of the “first class men in our town. One is a lawyer, one a doctor, and some are farmers.” Shortly before the attack, Colby explained, the men had tried to bribe him to change parties or give up his office. Colby refused to do either and days later they returned:

“On October 29. 1869, [the Klansmen] broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead. They said to me, ‘Do you think you will ever vote another damned Radical ticket?’ I said, “If there was an election tomorrow, I would vote the Radical ticket.” They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more, with sticks and straps that had buckles on the ends of them.”

Colby told the committee that the attack had “broken something inside of [him],” and that the Klan’s continued harassment and violent assaults had forced him to abandon his re-election campaign. Colby testified most emotionally about the attack’s impact on his daughter, who was home when the Klansmen seized him to be whipped: “My little daughter begged them not to carry me away. They drew up a gun and actually frightened her to death. She never got over it until she died. That was the part that grieves me the most.” [Colby’s 1872 testimony] (next BH, see February 18, 1688)

Civil Rights Committee

October 29, 1947: the President Harry Truman’s Civil Rights Committee, [created on December 5, 1946] was the first presidential committee or commission on civil rights. The commission’s report, To Secure These Rights, released on this day, was an historic event. The report identified race discrimination in virtually every area of American life — education, employment, voting, military service, and so on — and its recommendations charted the course of the civil rights movement for the next 20 years. [Truman Library article] (mext BH, see Nov 6, 1948; military, see October 30, 1954)

Muhammad Ali

October 29, 1960: Cassius Clay’s first professional fight against Tunney Hunsaker, police chief of Fayetteville, West Virginia. “He sure was a brassy young boy when I fought him. He drove to the Louisville airgrounds in a brand new pink Cadillac,” said Hunsaker, loser of the bout. (BH, see Nov 1; Ali, see June 18, 1963)

Stokely Carmichael

October 29, 1966:  Stokely Carmichael addressed an audience consisting primarily of college students at the open-air Greek Theater at the University of California at Berkeley in a speech that has become known as “Black Power”—although he gave other speeches that stressed the same theme and sometimes have been referred to by that same title. (next BH, see Nov 30)

School Desegregation

October 29, 1969: Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, the US Supreme Court demanded that its opinion in 1955’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (the so-called Brown II case)  ordered desegregation be implemented despite the phrase of “all deliberate speed”. The phrase had given the South an excuse to defy the law of the land. The Court wrote that “The obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools.” The previously-set pace of “all deliberate speed” was no longer permissible. ( integration at once)  (BH, see February 21, 1970; SD, see April 20, 1971)

Vietnam, Chicago 8 & Black Panthers

October 29, 1969: Judge Julius Hoffman ordered “Chicago Eight” defendant Bobby Seale gagged and chained to his chair during his trial. Seale and his seven fellow defendants (David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Thomas Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, and John Froines) had been charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to cause a riot during the violent anti-war demonstrations in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hoffman gave the order to gag Seale after Seale repeatedly shouted accusations and insults at the judge and prosecution and disrupted the court proceedings. In November, Seale’s conduct forced the judge to try him separately. Seale was sentenced to 48 months in prison for 16 acts of contempt. Seale was then charged with killing a Black Panther Party informant in New Haven, Connecticut; the contempt charges were eventually dismissed and the murder trial ended with a hung jury.  [Black Then article] (Vietnam, see Nov 3; Chi8, see February 9, 1970)

Georgetown reparations

October 29, 2019: officials at Georgetown University announced that it would raise about $400,000 a year to benefit the descendants of the 272 enslaved people who were sold to help keep the college afloat nearly two centuries ago.

The university planned to use the money to support community projects such as health clinics and schools. The announcement came six months after Georgetown students voted in a nonbinding referendum to impose student fees that would have raised about $400,000 a year to support the descendants. [NYT article] (next BH, see Nov 1)

Antwon Rose

October 29, 2019: according to court documents, Judge Marilyn Horan dismissed the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Antwon Rose II against former police officer Michael Rosfeld and the borough of East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Horan signed the dismissal documents, which state that Rose family would not be permitted to refile the same lawsuit again in the future.[CNN story] (next B & S, see  Dec 23; next AR, see )

