The Great Peace March
A Timeline of Peace and Justice Events
1350 BCE- Hebrew midwives in the first recorded act of civil disobedience, refuse to obey Pharaoh's order to kill male Hebrew babies.
600-520 - As a teenager, Jeremiah is called to be a prophet, and with Isaiah and Micah he criticizes the social injustice of the day and encourages the children of Israel to justice and righteousness.
33 - Jesus lives a life of compassion and nonviolence and is crucified for it.
40-80 - Paul and the apostles preach the Christian gospel of justice, nonviolence and reconciliation.
50-200 - Christian pacifism is typical among early Christian communities, which many recorded instances of Christians encouraged to make a vow of nonviolence.
316 - Martin of Tours, a Roman army officer, renounces violence when he becomes a "soldier of Christ."
1181 - St. Francis of Assisi turns his back on wealth and lives a life of nonviolence and care for others.
1200 - Thousands of women join the Beguines, develop creative community, religious and economic forms.The Franciscan Experience
1537 - The historic peace churches are founded, which oppose war for conscience sake: Mennonites (1537); Society of Friends (1652) and Bretheren (1708).
1644 - Eleven African-American servants in new Amsterdam file a petition for freedom, the first recorded legal protest in what Europeans called "The New World."
1681 - William Penn's Letter to the Delaware Indians leads to treaties that keep peace for two generations.
1765-75 - American colonists mount three nonviolent resistance campaigns against British rule.
1780 - Quakers start the first anti-slavery society.
1840s - The Underground Railroad helps slaves escape to the northern United States or Canada led by conductors such as Harriet Tubman, who led 19 groups to safety.
1846 - Henry David Thoreau is jailed for refusing to pay taxes to support the Mexican-American War; he writes a powerful essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, that influences Tolstoy and Gandhi.
1848 - Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organize the first women's rights convention.
1867 - 2000 Chinese railroad workers stage a week-long strike protesting inhumane and racist conditions.
1871 - 1000 women in Paris block cannons and stand between Prussian and Parisian troops.
1873 - Women celebrate Mother's Day, a peace holiday proposed by Julia Ward Howe.
1891 - Ida B. Wells starts her lifelong anti-lynching campaign by establishing her own newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech, to draw attention to the brutal lynch mob murders of African-Americans.
1898-1902 - Thousands protest the brutal Spanish-American War. Leaders include Mark Twain, author of A War Prayer and other works on the folly of war.
1900s - The U.S. labor movement, largely nonviolent, uses strikes to secure economic justice, dignity, democratic means of resolving problems and improved working conditions.
1901 -1905 - Finns nonviolently resist Russian oppression and force them to repeal laws imposing a military draft.
1905 - Mohandas Gandhi begins his first major nonviolent resistance campaign in Johannesburg, South Africa.
1909 - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, is formed to fight prejudice and discrimination. W.E.B.DuBois, Ida B. Wells and Mary Terrell are founding members.The M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence
1914 - The Fellowship of Reconciliation is founded as World War I begins, pledging to "keep the bonds of Christian love unbroken across the frontier."
1914-1918 - Conscientious objectors in World War I number more than 4,000.
1919-1947 - Gandhi leads the struggle for Indian independence through nonviolent means. The 1930 salt march ended at the ocean where Gandhi and others protested British economic subjugation by gathering salt in violation of British law.
1920 - The US Women's suffrage movement achieves a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote, culminating a 75-year struggle.The Man - The Mahatma (a ThinkQuest student project)
1923 - 20,000 women silk workers in Shanghai, China, go on strike demanding a 10-hour day.A History of the American Sufferage Movement
1927 - The Filipino Federation of Labor, League of Latin American Citizens (1928) and the Japanese American Citizens League (1930) are organized in the face of rising discrimination.
1933 - The Catholic Worker is founded by Dorothy Day, a newspaper reporter, and Peter Maurin, a self-taught French peasant, emphasizing pacifism, hospitality to the poor and voluntary poverty.LULAC Web Site Japanese American Citizen's League
1940-45 - Finland saves all but six of its Jewish citizens from death camps through nonmilitary means. 6.500 of 7,000 Danish Jews escape to Sweden and most of the rest are hidden, aided by the people. A rail worker strike in Holland almost shuts down traffic from November 1944 until liberation in May, 1945.
