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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, MAY 7–13  
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_ Colonialism Is Hard to Kill (in 1954), “It Was the Right Thing to
Do” (1929), “Join, Or Die” (1754), Apartheid’s End (1994),
Class War in the Midwest (1894), Unsafe at Any Speed (1969), “I
Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night” (1949) _

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_COLONIALISM IS HARD TO KILL_

70 YEARS AGO, on May 7, 1954, after more than seven years of war,
Vietnamese forces put an end to French colonial rule in Vietnam, Laos
and Cambodia by defeating the French Army at Dien Bien Phu in northern
Vietnam. The Vietnamese victory was to a lesser extent a defeat for
the U.S., which had been supplying French fighters with large numbers
of tanks and military aircraft. Under the peace treaty that was signed
after the war, the Vietnamese people were scheduled to hold an
election to determine the composition of the government of a unified
Vietnam. But the election never took place, because the anti-communist
caretaker government that was installed by France and the U.S. in the
southern part of the country refused to allow it. The result was a
divided Vietnam that was only united after more than 15 years of
additional bloodletting.
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_“IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO”_

95 YEARS AGO, on May 8, 1929, Albert Kahn Associates, one of the
largest architecture firms in the U.S., which had pioneered building
factories with reinforced concrete, signed a contract to design the
first factory to build tractors in the Soviet Union. The Kahn firm was
well known for having designed factory buildings for virtually every
U.S. auto manufacturer, including Ford, Chevrolet, Cadillac, and
Chrysler. Under the contract, the Kahn firm agreed to set up an office
in Moscow, where, in addition to designing the tractor factory, the
staff would train Soviet architects in the firm’s advanced methods.
Eight months after the initiation of the first contract, Kahn signed a
second, much larger, contract to be consulting architect for all
industrial construction in the USSR. Over the next five years,
Kahn’s staff trained more than four thousand Soviet architects and
helped to design more than 500 Soviet industrial plants. Kahn, who did
not profess to be a leftist, said that he believed that “the Russian
people – regardless of their form of government – were entitled to
help after all their generations of suffering under the czars. It was
the right thing to do.” [link removed];

_“JOIN, OR DIE”_

270 YEARS AGO on May 9, 1754, The Pennsylvania Gazette, which was
owned and edited by Benjamin Franklin, published the first U.S.
political cartoon, an image of snake that was cut into pieces, each
piece representing one of the North American colonies, under the
heading “Join, or Die.” The image and the accompanying text
delivered the message that the colonies faced a dire military threat
from France, and that they needed to act in unison in order to avoid
fatal consequences.
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_APARTHEID’S END _

30 YEARS AGO, on May 10, 1994, Nelson Mandela, the South African
revolutionary who had spent most of his adult life in prison, was
inaugurated as South Africa’s first president to have been elected
in a truly democratic election.
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_CLASS WAR IN THE MIDWEST_

130 YEARS AGO, on May 11, 1894, most of the hundreds of workers at the
Pullman Car Company factory in Chicago began a spontaneous strike to
demand that the company rescind a large wage cut imposed by
management. Many of the strikers were members of the American Railway
Union, which had not planned the strike, but once the strike began,
the union decided to support it. Soon the ARU called on its tens of
thousands of members, who were employed at most of the railroads in
the U.S., to refuse to operate trains that included any Pullman-built
car. The result was that ARU members blockaded trains that included
Pullman-built cars. The strike spread slowly at first, but by the end
of June more than 125,000 ARU members at 29 railroads were boycotting
trains that included a Pullman car. On July 2 the federal government
obtained a federal court’s  injunction against the strike because
it was interfering with the shipment of U.S. mail. When the strikers
refused to obey the injunction, U.S. President Grover Cleveland
dispatched thousands of soldiers and deputy U.S. marshals to Chicago
to enforce it. The strikers refused to yield, and the soldiers and
lawmen fired on them, killing 30 and wounding many more. ARU President
Eugene Debs was arrested and served six months in jail for his role in
defying the injunction. The strike failed to attain its objectives,
but its size and the brutality of its suppression were never
forgotten.
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_UNSAFE AT ANY SPEED _

55 YEARS AGO, on May 12, 1969, General Motors Corporation announced
that Chevrolet had built its last Corvair. From the very beginning in
1960, Corvairs were obviously unusual. Not only did they have
air-cooled, rear-mounted engines, like Volkswagen sedans, but they
looked nothing like any existing U.S.-made car.  They immediately
became a best-seller, but before long their drivers began to
experience unexpected steering problems. A young and largely unknown
Ralph Nader published a book-length critique of the Corvair’s design
titled “Unsafe At Any Speed,” and Corvair sales plummeted.
Nader’s criticism inspired Congress to create the first government
agency focused on automobile safety, the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration. Even though the Corvair’s lack of safety was
never totally clear, its sales never recovered, and Chevrolet stopped
building them.
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_“I DREAMED I SAW JOE HILL LAST NIGHT”_

75 YEARS AGO, on May 13, 1949, the progressive activist, singer and
actor Paul Robeson, who was being sharply attacked by some for his
political activities, made a performing tour of Europe, during which
he was filmed making an impromptu rendition of “I Dreamed I Saw Joe
Hill Last Night” to a meeting of Scottish coal miners.
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