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

October 29, 1889: Japanese immigrant and labor advocate Katsu Goto was strangled to death, his body then strung from an electric pole, on the Big Island of Hawaii by thugs hired by plantation owners.  They were outraged over Goto’s work on behalf of agricultural workers and because he opened a general store that competed with the owners’ own company store. [Hawaii dot edu article]  (see January 25, 1890)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Anarchism

October 29, 1901: Leon Czolgosz, assassin of President McKinley, executed. His body was buried in a pine coffin, but before the coffin was sealed, authorities poured acid over the body to destroy it within 12 hours. (NYT article) (see March 3, 1903)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Military draft

October 29, 1940, The US began its first peacetime military draft. NYT article)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

see October 29 Music et al for more

“Surfin’ Safari”

October 29, 1962, the Beach Boys’ debut album, “Surfin’ Safari,” was released. (see July 4 – 17, 1964)

“96 Tears”

October 29 – November 4, 1966: “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Allison Steele

October 29, 1967: WNEW-FM DJ Allison Steele (a rare female DJ) announced that Rosko will be a WNEW-FM DJ. (Allison’s announcement) (see April 5, 1983)

Mind Games

October 29, 1973: UK release of John Lennon’s Mind Games album, his fourth. He recorded it  at Record Plant Studios, NYC in summer 1973. The album was Lennon’s first self-produced recording without help from Phil Spector. It reached number 13 in the UK and number 9 in the US, where it went gold.

Lennon and May Pang went to Los Angeles to promote ‘Mind Games’ and decided to stay. But without Ono’s restraint, Lennon began to drink heavily. (see Nov 16)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

October 29, 1966: The National Organization for Women (NOW), organized by feminist leader Betty Friedan and a small group of friends on June 30 was formally chartered.  (see Dec 22)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Technological Milestone

October 29, 1969: the Internet had its beginnings when the first host-to-host connection was made on the Arpanet – an experimental military computer network – between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif. [Live Science article] (see January 4, 1972)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

October 29, 1971: US troops in Vietnam drop in number to 196,700, their lowest since January 1966. [chart] (see Dec 18)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Cannabis

Medical marijuana

October 29, 1998: prior to the election, former Presidents Ford, Carter, and Bush released a statement urging voters to reject state medical marijuana initiatives because they circumvented the standard process by which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tests medicines for safety and effectiveness. ‘Compassionate medicine,’ these leaders insisted, ‘must be based on science, not political appeals.’ (see Nov 3) or see CCC for expanded chronology)

Medical licenses

October 29, 2002: after California legalized medical marijuana in 1996, the US government threatened to take away the medical licenses of physicians who recommended the use of marijuana. On Oct. 29, 2002, a US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit 3-0 ruling  (80 KB) in the case Conant v. Walters prohibited “the federal government from either revoking a physician’s license to prescribe controlled substances or conducting an investigation of a physician that might lead to such revocation, where the basis for the government’s action is solely the physician’s professional ‘recommendation’ of the use of medical marijuana.” The US Supreme Court denied an appeal, so physicians maintained the right to discuss marijuana with their patients. (see May 26, 2004)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Trayvon Martin Shooting

October 29, 2013: Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, told a panel of US senators that state “stand your ground” self-defense laws do not work and must be amended, reviving the politically charged gun-control issue a year ahead of the 2014 midterm elections. But little besides politics emerged from the session, held in the Senate’s made-for-television hearing room. Democrats, who hold majority power in the Senate and are trying to keep it, supported call. Republicans, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), said the matter should be left to the states that passed the laws. (see Nov 18)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH, US Labor History & Colin Kaepernick

Colin Kaepernick

October 29, 2017: about 40 members of the Houston Texans knelt during the national anthem in protest of their team owner Robert McNair’s “inmates running the prison” remarks. [USA article] (mext FS, US Labor, & CK, see Nov 1)

UF Professors Banned

October 29, 2021:  the University of Florida banned three  professors  from assisting plaintiffs in a lawsuit to overturn the state’s new law restricting voting rights, lawyers said in a federal court filing. The ban was an extraordinary limit on speech that raised questions of academic freedom and First Amendment rights.

