[Shining light on federal records in 1966. Segregating the U.S.
civil service in 1913. Smallpox scam in 2002. March of the Mill
Children in 1903. A big win for airline workers in 1966. 14th
Amendment inked in 1868. Telstar fried by a nuke in 1962.]
[[link removed]]

THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, JULY 4 – 10  
[[link removed]]


 

xxxxxx

[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Shining light on federal records in 1966. Segregating the U.S.
civil service in 1913. Smallpox scam in 2002. March of the Mill
Children in 1903. A big win for airline workers in 1966. 14th
Amendment inked in 1868. Telstar fried by a nuke in 1962. _

,

 

J_ULY 4, 1966._ President Lyndon Johnson signs the original version of
the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. The law is unprecedented in
that it establishes the legal principle that _ALL_ records of the
federal government are public records unless and until the federal
government can explain to a court the reason they should not be
public. For the first time, if any person requests a government
record, it is up to the government to justify keeping it secret. The
original law established the principle, but it was almost
unenforceable. Fortunately, it was soon amended to give it some teeth.
[link removed]    

_JULY 5, 1913 (110 YEARS AGO). _On the day after the Fourth of July,
anyone visiting a U.S. Post Office beholds a shocking sight unlike
anything anyone had seen since the end of the Civil War. Suddenly,
Post Office buildings all over the country are racially segregated,
with white postal employees segregated from Black, white clerks
serving only white customers, Black customers standing in lines served
by Black clerks. For 48 years the federal civil service had been
racially integrated, but no longer. Why? Because the recently-elected
President Woodrow Wilson was an unapologetic racist, the first
uncloseted bigot to occupy the White House in more than 40 years,
Wilson encouraged the members of his cabinet to impose racist policies
on federal workers. The Postmaster General was only too happy to
oblige, but the new policy was put in place incrementally. At first,
postal workers who did not work in public areas were segregated and
ordered to use separate bathrooms. But on July 5 the Jim Crow Post
Office was revealed to anyone who could see. The Post Office, which
was the biggest single employer of African-Americans in the U.S., was
only the tip of the iceberg.
[link removed] 

_JULY 6, 2002._ Eleven months after the attack on the World Trade
Center and the declaration of the "Global War on Terror," the Bush
administration announces plans to vaccinate at least a million
healthcare workers, soldiers, and State Department employees against
smallpox. The White House acknowledges that smallpox had been
eradicated in 1980, but claims vaccinations are essential because some
terrorist group, somewhere, might have a supply of smallpox virus that
could be used for biological warfare. No one in Washington claims to
have any information indicating the actual existence of hidden stores
of virus, but Bush insists that such stores could exist, just like the
weapons of mass destruction alleged (falsely) to be hidden in Iraq. As
alarming as the possibility of a smallpox attack is, many medical
institutions and the labor unions that represent their workers --
American Hospital Association, American Public Health Association,
Institute of Medicine, American College of Emergency Physicians,
Service Employees International Union, American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees, and the New York Committee for
Occupational Safety and Health -- push back on the plan because
smallpox vaccine is well known to be risky. If a million people are
vaccinated, it is almost certain that a thousand will have serious
adverse reactions, 30 will have life-threatening adverse reactions,
and two will die. Is the bare assertion that a terrorist _MIGHT _have
a supply of the virus enough to put so many people at risk? Thanks to
the public push-back, plus well-document reports of multiple
vaccine-related deaths, the program was killed before anything close
to a million people had been vaccinated.
[link removed]  

_JULY, 7, 1903 (120 YEARS AGO)._ The March of the Mill Children begins
when radical labor organizer Mother Jones sets off on foot from
Philadelphia, leading more than five hundred striking textile workers,
many of them children who work in the mills. The strikers, both
children and adults, plan to march 120 miles to the Summer White House
at President Roosevelt's grand estate on Long Island's luxurious North
Shore. It is a bold effort to dramatize the need for a federal
prohibition of child labor, as well as a shorter workweek and higher
pay in Philadelphia's textile mills. The marchers pass through many
mill towns, and everywhere they go -- Trenton, New Brunswick, Rahway,
Elizabeth, Newark, Paterson, Passaic, Manhattan and Brooklyn -- they
are welcomed at mass meetings of workers and union members. When the
marchers reach Roosevelt's mansion, the President refuses to meet with
them, but they have managed to generate enormous publicity for their
cause. In Philadelphia, the strike is only partially successful,
because some employers agree to recognize the union, but others
refuse.
[link removed]

_JULY 8, 1966._ After 11 months of fruitless bargaining, more than 35
thousand members of the International Association of Machinists strike
the five largest U.S. airlines. The strike means the flights of some
150,000 daily passengers, or 61 percent of U.S. passenger service, is
grounded. The strikers stand firm, despite heavy pressure from
President Johnson and from the president of their own union, who both
ask the strikers to accept an offer only slightly better than the one
they rejected when they walked out. The 6-week strike is a big deal,
because the vast majority of affected travelers must use ground
transportation or not travel at all. A gauge of the strike's impact
can be seen in that the New York Times gave it page-1 coverage on 35
of the strike's 43 days. When the strike was finally settled, the
machinists won a much better contract than the one they rejected six
weeks earlier, including a 16-percent wage increase over 3 years with
a cost-of-living clause and increased fringe benefits.
[link removed]

_JULY 9, 1868 (155 YEARS AGO). _ The Fourteenth Amendment to the
Constitution is adopted, which guarantees, for the first time,
citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United
States” and forbids the states to deny any person “life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law” or to deny any person
“equal protection of the laws.”
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

_JULY 10, 1962._  NASA launches the infamous Telstar 1, the first
communications satellite capable of relaying TV signals between Europe
and North America. Infamous because it is one of the first satellites
to be destroyed by the radiation injected into the atmosphere by
nuclear weapons testing.  The destruction of Telstar 1 would have
been an enormous and very public embarrassment to the Defense
Department, the Atomic Energy Commission, and NASA had it not been
treated as a top-secret event at the time. There was no military
reason for the secrecy, only the government's desire to avoid
appearing as uninformed and reckless as it must have been to neglect
to warn NASA that it was about to launch a delicate satellite into a
region of the upper atmosphere that had just been heavily contaminated
with long-lasting radiation from a hydrogen bomb.
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

* U.S. history
[[link removed]]
* freedom of information
[[link removed]]
* government secrecy
[[link removed]]
* Woodrow Wilson
[[link removed]]
* Racial segregation
[[link removed]]
* Bush administration
[[link removed]]
* smallpox
[[link removed]]
* global war on terror
[[link removed]]
* Mother Jones
[[link removed]]
* child labor
[[link removed]]
* International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
[[link removed]]
* Strikes
[[link removed]]
* 14th amendment
[[link removed]]
* nuclear weapons
[[link removed]]
* satellites
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]