December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Slave Celia

December 20, 1855: Celia, convicted of first degree murder, was hanged. (see Slave Celia for expanded chronology)

Dyer Anti-lynching Bill

December 20, 1893: Georgia became the first state in the Union to pass a law against lynching, making the act punishable by four years in prison.  The statute was not particularly effective. (next BH, see March 18, 1895; next Lynching, see January 12, 1893; see 19th century for expanded lynching chronology)

38 Years later

December 20, 1921, on the federal level, southern Democrats defeated the Dyer Anti-Lynching bill. Although outnumbered in the House by more than two to one, Democrats under the leadership of Tennessee Representative Garrett filibustered so successfully against consideration of the Dyer Anti-Lynching bill, that Rep Mondell, the Republican floor leader, was forced to capitulate and agree that the bill should not come up until after the Christmas holidays. (see January 4, 1922)

1964 Harlem Riot

December 20, 1964: a jury found William Epton, the leader of the Harlem Progressive Labor Movement, guilty of conspiring to riot, of advocating the overthrow of the New York State government, and of conspiring to overthrow it.(see December 22, 1968)

Howard Beach

December 20, 1986: in Howard Beach, Queens white teens chased Michael Griffith, an African-American youth, onto a freeway where a motorist hit him. Griffith died from his injuries setting off a wave of protests and racial tensions in New York. (see Dec 22)

SOUTH AFRICA/APARTHEID & Nelson Mandela

December 20, 1991: negotiations began to prepare an interim constitution based on full political equality. de Klerk and Mandela traded recriminations, with Mr. de Klerk criticizing Mr. Mandela for not disbanding the A.N.C.’s inactive guerrilla operation and Mr. Mandela saying that the president “has very little idea of what democracy is.” (see June 17, 1992)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

Technological Milestone

Nuclear News

December 20, 1951:  EBR-I (Experimental Breeder Reactor-I) became the first reactor to generate usable amounts of electricity from nuclear energy by lighting four light bulbs at the National Reactor Testing Station of Argonne National Laboratory, Butte County, Idaho. (TM, see March 27, 1953; NN, see February 28, 1953)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

see December 20 Music et al for more

Elvis drafted

December 20, 1957: while spending the Christmas holidays at Graceland, his newly purchased Tennessee mansion, rock-and-roll star Elvis Presley received his draft notice for the United States Army. (see Dec 27)

Beatles

December 20, 1968, The Beatles sent out their Beatles 1968 Christmas Record. (see Dec 28)

Peter, Paul and Mary

December 20 – 26, 1969: “Leaving on a Jet Plane” by Peter, Paul, and Mary #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

December 20, 1960: North Vietnam announced the formation of the National Front for the Liberation of the South. More commonly known as the National Liberation Front (NLF), organizers intended to replicate the success of the Viet Minh, the umbrella nationalist organization that successfully liberated Vietnam from French colonial rule.  (see March 21, 1961)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

The Cold War

December 20, 1963: more than two years after East Germany constructed the Berlin Wall to prevent its citizens from fleeing its communist regime, nearly 4,000 West Berliners were allowed to cross into East Berlin to visit relatives. Under an agreement reached between East and West Berlin, over 170,000 West Berlin citizens received passes. Each pass allowed a one-day visit. (see February 18, 1964)

Dissolution of Yugoslavia

December 20, 1995: NATO began peacekeeping operation in Bosnia. (see March 24, 1998)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

December 20, 1984: in People v. Liberta, the New York State Court of Appeals decided that there was no basis for distinguishing between marital rape and non-marital rape. The court noted that “a marriage license should not be viewed as a license to forcibly rape [the defendant’s] wife with impunity” and struck the marital exemption from the statue in question for violation of the state and federal Constitution.

