 | 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 |