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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, NOV 20–26  
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_ Did Wall Street Want FDR’s Ouster? (1934), A first for Song’s
First Lady (1934), Tamir Rice Would Be 22 (2014), Women Workers Stand
Up (1909), AFL Jump-Starts the Cold War (1944), Standing Up for Press
Freedom (1929), The Gap Just Gets Bigger (2019 _

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_DID WALL STREET TRY TO OVERTHROW FDR?_

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, IS THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY of alarming
congressional testimony about plans for a fascist takeover of the
United States. 

The testimony came from retired Marine Corps general and war hero
Smedley Butler, who told a House investigating committee that he had
been recruited to lead hundreds of thousands of military veterans to
take over the government by surrounding the Capitol and the White
House. Smedley said that had soured on the idea, but before doing so
he had learned the coup was being planned and bankrolled by some of
the richest men in the U.S., including J.P. Morgan and Robert Sterling
Clark.

At the time Smedley made his charges, the U.S. was in the depths of
the Great Depression, Wall Street was furious with the Roosevelt
administration for having abandoned the federal government’s
adherence to the gold standard, thereby putting the value of U.S.
dollars at risk, and millions of military veterans were enraged
because the Roosevelt administration was making plans to drastically
cut their pensions in a desperate effort to balance the federal
budget.

Of course, the coup attempt never took place. The rich and famous men
Smedely named all denied everything, and no official with the power to
subpoena records or compel testimony ever made a serious attempt to
get to the bottom of his charges. 

The committee that heard Smedley’s charges was satisfied to
eventually declare "there is no question that these [coup] attempts
were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution
when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient" and to leave it
at that. [link removed]
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_A FIRST FIRST FOR THE FIRST LADY OF SONG_

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, IS THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY of the beginning of one
of popular music’s biggest success stories. Ella Fitzgerald, who was
17 years old in 1934 and way down on her luck – having just finished
stays in the Bronx Colored Orphan Asylum and a New York State
Reformatory for Girls – sang two songs – "Judy" and "The Object of
My Affection" – at the Apollo Theater's Amateur Night and won first
prize. 

Even so, Fitzgerald was not an overnight success, but by the end of
1935 she had recorded her first hits with Chick Webb’s orchestra,
and the rest is history. You can listen to a 1968 Fitzgerald rendition
of one of the songs she sang at the Apollo, “The Object of my
Affection” here [link removed]
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_TAMIR RICE WOULD BE 22_

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, IS THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY of the death of
12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was holding a toy gun when he was shot by
Cleveland police. No one was ever charged with a crime, but Rice’s
family sued and won a $6 million settlement. For the distressing
details of Rice’s killing, visit
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_WOMEN WORKERS STAND UP AND WIN_

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, IS THE 115TH ANNIVERSARY of the mass meeting
that led to one of the biggest and most important strikes in U.S.
history, which is remembered as the Uprising of the 20,000.

In 1909, New York City was the capital of the U.S. garment industry
and the headquarters of the 9-year-old International Ladies Garment
Workers Union.  The young union had contracts with only a few of the
more than 600 clothing factories in the city. 

In September 1909 the union struck three of those factories, but the
employers were using scab labor and refusing to bargain. When the
union called a public meeting to discuss the dire situation, the
Cooper Union’s Great Hall was jammed with both union members and
women whose efforts to join the mostly-male union had been
unsuccessful. The crowd loudly supported a general strike of garment
workers, union members or not. Perhaps as many as 30,000 joined the
strike, which lasted 11 weeks and succeeded in winning union
contracts, or at least increased pay, shorter hours and improved
working conditions at hundreds of non-union shops.
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_AFL JUMP-STARTS THE COLD WAR   _

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, IS THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY of the American
Federation of Labor’s creation of its so-called Free Trade Union
Committee. Despite the fact that the U.S. and the Soviet Union were
allies fighting on the same side at the time, the AFL designed the
FTUC to begin fighting the Cold War before the Cold War had even
begun. For a detailed look at how the FTUC fit in with the AFL's
anticommunism, visit [link removed]
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_STANDING UP FOR PRESS FREEDOM_

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, IS THE 95TH ANNIVERSARY of the first time that
the newly published novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence,
was declared to be obscene in the U.S. 

A district court judge in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found the owner of
a bookstore and a store clerk guilty of obscenity for selling it. The
owner and the clerk were ordered to pay fines and serve jail sentences
of four months and two weeks, respectively. 

It was not until 1959 that the courts ruled that the First Amendment,
in combination with "redeeming social or literary value," were a
defense against obscenity charges.
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_THE GAP JUST GETS BIGGER_

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, IS THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of a bleak report by
the United Nations Environment Program. The program's 2019 Emissions
Gap Report showed, not surprisingly, that the world had failed to halt
the rise of greenhouse gas emissions despite repeated warnings from
scientists, and that the two biggest polluters, China and the U.S.,
had further increased their emissions in the previous year.

According to the report, the world’s 20 richest countries,
responsible for more than three-fourths of worldwide emissions, needed
to take the biggest, swiftest steps to move away from fossil fuels. Oh
that it had been so!
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