University officials told the three that because the school was a state institution, participating in a lawsuit against the state “is adverse to U.F.’s interests” and could not be permitted. In their filing, the lawyers sought to question Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, on whether he was involved in the decision. [Oct 29 NYT article; Nov 4 NYT article] (next FS, see Nov 5)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

October 29, 2017: Dennis J. Banks, the militant Chippewa who founded the American Indian Movement in 1968 and led often-violent insurrections to protest the treatment of Native Americans and the nation’s history of injustices against its indigenous peoples, died at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He was 80. [NYT obiturary] (see Nov 23)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

TERRORISM

October 29, 2018: according to authorities, an additional threatening package addressed to CNN was recovered and investigators said that Cesar Sayoc, Jr had prepared a list of about 100 possible targets. (T, see Oct 30; CSJ, see Oct 31)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

October 30, 2018: President Trump said he was preparing an executive order that would nullify the long-accepted constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship in the United States.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years, with all of those benefits.”

In fact, at least 30 other countries, including Canada, Mexico and many others in the Western Hemisphere, grant automatic birthright citizenship, according to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that supports restricting immigration and whose work Mr. Trump’s advisers often cited. (see  Nov 9)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment Inquiry

Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman

October 29, 2019: Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman of the Army, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council (a decorated Iraq war veteran) told House impeachment investigators that the White House transcript of a July 25 call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president omitted crucial words and phrases, and that his attempts to include them failed, according to three people familiar with the testimony.

The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump’s assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.

Vindman twice registered internal objections about how Trump and his inner circle were treating Ukraine, out of what he called a “sense of duty,”  according to his opening statement.

Vindman was the first White House official to testify who listened in on the July 25 telephone call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. [NYT article]

Resolution unveiled

October 29, 2019: House Democrats unveiled a resolution reaffirming their impeachment inquiry and setting out the process for it to continue examining whether the president improperly tried to pressure Ukraine into launching an investigation into a potential political rival.

The measure would enable public hearings and a release of the witness interviews already taken by House committees and would allow the president and his attorneys to cross-examine witnesses.

The move came after congressional Republicans and President Trump complained that the inquiry underway was unfair and lacked due process.

The resolution stated that after the inquiry phase was over, the investigating committees would send their findings to the House Judiciary Committee, which would determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment. [NPR story] (see TII for expanded chronology)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

October 29, 2019: US District Judge Myron Thompson blocked Alabama’s the Human Life Protection Act that would have blocked almost all abortions, calling it a “ban” that “contravenes clear Supreme Court precedent.”

Thompson issued a preliminary injunction barring from taking effect until the court resolves the case in full.

In the 17-page opinion, Thompson wrote that the state’s abortion ban “violates the right of an individual to privacy, to make choices central to personal dignity and autonomy.” Thompson also stated that the ban “diminishes the capacity of women to act in society, and to make reproductive decisions.”

Thompson wrote: “It defies the United States Constitution.” [CNN article] (next WH, see Nov 6)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Student Rights

October 29, 2019: the NCAA Board of Governors voted unanimously to allow student-athletes to be paid for the use of their name, image and likeness once its three divisions decide on rules for such opportunities.

“We must embrace change to provide the best possible experience for college athletes,” said Michael Drake, chair of the board for the NCAA, which governs major college athletics.

The NCAA’s stunning reversal came after California passed a Fair Pay to Play Act, which would go into effect in 2023. Other states are looking at possible legislation. The California law would allow athletes to sign endorsement deals and licensing contracts, something NCAA rule makers will address. [CNN article] (next SR, see June 21, 2021)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

October 29, 2019: according to research by Climate Central, rising seas would affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought, threatening to all but erase some of the world’s great coastal cities.

The authors of a paper had developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic. The new research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by mid-century.

