Nazi Germany
invaded Poland, overwhelming the Polish Army with 58 German
divisions and air cover from the German air force, the
Luftwaffe. This action started the second world war, prompting
England and France to declare war on Germany two days
later.
September 1,
1945
The Emperor
of Japan surrendered unconditionally to the U.S. and its
allies in a ceremony on the deck of the battleship U.S.S.
Missouri, ending the second world
war.
September 1,
1986
Angelo
(Charlie) Liteky & George Mizo, both Vietnam veterans,
began an open-ended Fast For Life on the steps of the U.S.
Capitol.
They were
calling attention to their opposition to U.S. support of the
Nicaraguan contras and repressive regimes in El Salvador and
Guatemala, “our expression of a deeply felt
desire to do everything and anything we can . . . to stop the
war with Nicaragua.”
Charles
Liteky
George
Mizo
Liteky
was a Catholic chaplain in the Vietnam War and had received
the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Charles Liteky
and his subsequent peace efforts
September 1,
1987
During a
nonviolent protest at the Concord (California) Naval Weapons
Station, a Navy munitions train ran over Brian
Willson.
Brian Willson
bird-watching California, 1997.
An Air Force and
Vietnam veteran, Willson and the other protesters were
attempting to stop shipment of weapons to Nicaragua and El
Salvador. They considered U.S. policy in Central America a
violation of the Nuremberg Principles. Willson lost both legs
and suffered other injuries but has remained an active and
articulate leader in the anti-military movement.
Willson’s
testimony before the U.S. House Armed Services Subcommittee on
Investigations
September 1,
1989
White
House staffers decided to purchase some crack cocaine so
President George H.W. Bush could hold the illegal drug in his
hands during a national address. On the first attempt, the
drug dealer didn't show up. On the second try, an undercover
drug agent's body microphone didn't work. Trying for the third
time, Bush's team managed to purchase the crack, but the
camera operator videotaping the deal missed the action as a
homeless person assaulted
him.
September 1,
1997
Kurdish and
British activists blockaded an arms trade exhibition outside
London. 89 members of Campaign Against the Arms Trade
(CAAT)were arrested for protesting the presence of Turkish,
Chinese and Indonesian government representatives in Britain
to purchase weapons. The Labour government had pledged
“[We will]
not permit the sale of arms to regimes that could use them for
internal repression or external aggression . . .
.” Great Britain is the world’s second largest
arms manufacturer (by dollar volume) after the
U.S.
What happened
that day
September
1 - International Day of War Tax Resistance.
“Refusing to pay
taxes for war is probably as old as the first taxes levied for
warfare...”
History of War
Tax Resistance
September 2,
1885
A mob of white
coal miners, led by the Knights of Labor, violently attacked
their Chinese co-workers in Rock Springs, Wyoming, killing 28
and burning the homes of 75 Chinese families. The white miners
wanted the Chinese barred from working in the mine. The mine
owners and operators had brought in the Chinese ten years
earlier to keep labor costs down and to suppress
strikes.
Chinese fleeing
Rock Springs
The unfortunate
story and illustrations of the scene
September
2, 1945
Revolutionary
leader Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam a republic and independent
from France (National Day). Half a million people gathered in
Hanoi to hear him read the Vietnamese Declaration of
Independence, which was modeled on the U.S. Declaration of
Independence.
Read the text
and note the similarities
note:Ho Chi Minh
translates to 'He Who
Enlightens'
September 2,
1966
On what
was supposed to be the first day of school in Grenada,
Mississippi—and the first day in an integrated school for 450
Negro children—the school board postponed opening of school
for 10 days because of “paperwork.” Nevertheless, the high
school played its first football game that night. Some of the
Negro kids who had registered for that school tried to attend
the game but were beaten and their car windows
smashed.
September 2,
1969
Vietnamese
revolutionary and national leader Nguyen Tat Thanh (aka Ho Chi
Minh), 79, died of natural causes in Hanoi.
Uncle
Ho
Ho and his
struggle for Vietnamese independence
Ho Chi
Minh
September 3,
1783
The Paris Peace
Treaty between the U.S. and Great Britain — formally ending
the American War for Independence — was signed by John Adams,
Benjamin Franklin and John Jay. In addition to giving
formal recognition to the U.S., the treaty established U.S.
boundaries, specified certain fishing rights, allowed
creditors of each country to be paid by citizens of the other,
restored the rights and property of Loyalists, opened up the
Mississippi River to citizens of both nations, and provided
for evacuation of all British forces.
Text of the
Treaty of Paris
September 3,
1838
Frederick
Douglass made his escape from slavery in Baltimore and went on
in life to become an abolitionist, journalist, author, and
human rights advocate.
The escape from
“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American
Slave” A Frederick
Douglass biography
September 3,
1957
Elizabeth
Eckford was blocked from becoming the first black student at
Little Rock’s Central High School in Arkansas.
September 3,
1970
Representatives
from 27 African nations, the Caribbean nations, four South
American countries, Australia, and the U.S. met in Atlanta,
Georgia, for the first Congress of African People.
Read more about
CAP in historical context
September 3,
1997
The Musa
Anter, or Kurdish Peace Train (named after an assassinated
Kurdish writer) was organized by peace activists to call
attention to the oppression of the Kurdish people in Turkey by
their own government. At the time, the Turkish words for Kurd,
Kurdish, guerilla and torture were banned, and it was illegal
to speak the Kurdish language.
The Peace
Train was to leave London and travel through Europe to
Diyarbakir in eastern Turkey to celebrate International
Anti-War Day there. Germany disallowed passage of the Train
through its territory (the Germans and Turks have strong
military ties). The group then flew to Istanbul, intending to
take a fleet of busses to the Kurdish region. Turkish troops
stopped them from reaching Diyarbakir, forcing them back to
the capital. On this day they tried to hold a press
conference to discuss the Kurdish issue. The police arrested
or beat all present, including foreign
diplomats.
The story of the
Musa Anter Peace Train
September 4,
1949
Paul Robeson,
scholar, athlete, musician and leader, defying a racist and
red-baiting mob, sang to 15,000 at a Labor Day gathering in
Peekskill, New York.
The story and
photographs of what happened
Paul Robeson (at
microphone) singing to the Labor Day gathering in Peekskill,
New York
Film from that
day narrated by Sidney Poitier
September 4,
1954
The Peace Pledge
Union (PPU) organized a demonstration against the H-Bomb in
London’s Trafalgar Square. The PPU dates back to October
1934.
The PPU
today
History of the
Peace Pledge Union
Young Peace
Pledge Union members
today.
September 4,
1957
Elizabeth Eckford
and eight other young Negroes were blocked from becoming the
first black student at Central High School in Little Rock,
Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus had called out the National
Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of the public
schools in the state’s capital. President Dwight
Eisenhower eventually sent in federal troops to guarantee the
law was enforced.
Elizabeth
Eckford
Read
more
Elizabeth Eckford
followed and taunted by mob,
1957.
