[Fighting the Good Fight (in 1909), Teach Literacy, Go to Jail
(1854), Deadly But Very Popular (1964), Pretending to Drain the Swamp
(1984), Orgy of Police Brutality (1874), McCarthyisms Downfall (1964),
Hitlers Friends in the House of Lords (1934)]
[[link removed]]

THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, JAN 9 – 15  
[[link removed]]


 

xxxxxx

[[link removed]]

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

_ Fighting the Good Fight (in 1909), Teach Literacy, Go to Jail
(1854), Deadly But Very Popular (1964), Pretending to Drain the Swamp
(1984), Orgy of Police Brutality (1874), McCarthyism's Downfall
(1964), Hitler's Friends in the House of Lords (1934) _

,

 

_FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT_

115 YEARS AGO, on January 9, 1909, the first issue of La Follette's
Weekly Magazine, founded by U.S. Senator Robert La Follette was
published in Madison, Wisconsin. It billed itself as a "publication
that will not mince words or suppress facts, when public welfare
demands plain talk, about public men, legislative measures, or social
and industrial wrongs." The Senator wrote this in the first issue: "In
the course of every attempt to establish or develop free government, a
struggle between Special Privilege and Equal Rights is inevitable. Our
great industrial organizations [are] in control of politics,
government, and natural resources. They manage conventions, make
platforms, [and] dictate legislation. They rule through the very men
elected to represent them. The battle is just on. It is young yet. It
will be the longest and hardest [battle] ever fought for Democracy. In
other lands, the people have lost. Here we shall win. It is a glorious
privilege to live in this time, and have a free hand in this fight for
government by the people." Twenty years after it began publication, it
changed its name to The Progressive, which carries on with the effort
to build "government by the people."
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

_TEACH LITERACY AND GO TO JAIL_

170 YEARS AGO, on January 10, 1854, a judge in Norfolk, Virginia,
sentenced a white seamstress, Margaret Douglass, to a month in jail
for the crime of teaching free African-American children to read. 

There is a historical marker in downtown Norfolk bearing a photograph
of Margaret Douglass and this inscription: "I told the judge to do his
duty and put me in prison at once, if he chose, for I would ask no
favors at the hands of any man."

The inscription continues, "Margaret Douglass, a white woman from
Charleston, South Carolina, moved to Norfolk with her daughter Rosa in
1845 and lived near here on the former Barraud Court. She was a vest
maker by occupation. In June 1852 she and her daughter opened a school
in the second story back room of her house to teach 25 free black
children, both boys and girls, how to read and write.

"Tuition was three dollars a quarter. After she was seen walking in
the funeral procession of one of her deceased students, her school was
raided, and she was arrested. She argued her own case in court,
pointing out that the wives and daughters of several court officials
taught black children weekly in Sunday School classes at Christ Church
from the same books she used. After being found guilty, she served a
month in jail. Later she moved to Philadelphia with her daughter and
gained considerable notoriety based on her booklet about her
experience in Norfolk that was published in 1854. "

The Zinn Education Project has a more detailed discussion of Margaret
Douglass' victimization here:
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

_CIGARETTES: DEADLY, BUT VERY, VERY POPULAR_

60 YEARS AGO, on January 11, 1964, the Surgeon General of the United
States made big news by releasing "Smoking and Health". The next day
it was the top story in most Sunday newspapers; the Washington Post
gave it a 4-column wide, 3-line headline: "Cigarette Smoking Cited as
Main Cause of Deadly Lung Cancer." But the tobacco industry response,
"More Research Needed, Says Industry," also received page-1 treatment.
The report came out on Saturday because the White House wanted to
minimize its impact on the stock market. As it turned out, the stock
market hardly noticed; on Monday, the first trading day, most of the
major tobacco stocks fell very slightly and Reynolds Tobacco stock
even went up. The report's impact on smokers was not as substantial as
public health advocates hoped. When it was published, 46 percent of
U.S. adults smoked cigarettes; the percentage of smokers has slowly
but steadily declined until it now stands at 30%.  But, thanks to the
growth of the population, the absolute number of smoking adults in the
U.S. is higher than it ever was. Smoking is now responsible for more
than 480,000 deaths per year in the U.S., including more than 41,000
deaths resulting from exposure to second-hand smoke.
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]
           

