February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism, BLACK HISTORY & Voting Rights

February 3, 1870: the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution ratified. It states that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and other feminists will develop a constitutional argument stating that the Fifteenth Amendment’s gender-neutral language and the transfer of control over suffrage from the states to the federal government, coupled with the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, resulted in a constitutional protection for women’s right to vote.  (Feminism & Voting Rights, see Nov 5, 1872; BH, see Feb 25)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

FEMINISM

Voting Rights

February 3, 1918: Suffragist Lucy Burns notified the NY Board of Education that she declined the teaching position in the Bay Ridge High School. There had been a number of complaints because of her previous arrests and time in jail. (see Mar 4)

Malala Yousafzai

February 3, 2013: Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital doctors said that they were “very pleased” with Yousufzai’s progress after five hours of skull reconstruction and ear surgery. (Feminism, see  Feb 11; MY, see July 11)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Winfred Lynn

February 3, 1944: the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on this day rejected Winfred Lynn’s challenge to the racially segregated draft during World War II. Lynn was an African-American gardener from Long Island, New York, who refused to cooperate with the segregated draft.

Lynn’s challenge was based on the 1940 Selective Service Act law that established a military draft in preparation for World War II. It included a clause prohibiting racial discrimination. Nonetheless, the U.S. Armed Forces continued to maintain separate drafts for whites and African-Americans — and segregated military units. Civil rights leader. 

The U.S. District Court rejected Lynn’s case on December 4, 1942, and on this day by a vote of 2–1 the Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision.(see Feb 16)

Family Sentenced to Death

February 3, 1948:  Rosa Lee Ingram, a Black woman, and two of her children, Wallace, 17, and Sammie Lee, 14, were convicted by an all-white jury in a one-day trial in Ellaville, Georgia. The three family members were sentenced to death by electric chair for killing an armed white man in self-defense after he violently assaulted and threatened them.

After a post-trial motion and pressure from civil rights activists, the trial judge changed the Ingrams’ sentences to life imprisonment—then in July 1948, the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed their convictions and life sentences. Though Ms. Ingram and her sons no longer had death sentences, they were sent to the state penitentiary and were each forced to serve more than a decade in prison for daring to defend themselves against a violent, armed assault by a white man. The Ingrams were not released on parole until 1959. [EJI story]  (next BH, see )

Autherine Lucy

February 3, 1956: despite roadblock after roadblock, Autherine Lucy enrolled as a graduate student in library science, becoming the first African American ever admitted to a white public school or university in the Alabama. (see Autherine Lucy for expanded story; next BH, see Feb 6)

The Greensboro Four

February 3, 1960: more than 60 students, one-third of them female, returned to the Greensboro store and sat down at every available lunch counter seat. Students from Bennett College and Dudley High School increased the number of protesters, and many carpooled to and from the F.W. Woolworth store to sit-in shifts. 

Members of the Ku Klux Klan, including the state’s official chaplain George Dorsett, were present. White patrons taunted the students as they studied. A statement issued from F.W. Woolworth’s national headquarters read that company policy was “to abide by local custom.” (see G4 for expanded chronology)

Terrorism

February 3, 2014: the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Alabama announced that Steven Joshua Dinkle, 28, former Exalted Cyclops of the Ozark, Ala., chapter of the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), pleaded guilty in federal court to hate crime and obstruction of justice charges for his role in a 2009 cross burning. (see Mar 4)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

Loewe v Lawlor

February 3, 1908: in Loewe v Lawlor,  the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that union-sponsored boycotts were illegal and applied the Sherman Antitrust Act to labor as well as capital. It was also decided that individual unionists could be held personally liable for damages incurred by the activities of their union. (see  Mar 10)

United States v. Darby Lumber Co

February 3, 1941:  in United States v. Darby Lumber Co, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, holding that the U.S. Congress had the power under the Commerce Clause to regulate employment conditions thus banning child labor and establishing the 40-hour work week. (see Mar 8)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

The Red Scare

February 3, 1950: authorities in Great Britain arrested Klaus Fuchs, a German-born British scientist who helped developed the atomic bomb, for passing top-secret information about the bomb to the Soviet Union. The arrest of Fuchs led authorities to several other individuals involved in a spy ring, culminating with the arrest of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and their subsequent execution.  (RS, see Feb 9; Nuclear/Chemical News, see Mar 1)

February 3, 1962:  President Kennedy banned all trade with Cuba. (see CMC for expanded chronology)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

February 3 Music et al

Winter Dance Party

 

February 3, 1959: Winter Dance Party tour performers (see Jan 23 music et al) Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.

“It was already snowing at Minneapolis, and the general forecast for the area along the intended route indicated deteriorating weather conditions,” wrote the Civil Aeronautics Board investigators six months after the crash. “The ceiling and visibility were lowering…and winds aloft were so high one could reasonably have expected to encounter adverse weather during the estimated two-hour flight.” All of this information was available to 21-year-old pilot Roger Peterson, if only he had asked for it. Instead, he relied on an incomplete weather report and on the self-confidence of youth in making the decision to take off from Clear Lake, Iowa, shortly after midnight on February 3, 1959. Untrained and uncertified in instrument-only flight, Peterson was flying into conditions that made visual navigation impossible. “Considering all of these facts,” the investigating authorities concluded, “the decision to go seems most imprudent.” (see April 27)

Bob Dylan

February 3, 1964: Dylan, along with friends Victor Maymudes (his first road manager),  Pete Karman (Suze Rotolo’s request to keep an eye on Dylan), and Paul “Pablo” Clayton (his tune was appropriated by Dylan for “Don’t Think Twice.”

