Peacebuttons.info has served the peace-left community for decades, providing high-quality social justice buttons and the thoughtful series Today in Peace and Justice History. Please support them; the buttons are primo.
Be part of the apparent few working not to repeat history’s mistakes. Check in often and learn about the past so you can help build a better future and a green new world.
Today in Peace and Justice History
Dec. 30, 1901
The worst year in the 20th century for lynching in the U.S. ended with a total of 130 victims (105 Black people, 25 white people). Ida B. Wells-Barnett had been a teacher and newspaper editor in Memphis, Tenn., where she wrote against the evils of lynching in her columns in The Free Speech and Headlight. Forced from the South by the threat of violence, she continued her efforts in Chicago.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
From a letter to President William McKinley from Wells-Barnett, published in the Cleveland Gazette on April 9, 1898:
Mr. President, the colored citizens of this country in general, and Chicago in particular, desire to respectfully urge that some action be taken by you as chief magistrate of this great nation, first for the apprehension and punishment of the lynchers of Postmaster Baker, of Lake City, S.C.; second, we ask indemnity for the widow and children, both for the murder of the husband and father, and for injuries sustained by themselves; third, we most earnestly desire that national legislation be enacted for the suppression of the national crime of lynching.
For nearly twenty years lynching crimes, which stand side by side with Armenian and Cuban outrages, have been committed and permitted by this Christian nation. Nowhere in the civilized world save the United States of America do men, possessing all civil and political power, go out in bands of 50 and 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely powerless. Statistics show that nearly 10,000 American citizens have been lynched in the past 20 years. To our appeals for justice the stereotyped reply has been that the government could not interfere in a state matter. Postmaster Baker’s case was a federal matter, pure and simple. He died at his post of duty in defense of his country’s honor, as truly as did ever a soldier on the field of battle. We refuse to believe this country, so powerful to defend its citizens abroad, is unable to protect its citizens at home. Italy and China have been indemnified by this government for the lynching of their citizens. We ask that the government do as much for its own.
Dec. 30, 1936
Supporters pass in food to sit-down strikers
Members of the United Automobile Workers sat down at a General Motors plant in Flint, Mich. GM, the world’s largest corporation at the time, had refused to recognize or negotiate with the union, despite the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) in 1935 which promised unions the right to organize. The local’s membership adopted a tactic developed by French workers. Instead of picketing outside a factory only to be ignored or forcibly cleared away, the sit-down strike enabled workers to halt production and seize the plant “from the inside.” The strike began just days after the end of a successful sit-down at Ford supplier Kelsey-Hayes.
Workers sit down at GM
“Master Hands,” a corporate documentary about the Flint plant shot shortly before the strike
Dec. 30, 1971
Daniel Ellsberg, a Defense Department analyst, and his colleague Anthony Russo were indicted by a federal grand jury for releasing the Pentagon Papers to the news media. The papers were part of a 7000-page, top-secret government history of the United States’ political and military involvement in the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1971, and described air strikes over Laos, raids along the coast of North Vietnam, and offensive actions taken by U.S. Marines well before the American public had been told that such actions had occurred.
President Richard Nixon ordered an end to U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. The most recent air strikes had been retaliation for North Vietnam’s walking out of the peace negotiations in Paris and pressure to force it to submit to U.S. terms. Bombing of strategic targets and Hanoi (the North’s capital) and Haiphong lasted for eight days with a 36-hour break for Christmas. The 20,000 tons (18.1 million kg) of bombs killed just over 1600 North Vietnamese, and a dozen B-52s were lost. North Vietnam agreed to return to the bargaining table.
Dec. 30, 1993
The state of Israel and the Vatican under Pope John Paul II agreed to extend diplomatic recognition to one another.
Post Comment