July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

Seneca Falls Convention

July 19 – 20, 1848: Seneca Falls Convention About 300 people, including 40 men, met at America’s first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. There they adopt a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled closely after the Declaration of Independence, asserting the “self-evident” truth that “all men and women were created equal.” The delegates also adopt eleven resolutions, including one declaring it “the duty of women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.” (NPR article) (see January 23, 1849)

Voting Rights

July 19, 1917: Dudley Field Malone, collector of the Port of New York and personal friend of Woodrow Wilson, offers resignation five days after witnessing arrests of suffrage pickets, whom he offers to represent in court. Wilson declines Malone’s resignation; Malone later leaves administration over its handling of suffrage protests. (see Aug 14)

ERA

July 19–21, 1944: at its convention, the Democratic Party endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment. (see August 22, 1945)

Geraldine Ferraro

July 19, 1984: Geraldine Ferraro accepted the nomination of running mate to Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale. She was the first woman to be nominated for Vice President by either the Democratic or Republican Party. (2011 NYT obit) (see Dec 20)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Free Speech

Movie censorship

July 19, 1911: Pennsylvania became the first state in the US to approve laws allowing censorship of movies. (see February 23, 1915)

Colin Kaepernick

July 19, 2018: hours after The Associated Press reported that Miami Dolphins players who protest on the field during the anthem could be suspended for up to four games under a team policy issued, the NFL and the players union issued a joint statement saying the two sides were talking things out.

“The NFL and NFLPA, through recent discussions, have been working on a resolution to the anthem issue. In order to allow this constructive dialogue to continue, we have come to a standstill agreement on the NFLPA’s grievance and on the NFL’s anthem policy. No new rules relating to the anthem will be issued or enforced for the next several weeks while these confidential discussions are ongoing,”  (FS & CK, see Aug 30; Labor, see Aug 25)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Black History

Washington DC revolt

July 19, 1919: racial violence erupted in Washington, D.C. when mobs of U.S. soldiers and sailors, home from the war in Europe, attacked African-Americans in response to rumors that an Africa-American had attempted to rape the white wife of a sailor. The police were reportedly “nowhere to be seen” as a mob of about 400 whites invaded the African-American neighborhood in southwest Washington. (Black Past article) (see July 27)

Wichita sit-in

July 19, 1958: a local NAACP chapter on this day sponsored a sit-in in Wichita, Kansas, challenging racially segregated public accommodations. The sit-in was successful, and local lunch counters were desegregated on August 11, 1958.

The Wichita sit-in was significant because the conventional history of the Civil Rights Movement presents the sit-in movement challenging segregated lunch counters and other public accommodations as beginning in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960. In fact, there were a number of earlier sit-ins. See, for example, the early sit-in on April 17, 1943; January 20, 1955; and August 19, 1958. The significance of the February 1960 sit-in is that it launched a national sit-in movement that swept the South and transformed the Civil Rights Movement. (NPR article) (see Aug 19)

Minneapolis revolt

July 19, 1967: a race riot broke out in the North Side of Minneapolis on Plymouth Street during the Minneapolis Aquatennial Parade and business were vandalized and fires break out in the area, although the disturbance is quelled within hours. However, the next day a shooting sets off another incident in the same area that leads to 18 fires, 36 arrests, 3 shootings, 2 dozen people injured, and damages totaling 4.2 million. There will be two more such incidents in the following two weeks. (MNopedia article) (BH & RR, see July 24)

Muhammad Ali

July 19, 1996: Muhammad Ali lights the flame at the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. [Rolling Stone article] (BH, see Oct 10; Ali, see January 8, 2001)

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

Emmett Till

July 18, 2013: Willie Reed, who had changed his name to Willie Louis after the murder trial of Emmett Till and had moved to Chicago, died. Louis, one of the last living witnesses for the prosecution in the Till case, died in Oak Lawn, Ill., a Chicago suburb. He was 76. (BH, see July 19; see ET for expanded story)

Trayvon Martin

July 19, 2013:  President Barack Obama grappled with the Trayvon Martin case in the most personal of terms telling Americans that the slain youth “could have been me 35 years ago” and urging them to do some soul searching about their attitudes on race. He said it may be time to take a hard look at “stand your ground” self-defense laws, questioning whether they contribute “to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see.” (BH & TMS, see July 20; SYG, see Aug 8)

Samuel DuBose

July 19, 2015: in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ray Tensing, a University of Cincinnati police officer, shot and killed Samuel DuBose, an unarmed man, during a traffic stop for a missing front license plate. Tensing fired after DuBose started his car. Tensing stated that DuBose had begun to drive off and that he was being dragged because his arm was caught in the car. Prosecutors alleged that footage from Tensing’s bodycam showed that he was not dragged and a grand jury indicted him on charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter. [Tensing settlement] (B & S, see Sept 8; DuBose, see January 18, 2016)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

July 19 Music et al

Alan Freed

July 19, 1958: Alan Freed Enterprises, Inc filed for bankruptcy. (see Aug 29)