Climate Central, a science organization based in New Jersey, published the paper in the journal Nature Communications. The projections did not account for future population growth or land lost to coastal erosion. [NYT article] (next EI, see Oct 31)

October 29 Peace Love Art Activism

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Technological Milestones

Cotton gin

October 28, 1793: Eli Whitney applied for a patent for the cotton gin. It was granted in March 14, 1794. It will change the course of American history as it made the cotton crop a valuable commodity for which thousands of workers–black slaves–would be used.(see February 7, 1817)

Football game broadcast

October 28, 1922: hundreds of young men gathered around radios in Western Union offices, speakeasies and a Princeton University physics lab to hear the first-ever cross-country broadcast of a college football game between Princeton and the Chicago Maroons. Telephone lines carried a play-by-play of the match-up. (NYT article) (see April 15, 1923)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Matilda Josyln Gage

October 28, 1886: Matilda Josyln Gage joined the New York City Woman Suffrage Association’s protest at the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty. Suffragists called it the greatest hypocrisy of the 19th century that liberty is represented as a woman in a land where not a single woman has liberty. (NYT article)

In 1890: Gage left National Women’s Suffragist Association after its merger with the American Woman Suffrage Association and established the Woman’s National Liberal Union, dedicated to maintaining the separation of church and state. (Separation Church and State, see May 5, 1925 Feminism; see May)

In 1893 Gage published her magnum opus, Woman, Church, and State.

Gage also spoke of organized religion: “The greatest evils to women in all ages have come through the bondage of the Church. Women must think for themselves and realize that the story of the creation with the pair in the garden and the speaking serpent standing on his tail was a myth.” (next Feminism, see Nov 7)

In 1895 Gage contributed to Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s The Woman’s Bible, writing interpretations of three Biblical passages pertinent to women. The Woman’s Bible is a major criticism of standard biblical interpretation from a radical feminist point of view. (next Feminism, see April 4, 1886; see Gage for expanded story)

Consumer Protection

October 28, 1974:  President Gerald Ford signed into law the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which helped to reduce sex discrimination in access to credit. As a member of the Appropriations Committee,

Congresswoman Lindy Boggs (D–Louisiana) helped shape the law. She hand-wrote “sex or marital status” into the text and then passed out new copies of the bill with the phrase included. She suggested sweetly that the omission “must have been an oversight.” The amendment passed. President Gerald Ford signed further amendments to bar discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act Amendments of 1976 in March 1976. (Feminism, see January 8, 1975; CP, see February 12, 1976)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

October 28, 1918:  Czech Republic formed marking independence from Austria-Hungary. (see Nov 11)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Cultural Milestone/Volstead Act

 

October 28, 1919,  the day after President Wilson had vetoed the act, the House and Senate override his veto and the Volstead Act was passed, ushering in Prohibition. It went into effect in January 1920. (NYT article) (see January 17, 1920)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Cold War

McCarthyism

October 28, 1947: Dalton Trumbo, a successful Hollywood screenwriter, confronted the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on this day. All of the “Hollywood Ten” were cited for contempt of Congress, convicted, sentenced to prison, and blacklisted by the film industry.

Contempt of Congress indictments became a heavy weapon against alleged subversives during the Cold War. While it had rarely been used before World War II, HUAC issued 21 contempt citations in 1946, 14 in 1947, and 56 in 1950. All other House Committees in those years issued a total of only 6 contempt citations. (Red Scare, see Oct 30; Hollywood Ten, see November 25, 1956; Trumbo, see March 27, 1957)

see Cuban Missile Crisis for more

October 28, 1962:  after much deliberation between the Soviet Union and Kennedy’s cabinet, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove all missiles set in southern Italy and in Turkey, the latter on the border of the Soviet Union, in exchange for Khrushchev removing all missiles in Cuba. Nikita Khrushchev announced that he had ordered the removal of Soviet missile bases in Cuba. (next Cold War, see Oct 30; see Cuban Missile Crisis for expanded story)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Boys arrested after being kissed

October 28, 1958: a mob of white men in Monroe, North Carolina, stormed the home of a nine-year-old Black boy named James “Hanover” Thompson, threatening to lynch him after a white girl told her parents that she kissed him on the cheek when they were playing together earlier that day. James and another Black boy named David “Fuzzy” Simpson, seven years old, who the girl had also kissed on the cheek, were arrested by police, held in jail without contact with their families for days, denied an attorney, and sentenced to indefinite terms, ultimately serving over three months. [EJI story] (next BH, see Nov 24)

Black Panthers

October 28, 1967: Oakland, CA officer John Frey is killed and officer Herbert Haines wounded in a predawn altercation after stopping Huey Newton and Gene McKinney. Newton is also critically wounded. (BH, see Oct 30; BP, see April 6, 1968)

Slave Revolts

October 28, 2002: the City Council in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy, unanimously voted to honor a slave who plotted a revolt.