Though Dylan would play a few concerts on the trip, it’s main purpose was to imitate Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road.

Among the songs he wrote on the trip were: “Chimes of Freedom” and “Mr Tambourine Man” (see Feb 25)

Green Tambourine

February 3 – 9, 1968: “Green Tambourine” by the Lemon Pipers #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCLiRyO2D8U

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Space Race

February 3, 1966: the Soviet Union accomplished the first controlled landing on the moon, when the unmanned spacecraft Lunik 9 touched down on the Ocean of Storms. After its soft landing, the circular capsule opened like a flower, deploying its antennas, and began transmitting photographs and television images back to Earth. (History dot com article) (see Mar 4)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

February 3, 1983: speaking at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, President Ronald Reagan issued a Proclamation designating 1983 the “Year of the Bible.” He issued the proclamation in response to a Congressional resolution advocating such a proclamation in late 1982. The Proclamation was a blatant violation of the separation of church and state, since it implied official government support for a particular religion — and ignored the views of all people in America who do not worship the Christian Bible or do not adhere to any religious faith. (Proclamation 5018) (see March 5, 1984)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

February 3, 1984: the Environmental Protection Agency ordered a ban on the pesticide ethylene dibromide (EDB) for grain products. Recent tests by government agencies had shown that the pesticide was often found on grain products in stores and on most imported fruits, especially citrus fruits, papayas and mangoes.  (see Dec 2 – 3)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

February 3, 1994: President Bill Clinton announced the lifting of the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam, citing the cooperation of Vietnam’s communist government in helping the United States locate the 2,238 Americans still listed as missing in the Vietnam War.  (see July 11, 1995)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

DEATH PENALTY

February 3, 1997: the American Bar Association took action that it hoped would focus more attention on systemic problems and lack of fairness in the application of the death penalty in the United States. While taking no position on the death penalty per se, the ABA adopted a resolution initiated by the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities that urges a halt to executions until concerns about capital punishment in the U.S. were addressed. Specifically, the resolution called for capital jurisdictions to impose a moratorium on all executions until they can:

(1) ensure that death penalty cases are administered fairly and impartially, in accordance with due process, and

(2) minimize the risk that innocent persons may be executed. 

(see March 3, 1999)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

February 3, 1999: House prosecutors questioned White House aide Sidney Blumenthal in a closed-door deposition. (see Clinton for expanded story)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Iraq War II

CIA

February 3, 2004:  the CIA admitted that there was no imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  (see Apr 28)

Bush requests additional $

February 3, 2006:  Bush requested an additional $70 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, $120 billion total for 2006. (see Feb 28)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

February 3, 2015:  the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit denied the Alabama Attorney General’s motion for a stay in Searcy v. Strange and Strawser v. Strange. With the ruling, same-sex couples could begin to marry beginning February, 9, unless the US Supreme Court issued a stay. (NYT article) (see Feb 8)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

ADA

February 3, 2015: the city of Fallon, Nevada reached an agreement with the Justice Department to settle allegations the city engaged in a pattern of discrimination by requiring job applicants to disclose disabilities and/or medical information before they were offered city jobs.

The Justice Department first notified Fallon in July 2013 it was investigating alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Fallon Mayor Kenneth Tedford signed the agreement pledging to end the practice and take several other steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again, including providing ADA training to all supervisors and other employees involved in making hiring or personnel decisions.

The Justice Department said in a statement that it had reached similar agreements with the cities of DeKalb, Illinois, Vero Beach, Florida and Isle of Palms, South Carolina. (see Apr 10)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

February 3, 2017: Judge James Robart of Federal District Court for the Western District of Washington (State) temporarily blocked President Trump’s week-old immigration order from being enforced nationwide, reopening America’s door to visa holders from seven predominantly Muslim countries and dealing the administration a humbling defeat.

The White House vowed to fight what it called an “outrageous” ruling, saying it would seek an emergency halt to the judge’s order as soon as possible and restore the president’s “lawful and appropriate order.”

 “The president’s order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people,” the White House said. A revised statement released later omitted the word “outrageous.” (NYT article) (see Feb 4)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

Trump Impeachment

February 3,  2020: President Trump’s defense team and the House impeachment managers made their closing arguments in the impeachment trial.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin proposed censuring the President instead of voting to remove him from office, thinking that such a move would get a bipartisan majority that a conviction vote would not.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said that while she would not vote to convict Trump, his actions were “shameful and wrong.”  [CNN article] (next TI, see Feb 5 or see Trump for expanded chronology)

February 3 Peace Love Art Activism

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, 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 – 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 – 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, 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, 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, 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