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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, JULY 31-AUG 6  
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_ Freedom Summer Digs In (1964), Warsaw Uprising Begins (1944), Jim
Crow, Meet Lieutenant Robinson (1944), A Big Win for Free Speech
(1929), Beach Days for the Masses (1929), ‘We Seek No Wider War’
(1964), Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1964) _

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_FREEDOM SUMMER DIGS IN_

60 YEARS AGO, on July 31, 1964, ten days after the beginning of
Mississippi Freedom Summer, the terrorist effort to preserve Jim Crow
was at its worst. During those ten days at least 15 Black Mississippi
churches had been destroyed or badly damaged by arsonists. The three
Congress of Racial Equality volunteers who had been kidnapped were
still missing and their fate was unknown to all except their killers.
The Mississippi state legislature had started a so-called
investigation into “the influences of the Communist Party and other
subversive and un-American organizations in the activities in
Mississippi of civil rights organizations.” 

But the backlash wasn’t stopping the two thousand Council of
Federated Organizations volunteers who were operating in every corner
of the state. They were  making good use of the legal leverage they
had gained from the brand-new Civil Rights Act to help emboldened
Black voters to register. In addition, a new organization, the Jackson
Movement for Freedom and Human Dignity was hard at work organizing a
boycott of businesses in Jackson that refused to comply with the Civil
Rights Act’s new prohibitions on the segregation of public
accommodations. A constant struggle was ahead, but the tide was
beginning to turn against the Klan and White Citizens’ Councils.
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_THE WARSAW UPRISING BEGINS_

80 YEARS AGO, on August 1, 1944, one of the most memorable of World
War 2’s many chilling events began to unfold. As the Soviet
Union’s troops pushed the retreating Nazi armies west across Poland
and began to approach Warsaw, the Polish Home Army, a surprisingly
large and well organized military resistance operation, went on the
offensive against the German occupiers.

The Home Army started its new offensive on this day because it knew
the Germans’ ability to fight back was badly compromised by their
need to devote more and more resources to fighting the approaching
Soviets. The Home Army’s leadership believed that if they could
defeat the Germans in Warsaw before the Soviets entered the city, it
would put them in a position to establish a regime of Polish
nationalists that could have a legitimate claim on sharing power with
the advancing Soviets. 

Apparently, the Soviets understood the Home Army’s plans, and, in
order to avoid the need to establish a power-sharing arrangement,
delayed their occupation of Warsaw for two months, just enough time
for the Germans to come close to totally destroying the Home Army.
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_JIM CROW, MEET LIEUTENANT ROBINSON_

80 YEARS AGO, on August 2, 1944, an Army court martial acquitted 2nd
Lieut. Jackie Robinson of the potentially very serious charge that he
had refused to obey a lawful command from a superior officer.
Robinson’s case and its outcome received extensive coverage from
Black newspapers all over the U.S., both because it had arisen from
Robinson’s having refused to be consigned to the rear of a bus and
because Robinson was already a minor celebrity, as a former star UCLA
running back. Less than a year and a half later, after his brush with
military justice, Robinson started his career as the first
African-American to break Major League Baseball’s color line.
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_THERE’S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE_

95 YEARS AGO, August 3, 1929, was a bad day for civil liberties,
thanks to the San Bernardino County Sheriff. But later, in 1931,
thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, what had been a bad day turned into
a good one. 

In 1929, 19-year-old Yetta Stromberg and four other young people, all
of whom were working at the Pioneer Summer Camp in the San Bernardino
Mountains, were arrested for violating a California law that made it
illegal to display a red flag “as a sign, symbol, or emblem of
opposition to organized government.” During the trial in state
court, the prosecution showed that Stromberg had presided over a daily
flag-raising during which the campers pledged allegiance to "the
workers' red flag, and to the cause for which it stands, one aim
throughout our lives, freedom for the working class."  

Stromberg and her co-defendants were convicted, but, with the help of
the American Civil Liberties Union, they took their case all the way
to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the case known as Stromberg v.
California, the Supreme Court ruled (for the first time) that the
First Amendment prevented any state from outlawing political speech or
the display of political symbols.
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_BEACH DAYS FOR THE MASSES_

95 YEARS AGO, on August 4, 1929, New York State Governor Franklin
Roosevelt, along with former Governor Al Smith, presided over the
opening ceremony of the 10,000-acre Jones Beach State Park on the
south shore of Long Island. At the time, the development of Jones
Beach was regarded as the leading edge of a controversial social
experiment, creating a public park in an area that was dominated by
wealthy landowners who were fighting to preserve their privacy. During
the opening ceremony, Roosevelt referred to the ongoing opposition to
the construction of public recreational facilities in the midst of
private estates. Mentioning that the effort was criticized as being
“socialistic,” Roosevelt said, “Well, Governor Smith and I are
pretty good Socialists.” [link removed]

_‘WE SEEK NO WIDER WAR’_

60 YEARS AGO, on August 5, 1964, a significant escalation of the war
against Vietnam took place when, for the first time, the United States
bombed targets in North Vietnam. Attacking U.S., Navy jets destroyed
or damaged more than two dozen Vietnamese gunboats and did severe
damage to a fuel storage facility. The attacks on North Vietnam were
announced on television just before midnight by President Lyndon
Johnson, who said they were “limited retaliation” for attacks on
U.S. Navy ships off Vietnam’s coast, and that “we seek no wider
war.” 

The bombing on this day was the start of the longest and heaviest
aerial bombardment in history, during which the U.S. dropped 7,662,000
tons of bombs on Southeast Asia, compared with the 2,150,000 tons the
U.S. dropped during World War II.
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_MISSISSIPPI FREEDOM DEMOCRATIC PARTY_

60 YEARS AGO, on August 6, 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party held its first statewide convention, attended by 2500 people, in
Jackson, the state capital. The meeting chose 68 delegates to send to
the national Democratic Party’s upcoming convention in Atlantic
City, New Jersey. They planned to challenge the legitimacy of the
regular Democratic delegation on the ground that only the Freedom
Democrats had complied with the national Democratic Party’s policies
in choosing its delegates.  Their challenge to the regular Democrats
did not succeed, but it put the party on notice that a major shift was
beginning to make itself felt in Mississippi and beyond.
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