[ Deadly hurricane in 1928. Slavecatchers stymied (1858). Feds
forgeries flop (1918). Deadly racist church bombing (1963). Settlers
take over Cherokee Strip (1893). Thin-skinned cops get served (1994).
Eugene Debs speaks truth to power (1918).]
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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, SEPT. 12–18  
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_ Deadly hurricane in 1928. Slavecatchers stymied (1858). Feds'
forgeries flop (1918). Deadly racist church bombing (1963). Settlers
take over Cherokee Strip (1893). Thin-skinned cops get served (1994).
Eugene Debs speaks truth to power (1918). _

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DEADLY HURRICANE DEVASTATES BLACK COMMUNITIES
_SEPTEMBER 12, 1928 (95 YEARS AGO)._ A very large, powerful and
slow-moving hurricane makes landfall for the first time in Guadeloupe
in the Caribbean, where it does enormous damage to structures and
crops and kills about 1200 people. Two days later it devastates Puerto
Rico, but kills relatively few because the storm was the subject of
the first-ever radio broadcast of a hurricane warning, produced by the
U.S. Weather Service's San Juan station. From Puerto Rico, the storm
moves north and travels up the middle of the Florida peninsula,
inundating many places to a depth of 20 feet. It is the
second-deadliest hurricane ever in the U.S., killing more than 2500,
the vast majority of whom are Black farmworkers in Florida.
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SLAVE-CATCHERS STYMIED BY OUTRAGED ABOLITIONISTS
_SEPTEMBER 13, 1858 (165 YEARS AGO)._ In what is remembered as the
Oberlin-Wellington Rescue, John Price, a self-emancipated formerly
enslaved man who had escaped from Kentucky, is captured by
slave-catchers in Oberlin, Ohio.  Slavery is not legal in Ohio, but
the federal Fugitive Slave Law makes every self-emancipated enslaved
person an outlaw anywhere in the U.S.
A posse of outraged Ohio citizens, both Black and white, rides nine
miles to Wellington, where the slave-catchers are holding Price and
preparing to take him back to Kentucky. Hundreds of abolitionists from
Oberlin, Wellington, and the surrounding area, gather outside the
hotel where Price is being held and demand his release. When their
demand is refused, the crowd forcefully liberates Price and take him
back to Oberlin. They immediately send him on the way to Canada (where
a person cannot be extradited for violating the Fugitive Slave Law)
along with a small group to protect him en route.
A federal grand jury in Ohio then indicts 37 of Price's liberators.
 In response, an Ohio constable arrests the slave-catchers on the
charge of kidnapping Price. At a meeting of state and federal
officials, the state agrees to free the slave-catchers  in exchange
for quashing 35 of the 37 federal indictments. The two men who are
tried in federal court for liberating Price are found guilty. One is
sentenced to 60 days; the other to 20 days.
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WAR-MONGERS USE FORGERIES TO MAKE THEIR CASE 
_SEPTEMBER 14, 1918 (105 YEARS AGO)._ A newly-minted and controversial
wartime federal agency, the Committee on Public Information, which was
created to promote U.S. military and foreign policy by any means
possible, publishes and distributes 137,000 copies of a 30-page
pamphlet, "The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy." The pamphlet presents a
collection of what are described as Russian and German documents that
"prove" that the German government was financing Russian communists in
order to weaken Russia's military. The publication of the pamphlet
results in an outpouring of news reports repeating the pamphlet's
charges. A close reading of the documents raises suspicions about
their authenticity and they are soon shown to be forgeries. Of course,
the news of the pamphlet's falsity does not reach most of the
population. From what is known about the affair, it appears that the
Committee did not realize that the "documents" were phony. but whether
the Committee knew or not, its reputation was tarnished and it
acquired the nickname, in some circles, of Committee on Public
Misinformation.
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Ku Klux Klan bombs a church, kills four girls
_September 15, 1963 (60 years ago).__ _In Birmingham, Alabama, a
 large dynamite bomb that had been put in place by four Ku Klux Klan
members explodes in the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing three
14-year-old girls and one 11-year-old, who were inside the church, and
injuring about 20. Within two years an official investigation
identifies the bombers, but none is arrested until 1977, when one of
the bombers is convicted of first-degree murder. Two more bombers are
convicted of murder in 2001 and 2002.  The fourth bomber died of
natural causes before being prosecuted.
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White men speak with forked tongues
_September 16, 1893 (130 years ago)._ In what is called the Cherokee
Strip Land Run, the brutal and lawless takeover of land that is under
the treaty-guaranteed control of Native Americans continues when more
then 6.5 million acres that had been deeded to the Cherokee Nation in
1836 with the solomn promise that it would never  "be included within
the territorial limits or jurisdiction of any State or Territory" is
officially opened to white settlers.  An estimated 100,000 race in to
stake claims. The land is made part of the State of Oklahoma in 1907.
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Thin-skinned cops taught an expensive lesson
_September 17, 1994._ A Federal District Court jury finds the San
Francisco Police Department liable for damages amounting to about
$715,000 as a result of SFPD officers having removed thousands of
copies of the Bay Times, a free weekly newspaper, from newspaper racks
throughout the city. The cops' illegal suppression of the Bay Times
was triggered by the strong negative reaction of SFPD Chief Richard
Hongisto to a cover photo-montage of him holding a night stick in a
lewd manner under the headline "Dick's Cool New Tool: Martial Law."
That 1992 issue of the newspaper included detailed articles about the
San Francisco cops' having made mass arrests of thousands of people
who were demonstrating against the acquittals of LAPD officers who had
been charged with excessive force for their videotaped beating of
unresisting motorist Rodney King.
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Eugene Debs speaks truth to power before going to prison
_September 18, 1918 (105 years ago)._ Socialist leader Eugene Debs
makes an eloquent address to the federal court that convicted him of
sedition and sentenced him to 10 years in prison. The speech is short
and well worth reading in full. Here is an excerpt, with a link to the
complete text below. 
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings,
and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest
on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower
class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it,
and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. . . . I am
thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of
the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women
who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of
the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood
and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of
Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the
monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted,
body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives
broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization
money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of
childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless
sway in the affairs of men."
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* U.S. history
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* deadly weather
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* Fugitive Slave Law
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* Anti-Communism
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* Native Americans
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* First Amendment
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* Eugene Debs
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* Espionage Act of 1917
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