Guerrilla Girls

In the spring of 1985: Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world, formed in New York City with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality within the fine arts into focus within the greater community. Members were known for the gorilla masks they wore to remain anonymous. They wear the masks to conceal their identity because they believed that their identity was not what mattered as GG1 explains in an interview “…mainly, we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work.” Also, their identity was hidden to protect themselves from the backlash of prominent individuals within the art community. (see Dec 14)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

December 20, 1999: the Vermont Supreme Court ruled in Baker v. State of Vermont that same-sex couples must be treated equally to different-sex married couples. The Vermont legislature responded by establishing civil union, a separate legal status that affords couples some, but not all, of the protections that come with marriage – falling short of the constitutional command of equality, but far more than gay couples had before. The law went into effect on July 1, 2000. (see April 26, 2000)

Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage

December 20, 2013: U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby struck down Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional handing a major victory to gay rights activists in a conservative state where the Mormon Church wields considerable influence. Shelby, in a lawsuit brought by three gay couples, found that an amendment to the Utah Constitution defining marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman violated the rights of gay couples to due process and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution. “The state’s current laws deny its gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry and, in doing so, demean the dignity of these same sex couples for no rational reason. Accordingly, the court finds that these laws are unconstitutional,” Shelby said.(see Dec 23)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

Religion and Public Education

FREE SPEECH

December 20, 2005: in Kitzmiller v. Dover, a US District Court ruled that a Pennsylvania school district’s “intelligent design policy” violated the First Amendment. The policy required district teachers to inform students of the “gaps/problems in Darwin’s Theory,” and they are required to introduce “other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.” (NYT article) (FS, see May 30, 2006; Religion, see May 27, 2012)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

Stop and Frisk Policy

ACLU suit allowed

December 20, 2012: In a unanimous finding, the Appellate Division, First Department, reinstated a purported class action brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union that claimed the NYPD’s refusal to seal records of the stops violated state law. Hundreds of thousands of people who were subjected to the New York Police Department’s controversial “stop and frisk” program, but not convicted of a crime, can sue the NYPD for keeping their personal information in a database, a New York appeals court ruled Thursday.

2012 statistics

In December 2012 statistics showed that the NYPD stopped people 533,042 times: 473,300 were totally innocent (89 percent). 286,684 were black (55 percent); 166,212 were Latino (32 percent); 50,615 were white (10 percent). (see January 8, 2013)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

Environmental Issues

December 20, 2016: President Obama announced what he called a permanent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along wide areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic Seaboard as he tried to nail down an environmental legacy that could not quickly be reversed by Donald J. Trump.

Obama invoked an obscure provision of a 1953 law, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which he said gave him the authority to act unilaterally. While some presidents have used that law to temporarily protect smaller portions of federal waters, Mr. Obama’s declaration of a permanent drilling ban on portions of the ocean floor from Virginia to Maine and along much of Alaska’s coast is breaking new ground.  [NYT article] (see February 14, 2017)

Incandescent Bulbs/Trump

December 20, 2019:  the Trump administration announced that it would block a rule designed to phase out older incandescent bulbs and require Americans to use energy-efficient light bulbs.

In announcing the move, the secretary of energy, Dan Brouillette, who was a former auto lobbyist, said the administration had chosen “to protect consumer choice by ensuring that the American people do not pay the price for unnecessary overregulation from the federal government.” The new rule was unnecessary, he said, because innovation and technology are already “increasing the efficiency and affordability of light bulbs without federal government intervention.”

The rule, which would have gone into effect on Jan. 1, was required under a law passed in 2007 during the administration of President George W. Bush. [NYT article] (next EI, see January 23, or see April 26, 2022 for Bidin change)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

Nuclear/Chemical News

December 20, 2018: North Korea official news agency  said that it would not dismantle its nuclear weapons program until the United States also agreed to diminish its military capacity in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula.  [NYT article] (see January 30, 2019)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

Immigration History

December 20, 2019:  the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General said that it had found “no misconduct or malfeasance” by department officials in the deaths of two Guatemalan children who died in the custody of the United States Border Patrol in December 2018.

The office announced the finding in two brief reports. The reports did not name the children, but the details listed matched the deaths of Jakelin Caal Maquín, 7, and Felipe Gómez Alonso, 8, both of whom died in December 2018.