September 4,
1970
Vietnam Veterans
Against the War (VVAW) began Operation RAW (Rapid American
Withdrawal). Over the following three days more than 200
veterans, assisted by the Philadelphia Guerilla Theater,
staged a march from Morristown, New Jersey, to Valley Forge,
Pennsylvania, reenacting the invasion of small rural hamlets
along the way.
Operation Rapid
American Withdrawal 1970-2005: An Exhibition:
September 4,
1978
Simultaneous
demonstrations in Moscow’s Red Square and in front of the
White House in Washington, D.C. were organized by the War
Resisters League, calling for nuclear
disarmament.
September 5,
1882
Well over 10,000
workers demanding the 8-hour day marched to protest working
conditions in the first-ever U.S. Labor Day parade, held in
New York City. About a quarter million New Yorkers turned out
to watch.
The idea was that
of Peter J. McGuire, a union carpenter and cofounder of the
Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, a precursor
of the American Federation of Labor.
< Peter J.
McGuire, the carpenter and labor leader who conceived of Labor
Day
He wanted to
honor the American worker and create a holiday break between
the 4th of July and Thanksgiving, proposing a “festive parade
through the streets of the city.”
1st Labor Parade
in Union Square, NYC 1882
Originally the
second Tuesday of the month, it is now the first Monday, and
recognized as a national holiday.
More on the
history and practice of Labor Day
September 5,
1917
In 48 coordinated
raids across the country, later known as the Palmer Raids,
federal agents seized records, destroyed equipment and books,
and arrested hundreds of activists involved with the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known fondly as the
Wobblies. Among the arrested was William D. “Big Bill”
Haywood, a leader of the IWW, for the “crimes of labor" and
“obstructing World War I.”
Attorney General
Mitchell Palmer
Big Bill
Haywood
An Italian
anarchist’s bomb blew himself up on the porch of Attorney
General Mitchell Palmer’s residence in Washington shortly
after the discovery of 38 bombs mailed to leading
politicians.
More on Attorney
General Palmer
September 5,
1981
The Greenham
Common Women's Peace Camp was established outside Greenham Air
Base in England, as “Women For Life On
Earth.”
More on Greenham
Common Women's Peace Camp
Greenham Peace
Camp
April,
1983.
September 6,
1941
All Jews over
the age of six in German-occupied territories were ordered by
the Nazi regime to wear a yellow Star of David on their
clothing.
September 6,
1963
Anti-nuclear
marchers who began in Glasgow, Scotland, arrived in London and
attempted to present a dummy missile to the British Imperial
War Museum.
September 7,
1948
3,000
attended a rally to publicly launch the Peace Council in
Melbourne,
Australia.
September 7,
1957
Barbara
Gittings organized the first New York meeting held for the
Daughters of Bilitis, a pioneer lesbian organization. The
group was founded two years earlier in San
Francisco.
Read
more
Cover from their
magazine "The Ladder", October,1968
Barabara Gittings
leading a picket in the '60s
September 7,
1990
Two British peace
activists, Stephen Hancock and Mike Hutchinson known as the
Upper Heyford Plowshares were sentenced to 15 months in prison
for disabling an F-111 bomber in Oxford,
England.
A chronology of
Plowshares actions
A brief History
of Direct Disarmament Actions
September 7,
1992
South African
troops killed at least 24 people and injured 150 more at an
African National Congress (ANC) rally on the border of Ciskei,
in South Africa. 50,000 ANC supporters had turned out to
demand Ciskei’s re-absorption into South Africa. Ciskei was
one of ten black “homelands,” so designated to keep blacks
from claiming citizenship in South Africa itself. They were a
legal fiction, not recognized by any other country, that was
part of the racially separatist apartheid
regime.
Read more
September 7,
1996
Two women were
arrested for trespass at the Norfolk (Virginia) Naval Base
after walking into the base with a banner reading, "Love Your
Enemies."
September 8,
1756
Colonel John
Armstrong and troops under his command destroyed the Indian
village of Kittanning. The Corporation of the City of
Philadelphia awarded a silver medal to Armstrong and his
officers for their
action.
September 8,
1941
In
Norway, 2000 workers in the shipyards went on strike against
diversion of milk, "depriving mothers and babies," to military
use by the German soldiers in Finland. In retaliation, Oslo
was placed under a 7 o'clock nightly curfew, after which
transportation was stopped, public meetings prohibited, radios
seized, dancing forbidden. Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and
Salvation Army organizations were all
dissolved.
Contemporary
report of the resistance: “Norway Starts Something”
September 8,
1965
Table
grape pickers, the mostly Filipino members of the Agricultural
Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), led by Larry Itliong,
went on strike for higher wages in Delano,
California.
Background on
farm labor organizing
Larry
Itliong
September 9,
1862
Minnesota
Governor Alexander Ramsey declared that "The Sioux Indians of
Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the
borders of the state." The previous month the Dakota,
or Santee, Sioux, long burdened by treaty violations and late
or unfair payments from Indian agents, killed four settlers
and decided to attack settlers throughout the Minnesota River
valley. The number killed was estimated between 300 and 800,
until 9/11 the largest civilian death toll in the U.S. The
number of Indian deaths was not recorded.
September 9,
1944
Religious
conscientious objector Corbett Bishop was arrested after
walking out of a Civilian Public Service Camp. During
subsequent trials and imprisonments, he refused any type of
cooperation with the government until he was released 193 days
later.
" I'm not
going to cooperate in any way, shape or form. I was
carried in here.
If you hold me,
you'll have to carry me out.
War is wrong. I
don't want any part of it." - Corbett
Bishop, 1906-1961
September 9,
1963
Students at Chu
Van An boys' high school in Saigon tore down the government
flag and raised a Buddhist flag to protest the corrupt Diem
regime in South Vietnam; 1,000 were
arrested.
September 9,
1971
The Attica (New
York) State Penitentiary revolt began. The interracial revolt
was led by blacks but featured cooperation between prisoners
of different racial and ethnic
backgrounds.
It was finally
brutally suppressed by the state five days later, upon orders
from Governor Nelson Rockefeller who refused to become
directly involved. 29 prisoners and 10 guards were shot and
killed by attacking state troopers in the bloodiest prison
confrontation in U.S. history. The prisoners had been
demanding improvements in their living and working conditions
at the increasingly overcrowded facility.
Read
more
September 9,
1980
Eight activists
from the Atlantic Life Community were arrested after hammering
the nose cones of two missiles at the General Electric plant
in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Read about
Plowshares 8
The Plowshares
8(in alphabetical order):
Daniel Berrigan,
Philip Berrigan, Dean Hammer, Carl Kabat, Elmer Maas, Anne
Montgomery, Molly Rush, and John
Schuchardt
This action would
become the first of an international movement of dozens of
"Plowshares" anti-nuclear direct actions.
A chronology of
Plowshares actions
September 9,
1997
Sinn Fein
(pronounced shin fayn), the Irish Republican Army's allied
political party, formally renounced violence by accepting the
principles put forward by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell
(D-Maine) who was mediating the talks between the Irish
Republicans and the British Unionists on Northern Ireland's
future.