Similar resistance in Norway undermines Nazi plans; for example, teachers refuse to teach Nazi propaganda. Romania at first persecutes Jews, then refuses to give up one Jew to the death camps.
Thousands of Bulgarians march in demonstrations, hide Jews and send countless letters protesting anti-Jewish measures. Bishop Kiril threatens to lead civil disobedience and lie down on the tracks in front of trains. All Bulgarian Jews are saved from Nazi death camps.
1942 - German students from the White Rose resistance movement against the Nazi regime distribute thousands of leaflets exposing the nature of the Nazis and its treatment of Jews. They urge "obstruction of the war machine by passive resistance, including sabotage." Several of its leaders are killed in 1943.Holocaust Heroes A Cybrary of the Holocaust The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Never Again Memorial to Victims of the Holocaust
1945 - Claude Eatherly pilots one of the planes that drops atomic bombs on Japan. He later comes to regret his involvement and speaks widely about the horrors of modern weapons.
1945 - The United Nations is founded to resolve disputed before they result in war. Since then, the UN has developed agencies and programs on arms control, human rights, the environment, hunger, peacekeeping, development, indigenous peoples, refugees, children and women, to name but a few.
1955 - 500,000 women in Indonesia demonstrate for women's rights on International Women's Day.The United Nations
1955 - Rosa Parks is arrested after refusing to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus. The black community launches the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After a year of hardship the boycott succeeds.
1957 - Despite threats to their lives, Daisy Bates, Elizabeth Eckford and seven other students become the first African-Americans to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
1959 - The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker and other black leaders. Educator Septima Clark sets up Freedom Schools all over the country.
1960 - Four black students sit-in at a whites-only Woolworth lunch counter; this nonviolent tactic spreads in campaigns to desegregate restrooms, movie theaters, restaurants and libraries.
1961 - Young Freedom Riders protest discrimination on buses. A bus is burned in Alabama, riders are attacked in Birmingham, and riders spend 40-60 days in jail in Jackson, Mississippi. Six months later the Interstate Commerce Commission bans segregation on buses and trains.Launch of a Civil Rights Movement
1961 - Amnesty International is founded to document and protest torture and capital punishment and gains more than a million members within 20 years.The Freedom Rides, national Civil Rights Museum
1963 - March on Washington is the largest demonstration to date, bringing more than 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gives his "I have a Dream" speech.Amnesty International
1963 - Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is signed after six years of demonstrations and public pressure.The March on Washington, from MSNBC
1964-1973 - Draft card burnings mark growing resistance to the U.S. War in Vietnam; millions join in demonstrations, draft counseling, tax resistance, civil disobedience or other forms of protest.Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Site
1964 - Freedom Summer recruits 700 young people to register voters in Mississippi; three volunteers - Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney - disappear in early summer and are later found murdered.By Reason of Religious Training and Belief..." , A History of Conscientious Objection and Religion during the Vietnam War Radical Times: , The Antiwar Movement of the 1960s The Sixties Project
1965 - United Farm Workers union launches a grape boycott, led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.Freedom Summer, from the National Civil Rights Museum
1965 - Because of the enthusiasm and activism of many African-Americans, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed by Congress.United Farm Workers of America web site Viva Cesar Chavez Dolores Huerta, from the American Women's Hall of Fame
1968 - Philip and Daniel Berrigan and seven other catholic priests and lay people destroy 378 draft files in the Catonsville, Maryland draft board. The protest sparks dozens of similar acts of civil disobedience.Voting Rights Act, from Grolier Online ACLU - Voting Rights
1969 - Greenpeace adopts nonviolent direct action to protect the environment and dramatize its cause.
