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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, AUG 21–27  
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_ Open to the Public? (1939), Dissin’ Freedom Democrats (1964),
Voters Say ‘No’ to the Klan (1924), Starting a Revolution (1774),
Broadway’s a Tough Place to Take a Break (1959), Protecting
Miners’ Health (1969), A Setback for Civil Rights (1949) _

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_OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, BUT NOT REALLY_

85 YEARS AGO, on August 21, 1939, five brave young African-Americans
staged one of the first-ever anti-racist sit-ins in the U.S., when
they visited the Alexandria, Virginia, public library and asked for
library cards. When the librarian refused and told them to leave the
whites’-only building, each of them picked up a library book and
quietly sat down to read it.

The non-violent library protest had been planned by 26-year-old
civil-rights attorney Samuel Tucker, who had given advance notice of
the sit-in to the media. When police arrived at the library, they
found it surrounded by a crowd of some 300 reporters, photographers,
and curious citizens.

The police took the five into custody and escorted them from the
building, through a phalanx of media representatives. The result of
the sit-in was a legal stand-off. Since there was no Virginia law
(only a despicable tradition) against ignoring a whites’-only sign,
the five were tried for disorderly conduct, an accusation that was not
confirmed by the testimony of a single witness, as made clear by
lawyer Tucker’s defense.

Tucker hoped that an acquittal could force the library to abandon its
racist policy or that a conviction and appeal provide the opportunity
for a higher court to take a stand against Jim Crow. But the judge in
the case took the cowardly option of never issuing a verdict, thereby
making an appeal impossible and leaving the library free to maintain
its whites’-only policy. The defendants remained free on their own
recognizance for the rest of their lives. 

The public-in-name-only library’s directors soon decided to open
what would be Alexandria’s first library for Afro-Americans, which
was stocked entirely with donated and caste-off books. The
whites’-only library was finally integrated in February 1959.
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The image shows the five would-be library patrons leaving the building
under arrest. 

_LBJ THROWS SHADE ON FREEDOM DEMOCRATS_

60 YEARS AGO, on August 22, 1964, a small but determined group of
anti-racist Mississippians tried to speak truth to power for 30
minutes on national television and the president of the United States,
Lyndon Johnson, went out of his way to prevent them from broadcasting
their powerful message.

The setting was the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City,
New Jersey, where the convention’s credentials committee was holding
a public hearing on which one of two groups of elected delegates had
the right to represent Mississippi Democrats. The regular and racist
Mississippi Democratic Party’s delegation was being challenged by
the grassroots Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The Freedom Party
objected that the regular party’s delegates should not be seated
because they had been chosen in a whites’-only election. The regular
party could not deny the charge, because it had proudly held a
whites’-only primary, even though doing so was against the national
Democratic Party’s rules.

The Freedom Democrats’ challenge was political dynamite, so
President Johnson used his influence over the media to prevent the
Freedom Democrats getting the word out on live television. The
credentials committee hearing was being broadcast live, so just when
the broadcast of the hearing was scheduled to begin, Johnson announced
he would speak in a live, televised, press conference in the White
House.  

The television networks had no choice but to cut away from the
convention, where television cameras recorded, but did not broadcast
live, dramatic testimony by Martin Luther King, Jr., and leading
Freedom Democrat Fannie Lou Hamer about the violent methods used by
Mississippi’s racist electoral apparatus to subvert democracy. By
monkey-wrenching the broadcast of the Freedom Democrats testimony,
Johnson hoped to prevent giving the racist regular Democrats from the
entire Deep South an excuse to throw their weight behind the
Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater.

Party rules or no party rules, the credentials committee was afraid
that if it agreed with the Freedom Democrats, every Democratic Party
from the Deep South would support Goldwater. The credentials committee
proposed a “compromise,” which was to seat two of the Freedom
Party’s 68 delegates, but even the “compromise” was not good
enough for the regular Democrats from Mississippi and Alabama, who
wound up refusing to support Johnson’s election.

