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Today in Peace and Justice History
| U.S. peace activist and suffragist Kate Richards O’Hare was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for a speech denouncing World War I. Occupying a neighboring jail cell was Emma Goldman, the well-known anarchist organizer, feminist, writer and antiwar critic who was imprisoned for obstructing the draft. O’Hare was one of a number of prisoners Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs cited in his “Canton Speech” for which he in turn was imprisoned. |
More about activist Kate Richards O’Hare  |
Read the speech |
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In a public exchange of letters with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, U.S. President John F. Kennedy formally announced the United States would increase aid to South Vietnam, including the expansion of the U.S. troop commitment. Kennedy, concerned with recent advances made by the communist insurgency movement in South Vietnam, wrote: “We shall promptly increase our assistance to your defense effort.”
Info on Kennedy – Diem letter exchange
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At Yoko Ono’s request, John Lennon fans around the world mourned him with 10 minutes of silent prayer. In New York over 100,000 people converged on Central Park in tribute, and in Liverpool, England, his hometown, a crowd of 30,000 gathered outside of St. George’s Hall on Lime Street.
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| johnlennon.com > |
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“You may say I’m a dreamer.
But I’m not the only one.” |
| Time capsules to mark John Lennon’s legacy |
| Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to lead a major U.S. Indian tribe when she took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. |
| After eight years of negotiations, the United States finally agreed to honor New Zealand’s ban on nuclear weapons in its territory. U.S. Navy ships armed with nuclear weapons no longer visited New Zealand’s ports. |
| Leaders of the states that were parts of the former Yugoslavia signed the Bosnia peace treaty, formally ending four years of bloody and vicious ethnic/religious conflict. The Dayton Accords, as they are known, committed the Balkan states of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina to accept a division of territory, a process to deal with the more than 2 million refugees, and the introduction of 60,000 NATO peacekeeping forces.
The negotiations were led by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, and held principally at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.
The Dayton Accords |
| The Bill of Rights became law when Virginia ratified the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution. |
| Read The Bill of Rights |
The Bill of Rights Defense Committee |
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Albert Einstein urged militant pacifism and the creation of an international war resistance fund. Einstein stated in New York that if two percent of those called for military service were to refuse to fight, and were to urge peaceful means of settling international conflicts, then governments would become powerless since they could not imprison that many people. He struggled against compulsory military service and urged international protection of conscientious objectors. He concluded that peace, freedom for individuals, and security for societies depended on disarmament; otherwise, “slavery of the individual and the annihilation of civilization threaten us.”
Einstein on Peace and World Government |
| Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh sent a note to French Premier Leon Blum congratulating him for his selection as French Premier and asking for peace talks. France had exercised colonial power over the Vietnamese as part of French Indochina, formed in October 1887 from the provinces of Annam, Tonkin, Cochin China, and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added in 1893. Vietnamese nationalists, however, had demanded independence for the three provinces at the end of World War II. |
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The American Psychiatric Association reversed its long-standing position and declared that homosexuality is not a mental illness and “…deplores all public and private discrimination in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodation…”
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| Read the APA on homosexuality |
| The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was shut down 14 years after becoming the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident ever. Nearly nine tons of radioactive material – dozens of times as much as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – were released in the explosion.
The radioactive fallout affected 23 percent of Belarus, with 4.8 percent of Ukrainian territory and 0.5 percent of Russia. The Belarussian government spends 30 percent of its annual budget dealing with the aftermath of Chernobyl. |
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