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August |
| 1-Aug |
As World War I begins, Harry Hodgkin, a British Quaker and Friedrich Siegmund-Schulte, a German Lutheran pastor, attending a conference in Germany, pledged to continue sowing the "seeds of peace and love, no matter what the future might bring," germinating the idea of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. (1914) |
| 1-Aug |
Gandhi begins movement of noncooperation, India. (1920) |
| 1-Aug |
Britain bans cigarette advertising from commercial television. (1965) |
| 1-Aug |
Helsinki Accords on human rights & East-West relations formed. (1975) |
| 1-Aug |
First occupation of Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear reactor site. (1976) |
| 1-Aug |
Blockade of nuclear missile site begins, Grossenstringen, West Germany. (1982) |
| 1-Aug |
US resumes making chemical weapons after 14 year's suspension. (1983) |
| 2-Aug |
Albert Einstein urges all scientists to refuse military work. (1931) |
| 2-Aug |
Mounted police break up anti-Korean War protest in Union Square, N.Y.C. (1950) |
| 3-Aug |
Congress passes the first law to restrict immigration in the United States. (1882) |
| 3-Aug |
Four die in the "Wheatland riots" when police fire into a crowd of California farmworkers trying to organize for better working conditions. (1913) |
| 3-Aug |
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) upholds a political candidate's right to broadcast paid commercials with racist content if such broadcast presents no danger of violence or incitement to violence. (1972) |
| 3-Aug |
Eight women arrested in Motherpeace action, U.S.-Canada war test site, Vancouver, B.C. (1986) |
| 3-Aug |
143 resisters publicly refuse military call-up, South Africa. (1988) |
| 4-Aug |
Trial of John Peter Zenger on charges of libel (1735) |
| 4-Aug |
In France, an elected Assembly abolished the privileges of the nobility. (1789) |
| 4-Aug |
US Marines leave Nicaragua after 13-year occupation.(1925) |
| 4-Aug |
First International Nonviolent March leaves for Verdun from Metz, France. (1976) |
| 4-Aug |
Peace Ribbon made by thousands of women wrapped around Pentagon. (1985) |
| 4-Aug |
Congress votes $20,000 to each Japanese-American interned during WW II. (1988) |
| 5-Aug |
US, USSR and Great Britain sign treaty banning nuclear testing in atmosphere (1963) |
| 6-Aug |
At Auburn Prison in New York, William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed in the electric chair. (1890) |
| 6-Aug |
Hiroshima Peace Day-atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima by "Enola Gay" (1945) |
| 6-Aug |
Voting Rights Act signed. (1965) |
| 6-Aug |
US imposes sanctions of Iraq. (1990) |
| 7-Aug |
Ralph Bunche born, the first African-American to hold a key position at the State Department, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the 1948 Arab-Israeli truce. (1904) |
| 7-Aug |
The first photograph of Earth taken from space is sent by the Explorer VI satellite. (1959) |
| 7-Aug |
Arias Peace Plan signed by five Central American nations (1987) |
| 8-Aug |
At the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, President Chester Arthur meets with Shoshoni Chief Washaki, becoming the first president to officially visit a Native American tribe. (1883) |
| 9-Aug |
Edge Pillock in Burlington County, New Jersey, becomes the first Native American reservation in the United States. (1758) |
| 9-Aug |
Nagasaki Day |
| 11-Aug |
Oliver Wendell Holmes is appointed to the Supreme Court. He wrote, "...The right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins." (1902) |
| 11-Aug |
Riots broke out in the Watts district of Los Angles. (1965) |
| 12-Aug |
Thousands demonstrate in Philadelphia in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, on death row since 1982, in the largest anti-death penalty rally in the U.S. (1995) |
| 13-Aug |
East German border guards begin construction of the Berlin Wall (1961) |
| 13-Aug |
Lamar Smith, who had organized blacks to vote in a recent election, was shot dead on the courthouse lawn by a white man in broad daylight Brookhaven, Miss. (1955) |
| 13-Aug |
Black students admitted to Little Rock High School, AR (1959) |
| 14-Aug |
Henry David Thoreau jailed for war tax resistance in Mexican War (1847) |
| 14-Aug |
India achieves independence from Britain after years of Gandhian resistance (1947) |
| 14-Aug |
10,000 Northern Ireland women demonstrate for peace in Belfast (1976) |
| 15-Aug |
Congress quickly passes law to remove Native Americans from Black Hills country after gold is found there.(1876) |
| 15-Aug |
India achieves independence after years of Gandhi's non-violent campaign (1947) |
| 15-Aug |
Woodstock festival begins (1969) |
| 16-Aug |
Solidarity led government elected in Poland (1989) |
| 17-Aug |
First of 350 B-52 bombers destroyed by U.S., as called for in START I treaty. (1993) |
| 18-Aug |
James Meredith became the first African American to graduate from The University of Mississippi. (1963) |
| 18-Aug |
