[President Wilson unleashes repression of peace advocates.
Republican Party denounces slave trade as a ‘crime against
humanity.’ First compulsory public education. Camden draft
protestors acquitted. Wiretapping gets the nod. Amnesty for
Confederates.]
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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, MAY 16 . . .  
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_ President Wilson unleashes repression of peace advocates.
Republican Party denounces slave trade as a ‘crime against
humanity.’ First compulsory public education. Camden draft
protestors acquitted. Wiretapping gets the nod. Amnesty for
Confederates. _

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_MAY 16, 1918._ Congress and President Wilson respond to large and
growing opposition to U.S. participation in World War I by making it a
crime to speak or write in opposition to the war. The Sedition Act is
used to jail nearly a thousand people, some of them for many years,
for their "seditious" words.  
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_MAY 17, 1860._ The Republican Party adopts a platform including
these words: "the African slave trade  . . . [is] a crime against
humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon
Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final
suppression of that execrable traffic." It is one of the first times
the phrase "crime against humanity" was used in a public document. 
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_MAY 18, 1852._ Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to require
that all children attend school, and to require that each town provide
free education. 
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_MAY 20, 1973. _Twenty-eight anti-war activists who had been caught
red-handed trashing the draft board's office in Camden, New Jersey,
are acquitted of all charges in what is widely regarded as a
referendum on the FBI's use of informers to suppress activism against
the Vietnam War.  [link removed]

_MAY 21, 1940._ President Franklin Roosevelt tells his Attorney
General that when "national security" is at stake, the FBI could
ignore the recent Supreme Court decision that wiretapping is illegal.
Roosevelt says, "I am convinced that the Supreme Court never intended
any dictum in the particular case it decided to apply to grave matters
involving the defense of the nation.” Then, as now, as a practical
matter secret government surveillance  is nearly impossible to
prevent. 
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_MAY 22, 1872._ Just seven years after at least 385,000 people had
given their lives to win the Civil War and abolish slavery, the U.S.
government turns the other cheek by passing the Amnesty Act. The law
eliminates most of the penalties imposed on former Confederates by the
Fourteenth Amendment. Not surprisingly, the January 6, 2021
insurrectionists have been arguing in court that the Amnesty Act's
protections apply to them.  [link removed]

* U.S. history
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* Free Speech
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* U.S. repression
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* slavery
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* Public Education
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* Richard Nixon
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* anti-war Government Surveillance
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* Civil War
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