Senator George
Mitchell
The Mitchell
Principles: • To
democratic and exclusively peaceful means of resolving
political issues; • To the total disarmament of all
paramilitary organisations; • To agree that such
disarmament must be verifiable to the satisfaction of an
independent commission; • To renounce for themselves, and
to oppose any effort by others, to use force, or threaten to
use force, to influence the course or the outcome of all-party
negotiations; • To agree to abide by the terms of any
agreement reached in all-party negotiations and to resort to
democratic and exclusively peaceful methods in trying to alter
any aspect of that outcome with which they may disagree;
and, • To urge that "punishment" killings and beatings stop
and to take effective steps to prevent such
actions.
September 10,
1897
Nineteen unarmed
striking coal miners were killed and 36 more wounded in
Lattimer (near Hazleton), Pennsylvania, for refusing to
disperse, by a posse organized by the Luzerne County sheriff.
The strikers, most of whom were shot in the back, were
originally brought in as strike-breakers, but later created
their own union.
The background
and details
September 10,
1963
Twenty
black students entered public schools in Birmingham, Tuskegee
and Mobile, Alabama. The Gov. George C. Wallace had ordered
Alabama state troopers to stop the federal court-ordered
integration of Alabama’s elementary and high schools. Pres.
John Kennedy responded by calling out the Alabama National
Guard to protect the students and to see the order
enforced. Pres. Kennedy spoke that day at American
University’s commencement, saying, "Peace need
not be impractical, war not inevitable . . . There is not
peace in many of our cities because there is not
freedom."
September 10,
1996
Sheryl
Crow's second album was banned from Wal-Mart stores because
the song she co-wrote with Tad Wadhams, "Love Is A Good Thing"
opens with “Watch out
sister, watch out brother, Watch our children while they
kill each other With a gun they bought at Wal-Mart discount
stores....”
September 11,
1906
Mohandas Gandhi,
a young Indian lawyer, began a nonviolent resistance campaign
in Johannesburg, South Africa, demanding rights and respect
for those of Asian descent. It was the birth of his concept of
political progress through nonviolent resistance known as
Satyagraha, or
truth-force.
He led a meeting
of 3000 of the town's Indians, protesting the Transvaal
Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance. That law required all Asians
to obey three rules: those of eight years or older had to
carry passes for which they had to give their fingerprints;
they would be segregated as to where they could live and work;
new Asian immigration into the Transvaal would be disallowed,
even for those who had left the town when the South African
War broke out in 1899, and were returning. The meeting
produced the Fourth Resolution, in which all Indians resolved
to go to prison rather than submit to the
ordinance.
Ghandi, London,
1906
In Ghandi’s own
words:
September 11,
1973
Chile's
armed forces staged a coup d'etat against the government of
President Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected
socialist head of state in Latin America. Some three thousand
were held in Santiago's national stadium where guards singled
out folksinger Victor Jara as he continued to sing protest
songs. Jara was viciously beaten, and his mutilated body
machine-gunned in front of the other
prisoners.
dissidents held
in the stadium
Read more on
Victor Jara
Victor Jara plays
to young supporters
Victor
Jara
The U.S.
government, through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had
worked for three years to foment the coup against Allende.
Striking Chilean labor unions, instrumental in destabilizing
the Allende government, were secretly bankrolled by the
CIA. During the brutal and repressive 17-year rule of
General Augusto Pinochet that followed, more than 3,000
political opponents were assassinated or "disappeared." The
U.S.-backed military dictatorship banned Jara's music, image,
name and, for a time, even outlawed the public performance of
the folk-guitar.
Read more about
the coup
September 11,
2001
Suicidal
Islamist terrorists, members of Al Qaeda and most of them
Saudis, hijacked four commercial airliners in the eastern
U.S., and managed successfully to turn three of the
jet-fuel-loaded planes into missiles: two flew into New York
City’s World Trade Center towers, destroying them, and a third
into the west side of the Pentagon. On the fourth, passengers
heroically seized back control but crashed it into an empty
field in western Pennsylvania. The hijackers killed nearly
3000 that day: passengers and crew, workers in the twin towers
and the Pentagon.
Minute-by-minute
account of what happened and the official and military
responses
September 11,
2002
Women In Black
(WIB) Baltimore started the first Peace Path as a response to
9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The nonviolent action
presented images of peace rather than war and militarism as a
response to problems. Now in its seventh year, the path
will extend for 12 miles through Baltimore. Others are
beginning to create 9/11 peace paths in their own
communities.
Women in Black
along the peace path in Baltimore,
2007
Participants in
WIB vigils wear black as a sign of mourning for all that is
lost through war and violence. The group seeks to bring
together people of all races, faiths, nationalities, and
genders who support positions of nonviolence and who seek
peace through mutual understanding and constructive
dialogue.
For more
information
September 12,
1977
Steve Biko, the
leader of the black consciousness movement, and probably the
most influential young black leader in in South Africa, died
while being held by security forces in Port Elizabeth; he was
the forty-first person to die while in police custody in South
Africa.
Read more about
Steven Biko
September 12,
1998
A group
later known as the Cuban Five was arrested after infiltrating
groups which had previously executed terrorist attacks on
Cuban soil.
They were
convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S.
Their conviction was overturned by a three-judge panel of the
11th Circuit Court, then reinstated by the full court; an
appeal to the Supreme Court is planned. The United Nations
Commission on Arbitrary Detentions has characterized their
imprisonment as arbitrary detention.
Free the
five
September 12,
2002
President George
W. Bush told skeptical world leaders at the United Nations to
confront the ''grave and gathering danger'' of Saddam
Hussein's Iraq, or to stand aside as the United States
acted.
September 13,
1858
A group
of the citizens of Oberlin, Ohio, stopped Kentucky
slavecatchers from kidnapping John Price, a black man.
Shakespeare Boynton, son of a wealthy landowner had lured
Price with the promise of work. Oberlinians, black and white,
from town and from the local College, pursued the kidnappers
to nearby Wellington at word of his
abduction.
These were twenty
of the thirty-seven citizens from Oberlin and Wellington who
were charged with breaking the law by helping John Price
escape from slave catchers in the fall of 1858. The
Oberlin-Wellington Rescue and subsequent trial caught the eye
of the nation as escalating tensions over slavery raised the
prospect of civil war
The
group, led by Charles Langston, James M. Fitch, bookseller and
superintendent of the Oberlin Sunday School, and John Watson,
a grocer, wanted to proceed nonviolently, but when the
Kentuckians refused to surrender Price, the response was "we
will have him anyhow." They rushed the door guards of the
Inn and theology student Richard Winsor took Price to safety,
hidden for a time in the home of Oberlin College President
James Fairchild, later helped across the Canadian border to
freedom.
The
Oberlin-Wellington Rescue
September 13,
1961
Bertrand Russell,
aged 89, and 32 others were arrested during a major
demonstration against nuclear weapons in Trafalgar Square,
London.
September 13,
1971
President Richard
Nixon, speaking to his Chief of Staff Robert Haldeman, was
recorded on the White House’s taping system saying: "Now
here's the point, Bob. Please get me the names of the Jews.