Peace activists attempt to disrupt the launch of the Polaris submarine, Groton, CT (1982) |
| 19-Aug |
Benjamin Banneker sends a copy of his just-published almanac to Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, along with an appeal on behalf of African-Americans' "humiliating condition (slavery)..." (1791) |
| 20-Aug |
North America's first slaves arrive in Virginia from Africa (1619) |
| 20-Aug |
President Johnson signs a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure, the Economic Opportunity Act, which created the"Head Start", "Vista", and other "Great Society" programs.(1964) |
| 20-Aug |
Cesar Chavez ends a 36-day fast protesting dangerous pesticides in the fields. (1988) |
| 21-Aug |
Czechoslovakian people resist Soviet invasion (1968) |
| 21-Aug |
Aquino assassinated in the Philippines; hundreds of thousands demonstrate against Marcos (1983) |
| 21-Aug |
Cesar Chavez ends 36 day hunger strike to protest the use of pesticides on field workers (1988) |
| 22-Aug |
The Clotilde, the last known slave ship to arrive in America, docked at Mobile, AL under a veil of secrecy. (1854) |
| 22-Aug |
United Farm Workers Formed. (1966) |
| 23-Aug |
A million join hands in a 400 mile chain of resistance to USSR, Baltic states (1989) |
| 24-Aug |
Abbie Hoffman & Jerry Rubin throw 300 one-dollar bills from balcony onto floor of New York Stock Exchange, to disrupt business as usual. (1967) |
| 24-Aug |
U.F.W. lettuce strike begins (1970) |
| 25-Aug |
San Antonio Municipal Auditorium riot; progressive mayor Maury Maverick defends the free speech rights of communists to speak at the auditorium. (1939) |
| 25-Aug |
After the Soviet occupation of Prague, CZ, city buses began their routes bearing the signs, "U.S.: S.O.S." (1968) |
| 25-Aug |
UN Security Council declares embargo against Iraq (1990) |
| 26-Aug |
The French Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man. (1789) |
| 26-Aug |
The Amistad, a slave ship, is seized by the slaves and lands on Long Island, NY (1839) |
| 26-Aug |
19th Amendment, women gain right to vote; celebrated as Women's Equality Day (1920) |
| 26-Aug |
Samantha Smith, a youth invited to the Soviet Union after writing a letter calling for peace, dies in an airplane crash at age 13. (1985) |
| 27-Aug |
International Peace Bureau established, Rome, Italy. (1872) |
| 27-Aug |
Charles Schenk arrested; Supreme Court later says a "clear and present danger" was posed by his anti-draft leaflet "Long Live the Constitution of the U.S." (1917) |
| 27-Aug |
Mother Teresa born in Skopje, Albania (1910) |
| 27-Aug |
15 nations signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact that officially abolished war but lacked means of enforcement. (1928) |
| 27-Aug |
San Francisco Peace Torch begins its journey to Washington, D.C. for a demonstration against the Vietnam War. (1967) |
| 27-Aug |
Strike against the visit of potentially nuclear-armed US warship closes New Zealand docks for a week. (1976) |
| 27-Aug |
300,000 march in Washington on 20th anniversary of Civil Rights March, the second "March on Washington for Jobs, Peace, & Freedom" (1983) |
| 28-Aug |
England abolishes slavery. (1833) |
| 28-Aug |
Teenager Emmett Till is brutally murdered after speaking "inappropriately" to a white woman. The questionable trial helped to mobilize the civil rights movement. (1955) |
| 28-Aug |
Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech delivered (1963) |
| 28-Aug |
60,000 join Peace People demonstrations, Belfast & Dublin, Ireland.(1976) |
| 29-Aug |
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first federal civil rights legislation since 1875. The bill established a civil rights commission and a civil rights division in the Justice Department. (1957) |
| 29-Aug |
SNCC voter registration drive begins in the South. (1961) |
| 29-Aug |
Thousands of Chicanos gathered at Laguna Park in East L.A. to protest disproportionate number of deaths of Chicano soldiers in Vietnam. LAPD shot and killed journalist Ruben Salazar, accused of inciting the Chicano community. (1970) |
| 29-Aug |
Women call on women worldwide for peace. European Peace Caravan, Sarajevo, Bosnia. (1991) |
| 30-Aug |
"Hot line" telephone link established between Kremlin & White House. (1963) |
| 30-Aug |
Democratic Party convention refuses to seat black protest delegation in place of all-white delegation from state of Mississippi. (1964) |
| 30-Aug |
Ten empty school busses are blown up in Pontiac, Michigan eight days before bussing of 8,700 children to achieve racial balance in the schools was scheduled to begin. (1971) |
| 31-Aug |
Marcus Garvey, leader of the Black separatist movement, was inaugurated provisional president of "The Republic of Africa" in a Harlem ceremony. (1921) |
| 31-Aug |
Mexican-Americans in Beeville, Texas, desegregate the local high school. (1931) |
| 31-Aug |
2000 attend "World Unity or World Destruction" rally, London. (1941) |
| 31-Aug |
President Johnson signs law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense. (1965) |
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