 | Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. African Proverb |  |
If not, go here.
| Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. African Proverb | |
| JANUARY | |
| 1-Jan | World Peace Day |
| 1-Jan | A law making slave importation into the U.S. illegal becomes effective. (1808) |
| 1-Jan | William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberator, the leading abolitionist paper in the United States. (1831) |
| 1-Jan | Michigan becomes the first state to abolish capital punishment. (1847) |
| 1-Jan | President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) |
| 1-Jan | Arrest of 10 anti-nuclear activists for trespassing at Nevada Test Site culminates a 54-day encampment at the main Test Site gate. The camp establishes momentum for what became a movement of over 10,000 arrests in numerous Test Site protests over the following years. (1986) |
| 1-Jan | Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. (1993) |
| 2-Jan | Free Black community of Philadelphia petitions Congress to abolish slavery. (1800) |
| 2-Jan | President Roosevelt shuts down the post office in Indianola, Mississippi, for refusing to accept its appointed postmistress because she is African-American. (1903) |
| 2-Jan | Conference of Industrial Unionists in Chicago forms the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as The Wobblies. (1905) |
| 2-Jan | An estimated 100,000 Bangladeshi women traveled from the countryside to attend a rally in Dacca, the capital, to protest Islamic clerics' attacks on women's education & employment. (1996) |
| 3-Jan | Political and social reformer Lucretia Coffin Mott was born in Nantucket, MA. (1793) |
| 3-Jan | Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. (1521) |
| 3-Jan | Samuel Leamon Younge Jr., a student civil rights activist, was fatally shot by a white gas station owner following an argument over segregated restrooms, in Tuskeegee, Ala.(1966) |
| 3-Jan | President Carter pardons most of the Vietnam war draft resisters, nearly 10,000 qualified. (1977) |
| 4-Jan | Burma, now known as Myanmar, becomes an independent sovereign nation, ending more than six decades of British rule. (1948) |
| 4-Jan | Free Speech Movement holds its first legal rally on Sproul Plaza, University of California at Berkeley. (1965) |
| 5-Jan | Felix Manz, first Anabaptist martyr, sentenced to death, Zurich. (1527) |
| 5-Jan | Committee Against Nuclear Power Plants stops plant planned for Queens, NY. (1964) |
| 5-Jan | "Prague Spring," political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech and an end to state censorship, begins in Czechoslovakia. (1968) |
| 5-Jan | 20,000 miners in WV strike to protest the murder of Jock Yablonski, reform miners leader. (1970) |
| 5-Jan | 19 arrested in "Homes Not War" protest, Tucson, Arizona. (1971) |
| 6-Jan | First world anti-slavery convention held. (1831) |
| 6-Jan | William Lloyd Garrison and 15 others found New England Anti-Slavery Society (1832) |
| 6-Jan | President Roosevelt introduces the term "Four Freedoms": free speech & expression; free to worship; free from fear; & free from want. (1941) |
| 7-Jan | Marian Anderson debuts at the Metropolitan Opera, becoming the first African American to perform at America's most prestigious opera house. (1955) |
| 8-Jan | Birth of A.J. Muste, founder of Fellowship of Reconciliation (1885) |
| 8-Jan | African National Congress founded in South Africa. (1912) |
| 8-Jan | 200 Teamsters leaders hold "Labor for Peace" meeting to oppose Gulf War, New York City. (1991) |
| 8-Jan | Mothers' March For Life & Compassion to Grozny, Chechnya, leaves Moscow, Russia. (1995) |
| 9-Jan | Treaty with the Wyandot, Delaware, Ottowa, Potawatomi, & Sauk is the first in the new U.S. to recognize Native Americans as independent "nations." (1789) |
| 9-Jan | American feminist Carrie Chapman Catt, pacifist & suffragist, co-founder of Women's Peace Party & League of Women Voters, is born. (1859) |
| 9-Jan | Southern Tenant Farmers' Union lead Missouri Highway sit-down of 1,700 tenant families. (1939) |
| 10-Jan | The White House is picketed for the first time, in support of Women's sufferage. (1917) |
| 10-Jan | Versailles Treaty, establishing League of Nations (1920) |
| 10-Jan | Thomas Paine published his influential pamphlet, "Common Sense." (1773) |
| 10-Jan | Brethren, Mennonites and Friends send message to President Roosevelt asking for alternative service in event of war. (1940) |
| 10-Jan | Vernon Dahmer, a wealthy businessman in Hattiesburg, Miss., offered to pay poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford the fee required to vote. The night after a radio station broadcasted Dahmer’s offer, his home was firebombed. Dahmer died later from severe burns. (1966) |
| 10-Jan | Guatemalan officials and leftist guerilla movement agree to negotiate to end 30 years of violent conflict. (1994) |
| 11-Jan | Alice Paul, chief strategist for the militant wing of the suffrage movement and author of the Equal Rights Amendment, was born in Moorestown, NJ (1885) |
| 11-Jan | A young lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, is jailed for the first time, in Johannesburg, South Africa, for refusing to register as an Asian. (1911) |
| 11-Jan | Peace Pledge Union organizes "Operation Gandhi," first British protest against nuclear weapons, London. (1952) |
| 12-Jan | SCLC founded by Martin Luther King and other Black clergymen (1957) |
| 12-Jan | Twenty West German judges arrested for blockading the U.S. Air Force base at Mutlangen, West Germany. (1987) |
| 14-Jan | Martin Niemoller, German Minister imprisoned for many years by the Nazis, born (1892) |
| 14-Jan | A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters & chief spokesperson for the African American working class, calls for a March on Washington, demanding racial integration of the military & equal access to defense-industry jobs. (1941) |
| 14-Jan | March on Atlanta to protest ouster of Julian Bond, African American pacifist, from Georgia House of Representatives, after his endorsement of SNCC statement critical of US involvement in Vietnam. (1966) |
| 15-Jan | The United States Senate ratified the Kellogg-Brian pact, which outlawed war. (1929) |
| 15-Jan | Birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929) |
| 15-Jan | Jeanette Rankin Brigade, led by 87-year-old Rankin, the first U.S. Congresswoman & the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry to both World Wars, marches on Washington to protest war in Vietnam. (1968) |
| 17-Jan | Mangas Colorado, Apache chief, agrees to peace talks, is then arrested & imprisoned at Fort McLane (Arizona), then shot by two soldiers in his cell. (1863) |
| 17-Jan | Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews, disappeared in Hungary while in Soviet custody. (1945) |
| 17-Jan | President Eisenhower delivers Farewell Address warning the nation of the "Military- Industrial Complex." (1961) |
| 17-Jan | Chicano/a activists gather in Crystal City, TX, to form La Raza Unida Party. (1970) |
| 17-Jan | 5,000 rally, 138 arrested to protest test launch of first strike Trident Missile, Cape Canaveral, FL (1987) |
| 18-Jan | Greenham women 'keen' outside House of Commons. (1982) |
| 19-Jan | 59 arrested in civil rights sit in, Chattanooga, TN (1960) |
| 19-Jan | 25,000 march in Washington, DC against massive U.S. bombing of Iraq. (1991) |
| 19-Jan | "Shoes for Guns" firearm buy-back effort begins in Chicago. (1994) |
| 20-Jan | American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) founded. (1920) |
| 20-Jan | Nazi officials hold notorious Wannsee conference in Berlin deciding on "final solution" calling for extermination of Europe's Jews. (1942) |
| 20-Jan | 10,000 Mexican farmers in southeastern Chiapas block roads to major oil fields to protest pollution of their crops. Lasts several days. (1981) |
| 20-Jan | Over 200 citizens show up at a Seattle public hearing, many in radiation suits & mutant radioactive survivor makeup, & conduct die-ins to protest possible restart of nuclear weapon production at Hanford, Washington. (1998) |
| 21-Jan | Quaker Peace Testimony presented to Charles II, England. (1661) |
| 21-Jan | Women for Peace founded, Norway (1980) |
| 21-Jan | Emma Tenayuca leads San Antonio pecan shellers on the largest labor walk-out held to date. (1938) |
| 21-Jan | Continental Walk for Disarmament & Social Justice (The Great Peace March) starts in Ukiah, California, headed for Washington, D.C. (1976) |
| 21-Jan | Women's resistance camp set up, Volkel airbase, the Netherlands. (1984) |
| 21-Jan | 60 protesters with bathrobes, shower caps, & toothbrushes traipse through upscale stores in downtown Seattle, looking for a place to take a shower, in a protest drawing attention to City Council plans to kill a proposed downtown public hygiene center that could be used by the homeless. (1997) |
| 22-Jan | In a massacre known as Bloody Sunday, soldiers fired on civilians attempting to present petitions for better living and working conditionsto the Czar. The Russian workers lost faith in the Czar and turned to radicals and revolution to change their lives. (1905) |
| 22-Jan | 200 killed by Somoza's National Guard during protest against state violence, Managua, Nicaragua. (1967) |
| 22-Jan | World Council of Churches announces South African divestment. (1973) |
| 23-Jan | First British Disarmament Campaign, Liverpool, England (1875) |
| 23-Jan | 15 "Committee of 100" supporters sit in at House of Commons demanding halt to nuclear weapon tests. (1962) |
| 24-Jan | John Lennon & Yoko Ono shaved their heads to commemorate the start of Year One for Peace. (1970) |
| 25-Jan | Sojourner Truth addresses first Black Women's Rights Convention, Akron, OH (1851) |
| 25-Jan | INFACT (Infant Formula Action Coalition) wins settlement with Nestle Corporation after a seven year boycott. (1984) |
| 25-Jan | Soldiers' Mothers Committee begins 56 mile peace march between Nazran & Grozny, Chechnya. (1995) |
| 26-Jan | The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, later defeated by a filibuster in the Senate. (1922) |
| 26-Jan | First US Nuclear test at Nevada Test Site (1951) |
| 26-Jan | Major accident occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine. The radiation cloud killed 23; 40,000 were evacuated. (1986) |
| 26-Jan | 100,000 march against Gulf War, New York City & San Francisco. (1991) |
| 26-Jan | Women in Black demonstrate in solidarity with their Serbian sisters, Toronto, Canada. (1993) |
| 27-Jan | The United States and North Vietnam signed a cease-fire agreement. The same day, the United States announced an end to the military draft. (1973) |
| 27-Jan | Nationwide strike by some 10,000 conscientious objectors, West Germany. (1983) |
| 27-Jan | France conducted an open-air nuclear test in the South Pacific. (1996) |
| 28-Jan | Author and activist Julia Ward Howe became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. (1908) |
| 28-Jan | A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that the U.S. military's policy against homosexuals was unconstitutional because it was "based on cultural myths and false stereotypes." (1993) |
| 29-Jan | Four women Ploughshares activists cause millions in damage, disarming a British Aerospace F-16 fighter jet destined to be sold to Indonesia for use in its illegal occupation & genocide of East Timor. The women were later acquitted of all charges on the grounds of preventing a greater crime. Warton, England. (1996) |
| 30-Jan | Gandhi Assassinated, New Delhi. (1948) |
| 30-Jan | As Martin Luther King, Jr. stands at the pulpit, leading a mass meeting during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, his home is bombed. (1956) |
| 30-Jan | In a clash with British troops, 14 Irish civilians were killed in Derry, Ireland. This is remembered as Ireland's "Bloody Sunday." (1972) |
| 31-Jan | US government orders all Native Americans to move to reservations or be declared hostile. (1876) |