You know, the big Jewish contributors to the Democrats. Could
we please investigate some of the
cocksuckers?"
Pres. Richard Nixon (L) with Chief of
Staff Bob Haldeman, advisor John Ehrlichman (R) with Sec. of
State (standing) Henry Kissinger
Listen to Nixon’s
White House tapes:
September 13,
1982
The European
Parliament voted to phase out promotion and advertising of war
toys throughout the 25 countries of the European Union
(formerly European Economic Community).
September 13,
1983
The first
group from Peace Brigades International (PBI) arrived in
Guatemala to provide unarmed and nonviolent witness protection
for indigenous leaders. Following decades of severe repression
of native ethnic groups by the unelected military government,
the PBI team accompanied the Mutual Support Group (GAM in
Spanish) of Families of the Disappeared, the first human
rights group to emerge from the terror and
survive.
PBI founding
statement
September 13,
1993
The Prime
Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, and the leader of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, shook
hands before cheering crowds on the White House lawn in
Washington after signing an accord establishing limited
Palestinian autonomy.
Read
more
September 14,
1918
Eugene
V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing U.S.
entry into World War I. Debs had been an elected official in
Indiana, a labor organizer, writer and editor, had founded the
first industrial union in the U.S., the American Railway
Union, and had run for President four times on the Socialist
Party ticket.
He ran again for
president from prison in 1920 with the slogan “From Atlanta
Prison to the White House,” and received nearly one
million.
Learn more about
Eugene V. Debs
September 14,
1940
Congress
passed the Selective Service Act, providing for the first
peacetime draft (though Japan had already invaded China in
1937 and Germany had invaded Poland and Czechoslovakia in
1939) in U.S. history.
September 14,
1948
A
groundbreaking ceremony took place in New York City at the
site of the United Nations' world
headquarters.
The 39-story
building on 18 acres of Manhattan’s Turtle Bay neighborhood
(donated by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.) on the East River. It is
a major expression of the International Style with its simple
geometric form and glass curtain wall, designed principally by
Le Corbusier.
The UN building
today
The site selected
for the permanentheadquarters of the United Nations as it
was in 1946.
Background and
more examples of the minimalist, utilitarian International
style
September 14,
1963
The ABC
television network invited singer, songwriter, banjo player
and activist Pete Seeger to appear on its Saturday night folk
and acoustic music show, Hootenanny, despite the fact that he
had been blacklisted.
But the
invitation stood only if he'd sign an oath of loyalty to the
U.S. He described his reaction: "This is ridiculous. I’d sign
’em, if you sign ’em, and everybody whose born will sign ’em,
then we’d all be clean." In the 1940s Seeger traveled
throughout the country with Woody Guthrie, performing at union
meetings, strikes and demonstrations. After World War II, he
and Lee hays co-founded the Weavers, the legendary folk group
that gained commercial success despite being
blacklisted.
More about
Hootenanny
September 14,
1964
The Free
Speech Movement began at the University of California-Berkeley
when its Dean Katherine Towle (pronounced toll) announced that
existing University regulations prohibiting advocacy of
political causes or candidates, signing of members, and
collection of funds by student organizations at the corner of
Bancroft and Telegraph, would henceforth be ''strictly
enforced."
Read
more
September 14,
1982
Wisconsin
became the first to approve a statewide referendum calling for
a freeze on all testing of nuclear
weapons.
September 14,
1990
The
Pentagon announced a $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (Saudi Arabia’s eastern neighbor) had
invaded Kuwait six weeks earlier.
Saud royal
family
September 14,
1991
The South African
government, the African National Congress, the Inkatha Freedom
Party, a total of forty organizations, signed the National
Peace Accord. It led to the country’s first multi-racial
elections and the end of South Africa's racially separatist
apartheid (literally separateness in the Afrikaans language)
political, economic and social system by 1994.
“ Bearing in
mind the values which we hold, be these religious or
humanitarian, we pledge ourselves with integrity of purpose to
make this land a prosperous one where we can all live, work
and play together in peace and
harmony.”
Text of the
National Peace Accord
Background of the
conflict
September 15,
1915
In a letter,
Turkish Minister of the Interior Mehmet Talaat Pasha explained
that the real intention of sending the Armenians to the
Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) Desert (now in Syria) was to
annihilate them. Talaat had primary responsibility for
planning and implementing the Armenian Genocide. The day
before, The New York Times reported that the murder
of 350,000 Armenians in Turkey had already
occurred.
1915, orphaned
Armenian children in the open, many covering their heads from
the desert sun. Location: Ottoman empire, region
Syria.
The Turkish Adolf
Eichmann
September 15,
1935
The “Law for the
Protection of German Blood and German Honor” and the “Reich
Citizenship Law” were adopted by the Nazi (National Socialist
German Workers') Party Rally in Nuremberg, depriving German
Jews of their
citizenship.
September 15,
1963
During Sunday
School, 15 sticks of dynamite blew apart the Sixteenth Street
Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four children
in the basement changing room, and injuring 23 others. Prime
suspects were the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Nacirema (both white
supremacist organizations; Nacirema is "American" spelled
backwards). A week before the bombing Gov. George C. Wallace
had told The New York Times that to stop integration, Alabama
needed a "few first-class funerals." This event set off
racial rioting and other violence in which two
African-American boys were shot to death, and became a turning
point in generating broad American sympathy for the civil
rights movement. A member of the church, studying on a
scholarship in Paris at the time, was Birmingham High School
student Angela Davis.
The four girls
lost in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, the
ruins of the church and grieving
parents.
Lives cut
short...
Addie Mae Collins
(14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Caole Robertson (14), Denise McNair
(11) Read more
September 15,
1970
Vice
President Spiro Agnew said the youth of America were being
"brainwashed into a drug culture" by rock music, movies,
books, and underground newspapers.
More on
Spiro
September
15, 1981
A
blockade started at a nuclear power plant construction site in
Diablo Canyon near San Luis Obispo, California. Nearly 10,000
people tried to prevent fuel rods from being loaded into the
two reactor cores. Over two weeks, 1,901 are arrested in the
largest occupation of a nuclear power site in U.S.
history. Their
immediate major concern was over the region being seismically
active and the plant’s location near the Hosgri fault.
In 2004 a
6.5 (on the Richter Scale) earthquake was centered less than
40 miles from the plant. Four other faults nearby have since
been identified. Additionally, 9.5 billion liters (2.5
billion gallons) of water needed to cool the reactors each day
are discharged directly into the Pacific 11°C (20°F) warmer
than the surrounding ocean water, affecting marine plant and
animal life there.
Diablo
canyon
As with
all nuclear plants, the problem remains with storage of spent
nuclear fuel that remains dangerously radioactive for more
than 10,000 years. Diablo Canyon generates 110 spent fuel rod
assemblies each year. There is still no satisfactory solution
to this long-term storage problem.
