Tag Archives: January Peace Love Art Activism

January Peace Love Art Activism

January Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

January Peace Love Art Activism

In January 1792: Deborah Sampson petitioned the Massachusetts State Legislature for pay which the army had withheld from her because she was a woman. Her petition passed through the Senate and was approved, then signed by Governor John Hancock. The General Court of Massachusetts verified her service and wrote that she “exhibited an extraordinary instance of female heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful gallant soldier, and at the same time preserving the virtue and chastity of her gender, unsuspected and unblemished“. The court awarded her a total of 34 pounds. (see Deborah Samson for expanded chronology)

Mary Roberts Rinehart

In January 1915: Mary Roberts Rinehart, the NY based writer, went to the front (WWI) and did not hold back from getting close insight as she visited the trenches. She was the first journalist to reach the front during the war. (see Jan 12)

In January 1917: operating under the slogan “for God, for Country, for Home” The National League for Women’s Service was established with the intention of coordinating women’s war work, developing resources, and providing training for females across the country in case they were needed to supplement the Red Cross, navy, or army. (see Jan 9)

January Peace Love Art Activism

Black History

Chatham Manor Slave Revolt

January 1805: the enslaved people at Chatham Manor (Virginia) staged a revolt against their overseer, Mr. Starke. The overseer had attempted to cut their Christmas holiday short and compel the slaves to return early to work. The community of slaves resisted, seized and bound the overseer, and proceeded to whip him. The overseer eventually escaped to nearby Falmouth where he enlisted the help of four other men to help him subdue the revolt.

In the ensuing violence, one slave was wounded while another attempted to escape across the Rappahannock River, only to fall through the ice and drown. Later an enslaved man named Abraham was executed for “conspiracy and insurrection”, while two others, Robin and Cupid, were initially condemned to death and later sent further south, possibly to a slave colony in the Caribbean.

William Fitzhugh, the Manor’s owner, successfully petitioned the state of Virginia for compensation for his lost slaves, and was rewarded with $1400 for his lost investment. [NPS artcle] (next BH, see March 2, 1807; next Slave revolt, see  January 8, 1811; or see SR for expanded chronology of slave revolts)

Scottboro Januarys

In January 1932,: NAACP withdrew from the case.

January Peace Love Activism

In January 1933: The International Labor Defense retained Samuel Liebowitz, a New York lawyer, to defend the Scottsboro boys.

In January 1935: The US Supreme Court agreed to review the most recent Scottsboro convictions.

In January 1944: Clarence Norris and Andy Wright were paroled.

In January 2004: the town of Scottsboro, Alabama dedicated a historical marker in commemoration of the case at the Jackson County Court House.  (see Scottsboro Travesty for expanded chronology)

James H Meredith

January Peace Love Activism

In January 1967: Pulitzer Prize for Photography: Jack R. Thornell for his photograph of James Meredith after being shot on June 6, 1966. (next Meredith, see March 8, 1967)

Black Panthers

January Peace Love Activism

In January 1967: first Black Panther Party office opens at 5624 Grove Street, Oakland, CA. Panthers patrol the street of Oakland. (BH, see Jan 9; BP, see May 2)

January Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

ONE, Inc

In January 1953, LGBTQ:  ONE, Inc. an early gay rights organization and associated with the Mattachine Society published the first  issue of ONE Magazine, the first U.S. pro-gay publication, and sold it openly on the streets of Los Angeles. (see April 27, 1953)

Evan Wolfson

January Peace Love Activism

In January 2003: Evan Wolfson founded Freedom to Marry, the campaign to win marriage nationwide.  (see June 26, 2003)

January Peace Love Art Activism

see January Music et al for more

Two Steps from the Blues

In January 1961: Bobby “Blue” Bland released Two Steps from the Blues album. Bland was an original member of the Beale Streeters and was sometimes referred to as the “Lion of the Blues”. Along with such artists as Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, and Junior Parker, Bland developed a sound that mixed gospel with the blues and R&B. An imitator of Frank Sinatra, he was also known as the “Sinatra of the blues”, his music being influenced by Nat King Cole. Bland was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1981, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

“Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”

In January 1962: Bob Dylan wrote  “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” (see Mar 11)

Albert Ayler

In January 1965: Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity album released. “Ayler was among the most primal of the free jazz musicians of the 1960s; critic John Litweiler wrote that ‘never before or since has there been such naked aggression in jazz.’ He possessed a deep blistering tone—achieved by using the stiff plastic Fibrecane no. 4 reeds[2] on his tenor saxophone—and used a broad, pathos-filled vibrato.”

John Lennon/FBI

In January 1972: the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a file on John Lennon and Yoko Ono fearing they would organize the youth vote and prevent a second term for President Richard Nixon. (see Feb 4)

John and Yoko

In January 1975: John and Yoko reunited after 18 month separation—the so-called “Lost Weekend.” (see Jan 9)

January Peace Love Art Activism

Irish Troubles

In January 1998: after 15 years and many media reports suggesting the original tribunal’s inquiry was flawed, a second commission of inquiry, chaired by Lord Saville, was established  to re-examine ‘Bloody Sunday’. (see IT for expanded chronology)

January Peace Love Art Activism

Oklahoma City Explosion

In January 2000: Terry Nichols was brought from the prison in Colorado to Oklahoma to face the state trial on 160 capital counts of first-degree murder and one count each of fetal homicide, first-degree arson, and conspiracy. (see June 11, 2001)

January Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

In January 2012: volunteers in the state of Wisconsin submitted nearly a million signatures (double the number of signatures required) calling for a recall election of Governor Scott Walker in protest of his public fight last year to abandon the collective bargaining rights of public workers. (see Apr 30)

January Peace Love Art Activism

January 31 Peace Love Art Activism

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

January 30 Peace Love Art Activism

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