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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, MAY 14–20  
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_ Mississippi Racists Fight Back (in 1959), Bessie Smith,
Fortune-Teller (1929), Fortress Germany Unveiled (1939), “The
Germans Are Coming!” Or Not. (1919), ¡Karen Silkwood, Presente!
(1979), Big Brother’s Listening (1919), Rock Around the Clock (1954)
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_MISSISSIPPI RACISTS DON’T GIVE IN EASY_

65 YEARS AGO, on May 14, 1959, the modern era’s first major civil
rights campaign in Mississippi began when Black physician Gilbert
Mason attempted to swim with a group of friends at a whites-only
section of Biloxi Beach on the Gulf of Mexico. Mason and his friends
left the beach when threatened with arrest for violating the state’s
segregation laws. But they soon established the Biloxi chapter of the
NAACP, with Mason as chapter president. It took more than nine years,
many demonstrations, more than 100 arrests and a federal court order,
but in 1968 the city’s beaches were finally desegregated.
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_BESSIE SMITH, FORTUNE-TELLER_

95 YEARS AGO, on May 15, 1929, Bessie Smith recorded one of her
biggest hits, the Jimmie Cox blues ballad “Nobody Knows You When
You’re Down and Out,” for the Columbia label. By chance, the
record was released on September 13, in the midst of the Wall Street
meltdown that ushered in the Great Depression. You can listen to it
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_FORTRESS GERMANY UNVEILED_

85 YEARS AGO, on May 16, 1939, only 16 weeks before the beginning of
World War 2, the Third Reich rattled its saber at deafening volume.
Hitler and a large high-ranking entourage took a week-long,
well-publicized inspection tour of West Wall, a 390-mile line of
fortifications where Germany bordered on the Netherlands, Belgium,
Luxembourg and France. 

Hitler and his aides took every opportunity to emphasize and display
the strength and depth of Germany’s western defenses, saying
explicitly that any attempt to attack Germany from the west would be
futile. The message was clear: Germany could attack Poland (on the
east) without fearing attack from the west. France and its allies got
the message. Less than four months later, when Germany invaded Poland,
France and the United Kingdom, which were obliged by treaty to come to
Poland’s defense, did almost nothing. Fighting on Germany’s
western border did not begin until the spring of 1940, when Germany
launched its lightning attack and overran all resistance in a matter
of weeks.    
 

_“THE GERMANS ARE COMING!” OR NOT._

105 YEARS AGO, on May 17, 1919, World War 1 had been over for six
months. The U.S. Army had a confession to make.

Before the U.S. had entered the war, its people had been sharply
divided over what, if anything, to do about the fighting in Europe, so
the Wilson administration had used every possible trick to persuade
Congress to declare war. On this day in May 1919, the public learned
that one of those tricks involved bald-faced lies. 

For more than a year before Congress eventually agreed to declare war,
the Wilson administration’s military leadership had been claiming
that the U.S. was in grave danger of being invaded by Germany.  As
far-fetched as the idea seemed, ever since the spring of 1915 the War
Department had been insisting that Germany was capable of launching an
overwhelming sea-borne invasion of the U.S. In September 1915, the
Army published a 20-page study – entitled "Statement of a Proper
Military Policy for the United States" – concluding that Germany
would need only two months to land more than 825,000 fully-equipped
soldiers on the Atlantic coast of the U.S.  When the study was
published, the U.S. Army, Navy, and National Guard had a combined
force of only 375,000. After more than four years of insisting that
the danger of a German invasion was (or had been) real, and after
Germany had been defeated, the brass admitted that its study had been
based on “gross exaggerations” and that the “alleged facts”
behind the 1915 study “were quite impossible.”
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_¡KAREN SILKWOOD, PRESENTE!_

45 YEARS AGO, on May 18, 1979, a federal jury awarded the family of
union organizer and occupational- safety-and-health martyr Karen
Silkwood $10.5 million in civil damages for the negligence of her
former employer, Kerr-McGee. The lawsuit was based on the charge that
Kerr-McGee’s negligence had resulted in Silkwood becoming
contaminated with plutonium while working at the Kerr-McGee nuclear
fuel processing plant, before she died in a 1-car automobile crash.
Kerr-McGee appealed the verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled
in favor of the family, but then when Kerr-McGee threatened to file a
new appeal based on other grounds, the family agreed to settle the
matter for $1.38 million.
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_BIG BROTHER REALLY IS LISTENING_

105 YEARS AGO, on May 19, 1919, the U. S. government started its first
peacetime program to secretly intercept civilian cable and telephone
messages. The so-called Cable and Telegraph Section was jointly funded
by the Army and the State Department, even though it was never
authorized by Congress. Commercial U.S. communications companies gave
what was known as the Black Chamber access to all messages they
transmitted to or from the U.S. At the time the Black Chamber was
established, there was not a law that clearly made wiretapping
illegal, but the operation was kept secret because the government did
not want its targets to know about the eavesdropping. Not much is
known about the Black Chamber’s activities, because most of the
records about it were destroyed before they were understood to have
historical value.
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_“ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK”_

70 YEARS AGO, on May 20, 1954, “Rock Around the Clock,” written by
Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers and performed by Bill Haley & His
Comets was released by Decca. It quickly became the top-selling single
and remained there for two months.
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