Diablo Canyon
timeline
September 15,
1986
Veterans Duncan
Murphy (World War II) and Brian Willson (Vietnam) joined
Charles Liteky & George Mizo in the Fast For Life,
opposing U.S. support for the terrorist contra war against
Nicaragua. The contras were insurgent guerillas using violence
against civilians in the countryside to bring down the newly
formed Sandanista government. The contras were supported
in contravention of the Boland Amendment which prohibited U.S.
agencies from providing military equipment, training or
support to anyone "for the purpose of overthrowing the
Government of Nicaragua."
Duncan Murphy,
Brian Willson, Charles Liteky, George Mizo The Fast
for Life from Brian Willson’s perspective
September 15,
1996
6,000 rallied and
1,033 were arrested near the Headwaters Grove in rural
Carlotta, California, in protest against cutting one of the
last large unlogged stands of redwood trees in the
world.
Redwoods are
coniferous trees (sequoia
sempervivens: the genus is named for Sequoya, or George Guess,
an American Indian scholar; sempervivens is ever alive in
Latin) that can reach over 90m (300 ft.) over a
life as long as 2000
years.
September 15,
1997
Sinn
Fein, the political party closely allied with the goals of the
Irish Republican Army (IRA), entered Northern Ireland's peace
talks for the first
time.
September 15,
2001
Four
days after 9/11, Representative Barbara Lee (D-California)
cast the only congressional vote against authorizing President
Bush to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against
anyone associated with the terrorist attacks of September 11.
"I am convinced that military action will not prevent further
acts of international terrorism against the United
States.”
Read
more
September 16,
1837
William
Whipper, a wealthy negro from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,
published "An Address on Non-Resistance to Offensive
Aggression" in the The Colored American, outlining his
commitment to a strictly non-violent response to the evils of
slavery. This landmark essay predated Thoreau's on “Civil
Disobedience” by 12 years. “
...fatal error arises from the belief that the only method of
maintaining peace, is always to be ready for
war.”
William
Whipper
Whipper
edited a newspaper, The National Reformer, a publication of
the National Moral Reform Society, and furnished food and
transportation assistance to fugitive slaves who reached
Pennsylvania.
A brief biography
of William Whipper
And a more
extensive one
September 16,
1939
August
Dickmann, a German and a Jehovah's Witness, became the first
conscientious objector (CO) to be executed by the Nazis during
World War II. The execution by firing squad took place in
Sachsenhausen concentration camp before all prisoners,
including 400 Jehovah's Witness inmates.
Though threatened
by Commandant Hermann Baranowsky with the same fate, none of
the remaining 400 Witnesses renounced their CO position.
Later, the Nazis commonly executed Witnesses by guillotine or
hanging, not wanting to spend bullets on COs. German military
courts sentenced and executed 270 Jehovah's Witnesses, the
largest number of COs executed from any victim group during
World War II.
Watch a
timeline
NY Times, Sept
16, 1939
August
Dickmann
September
16, 1974
Dennis
Banks
Russell
Means
A federal judge
dismissed all charges against American Indian Movement (AIM)
leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means stemming from the 1973
occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. On Feb. 27, 1973,
AIM and supporters seized control of Wounded Knee to draw
attention to corruption and conditions on the Pine Ridge
(Lakota Sioux) reservation. Wounded Knee was the site
where, on December 29, 1890, over 200 Sioux men, women and
children were mercilessly gunned down by U.S.
cavalry.
Read
more
September
16, 1974
President Gerald
Ford announced a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War
deserters and draft-evaders, provided they swear allegiance to
the country and agree to work two years in the branch of the
military they had abandoned. He did this one month following
his pardon of resigned former Pres. Richard
Nixon.
September 16,
1991
The Philippine
Senate rejected a treaty allowing continued operation of U.S.
military bases in the Philippines. The Americans had occupied
the Philippines since 1898 (except after surrendering control
to the Japanese in 1942 until the end of World War II), though
on a “temporary” basis. More than two dozen U.S. military
installations were established in the country, even after
independence in 1945, notably Clark Air Base and the naval
station at Subic Bay, the largest U.S. military installations
in Asia.
September 16,
2003
New York
Stock Exchange Chair Dick Grasso resigned amid a furor over
his compensation package that would reach $139.5 million in
one year.
The details
of the plan and the reaction
Dick
Grasso
September 17,
1924
Mohandas
Gandhi began a purifying 21-day fast for Hindu-Muslim
tolerance and unity following communal riots in Kohat on
India’s northwest border in what is now Pakistan. A Hindu,
Ghandi spent his fast at the home of Mahomed
Ali.
A Gandhi
chronology
September 17,
1961
1,314
anti-nuclear protesters were arrested during a sit-down in
London’s Trafalgar Square by 12,000 (authorities had denied a
permit). Philosopher and peace activist Bertrand Russell, aged
89, and 32 others were already in jail, having been arrested
the previous month during a demonstration on Hiroshima Day in
Hyde Park. Russell’s Committee of 100 had organized the
sit-down and other actions to resist nuclear weapons,
challenging the authorities to ‘fill the jails’, with the
intention of causing prison overload and large-scale disorder.
On arrest members would go limp so as to create maximum
disruption without
conflict.
Bertrand Russell
at anti nuclear weapons March,
1961.
September 17,
1988
Haiti's military
government was overthrown by a group of non-commissioned
officers who installed Lt. General Prosper Avril as the new
head of state. The leaders of the coup were outraged by the
attack the previous Sunday on St. Jean Bosco Church during
which 13 parishioners were killed and nearly 80 injured. Fr.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a persistent critic of the military
regime, had been celebrating mass when the attack
occurred. From the report of the Organization of American
States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued on
September 7, 1988: “ The
Commission has come to the conclusion that the current
military government in Haiti has perpetuated itself in power
as a result of violence instigated by elements of the Haitian
Armed forces resulting in the massacre of Haitian voters on
November 29, 1987, the manipulation of the elections held on
January 17, 1988, and the ouster of President Leslie Manigat
on June 20, 1988.”
The full report
September 18,
1850
Congress passed
the Fugitive Slave Act, allowing slave owners to reclaim
slaves who escaped into another state, and levying harsh
penalties on those who would interfere with the apprehension
of runaway slaves. As part of the Compromise of 1850, it
offered federal officers a fee for each captured slave and
denied the slaves the right to a jury trial
The Compromise of
1850
September 18,
1895
African-American
educator (founder of the Tukegee Institute) and leader (born a
slave) Booker T. Washington spoke before a predominantly white
audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition in
Atlanta. Although the organizers of the exposition worried
that “public sentiment was not prepared for such an advanced
step,” they decided that inviting a black speaker would
impress Northern visitors with the evidence of racial progress
in the South. Washington, in his “Atlanta Compromise” address,
soothed his listeners’ concerns about “uppity” blacks by
claiming that his race would content itself with living “by
the productions of our
hands.”
Text of the
speech
September 18,
1961
Earl Bertrand
Russell and Lady Edith Russell were released from prison after
serving one week of their two-month sentences. They had
been part of a Hiroshima Day vigil in Hyde Park, and were
accused of inciting civil disobedience.
