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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, JUNE 25–JULY 2  
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_ A Successful Experiment (1959), Boycotts Can Work (1959), Hospital
Workers Win Big (1969), Malcolm X’s Last Stand (1964), Brilliance
Gets Shafted (1954), Throwing Shade on Racism (1989), Hit the Road,
Dictator (1944), Nazis Deadly Discipline (1934) _

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_A VERY SUCCESSFUL MUSICAL EXPERIMENT_

65 YEARS AGO, on June 25, 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet (Brubek on
piano, Paul Desmond on saxophone, Joe Morello on drums and Eugene
Wright on bass) gathered in Manhattan to hold the first of three
sessions to record Time Out for Columbia. The album was very unusual
because almost all of its music was in time signatures such as 9/8 and
5/4 that were almost never used in jazz. When the album was released
six months later, it proved to be both very influential and enormously
popular. 
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_BOYCOTT REPRESSION, CHANGE THE WORLD _

65 YEARS AGO, on June 26, 1959, the political movement known as the
British Boycott Movement, was first organized at a meeting in London
to bring an end to the virulently racist apartheid government of South
Africa. The citizens of the U.K.felt a special responsibility toward
the population of South Africa because South Africa had been a British
colony and was still a member of the British Commonwealth. More than
30 years after the British Boycott Movement was founded, it achieved
its main objective which was to help bring an end to South Africa’s
apartheid regime. The end of apartheid was primarily caused by the
brave actions of the citizens of South Africa, but anti-apartheid
South Africans acknowledge that the Boycott Movement played a
significant supporting role in bringing apartheid to an end.
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_A HISTORIC WIN FOR HOSPITAL WORKERS_

55 YEARS AGO, on June 27, 1969, a bitter and sometimes violent 14-week
hospital-workers strike in Charleston, South Carolina, came to a
victorious conclusion. 

The strike had been triggered when management fired 12 leaders of the
newly organized hospital workers union because the union had demanded
that management meet with them. In addition to their leaders'
reinstatement, the 400 strikers demanded that management recognize the
union and agree to establish a formal grievance procedure. 

The strikers were almost all African-American women employed as
laundry workers, kitchen helpers, nurse's aides, licensed practical
nurses, maids and orderlies. The strike pitted the workers -- who had
the support of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP
and CORE, as well as the AFL-CIO -- against Charleston's racist power
structure. 

In an effort to break the strike and prevent picketing, the governor
of South Carolina declared a state of emergency, ordered more than a
thousand state troopers and bayonet-wielding National Guardsmen to
Charleston, and imposed a 9 pm to 5 am curfew. Hundreds of strikers
and their supporters were arrested on the picket line. In reaction to
the governor’s heavy-handed response, the strike attracted massive
support within South Carolina and throughout the South, as was
demonstrated by two mass marches, one of which, on May 11, had 10,000
participants.

The union declared victory when management agreed to a modest pay
increase, to rehire the fired union leaders and to establish a
grievance procedure that mandated the union's participation. The
events leading up up to the strike’s success is are movingly
reported in Madeline Anderson’s 30-minute documentary, “I Am
Somebody,” which can been see here:
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_MALCOLM X’S LAST CAMPAIGN FOR JUSTICE_

60 YEARS AGO, on June 28, 1964, Malcolm X announced the formation of
the Organization of Afro-American Unity during a speech in Manhattan.
The purpose of the OAAU, Malcolm said, was to fight for the human
rights of African Americans and promote cooperation among Africans and
people of African descent in the Americas. The OAAU's program called
for the adoption of educational methods to "liberate the minds of our
children"; for Afro-Americans to exercise economic and political
freedom and use that freedom to establish strong links to "the newly
independent nations of Africa." The program also advocated
Afro-American self-defense: "We encourage the Afro-Americans to defend
themselves against the wanton attacks of the racist aggressors whose
sole aim is to deny us the guarantee of the United Nations Charter of
Human Rights and of the Constitution of the United States." 