Festival finances

July 19, 1969: John Roberts and Michael Lang discuss finances. Roberts concerned about additional costs. (see Chronology for expanded story)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

World Trade Center

July 19. 1971:  the South Tower of the World Trade Center topped out. (Port Authority timeline on Towers) (see April 4, 1973)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

July 19, 1993: President Clinton announced his ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy regarding gays in the American military. (see Dec 14)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Irish Troubles

July 19, 1997:  the Provisional IRA re-instated the ceasefire. (see Troubles for expanded story)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Fair Housing

July 19, 2013: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a proposed regulation that for the first time clearly defined the steps local and state governments that receive HUD funding must take to examine housing segregation based on race and show they are in line with the Fair Housing Act. (see Dec 3)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

July 19, 2018: the Interior Department proposed the most sweeping set of changes in decades to the Endangered Species Act, the law that brought the bald eagle and the Yellowstone grizzly bear back from the edge of extinction but which Republicans say is cumbersome and restricts economic development.

The proposed revisions had far-reaching implications, potentially making it easier for roads, pipelines and other construction projects to gain approvals than under current rules. One change, for instance, would eliminate longstanding language that prohibits considering economic factors when deciding whether or not a species should be protected.

The agency also intended to make it more difficult to shield species like the Atlantic sturgeon that are considered “threatened,” which is the category one level beneath the most serious one, “endangered.” (see Aug 2)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Pledge of Allegiance & Student Rights

July 19, 2018: U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison found that India Landry (see October 2, 2017) had a legitimate claim that her equal protection rights were breached and ruled that her family’s lawsuit can proceed over allegations that her expulsion was racially driven and violated her constitutional rights. (next PA, see Aug 30; next SR, see Sept 26; next Landry, see Dec 28)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

Family separation policy

July 19, 2018: US. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman granted Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s request to fast-track the multistate lawsuit filed last month against the Trump Administration’s family separation policy. In an unusually comprehensive 10 page order, Judge Pechman noted the unique background of this case and the particular risk of harm posed to the families involved.

Separated still

July 19, 2018: Federal officials said that 364 children had been reunited with their parents to comply with a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration bring together undocumented immigrant families separated under its “zero tolerance” policy. A majority of the nearly 2,600 immigrant children – who were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border with their parents for trying to illegally enter the country – still remained apart from their parents in facilities around the country.  (see July 24)

July 19 Peace Love Art Activism

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism & Voting Rights

July 17, 1917:  sixteen pickets arrested and sentenced to an unprecedented 60 days at Occoquan Workhouse, Virginia. President Wilson pardoned “Bastille Day” prisoners three days later. (see July 19)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

Religion and Public Education

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

July 17, 1925: Judge Raulston ruled in favor of a motion by prosecutors to bar expert testimony by scientists. Raulston argued that the experts’ opinions on evolutionary theory would “shed no light” on the issue at hand in the trial — whether Scopes violated the state’s anti-evolution laws. Many reporters leave town, believing that the trial is effectively over. Scopes was recruited to write news stories on the trial for some of the delinquent journalists. (see Scopes for expanded story)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

The Red Scare

July 17, 1948: States Rights Party. Southern Democrats opposed to President Truman and the Democratic Party’s liberal position on civil rights convene in Alabama to form the new States Rights Party (better known as Dixiecrats), which nominated South Carolinian Strom Thurmond for president. [platform] (see July 20, 1948)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

see July 17 Music et al for more

John Coltrane

July 17, 1967, Jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane died at age 40.

Joint Show

July 17, 1967: the Joint Show opened in the Moore Gallery in San Francisco. It was the first art show to celebrate Psychedelic rock concert poster artists and their work. The show showcased the “BIG FIVE” rock artists of the times: Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley, Victor Moscoso, Stanley Mouse, and Wes Wilson. Each of the five artists created a poster exclusively for the show, which was also made available for purchase. The show helped to create an acceptance of rock concert poster art in the larger art world and the museum community, and led to more gallery shows and the inclusion of these types of works into museum collections. (see Sept 23)

Yellow Submarine

July 17, 1968: The Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine, released in the UK (see Aug 8)

Road to Bethel

July 17, 1969: although initially expressing disinterest in renting land for the festival, Max Yasgur agreed to meet with Woodstock Ventures after hearing that it is the group just kicked out of Wallkill. (see Chronology for expanded story)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Race Revolts

July 17, 1967: Cairo, Illinois revolt. Three days of rioting following  the alleged jailhouse suicide of Pvt. Robert Hunt, a young African-American soldier on leave. Police said Hunt hanged himself with his t-shirt, (see July 19)

School Desegregation

July 17, 2001: Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project published a study on the resegregation of school districts more than 45 years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared legally-mandated racial segregation in public education unconstitutional. In the study, then-Harvard Professor of Education and Co-director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, Dr. Gary Orfield, evaluated statistics from the 1998-1999 school year and concluded that school districts across the nation and particularly in the South were resegregating at an alarming rate, with many Southern school districts returning to segregation levels of the early 1970s.