Bertrand and
Edith Russell after being release from
prison
September 19,
1893
With the signing
of the Electoral Bill by Governor Lord Glasgow, New Zealand
became the first major country in the world to grant national
electoral rights to women. The bill was the outcome of years
of suffragist meetings in towns and cities across the country,
with women often traveling considerable distances to hear
lectures and speeches and pass resolutions.
Read more about
New Zealand’s efforts
Organizer Kate
Sheppard delivered to parliament a petition signed by a
quarter or more of all the women in the country. New Zealand
women, both the native Ma¯ori and Päkehä (Anglo-European or
non-Maori), first went to the polls in the national elections
in November of 1893. The United States granted women
voting rights in 1920, and Great Britain didn’t guarantee full
voting rights until 1928.
Kate Sheppard, a
leader of the New Zealand suffragist movement
Kate Sheppard, a
leader of the New Zealand suffragette movement
A timeline of
Women’s Suffrage in the U.S.
September 19,
1952
The United States
prevented Charlie Chaplin, the British director, actor and
producer, from returning to his Hollywood home until he had
been investigated by Immigration Services. He had been on
the FBI's Security Index since 1948, and was one of over 300
people blacklisted by Hollywood film studios. Chaplin was
unable to work after refusing to cooperate during his
appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC). Informed that he would not necessarily be welcomed
back, he retorted, "I wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ
were president," and surrendered his U.S. re-entry permit in
Switzerland.
Chaplin’s FBI
files
Charlie
Chaplin
Charlie
Chaplin: "My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a
non-conformist.
Although I am not
a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating
them."
September 19,
1957
The
United States conducted its first underground nuclear test,
called Rainier, in the Nevada desert under the leadership of
Edward Teller.
Tunnels at the
Nevada Test Site were used to conduct contained underground
nuclear tests, such as the RAINIER event in
1957.
September
19, 1966
After 300 members
of Grenada, Mississippi’s white community called for “an end
to violence,” hundreds of Negro schoolchildren were allowed to
integrate the local public schools. The leaders of the vicious
organized attack on the kids the previous week (including the
town’s justice of the peace) had been arrested by the FBI, and
the mobs were gone, but the children were all escorted to
school by community members, or driven in cars for safety.
Folksinger Joan Baez had been in Grenada the previous week
lending support and running the same risks as Grenadans
struggling against the segregationist way
of
Grenada Mississippi in 1966
Marching strong
and proud
in Grenada,
Mississippi, 1966
On the front line
at the March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama,
1965.
James Baldwin,
Joan Baez, and James Forman (left to right)
More
than forty years later year Joan is still playing for peace
and justice. She performed at Camp Casey in support of Cindy
Sheehan and her protest against the war in Iraq in Crawford,
Texas.
September
19, 1966
A group
of 22 eminent U.S. scientists, including seven Nobel
laureates, urged President Lyndon Johnson to halt the use of
anti-personnel and herbicidal chemical weapons in Vietnam.
That same day in Congress, House Republicans issued a “white
Paper" warning the United States was becoming "a full-fledged
combatant" in a war that was becoming "bigger than the Korean
War." The paper urged the President to end the war "more
speedily and at a smaller cost, while safeguarding the
independence and freedom of South
Vietnam."
September 19,
1977
A lawsuit was
filed which would become "University of California Regents v.
Bakke," a groundbreaking claim of "reverse discrimination" by
a white prospective student (Allan Bakke) passed over for
admission to the UC-Davis Medical School allegedly due to the
school’s affirmative action
program.
September 19,
2001
Some 5,000
marched in a nighttime procession through Seattle's Capitol
Hill neighborhood, mourning the dead of September 11, and
calling for a non-military response by the
U.S.
September 20,
1830
The National
Negro Convention, a group of 38 free black Americans from
eight states, met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the
express purpose of abolishing slavery and improving the social
status of African Americans. They elected Richard Allen
president and agreed to boycott slave-produced goods and
encourage free-produce organizations. One of the most active
would be the Colored Female Free Produce Society, which urged
the boycott of all slave-produced goods.
Read
more
Richard
Allen
National
Negro Convention leaders 1879
September 20,
1850
The District of
Columbia abolished the slave trade though slavery itself was
not outlawed. Washington had been home to the largest slave
market in the country. This was an element of the Compromise
of 1850.
The Compromise of
1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act
September 20,
1906
Upton Sinclair's
“The Jungle,” a realist novel, was published, exposing the
dangerous conditions and deplorable sanitation in Chicago’s
meat-packing plants. Reaction from readers was intense,
including Pres. Theodore Roosevelt who coined the term,
muckrakers, to describe Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Ida
Tarbell and other writers who exposed corruption in government
and business [what we’d now call investigative
reporting].
"The men with the
muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of
society ... if they gradually grow to feel that the whole
world is nothing but muck, their power of usefulness is
gone.” — Theodore Roosevelt
More on the
muckrakers
September 20,
1932
Rabindranath
Tagore urges resistance to practice of "untouchability,"
British India.
September 20,
1946
The first
Cannes Film Festival began in that French Riviera resort town.
It had originally been planned for 1939 but Hitler’s invasion
of Poland that year, and later France, delayed plans until
after the war. The first Grand Prix and the International
Peace Prize were awarded to “The Last Chance” by Leopold
Lindtberg of Switzerland, a movie (shot on location) about how
three Allied soldiers, including two escaped prisoners of war,
lead a group of Jewish refugees from Nazi-occupied northern
Italy across the Alps to safety in nominally neutral
Switzerland.
Cannes festival
history
September 20,
1997
3,000 protesters
helped to rip up the railroad tracks leading from Krummel
nuclear power station to the main Hamburg-Berlin line. The
previous year two doctors had sued for closure of the plant
due to the increased incidence of leukemia among the
population around the plant. In January, a train carrying
nuclear waste derailed near the reactor at Krummel. At the
time, Germany’s 19 nuclear reactors generated 34 per cent of
the country’s electricity; in 2005 it was down to 26
percent.
September 20,
1999
A
multinational peacekeeping force landed in East Timor in an
attempt to restore law and order to the territory. Indonesian
militias had killed thousands following the overwhelming
vote by the East Timorese for independence from Jakarta on
September 4.
September 21,
1963
The War Resisters
League organized the first American anti-Vietnam War
demonstration in New York City. The League, founded in 1923,
was the first peace group to call for U.S. withdrawal from
Vietnam, and played a key role throughout the war, organizing
rallies, the burning of draft cards, civil disobedience at
induction centers, and assisting
resisters.
History of WRL
WRL home
September 21st
(since 1982)
The
International Day of Peace was established by United Nations
resolution in 1981 and first celebrated in 1982 (then as the
3rd tuesday of the month).
Events are planned all over
the world to promote peace and make it more
visible.
About Peace Day
and plans around the world
How to make your
own giant peace dove> or a smaller one>
September 22,
1966
Eight hundred
Puerto Rican men pledged in Lares to refuse U.S. Vietnam
draft. They saw compliance as "part of the colonial
subjugation of our
country."