A resolution calling the slave, Gabriel Prosser, an ”American patriot and freedom fighter” commemorates the 202nd anniversary of his hanging on October 10, 1800, in Richmond. Dozens of conspirators were also executed after two slaves told their masters of the plot. ”This resolution seeks to correct an error in history whereby Gabriel has been seen by many as a criminal,” Councilman Sa’ad El-Amin told the Council. (BH, see Dec 4; SR, see June 17, 2015)

The Matthew Shepard Act

October 28, 2009: President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010. Conceived as a response to the murders of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., the measure expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. (next BH, see November 15, 2010; see Shepard for expanded story;  next LGBTQ, see Nov 3)

see October 28 Music et al for more

Beatles/My Bonnie

October 28, 1961: “My Bonnie” is a success in Germany.  It will be released in Britain on 5 January 1962, as Tony Sheridan and The Beatles.

On the same day, according to Beatles legend,  a fan named Raymond Jones attempted to purchase the single “My Bonnie” from Brian Epstein’s NEMS record store in Liverpool. Brian managed the record shop, which was part of a large department store owned by his father. The legend states that this was the first occasion on which Brian Epstein heard of the single or, indeed, of The Beatles. “Mersey Beat” editor Bill Harry discounts this story as improbable. Harry claims to have discussed The Beatles and other local groups with Epstein well before this date, and he adds that Epstein was already writing record reviews for “Mersey Beat” and selling copies of the paper in his shop. Further, Epstein was selling tickets to Sam Leach’s ‘Operation Big Beat’ concert, and The Beatles’ name was at the top of the list of groups that were scheduled to appear at the November 10 event. (see Oct 30)

Beatles/Empire Theatre, Liverpool

October 28, 1962:  The Beatles performed at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool. This is a major performance for The Beatles, their first at Liverpool’s top theatre. They are part of an eight-act, big-name program that plays to two separate “houses” (two performances for two different audiences, one at 5:40 pm and the other at 8:00 pm). Heading the bill is Little Richard; also appearing is Craig Douglas (for whom The Beatles provide musical backing in addition to their own, separate performance), Jet Harris (ex-Shadows bass player), and Kenny Lynch & Sounds Incorporated. In Liverpudlian terms, The Beatles have hit the big time. (see Nov 23)

see Teenage Awards Music International for more

October 28 – 29, 1964 filmed over two days at the Santa Monica (Calif.) Civic Auditorium, “The T.A.M.I. Show” (short for  Teenage Awards Music International or Teen Age Music International) featured some of the biggest stars in rock and pop music, including The Rolling Stones, James Brown and the Flames, The Supremes, The Beach Boys and Lesley Gore. It was released in theaters in December 1964.  (see June 24, 1966)

Supremes

October 28 – December 1, 1967: Diana Ross and the Supremes Greatest Hits is the Billboard #1 album.

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

October 28, 1968: US Ambassador Bunker cabled the President that South Vietnam President Thieu had suddenly decided he needed more time to to consult his National Security Council regarding the Paris negotiations.

LBJ knew that Nixon had interfered.(Vietnam, see Oct 30; Nixon, see Nov 3)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

FREE SPEECH

October 28, 1989: a group burned a United States flag belonging to the United States Postal Service. The flag-burning occurred during a political demonstration convened in front of a post office in Seattle, Washington to protest the enactment of the Flag Protection Act of 1989, 18 U.S.C. § 700. That statute, which prohibits flag-burning, had taken effect only minutes before defendants’ actions against the flag.

Participants were charged with committing two misdemeanors: one count of fulfill injury to federal property and one count of knowingly burning a United States flag in violation of the Flag Protection Act. (see March 21, 1990)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Fair Housing

1992 Act

October 28, 1992: The Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 signed. The Act established the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It also mandated that HUD set specific goals for the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with regard to low income and under-served housing areas.

Home ownership

In 1996 home ownership totaled 66.3 million American households, the largest number ever. Except for a few historic buildings, Techwood Homes (see August 15, 1936) was demolished in 1996 before the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Enforcement Center

In 1998 HUD opened the Enforcement Center to take action against HUD-assisted multifamily property owners and other HUD fund recipients who violate laws and regulations. Congress approves Public Housing reforms to reduce segregation by race and income, encourage and reward work, bring more working families into public housing, and increase the availability of subsidized housing for very poor families.