| 31-Jan | Pacifist priest Thomas Merton born in Pyrenees-Orientales, France. (1915) |
| 31-Jan | The Winter Soldier Hearings begin in a Howard Johnson's motel in Detroit. Sponsored by the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the hearings are an attempt by soldiers who have served in Vietnam to publicize U.S. conduct in the war. (1971) |
| 31-Jan | 300,000 Berliners rally against attacks on immigrants, racisn and Nazism on the 60th anniversary of Hitler's rise to power. (1993) |
| 31-Jan | Illinois Gov. George Ryan halted all executions in his state after several death row inmates were found to be innocent of the crimes for which they were about to be put to death. (2000) |
| FEBRUARY | |
| 1-Feb | Four African American students sit in at Woolworth's, Greensboro, NC (1960) |
| 1-Feb | 7,000 march to protest KKK in Greensboro, North Carolina. (1980) |
| 1-Feb | President George Bush & Russian President Boris Yeltsin declare an official end to Cold War (1992) |
| 1-Feb | Two Native American activists, Eddie Hatcher & Tim Jacobs, occupy a newspaper office in Lumberton, North Carolina, to highlight racism issues. (1988) |
| 1-Feb | Two-month campaign of Citizens Against War begins, Belgrade, Serbia. (1992) |
| 2-Feb | Anthony Benezet refuses to pay taxes to support Revolutionary War. (1779) |
| 2-Feb | The first of well over 400,000 Mexican-Americans, many US citizens living here as long as 40 years, are "repatriated" from the nation as Los Angeles Chicanos are deported to Mexico. (1931) |
| 2-Feb | First world disarmament convention opens, Geneva, Switzerland. (1932) |
| 2-Feb | First burning of Australian military draft papers, Sydney. (1966) |
| 2-Feb | South African President deKlerk lifts ban on opposition groups; African National Congress (ANC) is now legal. (1990) |
| 3-Feb | The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified and takes effect on March 30. It grants all citizens the right to vote regardless of race or color. (1870) |
| 3-Feb | Abigail Ashbrook of New Jersey refuses to pay taxes because she is denied the right to vote. (1893) |
| 3-Feb | Mass arrest of children demonstrating for Civil Rights, Selma, AL. (1965) |
| 3-Feb | More then 450,000 students, nearly half the citywide enrollment, boycott the New York City schools to protest segregation. (1964) |
| 3-Feb | President Nixon signs Endangered Species Act. (1973) |
| 3-Feb | Texas executed Karla Faye Tucker, the first female inmate to be put to death by the state in 135 years. (1998) |
| 4-Feb | The American Colonization Society founds the African state of Liberia in West Africa as a home for freed U.S. slaves. (1822) |
| 4-Feb | Rosa Parks is born (1913) |
| 4-Feb | Colombian government recognizes native rights to half its forest, 69,000 square miles in the Amazon Basin, home to 55,000 indigenous tribal peoples. (1990) |
| 4-Feb | Start of week of marches for peace by thousands, Grozny, Chechnya. (1996) |
| 5-Feb | Roger Williams, defender of religious liberty and founder of Rhode Island, arrived in Boston. (1631) |
| 5-Feb | New Harmony Community of Equality founded in Indiana. (1826) |
| 5-Feb | Australian Prime Minister Robert Hawke refuses to allow the US to use o bases to monitor an MX missile test. (1985) |
| 5-Feb | 49 German troops conscientiously object to going to Turkey for Gulf War. (1991) |
| 7-Feb | Lord Byron, in his first speech before the House of Lords, denounces a death penalty measure for rebellious laborers.(1812) |
| 7-Feb | "Negro History Week" was observed for the first time. Today it has been lengthened, and is known as African-American history month. (1926) |
| 7-Feb | Autherine Lucy, the first black person admitted to the University of Alabama, was expelled after she accused school officials of conspiring in the riots that accompanied her court-ordered enrollment. (1956) |
| 7-Feb | Swiss women get the vote. (1971) |
| 8-Feb | Congress passed the Dawes Severalty Act, designed to end tribal life, which divided tribal lands into small plots for distribution to tribal members. American citizenship was granted to Native Americans who accepted their land and lived apart from the tribe. Congressed hoped that this would encourage Native Americans to "adopt the habits of civilized life." (1887) |
| 8-Feb | Longest Walk begins - Native American march from San Francisco to Washington, DC (1978) |
| 8-Feb | Four Black students killed, 50 wounded by police in Orangeburg, SC (1968) |
| 9-Feb | The "GI Joe" action doll debuts. (1964) |
| 10-Feb | Voice of Nuclear Disarmament pirate radio station begins operation off shore. (1961) |
| 11-Feb | Quakers and Mennonites petition Congress for Emancipation of slaves (1790) |
| 11-Feb | Vermont is the first state to abolish slavery. (1777) |
| 11-Feb | Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control. (1911) |
| 11-Feb | Treaty on non-militarization of sea bed signed, London, Moscow & Washington. (1971) |
| 11-Feb | Nelson Mandela freed after 27 years in a South African prison (1990) |
| 12-Feb | NAACP founded. (1909) |
| 12-Feb | First peacetime draft card burning. (1947) |
| 12-Feb | The International Olympic Committee rejected a U.S. proposal to postpone or cancel the 1980 Summer Games or move the site from Moscow as a protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (1980) |
| 12-Feb | About 5,000 demonstrators march on Atlanta's State Capitol to protest the Confederate symbol on the Georgia state flag. (1993) |
| 13-Feb | The English Parliament enacted into law a Bill of Rights. (1689) |
| 13-Feb | Carrying huge photos of Napalmed Vietnamese children, 2,500 members of the group Women Strike for Peace storm the Pentagon, demanding to see "the generals who send our sons to Vietnam." (1967) |
| 13-Feb | Five soldiers arrested at pray-in for peace, Fort Jackson, South Carolina. (1968) |
| 13-Feb | US bombs an Iraqi air raid shelter, killing 334. (1991) |
| 14-Feb | Frederick Douglass, abolitionist leader, born into slavery. (1817) |
| 14-Feb | New Jersey becomes the first state to legalize unions. (1883) |
| 14-Feb | Founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), in Atlanta. (1957) |
| 15-Feb | New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery. (1804) |
| 15-Feb | Susan B. Anthony born (1820) |
| 16-Feb | A pastoral letter was read in the majority of Norwegian pulpits telling the fascist regime to "end all which conflicts with God's holy arrangements regarding truth, justice, freedom of conscience and goodness.." (1941) |
| 17-Feb | Miguel de Cueno, a member of Columbus' second expedition, ships 550 captured Carib Indians to be slaves in Europe. 200 die at sea. (1495) |
| 17-Feb | The US Supreme Court issued its "one man, one vote" decision. (1964) |
| 17-Feb | First meeting of Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). (1958) |
| 18-Feb | Pennsylvania Quakers make first formal protest against slavery (1688) |
| 18-Feb | Nonviolent resistance to Austrian oppression results in separate constitution, Hungary. (1867) |
| 18-Feb | Bertrand Russell, 89, leads march of 20,000 & sit-down of 5,000 in an anti-nuke rally outside U.K. Defense Ministry and is jailed for 7 days. (1961) |
| 18-Feb | Five of the "Chicago Seven" (Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin) are found guilty of crossing state lines to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic convention, but are found not guilty of conspiracy. (1970) |
| 19-Feb | Tsar Alexander II of Russia issued his decree abolishing Serfdom. (1862) |
| 19-Feb | First Pan-African Congress organized by W.E.B. DuBois, Paris, France (1919) |
| 19-Feb | Norwegian teachers begin successful nonviolent protest against Nazification of schools (1942) |
| 19-Feb | Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, ordered that all Japanese Americans (Nisei) be evacuated from the West Coast and be forced to live in concentration camps. (1942) |
| 19-Feb | The U.S. Senate approves a treaty outlawing genocide, 37 years after the pact had first been submitted for ratification. (1986) |
| 19-Feb | A Superior Court judge ruled that a gay group has the right to march in South Boston's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. (1993) |
| 20-Feb | Dueling is outlawed in the District of Columbia. (1839) |
| 21-Feb | Malcolm X Assassinated. (1965) |
| 22-Feb | Tennessee abolished slavery. (1865) |
| 22-Feb | U.S. President Richard Nixon met with Chinese Premier Mao Tse-tung in Peking. This bold foreign policy coup ended more that two decades of Sino-American hostility. (1972) |
| 23-Feb | The Humane Society of Massachusetts is incorporated. (1792) |
| 23-Feb | W.E.B. DuBois born. (1868) |
| 23-Feb | Dockers strike against Nazi persecution of Jews, Amsterdam. (1941) |
| 24-Feb | A congressional commission release a report condemning the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, calling it a "grave injustice." (1983) |
| 25-Feb | Samuel Colt receives a patent for his revolver. (1836) |
| 25-Feb | Hiram Rhoades Revels, first African-American Congressman, sworn in. (1870) |
| 26-Feb | Jimmie Lee Jackson was beaten and shot by state troopers as he tried to protect his grandfather and mother from a trooper attack on civil rights marchers, in Marion, Ala. (1965) |
| 26-Feb | Corazon Aquino assumes power after non-violent revolt deposes Marcos, Philippines (1986) |
| 27-Feb | Wharlest Jackson, the treasurer of the NAACP chapter in Natchez, Miss., was one of many blacks who received threatening Klan notices at his job. After Jackson was promoted to a position previously reserved for whites, a bomb was planted in his car. It exploded minutes after he left work one day, killing him instantly. (1967) |
| 27-Feb | American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee, the site of the 1890 massacre of Sioux men, women and children (1973) |
| 28-Feb | The Republican Party was organized. Their main platform was preventing an end to the expansion of slavery. (1854) |
| 28-Feb | Peace Memorial Day, also called 228 Memorial Day, in Taiwan, commemorating a 1947 incident of government oppression. (1947) |
| 28-Feb | NATO was involved in actual combat for the first timein its 45-year history when four U.S. fighter planes operating under NATO auspices shot down four Serb planes that'd violated the U.N. no-fly zone in central Bosnia. (1994) |
| 28-Feb | The Brady Gun Law goes into effect. (1994) |
| 28-Feb | Bowing to international pressure, Jorg Haider resigned as leader of Austria's anti-immigrant Freedom Party. Haider had come under scrutiny for his reported admiration of Hitler when his party was included in a government coalition. (2000) |
| 29-Feb | The National Advisory Commission of Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move "toward two societies, one black, one white - separate but unequal" (1968) |
| 29-Feb | South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other religious leaders arrested near Parliament with a petition to end apartheid (1988) |
| MARCH | |
| 1-Mar | In Salem, Massachusetts, the witch trials began. (1691) |
| 1-Mar | Pennsylvania abolishes slavery. (1780) |
| 1-Mar | President Kennedy established the Peace Corps. (1961) |
| 1-Mar | Nuclear Free Pacific Day to commemorate 2nd US hydrogen bomb dropped on Bikini Atoll. (1954) |
| 1-Mar | Civil Rights Act enacted in US. (1875) |
| 1-Mar | International Day of the Seal to promote awareness of the seal's peril. (since 1983) |
| 3-Mar | Chicano students walk out of Los Angeles high schools protesting racist policies. (1968) |
| 5-Mar | A nuclear non-proliferation treaty went into effect after 43 nations ratified it. (1970) |
| 6-Mar | Mexican troops defeat foreign slaveholders and mercenaries at the Alamo. (1836) |
| 6-Mar | The Dred Scott decision is handed down by the Supreme Court. It ruled that African-Americans are not full citizens, and an escaped slave could not sue for his freedom. (1857) |