September 22,
1980
The
Solidarity union under leadership of Lech Walesa was allowed
to organize by the Communist-led Polish government. The
previous month the group had occupied the Lenin shipyards in
Gdansk and had inspired a national general
strike.
September 22,
1985
The first
Farm Aid concert, organized principally by Willie Nelson, was
held with more than 50 musicians raising $9 million for
debt-ridden U.S. farmers.
Farm Aid
home
September 23,
1949
President
Harry Truman announced that the Soviet Union had exploded its
first atomic bomb, an implosive plutonium weapon, the previous
month (it had happened on August 29). "We have evidence," the
White House statement said, "that within recent weeks an
atomic explosion occurred in the U.S.S.R."
September 23,
1979
200,000 attended
an anti-nuclear rally in New York City’s Battery Park. It was
the largest political protest of the late '70s in the U.S.,
six months after the partial meltdown of the nuclear reactor
at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania. Two days earlier the 'No
Nukes' concert, also known as the “Muse (Musicians United for
Safe Energy) concert,” was held in Madison Square Garden,
featuring Bruce Springsteen, Crosby Stills & Nash, Jackson
Browne and
others.
September 23,
2007
Dr. Jane
Goodall created Roots & Shoots Day of Peace in 2004 in
honor of U.N. International Day of Peace; each year, Roots
& Shoots Day of Peace is observed in late September. Roots
& Shoots groups around the world fly Giant Peace Dove
puppets to celebrate Roots & Shoots Day of Peace for its
symbolic meaning. They also plan and implement peace project
initiatives to help make the world a better place for animals,
the environment and the human
community.
hear Jane Goodall
on World Peace
Day
(needs
RealPlayer)
Dr.
Goodall was appointed a Messenger of Peace in 2002 by U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan. People selected as Messengers of
Peace are widely recognized for their achievements in music,
literature, sports and the
arts.
To
commemorate her appointment, Roots & Shoots members at the
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point first conceived of and
created the Giant Peace Dove puppets. Since then, Roots &
Shoots groups have flown doves in over 40 countries around the
world.
Students with
their peace dove - Northern Light School,
CA
September 24,
1968
10,000 draft
files destroyed by fourteen anti-war activists with homemade
napalm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Milwaukee 14
home
Watch a video of
the event(requires
Quicktime)
September 24,
1969
The Chicago 8
trial opened in Chicago. It was the prosecution of eight
anti-war activists charged with responsibility for the violent
demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National
Convention in Chicago.
The defendants
included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization
Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and
Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party
("Yippies"); Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party; and two
lesser-known activists, Lee Weiner and John
Froines.
Chicago 8
background
The Chicago 8
minus Bobby Seale
Bobby Seale,
after repeatedly asserting his right to an attorney of his own
choosing or to defend himself, was bound and gagged in the
courtroom and his trial was severed from the rest on November
5th. The group then became know as the Chicago
7.
About Bobby
Seale
September 24,
1976
Ian
Smith, leader of the whites-only government of Rhodesia, a
former British colony, agreed to introduce black majority rule
to the country within two years. He was under pressure from
the United States through Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,
and from British Prime Minister James
Callaghan.
September 25,
1789
The first
U.S. Congress passed the Bill of Rights, the first ten
amendments to the Constitution, and sent them on to the states
for ratification.
See the actual
document and learn more
September 25,
1957
Nine
African-American children, protected by 300 members of the
U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, with fixed bayonets,
entered the previously all-white Central High School in Little
Rock, Arkansas. The troops were there to escort the children
past white segregationists and the Arkansas Militia (National
Guard) that Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had activated to
prevent its federal court-approved racial integration plan.
After a tense
standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the
Arkansas National Guard and sent troops to Little Rock to
enforce the court order. The order to de-segregate the Little
Rock schools flowed from the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of
Education decision. The troops remained for the entire
school term.
On the Front
Lines with the Little Rock 9
September 25,
1961
Herbert Lee, a
farmer who worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help
register black voters, was killed by a state legislator, E. H.
Hurst, in Liberty, Mississippi. Hurst claimed self-defense and
was acquitted by a coroner's jury the same day as the killing.
Lewis Allen, who witnessed the shooting, said otherwise, and
was himself murdered two years later.
September 25,
2002
Rick DellaRatta
and Jazz For Peace performed at the United Nations
Headquarters in New York City. He led a band consisting of
Israeli, Middle Eastern, European, Asian and American jazz
musicians in concert for an international audience.
Jazz for Peace
continues to perform concerts to raise money for non-profit
organizations.
Read more about
Jazz for Peace
Rick DellaRatta
September 26,
1909
International
Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU Local 25) began a strike
against the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.
In November
their strike would become part of the "Uprising of the
20,000," during which 339 of 352 firms would be struck and
reach agreements with the union over the following five month
but Triangle would not one of them. The strike ended after
thirteen weeks that saw over 700 striking workers
arrested.
Chronology
September 26,
1945
OSS
(Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA)
officer Lieutenant Colonel A. Peter Dewey became the first
American to die in Vietnam. During unrest in Saigon, he was
killed by Viet Minh guerrillas who mistook him for a French
officer. Before his death, Dewey had filed a report on the
deepening crisis in Vietnam, stating his opinion that the U.S.
"ought to clear out of Southeast
Asia."
September 26,
1957
Despite
international protests, the United Kingdom began a series of
atmospheric nuclear bomb tests beginning with Operation
Buffalo on aboriginal land at Maralinga, South Australia.
The series of tests included dropping a bomb from a height of
30,000 feet. This was the first launching of a British atomic
weapon from an aircraft.
The Buffalo
Nuclear Test, Maralinga
September 26,
1983
Five members of
Puget Sound Women's Peace Camp entered Boeing's cruise missile
production plant in Seattle, Washington, to leaflet the
workers and were arrested.
In November of
1980 and 1981 the Women's Pentagon Actions, where hundreds of
women came together to challenge patriarchy and militarism,
took place. A movement grew that found ways to use direct
action to put pressure on the military establishment and to
show positive examples of life-affirming ways to live
together. This movement spawned women's peace camps at
military bases around the world from Greenham Common, England,
to the Puget Sound Peace Camp, as well as camps in Japan and
Italy, among others.
September 26,
1988
President
Ronald Reagan urged the United Nations General Assembly to
call a conference about the use of chemical weapons. Though
the U.S. and other nations had signed the Geneva Protocol
banning chemical (as well as bacteriological) arms, such
weapons had been used repeatedly by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in
its war against Iran.
Background on the
treaty and the issue
September 27,
1967
An advertisement
headed "A Call To Resist Illegitimate Authority," signed by
over 320 influential people (professors, writers, ministers,
and other professional people), appeared in the New Republic
and the New York Review of Books, asking for funds to help
youths resist the draft.
September 27,
1990
The last U.S.
Pershing II tactical nuclear missiles were removed from
Germany, fewer than ten years after their installation
provoked a massive anti-nuclear movement across
Europe.