The study found that more than 70% of African American students attended predominantly minority schools in the 1998-1999 school year. This marked a significant increase from the 63% of African Americans who attended predominantly minority schools in the 1972-1973 school year, before the implementation of many full-fledged desegregation plans. The study linked this resegregation trend to a series of Supreme Court cases decided in the early 1990s — Board of Education of Oklahoma City vs. Dowell (1991), Freeman v. Pitts (1992), and Missouri v. Jenkins (1995) — which made it easier for school districts to be released from federal desegregation orders and more difficult for desegregation orders to be reinstated, thereby crippling desegregation efforts and undercutting progress toward racial integration in public schools. (Harvard article) (BH, see March 24, 2002; SD, see November 2, 2004)

BLACK & SHOT

July 17, 2014: New York City police suspected Eric Garner of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. In an attempt to place him under arrest, officer Daniel Pantaleo put Garner in what New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton described as a chokehold, a move banned by the department. Garner could be seen in a video of the incident saying he can’t breathe as Pantaleo holds him. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital. A Staten Island grand jury voted on Dec. 2 not to indict Pantaleo, setting off a wave of national protests. (2015 NYT article) (see Aug 5)

Confederate Flag/US Military

July 17, 2020: the Pentagon, without once mentioning the word “Confederate,” announced a policy that essentially banned displays of the Confederate flag on military installations around the world.

In a carefully worded memo that Defense Department officials said they hoped would avoid igniting another defense of the flag from President Trump, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper issued guidance that lists the types of flags that can be displayed on military installations — in barracks, on cars and on signs.

According to the guidance, appropriate flags include those of American states and territories, military services and other countries that are allies of the United States. The guidance never specifically says that Confederate flags are banned, but they do not fit in any of the approved categories — and any such flags are prohibited.

“Problem solved — we hope,” one Defense Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so as not to anger Mr. Trump. [NYT article] (next BH, see July 27)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

United Farm Workers

July 17, 1970: six thousand drivers and packing workers in the Salinas Valley in California represented by the Teamsters struck effectively preventing most of the nation’s summer lettuce crop from reaching consumers. (Aug 24 NYT abstract) (see July 23, 1970)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

INDEPENDENCE DAY

July 17, 1992: Slovakia declared independence from Czechoslovakia [Gentle Revolution] (see January 1, 1993)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

July 17, 1998: Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist denies an extension of the temporary stay on Secret Service testimony. The subpoenaed Secret Service agents appeared before the grand jury, although only three of them testify. Larry Cockell, who is not one of the agents to testify, spends the afternoon waiting. (see Clinton for expanded story)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ & BSA

July 17, 2012: the Boy Scouts of America reaffirmed its longtime policy of barring openly gay boys from membership and gay or lesbian adults from serving as leaders. The decision came after what the organization described as a wide-ranging internal review, and despite public protests. The exclusion policy “reflects the beliefs and perspectives” of the organization, the Boy Scouts said in a news release. [NYT article] (LGBTQ, see July 31; BSA, see Oct 8)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

July 17, 2013: in a 3-2 decision the South Carolina Supreme Court awarded custody of Veronica Brown, a Cherokee child at the center of a protracted legal battle to a non-Native couple attempting to adopt her. The court ruled that Matt and Melanie Capobianco of James Island, S.C., were the only party properly seeking to adopt the three-year-old girl known as “Baby Veronica” and ordered the lower family court to finalize the adoption. (Indian Country Today article) (see Veronica for expanded story)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

July 17, 2018: the Trump administration officially killed a regulation that would have required employers to publicly disclose more information about the union-busting consultants they hire.

The Labor Department rescinded what was known as the “persuader rule,” a 2016 reform introduced under former President Barack Obama. The rule would have forced businesses to report more of the spending they steer toward anti-union advisers who help scuttle organizing drives by employees.

The agency said it was spiking the rule because it believed it violated attorney-client privilege “by requiring confidential information to be part of disclosures,” an argument that business groups had made to the Labor Department and in court.

\The AFL-CIO union federation criticized the Trump administration for dumping what it described as a commonsense reform that would have brought more sunlight to a “sinister” industry. The rule had been in the works for about five years before the Obama administration released it. (see July 19)

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

DACA Suspended

July 16, 2021: judge Andrew S. Hanen of the United States District Court in Houston ruled that President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program by executive order in 2012.

The program that had shielded hundreds of thousands of undocumented young adults from deportation. Hanen’s ruling threw into question yet again the fate of immigrants known as Dreamers.

But the judge wrote that current program recipients would not be immediately affected, and that the federal government should not “take any immigration, deportation or criminal action” against them that it “would not otherwise take.”

The Department of Homeland Security could continue to accept new applications but was temporarily prohibited from approving them, Hanen ruled. Immigrants currently enrolled in the program, most of whom were brought to the United States as children, would retain the ability to stay and work in the country, though those protections could evaporate if the government was unable to rectify a series of legal shortcomings. (next IH, see ; next DACA, see )

July 17 Peace Love Art Activism