| 6-Mar | Muhammad Ali is ordered by the Selective Service to be inducted. He refuses, citing his religious beliefs preclude him from killing others. (1967) |
| 7-Mar | A march by civil rights demonstrators in Selma, AL, was broken up by state troopers and a sheriff's posse. (1965) |
| 8-Mar | International Women's Day. (Since 1945) |
| 8-Mar | First U.S. Combat troops enter Vietnam. (1965) |
| 8-Mar | The Anti Apartheid movement held a mass lobby of the House of Commons in London to push for a firm stand against the government of South Africa. (1965) |
| 9-Mar | U.S. Supreme Court frees slaves who seized slave ship Amisted in 1839. (1841) |
| 9-Mar | The Supreme Court issues its New York Times vs. Sullivan decision, which said public officials who charged they'd been libeled could not recover damages for a report related to their official duties unless they proved actual malice on the part of the news organization. (1964) |
| 9-Mar | CBS cancels the Smothers Brothers Hour after they refuse to censor a comment made by Joan Baez. She wanted to dedicate her song to her husband, David, who was about to go to jail for objecting to the draft. (1969) |
| 10-Mar | Slavery abolished in China (1910) |
| 10-Mar | Harriet Tubman Day, on the anniversary of her death in 1913 to honor her work freeing slaves. (1913) |
| 10-Mar | 500,000 demonstrate against affiliation with NATO, Madrid, Spain (1986) |
| 11-Mar | Gandhi's Salt March begins, from Ahmadabad to Delhi, in protest against salt tax. (1930) |
| 11-Mar | The Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was among many white clergyman who joined the Selma marchers after the attack by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Reeb was beaten to death by white men while he walked down a Selma, Ala. street. (1965) |
| 11-Mar | Cesar Chavez ends 23-day fast for US farm workers. (1976) |
| 11-Mar | Beginning of 10 days of direct actions at Nevada Test Site which result in over 2,200 arrests, the largest number of arrests at a political protest outside Washington, D.C. in U.S. history. (1988) |
| 12-Mar | Maximilian, a Christian, beheaded by Romans for refusing military service, Thevesta, N. Africa. (295) |
| 12-Mar | The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) wins Lawrence, MA "Bread & Roses" textile strike after nine weeks involving 32,000 strikers. (1912) |
| 12-Mar | Ann Frank dies at Bergen-Belsen. (1945) |
| 12-Mar | New York becomes the first state to prohibit discrimination by race & creed in employment. (1945) |
| 12-Mar | Nearly a hundred Congressional Representatives & Senators sign the "Southern Manifesto," vowing to fight the Supreme Court school desegregation decision. (1956) |
| 12-Mar | 300 women workers stage slow-down at Control Data in Seoul, Korea, protesting the firing of their union president. (1982) |
| 13-Mar | First contingent of 14,030 Navajo reach Fort Sumner, New Mexico during the Long Walk of the Navajo, a 400-mile forced march in which thousands died. (1864) |
| 13-Mar | Pax Christi founded, France. (1945) |
| 13-Mar | Kitty Genovese stabbed to death in Queens, New York while Winston Mosley rapes & fatally stabs her in three separate attacks occurring over a period of more than half an hour. Although 38 people witness some or all of the crime, as Genovese cried for help, no one called for help until she was already dead, 35 minutes after the assault begins. (1964) |
| 13-Mar | Clouds of nerve gas drift outside the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, poisoning 6,400 sheep in nearby Skull Valley. (1968) |
| 14-Mar | Peace activist and scientist Albert Einstein born in Ulm, Germany. (1879) |
| 14-Mar | National Civil Liberties Council founded in England. (1934) |
| 14-Mar | Sixteen disabled rights activists arrested at the U.S. Capitol demanding passage of what would become the Americans With Disabilities Act. (1990) |
| 15-Mar | First federal women's suffrage amendment ever introduced in U.S. Congress. (1869) |
| 15-Mar | 78 protesters arrested during a second attempt by Native American activists to occupy Fort Lawton, demanding that Seattle give the unused facility back to Native Americans. (1970) |
| 15-Mar | Activists across Britain stage supermarket protests against genetically engineered foods. (1997) |
| 16-Mar | The first newspaper edited for and by African-Americans, Freedom's Journal, is published in New York. (1827) |
| 16-Mar | Freedom of Information Day, on the anniversary of the birth of former president James Madison, who helped draft the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution. (1751) |
| 16-Mar | War Resisters International founded. (1921) |
| 16-Mar | My Lai Massacre (1968) |
| 17-Mar | In London, at the largest Vietnam antiwar march in Britain to date, 25,000 people attempt to storm the American Embassy at Grosvenor Square. (1968) |
| 17-Mar | 3,000 Ethiopian women workers march for equal pay & better labor conditions. (1974) |
| 17-Mar | 30,000 march in Villahermosa, Mexico, in support of a campaign to blockade state-owned oil wells that had displaced thousands of poor people. (1996) |
| 18-Mar | Tolpuddle Martyrs banished to Australia for union activities. (1843) |
| 18-Mar | Beginning of Paris Commune. (1871) |
| 18-Mar | The Supreme Court rules on Gideon v. Wainwright, holding states must supply free legal council to all poor persons facing criminal charges.(1963) |
| 18-Mar | The first big oil spill: US supertanker "Torrey Canyon" runs aground off Land's End, Cornwall, England, releasing 119,000 tons of oil. (1967) |
| 19-Mar | 50 Greenwich Village folk artists protest Pete Seeger's blacklisting from the television show "Hootenanny." (1963) |
| 19-Mar | 43 arrested at Chase Manhattan Bank in NYC, protesting loans to South Africa (1965) |
| 19-Mar | 200 women seize the New York offices of "Ladies Home Journal," demanding what they call a "Women's Liberated Journal." (1970) |
| 19-Mar | Cyprus: 4,500 join Women's Walk Home nonviolent crossing of Green Line partition. (1989) |
| 19-Mar | 50,000 march in Amsterdam to protest US deployment of the neutron bomb in Europe. (1978) |
| 20-Mar | Switzerland declares perpetual neutrality (1815) |
| 20-Mar | Harriet Beecher Stowe's influential novel about slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin, is first published. (1852) |
| 20-Mar | Selma to Montgomery march begins. (1965) |
| 20-Mar | Johann Sebastian Bach born. (1685) |
| 20-Mar | In Australia 150,000 (1% of population) demonstrate in anti-nuclear rallies. (1983) |
| 21-Mar | A Hatfield marries a McCoy, ends long feud in West Virginia. (1891) |
| 21-Mar | 69 killed in Sharpeville massacre by South African police. (1960) |
| 21-Mar | International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, United Nations (since 1966) |
| 21-Mar | The newly wed John Lennon & Yoko Ono begin their famous "bed-in for peace" at the Amsterdam Hilton. (1969) |
| 21-Mar | Menomonee activists take over courthouse in Kenosha, Wisc., demanding authorities investigate the beating of two women. (1977) |
| 22-Mar | The Pilgrims and Massasoit Indians agree on a league of friendship. (1621) |
| 22-Mar | Slavery is abolished in Puerto Rico. (1873) |
| 22-Mar | Equal Rights Amendment passed by Congress. (1974) |
| 22-Mar | 30,000 march in Washington, DC against draft registration. (1980) |
| 22-Mar | A boat piled with 3,168 tons of garbage begins a 162-day, 6,000-mile search for a port willing to take its' load. After being rebuffed by 6 states & 3 countries, New York City agrees to burn the trash. (1987) |
| 23-Mar | Trial of 101 Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World; IWW) begins in Chicago, for opposition to World War I. (1918) |
| 23-Mar | The U.S. government begins moving native-born Americans of Japanese ancestry from their West Coast homes to imprisonment in detention centers. (1942) |
| 23-Mar | Archbishop Romero assassinated, El Salvador (1980) |
| 23-Mar | New Zealand: One thousand boats demonstrate against arrival of U.S.S. Queenfish, Auckland. (1984) |
| 24-Mar | Willi Leddra executed in New England for being a Quaker. (1661) |
| 24-Mar | Canadian women win the right to vote. (1918) |
| 24-Mar | 1,172 arrested in sit-down against nuclear weapons, Parliament Square, London, England. (1964) |
| 24-Mar | First teach-in to oppose the Vietnam War held at University of Michigan (1965) |
| 24-Mar | Martin Luther King, Jr., publicly announced his strong opposition to the Vietnam War. (1967) |
| 24-Mar | US and NATO begin 78 days of bombing in Yugoslavia (1999) |
| 24-Mar | The Exxon Valdez Runs Aground (1989) |
| 25-Mar | Toronto printers strike for the 9-hour day -- the first major strike in Canada. (1872) |
| 25-Mar | Coxey's "Army" heads peacefully from Ohio for Washington DC, demanding economic reform. (1894) |
| 25-Mar | Triangle shirtwaist fire kills 145 in New York City,stirring public outrage and spurs workplace safety reform.(1911) |
| 25-Mar | Sisterhood of International Peace founded in Australia. (1915) |
| 25-Mar | Viola Gregg Liuzo, a housewife and mother from Detroit, drove alone to Alabama to help with the Selma march after seeing televised reports of the attack at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. She was driving marchers back to Selma from Montgomery when she was shot and killed by a Klansmen in a passing car. (1965) |
| 25-Mar | Britain abolished the slave trade. (1807) |
| 25-Mar | 30,000 in Children's March for Survival, Washington, D.C., protesting welfare cuts. (1972) |
| 26-Mar | First Jews Boarded on Trains for Auschwitz. (1942) |
| 26-Mar | Over 50,000 march in Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade in New York City. (1966) |
| 26-Mar | New York City Central Park Love-In, 10,000 show up. (1967) |
| 26-Mar | John & Yoko Ono-Lennon start seven day bed-in against the Vietnam War. (1969) |
| 26-Mar | 500 fast against construction of nuclear reactors, Switzerland. (1978) |
| 26-Mar | Israeli-Egyptian Peace Agreement Signed (1979) |
| 26-Mar | US Supreme Court upholds a ruling that an Oklahoma law permitting the dismissal of teachers for speaking out on gay rights is unconstitutional. (1986) |
| 26-Mar | More than 3,000 people flee ethnic violence in Burundi, Africa. (1995) |
| 27-Mar | Blacks stage ride-ins on Charleston, SC street cars; 2 months later, railway company integrates (1867) |
| 27-Mar | 20,000 Buddhists in silent march for peace, Hue, South Vietnam. (1966) |
| 27-Mar | The first Chicano Youth Liberation Conference is held by the Crusade for Justice; the poet known as Alurista presents his poem on the myth of Aztlán, which captures the imagination of the conference. (1969) |
| 27-Mar | Nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island, PA. (1979) |
| 28-Mar | NY State abolished slavery. (1799) |
| 29-Mar | African-American men gain right to vote, 15th Amendment. (1870) |
| 31-Mar | Dalai Lama Begins Exile. (1959) |
| 31-Mar | Cesar Chavez born. (1927) |
| 31-Mar | Jews Expelled from Spain. (1492) |
| APRIL | |
| 1-Apr | Diggers occupy Saint George's Hill, seizing land to hold in common & to plant. (1649) |
| 1-Apr | Brook Farm, history's most famous utopian community, is founded near West Roxbury, Massachusetts. It's primary appeal was to young Bostonians who shrink from the materialism of American life. (1841) |
| 1-Apr | Michigan becomes first state to abolish the death penalty. (1847) |
| 1-Apr | Gandhi ends salt march by illegally collecting salt from the sea (1930) |
| 1-Apr | Protesters at Greenham Common form a human chain 14 miles long to oppose missiles (1983) |
| 1-Apr | South Africa: boycott of segregated schools begins. (1955) |
| 1-Apr | The Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty (1621) |
| 2-Apr | Jeannette Rankin, (R-MT) the first woman ever elected to Congress, took her seat (1917) |
| 2-Apr | Massachusetts enacts a law which exempts its citizens from having to fight in an undeclared war. (1970) |