Watch this 4-minute clip from “The American Experience” about the
dirty trick Johnson pulled to keep the Freedom Democrats off live
television, and take note of the unhappy expressions on the faces of
the credentials committee members as they listen to Hamer’s shocking
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_TEXANS VOTERS SAY ‘NO’ TO THE KLAN_

100 YEARS AGO, on August 23, 1924, the Ku Klux Klan hoped to take over
the Texas state house and the state attorney-general’s office. The
Klan’s Texas electoral bid was the biggest issue in this day’s
Democratic primary election. A victory in the primary election meant
almost-certain victory in the general election, because the state’s
voters were overwhelmingly Democrats.

The winners in the primaries were anti-Klan candidate Miriam Ferguson
for governor and anti-Klan candidate Dan Moody for attorney general.
Even though some 15 percent of Texas voters were Klan members,
Ferguson defeated self-proclaimed Klan member and Dallas County
District Judge Felix Robertson with 57 percent of the vote. Of course,
Ferguson’s opposition to the Klan did not signify that she was
anti-racist. In 1924 Texas public institutions were almost entirely
segregated and African-Americans had no political rights, a status quo
that would not begin to break down until the 1950s.
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_HOW TO START A REVOLUTION_

250 YEARS AGO, on August 24, 1774, more than eight months before the
first shots were fired in the American Revolution, Salem,
Massachusetts, was in open revolt against the authority of the British
crown and the British army. When the local Committee of Correspondence
held a forbidden meeting in direct defiance of the law, Thomas Gage,
who was both Royal Governor of Massachusetts and commander of the
British Army in North America traveled to Salem from Boston with 80
Redcoats to have the committee members arrested. When they attempted
to take the committee members into custody, they discovered themselves
face-to-face with more than a thousand members of the local militia
and returned to Boston empty-handed.
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_BROADWAY’S A TOUGH PLACE TO TAKE A BREAK_

65 YEARS AGO, on August 25, 1959, Miles Davis found himself on the
wrong end of a policeman’s blackjack for having committed the
offense of standing on a Broadway sidewalk while Black. 

Davis, who, only eight days earlier had released his masterpiece album
Kind of Blue, was headlining at Birdland on Broadway in Manhattan. He
was standing outside the club, when, as he recounted in his
autobiography, “This white policeman comes up to me and tells me to
move on. I said, ‘Move on, for what? I’m working downstairs.
That’s my name up there, Miles Davis,’ and I pointed to my name on
the marquee all up in lights.

“He said, ‘I don’t care where you work, I said move on! If you
don’t move on I’m going to arrest you.’

“I just looked at his face real straight and hard, and I didn’t
move. Then he said, ‘You’re under arrest!’ He reached for his
handcuffs, but he was stepping back…I kind of leaned in closer
because I wasn’t going to give him no distance so he could hit me on
the head… A crowd had gathered all of a sudden from out of nowhere,
and this white detective runs in and BAM! hits me on the head. I never
saw him coming.”

Davis was charged with assault and disorderly conduct.  After he was
bailed out he required five stitches to close his head wound.
Eventually all the charges were dismissed.
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_PROTECTING THE HEALTH OF COAL MINERS_

55 YEARS AGO, August 26, 1969, Ohio’s thousands of coal miners and
their families celebrated an important legislative victory over the
greed of their employers. The governor of Ohio signed a law, the
passage of which had been at the center of a bitter struggle, adding a
new sickness to Ohio’s list of occupational diseases, namely, Black
Lung. As a result, an Ohio miner who was diagnosed with Black would
now be eligible for free medical care treatment and for disability
compensation.

The Ohio law was not only a victory for Ohio miners, but for
occupational health advocates all over the country, because it was one
of the growing number of state laws protecting the health of coal
miners.  Before the end of the year, the federal government passed
the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, which extended new health and
safety protection to coal miners in all 50 states.
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_A SETBACK FOR CIVIL RIGHTS_

75 YEARS AGO, on August 27, 1949, the left-wing Civil Rights Congress
attempted to hold a benefit outdoor concert in Peekskill, New York, 25
miles north of New York City. The concert, which was to be opened by
Pete Seeger and feature a performance by Paul Robeson, never took
place, because the organizers and venue were attacked by a racist,
anti-semitic, anti-communist mob while police refused to intervene.
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