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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, MAR 26 – APR 1  
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_ A Brand-New Protest Format Catches on in a Very Big Way (1965),
Wasn’t That a Time? Yes, It Sure Was (1995), A Catchy Name for a
Rotten Program (1950), Texas Racists Throw the Book at Student
Protesters (1960) _

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_A BRAND-NEW PROTEST FORMAT CATCHES ON IN A VERY BIG WAY (1965)_

MARCH 26 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of one of the very first examples of
a brand-new form of political protest, the teach-in. 

The 8-hour event, which was organized by the Ad Hoc Teaching Committee
on Vietnam, was held in Columbia University’s McMillan Theater in
Manhattan with the full cooperation of the school’s
administration. 

The Columbia event was inspired by the first teach-in, which had been
organized by Students for a Democratic Society and members of the
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor’s faculty. 

The political-protest innovation immediately became the model for
similar events on campuses far and wide; at the University of
Wisconsin on April 1, a joint University of
Pennsylvania-Swarthmore-Temple event on April 7, at Michigan State
University on April 8, and at Rutgers University and the University of
Oregon on April 23.

On May 15 the Inter-University Committee for a Public Hearing on
Vietnam held a 27-hour teach-in, including a 3-hour Oxford-style
debate, in the main ballroom of the Sheraton-Park Hotel in Washington,
D.C. With some five thousand people attending the Washington event in
person, it was broadcast on both radio and television, and attracted
an estimated hundred thousand participants at coast-to-coast campus
gatherings, plus an unknown number of home viewers and listeners. Two
days after the Washington event, the New York Times devoted two entire
pages to an abridged version of the day’s transcript.

Many, if not most, of the events were covertly surveilled by the FBI,
but strangely enough, none of the teach-in organizers or participants
was expelled, fired, arrested, deported, or accused of being
terrorists.
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_WASN’T THAT A TIME? YES, IT SURE WAS (1995)_

MARCH 27 IS THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY of an Oscar win that few anticipated.
A 38-minute film that was developed by the Southern Poverty Law
Project’s Teaching Tolerance program to introduce high school
students to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement – “A Time for
Justice,” produced by Charles Guggenheim – won the Academy Award
for documentary short subject.
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_A CATCHY NAME FOR A ROTTEN PROGRAM (1950)_

MARCH 29 IS THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY of the coining of the term
“McCarthyism.”  The wordsmith was Herbert Block, who is generally
known by his pen name, “Herblock,” which is how he signed the
editorial cartoons he created for the Washington Post.

The cartoon that introduced the world to the idea that the Senator
Joseph McCarthy was leading a school of thought that might be on a par
with “Marxism” or “Darwinism” was new, at least in part
because McCarthy had only begun his rise to political prominence seven
weeks earlier, when he told an audience in Wheeling, West Virginia,
“I have in my hand a list of 205 . . .  a list of names that were
made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist
Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the
State Department. . . .” 

In the few weeks after McCarthy had accused the State Department of
willfully employing card-carrying Communists, the junior Senator from
Wisconsin had become a major force in U.S. politics, a position he
would occupy for another four years.

Herblock, the editorial cartoonist, was not alone in understanding how
important McCarthy had already become, but he was the first to turn
the Senator’s last name into an eponym that stood for demagogic
anti-radicalism. You can click on this link
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see the cartoon that earned Herblock a well-deserved mention in the
Oxford English Dictionary.

_TEXAS RACISTS THROW THE BOOK AT STUDENT PROTESTERS (1960)_

MARCH 30 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of mass civil disobedience by
hundreds of Black students (the majority of the student body) from two
small religious colleges in Marshall, Texas.  Police arrested 57 of
the students and held them for more than a day under extremely harsh
conditions before they were released on bail.

Operating with the support and encouragement of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference and the National Student Christian Federation,
the students, all of whom attended either Methodist-affiliated Wiley
College or Baptist-affiliated Bishop College, had collectively decided
to join the 2-month old wave of protest against Jim Crow that was
spreading throughout the southern U.S. 

The protests began when the students sat-in at the town’s
white’s-only lunch counters in the Woolworth variety store, Rexall
Drug Store and the inter-city bus depot. On the first two days of the
protests the manager of each store responded by shutting the lunch
counters down, after which the students left. On the third day, March
30, 57 students were arrested for sitting-in or attempting to do so.

After the arrested students had been held for hours in the county
courthouse without any indication of when they might be released, they
stood and began to sing the Star-Spangled Banner. They were distressed
to see that none of the officers guarding them stood to show respect
for the national anthem. 

After the arrested students waited hours for any sign of action by the
police or court officers, some 700 students from both colleges marched
into the courthouse square singing patriotic songs. Police responded
by coralling some 250 of the students and putting them under arrest
where they stood. 

At that point, with more than 300 students in custody, District
Attorney Charles Allen apparently realized he was losing control of
the situation and told all of those who had been arrested they could
leave without being charged, but that if the demonstrations continued,
the 57 who had been arrested at first would be re-arrested and put on
trial.

All the students left the courthouse to join the hundreds who filled
the square, at which point the fire department, acting on the police
orders, assaulted the students with high-pressure streams of water,
forcing them to leave the courthouse square.  Police told reporters
on the scene that the fire department did so in an effort to
“calm” demonstrators.                    

Two days later, the sit-ins began again. As the District Attorney had
threatened, the 57 who had been the first to be arrested were taken
into custody and imprisoned at the county jail. The arrested students
were held for more than 24 hours in cells that were intended to
accommodate less than half the number actually present.

Ten months later, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed all of
the charges against the arrested students.
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For more People's History, visit
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* Anti-Vietnam War movement
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* Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
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* McCarthyism
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* editorial cartoons
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* Civil Disobedience
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