| 3-Apr | Three day, fifty mile peace march from Trafalgar Square to Aldermaston, Berkshire begins to protest Britain's development of nuclear weaponry; first of many. (1958) |
| 3-Apr | Martin Luther King, Jr. "I've been to the mountaintop" speech delivered (1968) |
| 4-Apr | Martin Luther King, Jr., preaches against Vietnam War & calls for common cause between civil rights & anti-war movements, Riverside Church, New York City. (1967) |
| 4-Apr | Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassinated. (1968) |
| 4-Apr | Henry Cisneros becomes mayor of San Antonio, Texas; the first Mexican-American elected mayor of a major U.S. city. (1981) |
| 4-Apr | Columbia University students occupy Hamilton Hall to demand South African divestment (1985) |
| 5-Apr | Nuclear free zone declared by Dublin City Council. (1982) |
| 5-Apr | Solidarity granted legal status in Poland (1989) |
| 5-Apr | Nonviolent demonstration against war, Parliament building, Sarajevo. (1992) |
| 5-Apr | 54 arrested in Good Friday protest at Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory, Livermore, California. (1996) |
| 6-Apr | First Major Slave Rebellion in the Colonies, New York (1712) |
| 6-Apr | Hot Springs, Arkansas professional baseball team is voted out of the Class C Cotton States League after the club refuses to cancel contracts with two black pitchers whose services it had obtained. (1953) |
| 6-Apr | Tens of thousands protesting Vietnam War jeer Vice President Humphrey in West Berlin, West Germany. (1967) |
| 6-Apr | 11 arrested at main post office near Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., for attempting to mail needed medical supplies to Iraq in defiance of U.S.-led embargo. (1996) |
| 7-Apr | World Health Day (since 1948) |
| 7-Apr | Start of a 90-day genocide in Rwanda which left 500,000 people dead. Commemorated by prayer vigils in Rwanda. (1994) |
| 8-Apr | Paul Robeson born. (1898) |
| 8-Apr | Marian Anderson performs a concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington after she is denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution. (1939) |
| 8-Apr | Women in Black demonstrate in solidarity with their Serbian sisters, Lund, Sweden. (1993) |
| 9-Apr | First freedom ride, "Journey of Reconciliation," sponsored by CORE and FOR. (1947) |
| 9-Apr | Members of Big Stone Cree end a 250 mile march to Edmonton, Alberta, to highlight economic plight of Big Stone Cree in northern Alberta. (1981) |
| 10-Apr | 1st ghetto, Jews are compelled to live in specific area of Venice. (1516) |
| 10-Apr | The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is incorporated. (1866) |
| 10-Apr | Nebraskans planted more than a million trees in celebration of the first Arbor Day. (1872) |
| 10-Apr | US troops liberate Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany (1945) |
| 10-Apr | Nat "King" Cole is attacked and severely beaten by a group of racial segregationists while singing onstage at the Municipal Hall in Birmingham, Alabama. (1956) |
| 10-Apr | The United States and the Soviet Union join some 70 nations in signing an agreement banning biological warfare.(1972) |
| 10-Apr | UN approves world treaty assuring no civilians should be attacked with "napalm, mines or booby-traps." Defeated by US veto. (1981) |
| 11-Apr | Pacem in Terris encyclical issued by Pope John XIII, calling for an end to the nuclear arms race. (1963) |
| 11-Apr | The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issues regulations specifically prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors. (1980) |
| 11-Apr | Treaty of Pelindaba signed in Cairo, making Africa a nuclear-free continent and in theory making the entire southern hemisphere a nuclear-free zone. (1996) |
| 12-Apr | 60,000 students across the country took place in the first nation wide student strike. The protest was against participation in any war. (1937) |
| 12-Apr | 90-year-old Jeanette Rankin,the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry to both World Wars, leads 8,000 in protest of the Vietnam War in the Women's peace march on the Pentagon.(1971) |
| 12-Apr | First European anti-nuclear power demonstration, Fessenheim. (1971) |
| 12-Apr | At President Carter's request, the US Olympic Committee votes not to attend the Moscow Summer Olympics in retaliation for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (1980) |
| 13-Apr | Amritsar Massacre - 379 unarmed demonstrators killed by British in India (1919) |
| 13-Apr | Rachel Carson's book indicting the pesticide industry, Silent Spring, is published. (1962) |
| 13-Apr | Catholic Worker activists arrested in protest at World Bank headquarters, Washington DC. (1995) |
| 14-Apr | The first American society for the abolition of slavery is organized by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush. (1775) |
| 15-Apr | Jack Roosevelt Robinson becomes the first African-American in the 20th Century to play in a Major League Baseball game. (1947) |
| 15-Apr | Over 150 people burn draft cards - Vietnam War protest in Central Park, NYC (1967) |
| 16-Apr | Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) throw medals on Capitol steps (1971) |
| 17-Apr | Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee founded, Raleigh, NC (1960) |
| 17-Apr | The Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961) |
| 17-Apr | First national demonstration against Vietnam War, 25,000 march in Washington, DC (1965) |
| 19-Apr | The American Revolution Begins (1775) |
| 19-Apr | Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Begins (1943) |
| 20-Apr | Harriet Tubman begins her Underground Railroad. (1853) |
| 20-Apr | Ku Klux Klan Act Passed by Congress; authority to use military force against Klan (1871) |
| 20-Apr | Ludlow Massacre, troops kill 25 in attack on strikers living in tents in Colorado (1914) |
| 20-Apr | The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools. (1971) |
| 20-Apr | Killings at Littleton, Colorado's Columbine High School, where two teenagers killed 12 fellow students, a teacher and themselves (1999) |
| 21-Apr | Chinese Students Begin Protests at Tiananmen Square (1989) |
| 22-Apr | First Earth Day observance (1970) |
| 22-Apr | The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is dedicated in Washington, D.C., to honor the victims of Nazi extermination. (1993) |
| 23-Apr | Army-McCarthy Hearings Begin (1953) |
| 23-Apr | William Lewis Moore, a postman from Baltimore, was shot and killed in Attalla, Ala. during a one-man march against segregation. Moore had planned to deliver a letter to the governor of Mississippi urging an end to intolerance. (1963) |
| 23-Apr | Students at Columbia seize buildings to protest war research & razing Harlem for new gym (1968) |
| 24-Apr | The Easter Uprising Begins in Ireland (1916) |
| 24-Apr | 500,000 demonstrate against Vietnam War in Washington, DC (1971) |
| 25-Apr | Peaceful uprising by army and civilians ends 48 years of fascism in Portugal (1974) |
| 25-Apr | Tens of thousands march on Washington, D.C. to demand an end to U.S. wars in Central America. (1987) |
| 26-Apr | Nazis Test Luftwaffe on Basque Town of Guernica (1937) |
| 26-Apr | "Corky" Gonzales founds Crusade for Justice, Chicano activist group, Denver, CO (1966) |
| 26-Apr | South Africa Holds First Multiracial Elections (1994) |
| 27-Apr | Navajos demonstrate as Gulf Oil sinks a uranium mine into sacred mountain (1979) |
| 28-Apr | Catholic workers refuse to leave park in Manhattan during nuclear civil defense drill (1961) |
| 28-Apr | Mothers hold first rally for the disappeared at Plaza de la Maya, Buenos Aires (1977) |
| 29-Apr | American soldiers liberate the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. (1945) |
| 29-Apr | 826 arrested in London rally against nuclear weapons (1961) |
| 29-Apr | Wrecking cranes begin tearing down the section of the Berlin Wall surrounding the Brandenburg Gate, the wall's most famous section. (1990) |
| 30-Apr | 1,415 arrested in occupation of Seabrook nuclear power plant, New Hampshire (1977) |
| MAY | |
| 1-May | International Workers Day (since 1886) |
| 1-May | "EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION ACT", P.L. 87-447, is signed into law. (1962) |
| 1-May | One million South Africans strike against apartheid in COSATU strike (1986) |
| 2-May | Poor People's Campaign March on Washington, DC (1968) |
| 3-May | Pete Seeger is born in New York City. (1919) |
| 3-May | The Nixon administration arrests nearly 13,000 anti-war protesters who disrupt Monday morning rush hour in Washington. (1971) |
| 3-May | National Public Radio premieres. (1971) |
| 3-May | 60,000 march on Pentagon to end military involvement in El Salvador (1980) |
| 4-May | First Freedom Riders' interstate bus integration attempt, Washington to New Orleans (1961) |
| 4-May | Four Kent State students killed, 13 wounded by National Guard, in Kent, OH (1970) |
| 5-May | Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified, which outlawed slavery (1865) |
| 5-May | Congress passes the Geary Chinese Exclusion Act, which requires Chinese in the United States to be registered or face deportation. (1892) |
| 5-May | Bobby Sands, IRA member, dies in prison from hunger strike (1980) |
| 6-May | 415 arrested at proposed nuclear site in Seabrook, NH (1977) |
| 7-May | William Penn begins monthly meetings for Blacks advocating emancipation. (1700) |
| 7-May | The Rev. George Lee, one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County and who used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote, was murdered in Belzoni, Miss. (1955) |
| 8-May | The Department of Justice orders court action to halt racial segregation in hospitals built with federal funds. (1962) |
| 10-May | Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman nominated for the U.S. presidency, by the National Equal Rights party. (1872) |
| 10-May | Nelson Mandela inaugurated president of South Africa (1994) |
| 12-May | Poor People's Campaign begins when contingents of the poor, mainly from the south, begin pitching "Ressurection City" in the vicinity of the Lincoln Memorial. It was dismantled by police on June 24. (1968) |
| 12-May | Amy Eilberg is ordained in New York as the first woman rabbi in the Conservative Jewish movement. (1985) |
| 13-May | Slavery abolished in Brazil (1888) |
| 13-May | President Theodore Roosevelt opened a conference on the conservation of natural resources saying, "the natural resources of our country are in danger of exhaustion if we permit the old wasteful methods of exploiting them longer to continue," propelling conservation issues into the forefront of public consciousness. (1908) |
| 13-May | In the first action against violators of the desegregation guidelines of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, federal funding for education is denied to 12 school districts in the South. (1966) |
| 13-May | Philadelphia police try to dislodge members of MOVE by firebombing, destroying 61 homes and killing 11 people (1985) |
| 14-May | The Black Hawk War begins when untrained American recruits attack Sauk Indian peace envoys. (1832) |
| 14-May | 2 Black students killed, 30 wounded, by police during protest of invasion of Cambodia and Kent State killings, Jackson State University, MS (1970) |
| 14-May | Hundreds of thousands participate in the Million Mom March for gun safety (2000) |
| 15-May | The U.S. Congress declared the transporting of African slaves to the United States to be a form of piracy (1820) |
| 15-May | The National Woman Suffrage Association is formed with Elizabeth Stanton as its first president. (1869) |
| 15-May | Julia Ward Howe proposes a Mother's Day as a peace holiday (1882) |
| 15-May | International conscientious objectors day |
| 15-May | Several million students on U.S. campuses strike against Vietnam War (1970) |
| 16-May | Denmark becomes the first country to outlaw the slave trade (1792) |
