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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, JUN 18–24, 2025  
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_ Jim Crow’s Brutal Defenders (1965), Free At Last, Free At Last!
(1865), Simpler Than, and Just as True as E = mc2 (1940), Happy
Birthday, Industrial Workers of the World! _

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_JIM CROW’S BRUTAL DEFENDERS_

JUNE 18 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of an unusually ugly moment in
Mississippi’s losing battle to preserve some of the worst aspects of
Jim Crow politics.

As the photo shows, a beefy Mississippi Highway Patrolman, nightstick
in hand, wrestled a tiny U.S. flag from the hands of 5-year-old
Anthony Quin, who was part of a picket line demanding an end to the
state’s Jim Crow voting regulations. 

The incident was photographed by Matt Herron, who captured many iconic
images of the long struggle for civil rights in the deep South.

The unprovoked attack on a 5-year-old was part of a series of
confrontations in Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, where civil rights
activists staged six days of daily demonstrations against an ongoing
special session of the state legislature. The special session had been
called to consider a package of bills amending the state’s electoral
regulations. The draft legislation was being proposed, not to make
elections fairer, but to give them the appearance of being fairer.

At the time, in 1965, Mississippi had an all-white legislature, as had
been the case for more than 70 years, even though the state’s
population was more than 40 percent Black. The protests that week were
to demand an immediate end to the travesty of the all-white
legislature amending Mississippi’s election laws. According to the
demonstrators, the legislature had been elected fraudulently and
therefore had no right to amend the law.

Non-violent demonstrations against the special session took place for
six days, during which at least 850 people had been arrested for
“parading without a permit.” Many of those arrested were injured
as they were taken into custody or transported to cattle pens in the
nearby state fairgrounds, where many were held for weeks without
opportunity to make bail in conditions that were widely described as
being like a “concentration camp.”
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_FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST!_

JUNE 19 IS THE 160TH ANNIVERSARY of the day that has come to be known
as Juneteenth, when all enslaved people in Texas were formally
emancipated. 

In theory all of the enslaved in Texas had been freed on 10 weeks
earlier, when Ulysses Grant accepted the surrender of rebel commander
(and traitor) Robert Lee, bringing the bloody Civil War to an end, but
as a practical matter, freedom was only realized where Union troops
were present to enforce it.

On June 19, 1865, Union Gen. Gordon Granger and a company of Union
infantry arrived in Galveston, Texas, on a troopship. On the same day
Granger issued General Order No. 3, declaring all enslaved people in
Texas to be free. 

For more than a century, Juneteenth was a folk holiday celebrated for
the most part by people residing in the states of the former
Confederacy. In 1980, Texas was the first state to make it an official
holiday; more and more states followed suit until four years ago it
became a national, federal, holiday for the first time.
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_SIMPLER THAN, AND JUST AS TRUE AS __E = MC__2_

JUNE 22, 1940, IS THE 85TH ANNIVERSARY of Nazi Germany’s defeat of
France, which gave Germany control of most of Europe. It was also the
day that the NBC Radio Network interviewed Albert Einstein, who had
been living in New Jersey as a refugee since 1933. 

Among other things, Einstein told the interviewer: “Several years
ago, when asked why I had given up my position in Germany, I made this
statement: ’As long as I have any choice I will only stay in a
country where political liberty, toleration and equality of all
citizens before the law is the rule.’

“I think from what I have seen of Americans since I have come here,
they are not suited by temperament or tradition for existence under a
totalitarian system. I think that most of them would not find life
worth living so. Therefore, it is very important that they consider
how these liberties that are so necessary to them may be preserved and
defended. . . .

"I do not think words alone will solve humanity’s present problems.
The sound of bombs drowns out men’s voices. In times of peace I have
great faith in the communication of ideas among thinking men, but
today, with brute force dominating so many millions of lives, I fear
that the appeal to man’s intellect is fast becoming virtually
meaningless."
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_HAPPY BIRTHDAY, INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD!_

JUNE 24 IS THE 120TH ANNIVERSARY of the founding of the Industrial
Workers of the World, aka IWW, aka One Big Union, aka the Wobblies.
The IWW quickly became one of the most dynamic, militant and
innovative labor organizations of the age or any age since.

In December 1906 the IWW pioneered the use of a sit-down strike, which
they used successfully against General Electric’s huge factory in
Schenectady, N.Y. 

In 1909 the IWW organized a 7-week-long strike by thousands of workers
at the vast Pressed Steel Car factory near Pittsburgh, where the
workers stood up to deadly attacks by Pennsylvania State Troopers and
won most of their demands in the end.

Also in 1909 the IWW pioneered the civil disobedience tactic of the
Free Speech Fight, which succeeded in making it impossible for police
in scores of U.S. cities to enforce laws against unpermitted rallies.

In 1912 the IWW led a successful 9-week strike by some 20 thousand
textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1913 the IWW led a
successful strike by thousands of longshore workers in Philadelphia.
In 1917 the IWW led a strike by more than 30 thousand lumber workers
in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington that succeeded in shortening
the industry’s workday to 8 hours.

The IWW’s great success led to fierce repression by both state and
local government.  Almost the entire leadership of the organization
was arrested on trumped-up charges, and then tried, convicted and
sentenced to long prison sentences by a legal system that would stop
at nothing to destroy the organization.

Despite the repression, the IWW carries on, but its days of leading
one massive successful strike after another are nearly forgotten, at
least for now.
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For more People's History, visit
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* Jim Crow race laws
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* Jackson Mississippi
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* Juneteenth
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* Albert Einstein
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* Industrial Workers of the World
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