1970 - Killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio sparks strikes and protests at thousands of colleges; more than a million people join Vietnam protests for the first time.Greenpeace International
1971 - At the age of 90, Jeanette Rankin leads an 8,000 women march on the Pentagon against the Vietnam war. 1,000 veterans protest the war, followed by the largest demonstration ever against the war.Bitter Passage: Kent State and the Fall of Saigon
1972 - Trail of Broken Treaties march occupies Bureau of Indian Affairs offices to dramatize Native American needs.Jeanette Rankin Peace Resource Center, Missoula, MT
1977 - Mothers of the Plaza buy a newspaper ad in Argentina to publish the names of mothers and pictures of 230 "disappeared," people kidnapped, tortured and/or killed by the military.AIM and Wounded Knee Documents
1980 - Solidarity founded in Poland. Repressed under martial law in 1981, in 1989 it wins every available seat in parliament and now governs the nation. Victory comes without a single violent act.The Mothers of the "Plaza de Mayo," 20 years on The "Madwomen" Memory Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo: A Case of Counter-hegemonic Communications Developed by a Unique Human Rights Group: Mothers of Disappeared People From Argentina
1980s - Witness for Peace sends thousands of Americans to Nicaragua in a "shield of Love" to help stop violence by U.S. backed Contras. 80,000 U.S. citizens sign a "pledge of Resistance" promising civil disobedience if the U.S. invades, helping avert military action.The Birth of Solidarity in Poland
1981 - Protests against cruise missiles based in Greenham Common, England, begin. At its peak, 8,000 women live in tents outside the base, demonstrating and committing civil disobedience.
1982 - 750,000 people gather in New York City for the largest disarmament demonstration in U.S. history.Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp
1982 - Sister Helen Prejean becomes a pen pal to a prisoner on death row; she later writes a powerful memoir of her experience, Dead Man Walking, which is made into an award-winning movie.
1984 - The Book, I Rigoberta Menchu, details the struggle of Guatemalan women in the face of U.S.-supported military government that killed more than 100,000 people.
1986 - Nonviolent People Power in the Philippines brings down the oppressive Marcos regime.
1987 - 3,000 people gather on Mother's Day at the Nevada test Site to protest preparations for nuclear war.
1989 - Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and East Germany all win freedom from Soviet control by nonviolent means. Nonviolent independence movements within the Soviet union are launched in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Moldavia and the Ukraine.Nevada Desert Experience
1989 - Romanian secret police attempt to arrest Rev. Laslo Toles. Parishioners jam the streets, light candles and refuse to move. The crowd gathers until 50,000 converge on the city center. Violent suppression by the government sparks the revolution that overthrows the dictator Ceausescu.
1989 - The Chinese government crushes a nonviolent student protest at Tiananmen Square, but not before images are televised around the world.
1990 - Disabled demonstrators at the Capitol Building demand passage of a bill guaranteeing their civil rights. Sixty highlight their demands by crawling out of their wheelchairs and up the Capitol steps.A Pictorial History Tiananmen Square, 1989: The Declassified History
1990-1991 - Demonstrations in 20 cities protest U.S. buildup to the war against Iraq; polls show that the majority of Americans support the nonviolent resolution of the conflict.
1994 - Nelson Mandela elected first Black president of South Africa, four years after he is released from jail.
1997 - The International Campaign to Ban Landmines receives the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to eliminate these weapons that kill and injure.
ICBL Web Site
Many thank to the Lutheran Peace Fellowship, Seattle, WA, for most of the research that went into the compilation of this timeline.
This timeline is available for your use in several formats:
- This text-only copy is available on the peaceCENTER web site at www.salsa.net/peace/timeline.html.
- An illustrated timeline is available on CD, in Microsoft Word and Powerpoint formats. This version consists of approximately 60 events selected from this timeline with color illustrations plus short biographies with photos of all Nobel Peace Prize recipients. Suitable for display. A $5 donation is requested to cover the cost of the disk and shipping.
- A traveling timeline is available for loan to organizations in San Antonio. It consists of the illustrated timeline, mounted and laminated, and a portable display stand. There is no charge for loan of the traveling display, although free-will donations will be joyfully accepted.
For more information, or to suggest additional events that should be included, contact:
PO Box 36
127 McCullough at Ave. E
San Antonio, TX 78291
Phone: (210) 224-HOPE
FAX: 222-1097
www.salsa.net/peace