| 16-May | The Sedition Act is passed, defining as criminal the direct advocacy of treason, and criticism of the Government, conscription, or the American flag.(1918) |
| 17-May | First women's anti-slavery convention in Philadelphia, PA (1838) |
| 17-May | Supreme Court endorsed ``separate but equal'' racial segregation with its Plessy vs Ferguson decision, a ruling that was overturned 58 years later.(1896) |
| 17-May | Supreme Court rules segregation in public schools unconstitutional in Brown vs. The Board of Education (1954) |
| 17-May | 9 activists burn draft files in Catonsville, MD (1968) |
| 18-May | Rhode Island becomes the first colony to abolish slavery. (1652) |
| 18-May | First celebration of International Goodwill Day (1925) |
| 18-May | President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Head Start Bill into law (1965) |
| 18-May | Margaret Kuhn founds Gray Panthers to protest discrimination against the elderly. (1972) |
| 19-May | Clara Barton founded the Red Cross (1881) |
| 23-May | General Winfield Scott ordered the forced removal of the Cherokee Indians from the East to the "Indian Nation" (what is now Oklahoma). Approximately one forth of the 10,000 died on this cruel march called "The Trail of Tears". (1838) |
| 23-May | 10,000 march against Falklands/Malvinas War in London (1982) |
| 23-May | Maryland becomes the first state to ban the sale of cheap hand guns. (1988) |
| 24-May | The Virginia House of Burgesses declared this a day of "fasting, humiliation and prayer" in reaction to the Vritish closure of the Port of Boston. (1774) |
| 24-May | International Women's Day for Disarmament (since 1981) |
| 25-May | African slaves in Massachussetts Bay petition the government for freedom as their natural right. (1774) |
| 25-May | First noncommercial educational television station-Houston, Texas (1953) |
| 25-May | The closing of schools to avoid desegregation is ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, causing Prince Edward County, Va. to reopen and desegregate its schools. (1964) |
| 26-May | House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC), founded. (1938) |
| 26-May | A patent is filed in the U.S. for the H-Bomb. (1946) |
| 26-May | Anti Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty signed by US and USSR (1972) |
| 26-May | An estimated 7 million Americans participate in Hands Across America, forming a line across the country from Los Angeles to New York to bring attention to and raise money for the nation's hungry and homeless. (1986) |
| 27-May | The first recorded American execution of a "witch" took place in Salem, Massachusetts. (1647) |
| 28-May | President Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act, requiring Eastern Indians to be resettled west of the Mississippi. (1830) |
| 28-May | The U.S. Attorney General decides it is legal for women to wear trousers. (1923) |
| 28-May | "Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Adoption and Family Services Act", P.L. 102-295, becomes law. (1992) |
| 28-May | President Clinton signs an amendment to Executive Order 11478 that "prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation" in the government. (1998) |
| 28-May | Amnesty International founded (1961) |
| 31-May | The Tulsa Race Riot (1921) |
| 31-May | Tax protester Lady Godiva rides naked through Coventry, England (1678) |
| JUNE | |
| 1-Jun | Mary Dyer hanged for nonviolent resistance to suppression of Quakers, Boston (1660) |
| 1-Jun | Sojourner Truth set out from New York on an historic journey across America, preaching about the evils of slavery and promoting women's rights. (1845) |
| 1-Jun | A Warsaw underground newspaper, the Liberty Brigade, makes public the news of the gassing of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmno, a death camp in Poland-almost seven months after extermination of prisoners began.(1942) |
| 1-Jun | Sen. Margaret Chase Smith denounces Joseph McCarthy and his "red-baiting" tactics on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in a speech called "A Declaration of Conscience". (1950) |
| 1-Jun | US and USSR signed an agreement to stop producing chemical weapons (1990) |
| 2-Jun | Congress granted US citizenship (8 U.S.C. §1401) to all American Indians. (1924) |
| 3-Jun | US Supreme Court rules race separation on buses unconstitutional (1946) |
| 3-Jun | In Cincinnati, Ohio, Sally J. Priesand, 25, became the first woman in Reform Judaism to be ordained as a rabbi. (1972) |
| 4-Jun | During what became known as the "Voyage of the Damned," the SS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away from the Florida coast. The ship, which was also denied permission to dock in Cuba, eventually returned to Europe; many of the refugees later died in Nazi concentration camps.(1939) |
| 4-Jun | International Day for Children as Victims of War (since 1982) |
| 4-Jun | The Sierra Club was incorporated in San Francisco. (1892) |
| 4-Jun | The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification (1919) |
| 4-Jun | President Harry Truman signs into law the National School Lunch Act, P.L. 79-396. (1946) |
| 5-Jun | Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly began to appear in serial form in the Washington National Era. (1851) |
| 5-Jun | The U.S. Supreme Court rules that there can be no segregation in railroad dining cars. (1950) |
| 5-Jun | World Environment Day, commemorating the opening of the U.N. Conference o. Human Environment in Sweden (since 1972) |
| 5-Jun | Chinese soldiers slaughter pro-democracy students at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China (1989) |
| 6-Jun | Congress passes a bill abolishing debtor's prisons in the United States. (1798) |
| 6-Jun | Robert F. Kennedy, Attorney General, assassinated. (1968) |
| 7-Jun | The Pennsylvania Assembly bans the import of slaves in the colony. (1712) |
| 7-Jun | In his first act of civil disobedience, Mohandas Gandhi refused to comply with racial segregation rules on a South African train and was forcibly ejected at Pietermaritzburg (1893) |
| 7-Jun | James H. Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, was shot by a sniper while on a lone "March Against Fear" through the South. (1966) |
| 7-Jun | Norway gains independence from Sweden by nonviolent means (1905) |
| 8-Jun | The British Parliament enacts legislation limiting working hours of women and children aged 13 to 18 to 10 per day (1847) |
| 10-Jun | At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, James Augustine Healy was ordained as the first African-American Roman Catholic priest. (1854) |
| 10-Jun | "Equal Pay Act of 1963" passed and signed into law; guarantees women equal pay for equal work (1963) |
| 10-Jun | A twenty-one year old trade embargo with mainland China is lifted by President Nixon. (1971) |
| 10-Jun | Nelson Mandela's first prison writings smuggled out and made public (1980) |
| 11-Jun | SDS holds founding convention and issues Port Huron statement (1962) |
| 11-Jun | University of Alabama desegregated when Governor George Wallace, facing federalized Alabama National Guard troops, ended his blockade of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and allowed two African-American students to enroll (1963) |
| 11-Jun | 100,000 march from U.N. to Central Park during 3rd U.N. Special Session on Disarmament (1988) |
| 12-Jun | In the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death by white supremacist (1963) |
| 12-Jun | Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment for opposing apartheid (1964) |
| 12-Jun | In the case of the Loving vs. Virginia Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down state laws which prohibit interracial marriages.(1967) |
| 12-Jun | One million rally in Central Park for nuclear disarmament; largest US peace demonstration (1982) |
| 13-Jun | The “Pentagon Papers” excerpted in the New York Times, give details of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from the end of World War II to 1968. (1971) |
| 13-Jun | In Miranda v. Arizona, the Supreme Court rules that a suspect must be read his rights by police before interrogation. (1966) |
| 13-Jun | Pentagon Papers are printed in the New York Times. (1971) |
| 13-Jun | The Sioux Nation is granted an award of $17.5 million for land taken from them by the United States Government in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1877. (1979) |
| 13-Jun | 1,765 arrested in 150 cities protesting US aid to Nicaraguan Contras (1985) |
| 14-Jun | In "Taylor v. Mississippi", the U.S. Supreme Court rules that school children need not salute the U.S. flag if it is against their religion to do so (1946) |
| 14-Jun | 60,000 march to Central Park to demand economic sanctions against South African apartheid regime (1986) |
| 15-Jun | King John signs the Magna Carta at Runnymede, limiting the power of the English monarchy (1215) |
| 15-Jun | 44 nations meet in 2nd Hague Peace Conference (1907) |
| 15-Jun | CORE (Congress on Racial Equality) founded in Chicago (1943) |
| 16-Jun | Massachusetts enacts a law requiring Roman Catholic priests to leave the colony within three months.(1700) |
| 16-Jun | Soweto massacre , 700 children killed for refusing to learn Afrikaans (1976) |
| 17-Jun | Start of Cherokee Trail of Tears; 1,200-mile forced march to Oklahoma (1838) |
| 17-Jun | The Supreme Court struck down rules requiring the Lord's Prayer or Bible verses in public schools (1963) |
| 17-Jun | The Supreme Court rules that prison conditions such as overcrowding, poor sanitation, and exposure to violence do not violate th 8th Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. (1991) |
| 18-Jun | A Federal Court rules that an Arkansas attempt to close a school rather than desegregate it is unconstitutional. (1959) |
| 18-Jun | US voting age lowered to 18. (1970) |
| 18-Jun | SALT II agreement to limit long-range missiles and bombers signed by Presidents Carter and Brezhnev. (1979) |
| 19-Jun | More than two years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, TX, with news that the war had ended and all slaves were now free. Still celebrated as Juneteenth. (1865) |
| 20-Jun | Muhammad Ali convicted of refusing to be drafted (1967) |
| 21-Jun | Women's Sunday Suffrage rally draws 500,000 in London (1908) |
| 21-Jun | Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murdered while registering Blacks to vote in MS (1964) |
| 22-Jun | 8,000 peace protesters form 10-mile human chain around U.S. air base, Okinawa, Japan (1987) |
| 23-Jun | A treaty is signed between William Penn and the chiefs of the Lenni Lenape tribe in Shakamaxon, Pennsylvania. (1683) |
| 23-Jun | Education Amendments of 1972 becomes law. Prohibits any discrimination at Educational institutions based on sex (1972) |
| 24-Jun | President Truman signs the Selective Service Act, creating a registration for all men from ages 18-25. (1948) |
| 24-Jun | General Strike in El Salvador against the Death Squads (1980) |
| 25-Jun | The Fair Labor Standards Act sets the minimum wage at 25 cents per hour and prohibits child labor. (1938) |
| 25-Jun | The South African Freedom Charter is adopted at the Congress of the People in Johannesburg. (1955) |
| 26-Jun | The National Firearms Act, the first federal gun law, was signed into law. (1934) |
| 26-Jun | UN Charter signed by 50 nations in San Francisco. (1945) |
| 26-Jun | President Kennedy addresses 120,000 West Berliners and concludes his speech, "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner'." (1963) |
| 27-Jun | Stonewall rebellion, NYC, launches modern gay rights movement (1969) |
| 27-Jun | President Carter signs a measure that requires that approximately 4 million U.S. men age 19 to 20 register for the draft.(1980) |
| 28-Jun | One-day strike by 50,000 German workers to free Socialist anti-war leader Karl Liebnecht (1916) |
| 28-Jun | W.E.B. DuBois and other leaders organize silent parade against lynching of Blacks, NYC (1917) |