Home ownership

In 2000 America’s home-ownership rate reached a new record-high of 67.7 percent in the third quarter of 2000. A total of 71.6 million American families own their homes – more than at any time in American history. (next Fair Housing, see July 19, 2013)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

October 28, 1998: in the final week of the 1998 campaign, Republicans shift gears and begin pummeling the Democrats in TV ads about Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. (see Clinton for expanded story)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

October 28, 2013: federal Judge Lee Yeakel of the US District Court in Austin blocked an important part of the state’s restrictive new abortion law, which would have required doctors performing the procedure to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The decision, one day before the provision was to take effect, prevented a major disruption of the abortion clinics in Texas. It was a victory for abortion rights groups and clinics that said the measure served no medical purpose and could force as many as one-third of the state’s 36 abortion clinics to close.

But the court did not strike down a second measure, requiring doctors to use a particular drug protocol in nonsurgical, medication-induced abortions that doctors called outdated and too restrictive.

The decision is widely expected to be appealed to higher courts. Yeakel declared that “the act’s admitting-privileges provision is without a rational basis and places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus.” (NYT article) (BC, see Oct 31; Texas, see June 27, 2016)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment Inquiry

October 28, 2019: despite a subpoena, Charles M. Kupperman, the former deputy national security adviser and one of Mr. Trump’s “closest confidential” advisers, did not appear to testify. He had notified lawmakers through his lawyer that he would not appear to testify. Kupperman’s lawyer, Charles J. Cooper,  said that he was following orders from Trump.

“It is President Trump, and every president before him for at least the last half century, who have asserted testimonial immunity for their closest confidential advisers,” Cooper, wrote. [NYT article] (see TII for expanded chronology)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

October 28, 2020: a football player’s concerned parent had informed the Missouri state/church watchdog that Joey Ballard, head coach for Jasper High School’s boys football team (Jasper Missouri), regularly led team prayer. On October 6, the Freedom From Religion Foundation informed the district of the practice.

On this date, the FFRF reported the district’s response: “In response to your letter dated Oct. 6, 2020, we write to advise you about the actions the district took in response to your initial correspondence indicating that a coach of the Jasper R-V School District was leading students prayer,” the district’s legal counsel stated. “In response to your complaint, the district conducted an investigation into the matter. We are unable to share the results of that investigation with you, as it involves confidential personnel information. However, we can tell you that employees of the district were reminded of the district’s board policy regarding religion at school and were also instructed not to lead students in, or promote, prayer. This matter has therefore been resolved.” (next Separation, see November 17, 2021)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

Voting Rights

October 28, 2020: the Supreme Court let election officials in Pennsylvania and North Carolina accept absentee ballots for several days after Election Day.

In the Pennsylvania case, the court refused a plea from Republicans in the state that it decide before Election Day whether election officials can continue receiving absentee ballots for three days after Nov. 3.

In the North Carolina case, the court let stand lower court rulings that allowed the state’s board of elections to extend the deadline to nine days after Election Day, up from the three days called for by the state legislature.

The court’s brief orders in the two cases were unsigned. The Pennsylvania order appeared to be unanimous, while the North Carolina one was issued over three noted dissents.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who had just joined the court the day before, did not take part in either case. [NYT article] (next VR, see March 7, 2021)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

October 28, 2021: Oklahoma executed John Marion Grant, 60, for the 1998 slaying of a prison cafeteria worker, ending a six-year execution moratorium brought on by concerns over its execution methods,

Prison officials strapped Grant to a gurney inside the execution chamber. He began convulsing and vomiting after they administered the first drug, the sedative midazolam. Several minutes later, two members of the execution team wiped the vomit from his face and neck.

Before the curtain was raised to allow witnesses to see into the execution chamber, Grant could be heard yelling, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” He delivered a stream of profanities before the lethal injection started. He was declared unconscious about 15 minutes after the first of three drugs was administered and declared dead about six minutes after that, at 4:21 p.m.

Someone vomiting while being executed is rare, according to observers.  [AP article] (next DP, see Nov 18)

October 28 Peace Love Art Activism