The Department of Homeland Security said that it was “still saddened by the tragic loss of these young lives,” and added that it continued “to bolster medical screenings and care at D.H.S. facilities on the border.” [NYT article] (next IH, see January 8, 2020)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

Women’s Health

December 20, 2019: the Trump administration added a new policy to the Affordable Care Act that could potentially make it more difficult for women to receive abortions by requiring insurance providers to generate separate bills for anyone whose insurance plan covers abortions. If the bill for abortion coverage goes unpaid, then insurance companies can exercise the right to cancel the entire policy. [Newsweek article] (next WH, see January 17, 2020)

December 20 Peace Love Art Activism

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

BILL OF RIGHTS

December 15, 1791: Virginia became the last state to ratify the Bill of Rights, making the first ten amendments to the Constitution law and completing the revolutionary reforms begun by the Declaration of Independence. Anti-Federalist critics of the document, who were afraid that a too-strong federal government would become just another sort of the monarchical regime from which they had recently been freed, believed that the Constitution gave too much power to the federal government by outlining its rights but failing to delineate the rights of the individuals living under it.

1. First Amendment – Freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government
2. Second Amendment – Right for the people to keep and bear arms, as well as to maintain a militia
3. Third Amendment – Protection from quartering of troops
4. Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure
5. Fifth Amendment – Due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, private property
6. Sixth Amendment – Trial by jury and other rights of the accused
7. Seventh Amendment – Civil trial by jury
8. Eighth Amendment – Prohibition of excessive bail, as well as cruel and unusual punishment
9. Ninth Amendment – Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
10. Tenth Amendment – Powers of states and people.

Fourth Amendment

December 15, 2014: in Heien v. North Carolina the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the police in a case arising from an officer’s “mistake of law.” At issue was a 2009 traffic stop for a single busted brake light that led to the discovery of illegal drugs inside the vehicle. According to state law at the time, however, motor vehicles were required only to have “a stop lamp,” meaning that the officer did not have a lawful reason for the initial traffic stop because it was not a crime to drive around with a single busted brake light. Did that stop therefore violate the 4th Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure? Writing today for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts held that it did not. “Because the officer’s mistake about the brake-light law was reasonable,” Roberts declared, “the stop in this case was lawful under the Fourth Amendment.” (see March 30, 2015)

FREE SPEECH

December 15, 2017: the Trump administration prohibited officials at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agency (CDC) from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in any official documents being prepared for 2018’s budget.

Policy analysts at the Centers were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget. According to an analyst the forbidden words were “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered. [WP article] (see Dec 21)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

Native Americans

December 15, 1890: Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, S.D., during a clash with Indian police. (see Dec 29)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

US Labor History

December 15, 1894:  Judge Woods sentenced labor leader and socialist Eugene V. Debs to six months imprisonment for his leadership of the Pullman railroad strike.  (see February 4, 1896)

US Labor History & Feminism

December 15, 1921: the Kansas National Guard was called out to subdue from 2,000 to 6,000 protesting women who were going from mine to mine attacking non-striking miners in the Pittsburg coal fields. The women made headlines across the state and the nation: they were christened the “Amazon Army” by the New York Times. (F, see February 27, 1922; Labor, see Dec 19)

December 15, 1967: the Age Discrimination in Employment Act supplemented the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which in Title VII prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin — but did not cover age. The age discrimination act was one of the many major legislative achievements of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

The law: “(b) It is therefore the purpose of this chapter to promote employment of older persons based on their ability rather than age; to prohibit arbitrary age discrimination in employment; to help employers and workers find ways of meeting problems arising from the impact of age on employment.”

Vietnam & US Labor History

December 15, 1967: meeting in its biennial convention, the AFL-CIO declared “unstinting support” for “measures the Administration might deem necessary to halt Communist aggression and secure a just and lasting peace” in Vietnam. (Vietnam, see January 3, 1968; Labor, see March 17, 1968)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

BLACK HISTORY

Tom Waller lynched

December 15, 1897: a group of 30 white men approached a group of black men, including an acquaintance of Charles Lewis (see Dec 10), and coerced him into saying that a man named Tom Waller had also been involved in the crime. Though another man in the group insisted this was not true, the unsubstantiated allegation was enough to seal Mr. Waller’s fate.