| 29-Jun | The South African parliament passed a bill excluding black, coloured (mixed race) and Indian people from skilled or semi-skilled work. (1925) |
| 29-Jun | In Furman v. Georgia, The Supreme Court rules that the death penalty -- as then employed by the states -- is unconstitutional.(1972) |
| 30-Jun | First GIs, Fort Hood 3, refuse to be sent to Vietnam (1966) |
| 30-Jun | The 29th Amendment to the US Constitution, lowering the voting age to 18 in all elections, was ratified (1971) |
| JULY | |
| 1-Jul | Guatemala's dictator of 14 years deposed by massive general strike (1945) |
| 1-Jul | 61 nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.(1968) |
| 2-Jul | New Jersey becomes the first Colony to grant women's suffrage.(1776) |
| 2-Jul | Mutiny on the Amistad slave ship (1839) |
| 2-Jul | U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. (1964) |
| 2-Jul | The Supreme Court rules that Capital Punishment does not constitute "cruel and unusual punishment". (1976) |
| 2-Jul | Vermont becomes first American colony to abolish slavery (1777) |
| 3-Jul | Children strike in Paterson, New Jersey, for an 11-hour work day and a 6-day work week. (1835) |
| 4-Jul | Slavery outlawed in New York State (1827) |
| 4-Jul | Freedom of Information Act, P.L. 89-487, becomes law (1966) |
| 4-Jul | "Give Peace a Chance" by Plastic Ono Band is released in UK (1969) |
| 4-Jul | Women's Peace Camp begins outside Romulus, NY at Seneca Army Depot (1983) |
| 6-Jul | In one of the worst cases of union-busting, a fierce battle breaks out between Homestead Steel employees and Pinkerton detectives. 20 are killed. (1892) |
| 6-Jul | In Nazi-occupied Holland, thirteen-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family were forced to take refuge in a secret sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse (1942) |
| 6-Jul | Irene Morgan, a 28-year-old black woman, refused to move to the back of the bus. Her appeal, entered after her conviction for breaking a Virginia law barring integrated seating, resulted in a 7-1 Supreme Court decision barring segregation in interstate commerce. (1944) |
| 6-Jul | Students try to block troop trains in Berkeley, CA (1965) |
| 9-Jul | Einstein, Russell and 7 other scientists warn that choice is between war and human survival (1955) |
| 10-Jul | Greenpeace flagship, The Rainbow Warrior, bombed in New Zealand by French government (1987) |
| 11-Jul | World Population Day, sponsored by the United Nations to focus attendion on population issues. |
| 11-Jul | Founding of American Indian Movement (AIM), Minneapolis, MN (1968) |
| 12-Jul | Henry David Thoreau born (1817) |
| 13-Jul | Anti-draft riots in NYC, against the implementation of the first wartime draft of U.S. civilian (1863) |
| 13-Jul | Live Aid concert raises $75 million for agricultural and technical assistance to Africa (1985) |
| 14-Jul | Clean Air Act becomes law (1955) |
| 15-Jul | The Spanish Inquisition, begun in 1478, is ended (1834) |
| 16-Jul | "Fat Boy," the first experimental atomic bomb, exploded in Alamogordo, NM (1945) |
| 18-Jul | Nelson Mandela born (1918) |
| 19-Jul | Women's Rights Convention launches U.S. feminist movement, Seneca Falls, NY (1848) |
| 19-Jul | Clinton announces his "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy regarding gays in the military (1993) |
| 19-Jul | A federal administrative law judge ordered white supremacist Ryan Wilson to pay $1.1 million in damages to fair housing advocate Bonnie Jouhari and her daughter. The decision stems from threats made against Jouhari by Wilson and his Philadelphia neo-Nazi group ALPA HQ. (2000) |
| 22-Jul | The “Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act”, Pub. L. 100-77, permits the donation of Federal surplus personal property to tax-exempt providers of assistance to homeless individuals.(1988) |
| 23-Jul | Henry David Thoreau jailed for refusal to pay poll tax, which led to his writing "Civil Disobedience." (1846) |
| 24-Jul | U.S. Army marches to Salt Lake City for a planned invasion to drive out the Mormons (1847) |
| 24-Jul | President Herbert Hoover proclaimed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of foreign policy. (1929) |
| 24-Jul | Canadians and Americans cross border at Thousand Islands Bridge to protest nuclear weapons and border harassment of peace activists. (1983) |
| 25-Jul | The National Security Act of 1947 is passed by Congress, uniting the armed forces under control of the National Military Establishment, called the Department of Defense. (1947) |
| 25-Jul | Test Ban Treaty signed by U.S.S.R., U.S. and Britain (1963) |
| 26-Jul | Women win vote (1920) |
| 26-Jul | President Truman ends segregation in the Armed Forces. (1948) |
| 26-Jul | Americans with Disabilities Act signed into law. (1990) |
| 28-Jul | The 14th Amendment is declared ratified by the states.(1868) |
| 28-Jul | Military gas and bayonet "bonus marchers," WW I vets (1934) |
| 28-Jul | San Francisco becomes the first U.S. city to ban the sale and possession of hand guns. (1982) |
| 29-Jul | Grape growers sign with UFW; end of first grape boycott (1970) |
| 29-Jul | Supreme Court rules death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment by a 5-4 vote (1972) |
| 31-Jul | The National Association of Colored Women was founded in Washington D.C. by Mary Church Terrell. (1896) |
| 31-Jul | 25,000 people rally for freedom from South African colonial rule, Namibia (1986) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 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 | U.F.W. lettuce strike begins (1970) |
| 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) |
| 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) |
| 28-Aug | England abolishes slavery. (1833) |
| 28-Aug | Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech delivered (1963) |
| 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) |
| 30-Aug | Senator Strom Thurmond filibustered the U.S. Senate for twenty-four hours in an effort to stop a Civil Rights act from passing - the longest filibuster in Senate history. The act passed. (1957) |
| 31-Aug | Marcus Garvey, leader of the Black separatist movement, was inaugurated provisional president of "The Republic of Africa" in a Harlem ceremony. (1921) |
| SEPTEMBER | |
| 1-Sep | Carl von Ossietzky founds Nie Wieder Krieg in Berlin, Germany (1920) |
| 1-Sep | Germany invades Poland, starting World War II (1939) |
| 1-Sep | International Day of War Tax Resistance |
| 4-Sep | Paul Robeson, defying racist mob, sings to 15,000 at Peekskill, NY (1949) |
| 4-Sep | Governor Faubus of Arkansas called out National Guard to prevent integration of black students into Central High School in Little Rock. President Eisenhower sent in troops to enforce the law. (1957) |
| 4-Sep | 10,000 dance on nuclear reactor site, Gorleben, W. Germany (1982) |
| 5-Sep | Some 10,000 workers assembled in New York City to participate in America's first Labor Day parade. (1882) |
| 6-Sep | Jane Addams, founder of WILPF and Nobel Peace Prize winner born (1860) |
| 7-Sep | An Idaho jury returned a $6.3 million civil judgment against the Aryan Nations, its founder Richard Butler and former security guards. (2000) |
| 9-Sep | 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 S. Vietnam; 1,000 were arrested. (1963) |
| 9-Sep | Plowshares activists hammer missile cone, King of Prussia, PA (1980) |
| 12-Sep | Steven Biko, South African leader, killed in prison (1977) |
| 13-Sep | European Parliament recommends end to war toy advertisements (1982) |
| 14-Sep | Eugene Debs sentenced to ten years in prison for opposing U.S. entry into World War I (1918) |
| 14-Sep | Free Speech Movement begins in Berkeley, CA (1964) |
| 15-Sep | Antoinette Brown of South Butler, New York, becomes America's first female minister. (1853) |
| 15-Sep | Respect for the Aged Day (In Japan) |
| 15-Sep | Four black children - Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley - killed in Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL by a bomb blast. (1963) |
| 16-Sep | President Ford announces a conditional amnesty program for Vietnam War deserters and draft-evaders, providing they agree to work two years in public service. (1974) |
| 16-Sep | William Whippers "An Address on Non-resistance to Offensive Aggression" was published. This landmark essay predated Thoreau's treatise on Civil Disobedience by 12 years. (1837) |
| 18-Sep | Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, allowing slave owners to reclaim slaves who escaped into another state. |
| 19-Sep | 80,000 demonstrate for democratic peace in Hague (1926) |
| 19-Sep | The United States conducts its first underground nuclear test, in the Nevada desert. (1957) |
| 19-Sep | Solidarity Day - 400,000 rally in Washington, D.C. to support labor (1991) |
| 20-Sep | The District of Columbia abolishes the slave trade. (1850) |
| 20-Sep | William Lloyd Garrison founds New England Non-Resistance Society, anti-slavery group (1838) |
| 22-Sep | The Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb. (1949) |
| 22-Sep | Solidarity union formed in Poland under leadership of Lech Walesa.(1980) |
| 22-Sep | Farm Aid concert; more than 50 musicians raised $9 million for debt-ridden U.S. farmers. (1985) |
| 23-Sep | Mary Church Terrell, educator, political activist, and first president of the National Association of Colored Women, was born in Memphis, Tennessee. (1863) |
| 23-Sep | First boycott, over rent charges, County Mayo, Ireland (1880) |
| 24-Sep | 10,000 draft files destroyed by fourteen anti-war activists - Milwaukee, WI (1968) |
| 25-Sep | Nine African-American children, protected by 300 army paratroopers with fixed bayonets, attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, following a Supreme Court ruling that segregated schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment. (1957) |
| 25-Sep | Herbert Lee, who worked with civil rights leader Bob Moses to help register black voters, was killed by a state legislator who claimed self-defense and was never arrested, in Liberty, Miss. (1961) |
| 28-Sep | Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat signed "phase two" of their peace agreement in Washington, D.C. (1995) |
| 29-Sep | Congress authorizes the establishment of a 1000-man standing army. (1789) |
| 29-Sep | Britain began to govern Palestine under a League of Nations mandate. (1923) |
| 29-Sep | Birthday of Polish labor leader, president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Walesa. (1943) |
| 30-Sep | Two are killed and 70 wounded in a riot at the University of Mississippi when 2,000 KKK and student demonstrators try to keep a black man, James Meredith, from being admitted to classes (1962) |
| 30-Sep | 1,400 draft cards burned in anti Viet Nam war protest, Puerto Rico (1970) |
| OCTOBER | |
| 1-Oct | Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense (1776) |
| 1-Oct | Anti-Kriegs Museum, first museum for peace, opened in Berlin (1920) |
| 1-Oct | Army kills and injures hundreds during student protest of university policies, Mexico City (1968) |
| 1-Oct | World Vegetarian Day, sponsored by the North American Vegetarian Society |
| 1-Oct | Five Plowshares activists pour blood on submarines at General Dynamics (1984) |
| 2-Oct | Mahatma Gandhi born (1869) |
| 2-Oct | An antinuclear peace march sponsored by the Committee for Nonviolent Action arrives in Moscow ten months after its start in San Francisco. (1961) |
| 2-Oct | The United States applies economic sanctions to South Africa. (1986) |
| 4-Oct | Earl Butz resigned as agriculture secretary with an apology for what he called the "gross indiscretion" of uttering a racist remark. (1976) |
| 4-Oct | The Mozambique government and RENAMO rebels signed an historic peace accord, ending 16 years of civil war in the southeast African nation. (1993) |
| 5-Oct | Chief Joseph, leader of the Nez Pierce Indians, surrendered to the American Army, ending a desperate struggle by his people for self-determination. (1877) |