At the time of its founding, OAAU had great promise; in addition to
the charismatic Malcolm X, its organizers included the renowned
Pan-Africanist scholar John Henrik Clarke, who was then the head of
the Black and Puerto Rican studies program at Hunter College, the
minister and Black Christian National Movement leader Albert Cleage,
New York City community organizer and politician Jesse Gray and
militant civil right movement leader Gloria Richardson. Less than a
week after OAAU was established, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made the
secret determination that it was a threat to the national security of
the U.S. Sadly and perhaps not coincidentally, Malcolm X was
assassinated less than nine months later.
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_“IMPRUDENT” BRILLIANCE GETS SHAFTED _

70 YEARS AGO, on June 29, 1954, by a 4-1 vote, the U.S. Atomic Energy
Commission revoked the security clearance of J. Robert Oppenheimer,
the brilliant atomic physicist who had been the scientific leader of
the Manhattan Project, which invented and then built the first atomic
bomb. Without a security clearance, Oppenheimer could play no future
role in any weapons-related project. When the Commission revoked
Oppenheimer’s clearance, it claimed it did so because Oppenheimer
had “fundamental defects of character,” which resulted in his
having associations with Communists that went “far beyond the
tolerable limits of prudence and self-restraint which are to be
expected of one holding the high positions" he had held since 1942.
After Oppenheimer died in 1966, the only AEC member who had voted
against revoking his clearance eulogized him with these words: "Such a
wrong can never be righted; such a blot on our history never erased."
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_CAST A COLD EYE ON RACIST BIGOTRY_

35 YEARS AGO, on June 30, 1989, the enormously successful anti-racist
comedy-drama, Do the Right Thing, written and directed by Spike Lee,
featuring Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, was released in the
U.S. The film was such an outstanding critical success that its not
being nominated for the Best Picture Oscar resulted in an outpouring
of criticism directed at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences. According to the website “Rotten Tomatoes,” Do the Right
Thing remains “one of the most important films of the 1980s.”
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_SHOWING A DICTATOR THE DOOR_

80 YEARS AGO, on July 1, 1944, Jorge Ubico, who had been dictator of
Guatemala since 1931, who admired Hitler and who was hated by the vast
majority of Guatemala’s population, was forced to resign his office
by a anti-fascist military junta. The generals who forced Ubico out of
office then made it possible for Guatemala to hold the first truly
free presidential election in its history. The election brought a
social-democratic government to power – at the time the most
progressive government in the western hemisphere – which remained in
power for 10 years during which the standard of living of Guatemalans
improved enormously, free education was made available for the first
time, and the large indigenous population was treated with respect.
Thanks to the junta that overthrew Ubico in 1944, Guatemala enjoyed a
decade of peace, prosperity and democracy. Then, in June 1954, the CIA
overthrew Guatemala’s elected government and replaced it with a
dictatorial regime that returned the country to the conditions it had
suffered under when Ubico was in power.
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_NAZIS ENFORCE DISCIPLINE WITH DEATH_

90 YEARS AGO, on July 2, 1934, the three brutal days of Nazi
bloodletting known to history as the Night of the Long Knives came to
an end. 

In a burst of unprecedented violence, the Nazi party had just purged
itself of some party members and other fascists who were considered by
Hitler and his inner circle to be unreliable allies in Hitler’s plan
to make the thousand-year Reich a reality. The number of people who
were purged by murder was carefully concealed by the killers and will
probably never be known.  It was at the very least one hundred, and
is reliably estimated to have been as many as a thousand. Thousands
more were arrested and terrorized until they were released, but afraid
to criticize Hitler and his policies. 

The Nazis did not attempt to conceal the purge, but claimed falsely it
was being conducted in response to a supposed coup attempt by
dissident fascists. At the time the ruse was almost completely
successful; for the mst part the media, including the foreign media
followed the lead of the New York Times, which reported "Chancellor
Hitler was calm as he went about the business of crushing what seemed
here [in Munich] like an incipient rebellion" under the headline
“HITLER CRUSHES REVOLT BY NAZI RADICALS.” 
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