The range and
accuracy of the Pershing II pushed the Soviet Union to
negotiate the Treaty on Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces
(INF) which completely eliminated all nuclear-armed
ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges
between 500 and 5,500 kilometers (about 300 to 3400 miles) and
their infrastructure. The INF Treaty is the first nuclear arms
control agreement to actually reduce nuclear arms, and the
signatories destroyed almost 2700 nuclear weapons (including
234 Pershing II) by May of 1991.
German
Anti Pershing missile demonstration poster,
1983.
September 27,
1991
President
George H.W. Bush announced a major unilateral withdrawal of
U.S. tactical nuclear weapons: "I am . . . directing that
the United States eliminate its entire worldwide inventory of
ground-launched short-range, that is, theater, nuclear
weapons. We will bring home and destroy all of our nuclear
artillery shells and short-range ballistic missile warheads.
We will, of course, insure that we preserve an effective
air-delivered nuclear capability in Europe. "In turn, I
have asked the Soviets . . . to destroy their entire inventory
of ground-launched theater nuclear weapons . . .
. "Recognizing further the major changes in the
international military landscape, the United States will
withdraw all tactical nuclear weapons from its surface ships,
attack submarines, as well as those nuclear weapons associated
with our land-based naval aircraft. This means removing all
nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. ships and
submarines, as well as nuclear bombs aboard aircraft
carriers."
September 28,
1836
Cherokee
Chief John Ross wrote a letter to both houses of the U.S.
Congress stating that the Treaty of New Echota was not
negotiated by any legitimate representatives of his nation.
Its terms required the Cherokees to relinquish all lands
east of the Mississippi River for a payment of $5 million.
Ross was the democratically chosen leader of a nation with its
own language, its own newspaper, a bi-cameral legislature and
a republican form of
government.
Cherokee Chief
John Ross
The
Cherokee Nation celebrated its own arts and sports, and
produced a wide variety of agricultural and commercial goods.
I had twelve political units ranging from northern Alabama to
western North Carolina. Writing from north Georgia, Ross
said:
“The makers
of it [the treaty] sustain no office nor appointment in our
Nation, under the designation of Chiefs, Head men, or any
other title, by which they hold, or could acquire, authority
to assume the reins of Government, and to make bargain and
sale of our rights, our possessions, and our common country .
. . . “ We are despoiled of our private possessions, the
indefeasible property of individuals. We are stripped of every
attribute of freedom and eligibility for legal self-defence.
Our property may be plundered before our eyes; violence may be
committed on our persons; even our lives may be taken away,
and there is none to regard our complaints. We are
denationalized; we are disfranchised. We are deprived of
membership in the human
family!”
Full text of the
letter
More on the
Treaty and the Cherokee nation
September 28,
1917
166
people who were (or had been) active in the I.W.W. (Industrial
Workers of the World, whose members were also known as
Wobblies) were indicted for protesting World War I. They were
accused of trying to "cause insubordination, disloyalty, and
refusal of duty in the military and naval forces" in violation
of the Espionage Act. One hundred and one defendants were
found guilty, and received prison sentences ranging from days
to twenty years, with accompanying fines of $10,000-$20,000.
This was part of a successful U.S. government campaign to
cripple the radical union movement.
The I.W.W. - A
Brief History
September 28,
1943
In
Denmark, underground anti-Nazi activists began systematic
smuggling of Jews to Sweden. In just three weeks, all but 481
of Denmark's 8000 Jews had been moved to
safety.
< Kim
Malthe-Bruun, a 21-year-old Danish resistance
fighter. Unfortunately one of the ones who did not make
it.
A
Danish Jewish family ready to go>
Read more about
Kim
September 28,
2005
The
lawyer who wrote the original legal complaint in the case of
Brown v. Board of Education, Constance Baker Motley, died in
New York City. She had led a remarkable career which began at
the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) where she
was their first female attorney. The first black woman to
argue before the Supreme Court, she was successful in nine of
her ten cases. Motley went on to achieve three more firsts as
an African American woman: being elected to the New York State
Senate and shortly thereafter to the Manhattan Borough
presidency. Finally, Pres. Lyndon Johnson appointed her to the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in
1966 where she served until her
passing.
September 29,
1923
Great
Britain began to govern the formerly Turkish province of
Palestine under a League of Nations mandate to create a Jewish
national home.
The
British Mandate For Palestine established at the San Remo
Conference, 1920
September 29,
1943
Six
conscientious objectors, imprisoned at Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania, for refusing to serve in World War II, began a
hunger strike against censorship of mail and reading material
by federal prison
authorities.
September 29,
1983
The
municipal council of Woensdrecht, a southern Dutch town, voted
against cooperating in the possible siting of 48 U.S.
nuclear-tipped cruise missiles at the nearby air base. The
council voted Tuesday by 9 to 4 not to cooperate with the
national government, and to stop any activities that might
lead to the missiles being sited at the
base.
September 29,
2002
A
London crowd estimated between 200,000 and 500,000 protested
British and U.S. plans for a "preemptive" (that is, without
provocation) invasion of
Iraq.
September 30,
1965
Hundreds
of Ku Klux Klan members, white students and others, tried to
keep a black student, James Meredith, 29, from attending
classes at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. They were
supported by the governor, Ross Barnett, who had explicitly
resisted the order of the Federal Circuit
Court.
In
spite of the efforts to block his court-ordered registration,
a deal to allow Meredith to register had been made between
U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Gov. Barnett.
Meredith was secretly escorted onto campus; deputy U.S.
marshals, border patrolmen and federal prison guards were
stationed on and around the campus to protect him. Those
standing guard were assaulted throughout the night with guns,
bricks, Molotov cocktails, and bottles.
James Meredith being escorted to his classes by
U.S.marshals and the
military.
Tear gas
was used to try and control the crowd. Federal troops arrived,
bringing the total to 12,000 (President Kennedy had activated
soldiers and national guardsmen totaling 30,000), and the mob
finally retreated. In the end, two were dead, 160 U.S.
Marshalls were injured (28 shot), 200 others injured, and 300
arrested.
September 30,
2003
The FBI
began a criminal investigation into whether White House
officials had illegally leaked the identity of an undercover
CIA officer, Valerie Plame, wife of diplomat Joseph C. Wilson,
IV. In early 2002 the CIA had sent Wilson to look into the
claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire yellow-cake
uranium from the African country of Niger. Ambassador
Wilson found nothing to support the claim, and some of the
documents cited as evidence for the claim were clearly shown
to be forgeries. President Bush, nonetheless, repeated the
claim in his January, 2003, State of the Union address as part
of his argument for war in Iraq. Wilson wrote a column in
the New York Times in July, 2003, entitled “What I Didn’t Find
in Africa.”
Columnist
Robert Novak a few days later published Plame’s identity
following conversation with Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage. Plame, who previously had worked on
counter-proliferation, was in charge of operations for the
CIA’s Joint Task Force on Iraq, formed the summer before
9/11.
September 30,
2004
The U.S.
Navy announce the shutdown of Project ELF.
This Week In
History compiled by peacebuttons.info from various
sources which are available upon request. Submissions
are always welcome. Please furnish sources. cb@peacebuttons.info
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