| 5-Oct | Birthday of activist Philip Berrigan. (1923) |
| 5-Oct | In 1965, Pope Paul VI made an unprecedented 14-hour visit to New York to plead for world peace before the United Nations. (1965) |
| 5-Oct | Raoul Wallenberg Day, honoring the Swedish diplomat who saved 100,000 Hungarian Jews during WWII. |
| 5-Oct | President Clinton ordered a resumption in nuclear testing after China broke an informal moratorium and exploded a nuclear device beneath its western desert. (1993) |
| 6-Oct | Arrival of first pacifists from Germany in America, to Pennsylvania (1683) |
| 7-Oct | 200,000 march on Washington for housing for the homeless (1989) |
| 8-Oct | Argentinian-born Communist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, an important figure in the 1959 Cuban revolution, was killed while leading a guerrilla war in Bolivia. (1967) |
| 10-Oct | The Spanish issued a royal decree which stated that every African-American who came to St. Augustine, FL and adopted Catholicism would be free and protected from the English. (1699) |
| 10-Oct | Women in Black begin vigil against war, Belgrade, Serbia (1991) |
| 11-Oct | The San Francisco Board of Education orders the segregation of Asian schoolchildren. (1906) |
| 11-Oct | Campaign of individual satyagraha begins, India (1940) |
| 11-Oct | Nearly one million people flood Washington, D.C. demanding gay and lesbian rights (1987) |
| 12-Oct | Native Americans discover Columbus (1492) |
| 12-Oct | President Grant publicly condemns the Ku Klux Klan and orders the arrest of over 600 citizens involved in its activities in South Carolina. (1871) |
| 12-Oct | Former President Theodore Roosevelt criticizes U.S.citizens who identify themselves by dual nationalities, saying, "There is no room in this country for 'hyphenated Americanism.'" (1915) |
| 14-Oct | William Penn, English reformer and founder of Pennsylvania, born in London, England. (1644) |
| 15-Oct | B'nai B'rith is founded in New York City. (1843) |
| 15-Oct | David Miller first to burn his draft card after Congress outlaws it, NYC (1963) |
| 15-Oct | The "Endangered Species Preservation Act" becomes law (1966) |
| 15-Oct | 2 million take part in rallies, teach-ins and vigils on Vietnam Moratorium Day (1969) |
| 16-Oct | President Roosevelt alienates the South when he invites Booker T. Washington to the White House. (1901) |
| 16-Oct | Fannie Lou Hamer, crusader for black voting rights, born (1916) |
| 16-Oct | During medal presentations at the Olympics in Mexico City, sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in a Black power salute while the Star Spangled Banner played. They were suspended from the team. (1968) |
| 16-Oct | World Food Day, United Nations |
| 17-Oct | International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, United Nations |
| 17-Oct | Black Poetry Day, commemorating the birth in 1711 of Jupiter Hammon, the first African-American American to publish his own verse. (1760) |
| 18-Oct | British police arrested former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet for questioning about "crimes of genocide and terrorism that include murder." (1998) |
| 18-Oct | The Shoemakers of Boston became the first labor union in the American colonies. (1648) |
| 19-Oct | U.S. marshals escort James Meredith onto University of Mississippi campus (1962) |
| 20-Oct | The House Un-American Activities Committee opened public hearings into communist influence in Hollywood. (1947) |
| 20-Oct | The Supreme Court rules that teachers could spank students if the students were told in advance of the behavior that would warrant such punishment. (1975) |
| 20-Oct | Rallies in 22 cities against United States' 200,000 troops in Persian Gulf (1990) |
| 21-Oct | The U.S. Army wins the Seminole wars in the Florida Everglades by inviting Osceola to a "peace conference", then jailing him. (1837) |
| 21-Oct | Chinese troops occupied Tibet. (1950) |
| 21-Oct | 100,000 march on Pentagon to end Vietnam War, 700 arrested (1967) |
| 22-Oct | 200,000 students boycott Chicago schools to protest de facto segregation (1963) |
| 23-Oct | The NAACP filed formal charges with the United Nations accusing the United States of racial discrimination. This appeal spurred President Truman to create a civil rights commission. (1947) |
| 23-Oct | Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player hired by a major league team, was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and sent to their Montreal farm team. (1945) |
| 24-Oct | 25,000 homemakers in Iceland go on strike, doing no housework (1975) |
| 24-Oct | Two million demonstrate in Europe against Cruise and Pershing missiles (1983) |
| 24-Oct | United Nations Day |
| 25-Oct | Sadako Sasaki, who tried to fold 1,000 paper cranes, dies of leukemia (1955) |
| 26-Oct | The Lord Mayor of Cork, Ireland, Terence McSwiney, died after a two-and-a-half-month hunger strike in a British prison cell, demanding independence for Ireland. (1920) |
| 28-Oct | In a battle that traditionally marks the beginning of the Christian era in Europe, Constantine's army, wearing the cross, defeated the forces of Maxentius at Mulvian Bridge in Rome. (312) |
| 29-Oct | First compusory peacetime draft in United States begun. (1940) |
| 29-Oct | 100 demonstrators disrupt university ROTC drill with non-violent ridicule, Buffalo, NY (1969) |
| NOVEMBER | |
| 1-Nov | A London organization sent a delegation of women to Geneva to lobby representatives at a test ban conference to push for an end to nuclear testing. (1958) |
| 1-Nov | McDonald's, under pressure from environmental groups, said it would replace plastic food containers with paper. (1990) |
| 2-Nov | President Ronald Reagan signs a bill designating a federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1983) |
| 3-Nov | Washington orders the Continental Army disbanded.(1783) |
| 3-Nov | US Supreme Court declares Native Americans to be "aliens" (1883) |
| 4-Nov | Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is fatally shot minutes after attending a peace rally held in Tel Aviv's Kings Square in Israel. (1995) |
| 5-Nov | Italians are the first to drop bombs from airplanes when they bombed an oasis in Libya. (1911) |
| 5-Nov | Bobby Seale, the founder of the Black Panther Party, is sentenced to four years in prison on sixteen counts of contempt of court during the Chicago Eight trial in Chicago. (1969) |
| 5-Nov | Goban Mbeki, an early leader of the African National Congress, was released from Robben Island prison after serving twenty-four years. (1987) |
| 6-Nov | The United States exploded the world's first hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific. (1952) |
| 6-Nov | The Iran-Contra affair, a scandal that involved the illegal selling of arms to Iran to fund anti-communist guerrilla forces in Nicaragua, was revealed to the American public. (1986) |
| 7-Nov | Abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy dies defending his printing press, Alton, IL (1837) |
| 7-Nov | Jeannette Rankin, America's first Congresswoman, was elected in Montana. (1916) |
| 7-Nov | New Jersey becomes the first state to allow girls into the little league. (1973) |
| 8-Nov | Dorothy Day born (1897) |
| 8-Nov | Trail of Broken Treaties march occupies Bureau of Indian Affairs, Wash., DC (1972) |
| 9-Nov | 78 Native Americans take over Alcatraz Island, San Francisco, CA (1969) |
| 9-Nov | Berlin Wall falls (1989) |
| 10-Nov | Society for Human Rights, first gay rights organization in U.S., founded in Chicago (1924) |
| 10-Nov | Kristalnacht - across Germany, Nazis murder dozens of Jews, attack synagogues and loot stores in open terror that leads to holocaust (1938) |
| 11-Nov | A Roman Catholic priest in Berlin, Provost Lichtenberg, preached in a sermon that he wanted to be deported to the East with the Jews to be and pray with them. He was. (1941) |
| 11-Nov | 250,000 march for abortion rights in Washington, DC (1989) |
| 12-Nov | Elizabeth Cady Stanton, spokeswoman for the human rights of women, was born in Johnstown, NY. (1815) |
| 13-Nov | The first recorded "sit-down" strike in the US was staged by workers at the Hormel Packing Company in Austin, Minn. (1933) |
| 13-Nov | 1,000 celebrate 300th anniversary of first Quaker peace protest with silent vigil at Pentagon (1960) |
| 13-Nov | US Supreme Court rules segregation is unconstitutional on public buses. (1956) |
| 13-Nov | The Vietnam War Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.(1982) |
| 14-Nov | Solidarity leader Lech Walesa is released after 11 months in prison. (1989) |
| 15-Nov | The NY General assembly permits Jews to omit phrase "upon the faith of a Christian" from abjuration oath. (1727) |
| 15-Nov | US Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) founded (1957) |
| 15-Nov | 500,000 peacefully demonstrate in Wash DC against Vietnam War (1969) |
| 16-Nov | Six Jesuit priests murdered by Salvadoran military (1989) |
| 17-Nov | New York newspaper publisher Peter Zenger is arrested and imprisoned for seditious libel against New York Governor William Cosby. (1734) |
| 17-Nov | Reformer and children's rights advocate Grace Abbott born in Grand Island, NE. (1878) |
| 17-Nov | Samuel Gompers organized the forerunner of the American Federation of Labor. (1888) |
| 18-Nov | Birth of Sojourner Truth, feminist, abolitionist, former slave (1787) |
| 18-Nov | The National Women's Christian Temperance Union was organized in Cleveland, Ohio. (1888) |
| 18-Nov | South Africa's ruling National Party and leaders of 20 other parties representing blacks and whites approved a new national constitution that provides fundamental rights to blacks. (1993) |
| 19-Nov | Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. (1863) |
| 19-Nov | In an unprecedented move for an Arab leader, Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat travels to Jerusalem in Israel to seek a permanent peace settlement with Egypt's Jewish neighbor after decades of conflict. (1977) |
| 20-Nov | Nuremberg War Crimes Trials begin and continue until October 1, 1946, establishing that subordinates are responsible for their own actions even if ordered by their superiors. (1945) |
| 20-Nov | The UN issued "The Declaration of the Rights of the Child." (1959) |
| 20-Nov | President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order forbidding racial discrimination in public housing. (1962) |
| 20-Nov | the U.S. Senate approved the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). (1993) |
| 21-Nov | National Organization for Women (NOW) founded in Chicago. (1966) |
| 21-Nov | President Lyndon Johnson sighed the Air Quality Act, beginning the war on pollution in America. (1967) |
| 21-Nov | The Freedom of Information Act is passed by Congress over President Ford's veto. (1974) |
| 21-Nov | 350,000 march against nuclear weapons in Holland. (1981) |
| 21-Nov | President Bush signed the Civil Rights Act of 1991, making it easier for workers to sue in job discrimination cases. (1991) |
| 21-Nov | Dayton Peace Accords, ending the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, initialed at Wright-Patterson AFB; formally signed in Paris on Dec. 14. (1995) |
| 21-Nov | China jailed well-known dissident Wei Jing-sheng and charged him with trying to overthrow the government. (1995) |
| 22-Nov | The first interracial kiss in TV history is shown on Star Trek between Capt. Kirk and Uhura. (1968) |
| 22-Nov | Some 2,000 people taken into custody during a demonstration against the Army's School of the Americas, accused by critics of training soldiers involved in atrocities in Latin America. (1998) |
| 24-Nov | Women from 21 states met in Cleveland to organize the American Women Suffrage Association. (1869) |
| 24-Nov | A group of writers, producers and directors that became known as the "Hollywood 10" are cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry.(1947) |