_TALK IS CHEAP, BUT IT WINS ELECTIONS_

40 YEARS AGO, on January 12, 1984, the President's Private Sector
Survey on Cost Control, which had been appointed by President Reagan
with a mandate to "drain the swamp" of bureaucracy, published a
47-volume report, containing 2478 cost-cutting recommendations.
According to the report,  its recommendations had the potential to
save more than $424 billion over three years. Claiming to have a plan
to cut costs in an election year is great politics, but would it work?
According to an analysis by the non-partisan Congressional Budget
Office, even if all the recommendations had been implemented, that
savings would be $98 billion over three years, or less than a quarter
of what the report claimed. Most of the recommendations were never put
into effect. Despite the effort's lack of discernible effect on the
so-called swamp, it did no harm to Reagan's re-election campaign.
[link removed]…
[[link removed]]

_AN ORGY OF POLICE BRUTALITY_

150 YEARS AGO, on January 13, 1874, hundreds of thousands of people
had recently lost their jobs as a result of what was then the largest
U.S. depression ever, which had begun four months earlier. This was at
a time before the invention of unemployment insurance, when the only
social safety net was charity. With whole families thrown out of work,
some 90 thousand newly evicted New Yorkers were homeless and many of
them were literally starving. Unemployed workers organized themselves
to demand government assistance at a massive January 13 demonstration
in Tompkins Square, on New York City's Lower East Side. Hundreds of
the demonstrators were hurt when they were attacked by club-wielding
mounted policemen. Samuel Gompers, who was at the time a 24-year-old
cigar maker, described the event this way: "mounted police charged the
crowd on Eighth Street, riding them down and attacking men, women, and
children without discrimination. It was an orgy of brutality." Not
surprisingly, the unemployed workers' demands were not met.
[link removed]

_MCCARTHYISM'S DRAMATIC DOWNFALL _

60 YEARS AGO, on January 14, 1964, "Point of Order!", a documentary
film about the Senate hearings that helped to disgrace anti-communist
witch-hunter Joseph McCarthy,  was released. The film, by Emile de
Antonio, Daniel Talbot and Robert Duncan, was innovative because it
did not use any narration (except for a 60-second voice-over
introduction), nor did it include any footage that had been created
for the documentary. The Senate hearings it depicted had been recorded
for broadcast by CBS, and every second of the 97-minute film was taken
directly from 188 hours of CBS recordings. Similarly, the soundtrack
consisted of nothing but what had been created for broadcast. The
bare-bones film was a surprise hit. When it was first released the
film did not have a distributor, but within weeks of its playing to
packed houses in New York City, a major distribution company bought
the distribution rights for $100,000 plus a percentage of box office
receipts. You can watch "Point of Order!" here:
[link removed]

_HITLER'S WEALTHY FRIENDS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS _

90 YEARS AGO, on January 15, 1934, one of Britain's biggest
newspapers, the Daily Mail, published a major article under the
headline "Hurrah for the Black Shirts!," which meant, to the 1,500,000
regular readers of The Daily Mail, "Hurrah for the Fascist Movement in
Britain." The article exhorted the paper's readers, "Britain's
survival as a great power will depend on the existence of a
well-organized part of the Right, ready to take over the
responsibility of national affairs with the same directness of purpose
and energy of method as Mussolini and Hitler have displayed." 

There was nothing surprising about the article to anyone who was
familiar with the Daily Mail. The paper's editorial stance was
determined by its rich owner, Harold Harmsworth, also known as
Viscount Rothermere, who was famous for his warm friendship with both
Hitler and Mussolini. 

With the Daily Mail's support, the British Union of Fascists was a
significant presence on the far right. Five days after January 15, the
Black Shirts held a rally in Birmingham that was attended by some 10
thousand supporters, who cheered their leader's calls for a "modern
dictatorship" that would be "armed with powers to overcome the
problems that people want overcome." Less than five months later, a
standing-room-only crowd of 15 thousand packed a London arena to cheer
their leader say that "only fascism and its Black Shirts can preserve
British free speech and our other liberties." 

But a large number of those present were there specifically to jeer
the fascist speakers, with the result that the event was punctuated by
many fights resulting in serious injuries. As a result of that night's
violence, the Daily Mail ceased to cheer for the British Union of
Fascists, but continued to praise Hitler and the Nazi takeover of
central Europe right up until the UK declared war on Germany in
September 1939.
[link removed]

* U.S. history
[[link removed]]
* U.S. Slavery
[[link removed]]
* cigarettes
[[link removed]]
* Ronald Reagan
[[link removed]]
* police brutality
[[link removed]]
* McCarthyism
[[link removed]]
* Fascism
[[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]