Soon after he was taken into custody, a growing mob of 400 people seized Waller from law enforcement and conducted a “sham trial”; newspapers reported that several men “held court under a tree,” where Waller was interrogated as a rope was placed around his neck. Some men reportedly suggested that the “trial” be delayed a week because the “evidence” was so scant, but the rest of mob rejected that idea and instead insisted that Waller be lynched that night.

Newspapers later explained that the mob preferred to lynch Mr. Waller immediately because waiting “meant standing guard all night in the cold, and most of those present did not relish this at all.”

As the hundreds of white men in the mob grew “hungry,” press accounts described, “a wagon load of provisions” including fish and lobster was brought forward and everyone “indulged in a hearty supper” before continuing their deadly plan.

The mob ultimately hanged Tom Waller on the night of December 15th, on the same hill where Mr. Lewis had been lynched five days earlier, and left his body hanging until 10am the next morning. (next BH, see February 22, 1898;  see 19th century for expanded lynching chronology)

 Albany Movement

December 15, 1961: going against some of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference advisers, King accepted an invitation to Albany, Georgia and spoke at a rally in support of activists that had be arrested the previous day. (see Albany for expanded chronology)

BLACK & SHOT

December 15, 2015: Chicago Mayor Emanuel announced the creation of the Task Force on Police Accountability, which would study the processes, oversight and training at CPD, and make recommendations.  (B & S and L. McDonald, see Dec 16)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

LGBTQ

December 15, 1950: a Senate report titled “Employment of Homosexuals and Other Sex Perverts in Government“ is distributed to members of Congress after the federal government had covertly investigated employees’ sexual orientation at the beginning of the Cold War. The report states since homosexuality is a mental illness, homosexuals “constitute security risks” to the nation because “those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons.” Over the previous few years, more than 4,380 gay men and women had been discharged from the military and around 500 fired from their jobs with the government. The purging will become known as the “lavender scare.”(see March 25, 1952)

Redefinition

December 15, 1973: in a major breakthrough for lesbian and gay rights, the American Psychiatric Association removed the designation of homosexuality as a mental illness. The designation had been a major stigma on same-sex relations. The American Psychological Association, a different professional group, removed its designation of homosexuality as unhealthy in 1975. (NYT article) (see January 1974)

Washington, D.C.

December 15, 2009: the Washington, D.C. City Council voted to legalize same-sex marriage. [CNN article] (see Dec 18)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

December 15 Music et al

December 15 – March 8, 1963 – Vaughn Meader’s comedy album, The First Family Billboard #1 album.

December 15, 1964, The Beatles: Beatles ’65 released. In two weeks it became the 9^th biggest selling album of 1964. (see Dec 18)

John’s last live performance

December 15, 1969: John Lennon gave his last live performance in England. It was a UNICEF benefit in London. (see Dec 16)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

Space Race

December 15 – 16, 1965: Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford fly Gemini 6 within a few feet of Borman and Lovell in Gemini 7, for the first true rendezvous in space. (NYT article) (see February 3, 1966)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

Feminism

December 15, 1969: Nixon administration released “A Matter of Simple Justice,” a report on women’s rights. The 77-page report declared that the federal government “should be as seriously concerned about sex discrimination as with race discrimination.” To that end, it called on the Nixon administration to convene a national conference on women’s rights and for Congress to develop legislation to eliminate all existing forms of sex discrimination. (see February 1, 1970)

First Secret Service females

December 15, 1971: the Secret Service appointed its first five female special agents. [The Hill article]

Phyllis Schlafly Blasts ERA

In 1972  Phyllis Schlafly published “What’s Wrong with ‘Equal Rights’ for Women,” launching the campaign opposing ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Arguing that the ERA would force women into the military, jeopardize benefits under Social Security, and weaken existing legal protections under divorce and marriage laws, Schlafly played a large part in bringing the movement toward ratification of the amendment to a halt. (text) (see Jan 1)

Anita Hill

December 15, 2017:  announced that Anita Hill would head the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace. The Commission was composed of and funded by some of the most powerful names in Hollywood and was created to tackle widespread sexual abuse and harassment in the media and entertainment industries.

Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm; Maria Eitel, the co-chair of the Nike Foundation; the powerhouse attorney Nina Shaw; and Freada Kapor Klein, the venture capitalist who helped pioneer surveys on sexual harassment decades ago spearheaded the Commission whose mission was “tackle the broad culture of abuse and power disparity.” (see March 15, 2018)

Women’s Health

December 15, 2017: Judge Wendy Beetlestone of the Federal District Court in Philadelphia blocked Trump administration rules that made it easier for employers to deny insurance coverage of contraceptives for women.

Beetlestone issued a preliminary injunction, saying the rules contradicted the text of the Affordable Care Act by allowing many employers to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage if they had religious or moral objections.

In the lawsuit, filed by the State of Pennsylvania, the judge said the rules would cause irreparable harm because tens of thousands of women would lose contraceptive coverage. [NYT article] (see Dec 18)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

Vietnam

December 15, 1969: Nixon announced that 50,000 additional U.S. troops would be pulled out of South Vietnam by April 15, 1970. (see Dec 16)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

Environment

MV Argo Merchant

December 15, 1976: the oil tanker MV Argo Merchant caused one of the worst marine oil spills in history when it runs aground near Nantucket, Massachusetts. (NYT article) (see May 11, 1977)

Paris Accord

December 15, 2018: diplomats from nearly 200 countries reached a deal to keep the Paris climate agreement alive by adopting a detailed set of rules to implement the pact.

The deal, struck after an all-night bargaining session, would ultimately require every country in the world to follow a uniform set of standards for measuring their planet-warming emissions and tracking their climate policies. And it called on countries to step up their plans to cut emissions ahead of another round of talks in 2020.

It also called on richer countries to be clearer about the aid they intend to offer to help poorer nations install more clean energy or build resilience against natural disasters. And it builds a process in which countries that are struggling to meet their emissions goals can get help in getting back on track. (see January 10, 2019)

NYC Gas Ban

December 15, 2021: New York City’s City Council approved a bill banning gas hookups in new buildings. The bill will ban gas-powered stoves, space heaters and water boilers in all new buildings, a move that would significantly affect real estate development and construction in the nation’s largest city and could influence how cities around the world seek to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, which drives climate change.

The  bill effectively required all-electric heating and cooking and the ban would take effect in December 2023 for buildings under seven stories; for taller buildings, developers negotiated a delay until 2027.

Mayor Bill de Blasio had called for the ban two years ago, and wold sign the bill “enthusiastically,” said Ben Furnas, the director of climate and sustainability for the mayor’s office.

“It’s a historic step forward in our efforts to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels,” Mr. Furnas said. “If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.” [NYT article] (next EI, see )

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

The Cold War

People’s Republic of China

December 15, 1978: President Jimmy Carter stated that as of January 1, 1979, the United States would formally recognize the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) and sever relations with Taiwan. (see June 18, 1979)

Dissolution of the USSR

December 15, 1989: a popular uprising began in Romania. [RFE article] (see USSR for expanded chronology)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

TERRORISM

December 15, 1981: a suicide car bomb killed 61 people at the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon; Iraq’s ambassador to Lebanon was among the casualties. (see April 18, 1983)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

Irish Troubles

December 15, 1993:  the Downing Street Declaration, issued jointly by UK and the Republic of Ireland, affirmed the UK would transfer Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland only if a majority of Northern Ireland’s people approved. (see Troubles for expanded chronology)

CLINTON IMPEACHMENT

December 15, 1998: in a blow to White House hopes, 11 moderate House Republicans announced they would vote to impeach the president. (see CI for expanded chronology)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism

Iraq War II

December 15, 2009:  millions of Iraqis turned out to choose a parliament in a mostly peaceful election. [Aljazeera article] (see February 2, 2006)

December 15 Peace Love Art Activism