| 24-Nov | Congress votes to formally apologize to Hawaii for overthrowing the government in 1893. (1993) |
| 24-Nov | Plowshare 7 damage B52's carrying cruise missiles at Griffith Air Force Base. (1983) |
| 25-Nov | British government outlaws the IRA in all of Great Britain. (1974) |
| 26-Nov | Birthday of Sarah Moore Grimke, antislavery/women's rights advocate. (1792) |
| 27-Nov | Jawaharlal Nehru, who fought British authority through acts of passive resistance and became India's first Prime Minister, made an impassioned speech for global disarmament. (1957) |
| 28-Nov | Sinn Fein is founded in Dublin by Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith. (1905) |
| 29-Nov | The Sand Creek Massacre takes place. Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, awaiting surrender terms, are attacked by 900 calvarymen. (1864) |
| 30-Nov | The American Society of Free Persons of Colour met for the first time, in Philadelphia. (1830) |
| 30-Nov | Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act becomes law. (1993) |
| 30-Nov | Thousands of activists, students, unionists and environmentalists shut down the World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle. (1999) |
| DECEMBER | |
| 1-Dec | Rosa Parks, NAACP staff member, arrested for not giving up her bus seat (1955) |
| 1-Dec | 12 nations sign treaty for scientific peaceful use of Antarctica (1959) |
| 1-Dec | World AIDS Day, sponsored by the American Association of World Health (since 1980s) |
| 2-Dec | Members of the Jewish community of Newport, RI witnessed the dedication of the Touro Synagogue, the first synagogue in what became the United States. (1763) |
| 2-Dec | Abolition of the Costa Rican Army (1948) |
| 2-Dec | The nuclear age begins when the world's first self-sustaining fission reaction was created. (1942) |
| 2-Dec | The U.S. Senate votes sixty-five to twenty-two to condemn Senator Joseph McCarthy for misconduct unbecoming to a senator. (1954) |
| 2-Dec | Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created (1970) |
| 2-Dec | Three Maryknoll nuns and a lay missionary murdered in El Salvador (1980) |
| 3-Dec | The North Star newspaper founded by Frederick Douglass. Its slogan was, "Right is of no sex . . Truth I of no color . . God is the father of us all and we are all brothers." (1847) |
| 3-Dec | Oberlin College, the first college to enroll men and women on equal terms and the first school in America to advocate the abolition of slavery and to accept African-American men and women on equal terms with white students, is founded in Ohio. (1833) |
| 3-Dec | Mary McLeod Bethune founds the National Council of Negro Women. (1935) |
| 3-Dec | Police arrest some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley, one day after the students storm the administration building and staged a massive sit-in. (1964) |
| 3-Dec | The Bhopal-Union Carbide Disaster; a pesticide plant located in central India leaks a toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate into the air, killing 2,000 people immediatelyand injuring 300,000. (1984) |
| 3-Dec | International treaty banning land mines signed by 122 countries (1997) |
| 3-Dec | International Day of Disabled Persons, United Nations |
| 4-Dec | The American Anti-Slavery Society is formed by Arthur Tappan in Phila. (1833) |
| 4-Dec | Five members of a Woman's Suffragist group unroll a banner from the visitor's gallery during President Wilson's address to Congress, asking, "Mr. President, What will you do for woman sufferage?" (1916) |
| 4-Dec | Cesar Chavez jailed for 20 days for refusing to call off UFW lettuce boycott. (1970) |
| 5-Dec | President Harry S Truman issues Executive Order 9808 which set up a committee to study the protection of civil rights in the United States. (1946) |
| 5-Dec | The African-American community of Montgomery, Alabama launch their boycott of the city's bus system. (1955) |
| 5-Dec | The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge to form the AFL-CIO. (1955) |
| 5-Dec | New York City becomes the first city to legislate against racial or religious discrimination in housing market (Fair Housing Practices Law). (1957) |
| 5-Dec | 1000 antiwar protestors try to close NYC induction center; 585 arrested including Allen Ginsberg and Dr. Benjamin Spock. (1967) |
| 5-Dec | UN adopts charter for University for Peace, Costa Rica (1980) |
| 6-Dec | Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland. (1849) |
| 6-Dec | The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, abolishing slavery. Congress passed it on Jan 24. (1865) |
| 6-Dec | An explosion at a mine owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in Monongah, WVa kills 361 coal miners, the worst mining disaster in American history. (1907) |
| 7-Dec | The first execution by lethal injection takes place at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. (1983) |
| 8-Dec | Jeanette Rankin casts only vote against US entry into WWII. (1941) |
| 8-Dec | Ex-Beatle John Lennon was shot and killed while leaving his apartment building in New York City. (1980) |
| 8-Dec | U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign the first treaty to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the two superpowers. (1987) |
| 8-Dec | North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed into law. (1993) |
| 9-Dec | Solidarity leader Lech Walesa elected President of Poland. (1990) |
| 10-Dec | 1st Nobel Peace Prizes (to Jean Henri Dunant, Frederic Passy) (1901) |
| 10-Dec | The United Nations adopted the Declaration of Human Rights. (1948) |
| 10-Dec | Human Rights Day first observed (1950) |
| 10-Dec | The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a New York law that allowed a criminal's profits for selling his or her story to be seized and given to the victims. (1991) |
| 10-Dec | Julia Butterfly Hill, age 23, climbs "Luna," a 1,000 year-old California redwood, to protect it from loggers. (1997) |
| 11-Dec | The General Assembly of the United Nations votes to establish the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to provide relief and support to children living in countries devastated by WWII. (1946) |
| 11-Dec | President Kennedy orders 425 helicopter crewmen to South Vietnam, the first large force of U.S. military personnel, bolstering the small number of U.S. advisors in the country since the late 1950s. (1961) |
| 11-Dec | President Carter signs law creating a $1.6 billion environmental superfund to pay for cleanup of chemical spills and toxic waste dumps. (1980) |
| 11-Dec | 30,000 women tried to rip down fences around a U.S.cruise missile base at Greenham Common, England. (1983) |
| 11-Dec | The three major US TV networks agreed on joint standards to limit entertainment violence by the start of the next fall's season. (1992) |
| 11-Dec | In the largest Russian military offensive since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks pour into the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya. (1994) |
| 12-Dec | North and South Korea agree to reunify peacefully after 46 years of division and animosity. (1991) |
| 12-Dec | By only three votes, the Senate kills a constitutional amendment giving Congress authority to outlaw flag burning. (1995) |
| 13-Dec | Leaders of the Central American countries held a summit meeting and agreed to pledge $4.5 billion to fight poverty. (1991) |
| 14-Dec | The United Nations adopted a resolution to outlaw the use of the atomic bomb. (1946) |
| 14-Dec | Wilma Mankiller becomes the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe when she takes office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. (1985) |
| 14-Dec | In Paris, France, leaders from the former Yugoslavia sign the Bosnia peace treaty, formally ending four years of bloody conflict. (1995) |
| 15-Dec | Bill of Rights becomes U.S. law as Virginia ratifies the first 10 amendments to the Constitution (1791) |
| 15-Dec | The first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children founded in New York. (1874) |
| 15-Dec | In South Dakota, Sitting Bull, a leader of the Hunkpapa Teton Sioux, is killed by Indian police at his home in a remote corner of the Standing Rock Reservation. (1891) |
| 15-Dec | Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh sent a note to the French Premier, Leon Blum, asking for peace talks. (1946) |
| 15-Dec | In Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS colonel who organized Adolf Hitler's "final solution of the Jewish question," is condemned to death by a Jewish war crimes tribunal. (1961) |
| 15-Dec | The American Psychiatric Association reverses its long-standing position and declares that homosexuality is not a mental illness. (1973) |
| 15-Dec | A popular nonviolent uprising began that resulted in the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. (1989) |
| 15-Dec | The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was shut down 14 years after it spawned the world's worst nuclear accident. (2000) |
| 16-Dec | Boston Tea Party. (1773) |
| 17-Dec | Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a radical Roman Catholic priest who was an opponent of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, is elected president in the first free election in Haiti's history. (1990) |
| 18-Dec | Slavery abolished by 13th amendment. (1865) |
| 18-Dec | Julia Butterfly Hill descends from her tiny platform 180 feet up in Luna, a giant Redwood tree, after perching in it for 738 days protecting it from loggers. (1999) |
| 19-Dec | Carter G. Woodson, a Harvard-educated historiographer known as the father of Black history, was born in Virginia. (1875) |
| 19-Dec | Czechoslovakia elects playwright and dissident, Vaclav Havel, president. (1989) |
| 21-Dec | Montgomery, AL buses integrated (1956) |
| 21-Dec | Britain banned the death penalty. (1961) |
| 21-Dec | Eleven former Soviet republics peaceably declared an end to the Soviet Union and forged a commonwealth. (1991) |
| 24-Dec | Ku Klux Klan founded in Pulaski, TN. (1865) |
| 25-Dec | On Christmas morning, the majority of German troops engaged in World War I cease firing and begin to sing Christmas carols. At dawn, many emerge from their trenches and approach the Allied lines across no man's land, calling out "Merry Christmas" in their enemies' native tongues. At first the Allied soldiers suspect a trick, but soon climb out of their trenches and shake hands with the German soldiers. The men exchange and sing carols.The Christmas Truce lasts a few days. (1914) |
| 26-Dec | The first Kwanzaa, a non-religious African-American holiday that celebrates family, community, and culture for seven days, is organized in Los Angeles by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a professor and chairman of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach. (1966) |
| 26-Dec | The Soviet Union began a massive airlift of an estimated 85,000 men into Kabul, Afghanistan, in an effort to reinstate Communist rule in the nation. (1979) |
| 27-Dec | Prohibitionist Carry Nation carried out her first public smashing of a bar, at the Carey Hotel in Wichita, KS. (1900) |
| 27-Dec | Founding of International Fellowship of Reconciliation, inter-religious peace group. (1914) |
| 27-Dec | Vietnam Veterans Against the War peace protest at historic Betsy Ross House, Phila. (1971) |
| 27-Dec | King Juan Carlos ratified Spain's first democratic constitution (1978) |
| 28-Dec | The Knights of Labor, a labor union of tailors in Philadelphia, hold the first Labor Day ceremonies in American history. (1869) |
| 29-Dec | Army massacres 300 women, men and children at Wounded Knee, SD (1890) |
| 30-Dec | Tuskeegee Institute reported that 1952 was the first year in 71 years of record keeping that no one was lynched in the United States. (1952) |
For further information contact:
peaceCENTER 1443 S. St Mary's, San Antonio, TX 78210
PHONE: (210) 224-HOPE or 224-4673 FAX: (210) 222-1097