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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, AUG 20–26, 2025  
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_ Voting Rights Trial By Fire (1965), Take Your Racist Law and Shove
It (1850), Let Slip the Dogs of War! (1775), Never Forget How We Got
Here (1791),Thirty Years Too Many (1945), Born to Run, Indeed (1975),
Nothing to Lose But Your Chains (1970) _

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_VOTING RIGHTS TRIAL BY FIRE_

AUGUST 20 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of the death of 26-year-old Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee volunteer Jonathan Daniels, who was
killed by a shotgun blast fired by a Lowndes County Deputy Sheriff in
Hayneville, Alabama. 

Daniels, who was in Alabama in 1965 to work on SNCC’s
voter-registration drive, was killed just two weeks after the Voting
Rights Act went into effect. The law made it possible – for the
first time since the 1880s – for millions of Afro-Americans in the
southern U.S. to become registered voters. Daniels was the first
person to be killed for helping put the Voting Rights Act into
effect.  He was not the last.

Under the new law the federal government installed Justice
Department-operated voter registration offices in nine jurisdictions
(counties or parishes) in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. The
locations were chosen because each had large Black populations and no,
or almost no, Black registered voters.

One of the jurisdictions chosen by the Justice Department was Lowndes
County, Alabama. On August 10, 1965, Justice Department registrars
opened a voter-registration office in Fort Deposit, the largest town
in Lowndes County. 

Four days later, more than two dozen SNCC activists, including
Daniels, arrived in Fort Deposit to support the population’s effort
to register in the face of constant white-supremacist harassment.
Almost as soon as the SNCC volunteers started to work, they were
arrested for “disturbing the peace.” They were transported to the
county jail in Hayneville, where they were held in unsanitary,
overcrowded conditions for six days.

In the afternoon on August 20 the imprisoned SNCC workers were
suddenly released, forced out of the jail and off the jailhouse
grounds. Four of those released, Daniels and Richard Morrisroe, who
were both white, and two Black teenagers, Joyce Bailey and Ruby Sales,
walked to a nearby store to buy soft drinks. Before they could enter
the store, they were confronted by Deputy Sheriff Tom Coleman, holding
a shotgun, who told them the store was closed. 

Surprised, because the store was clearly open for business, the group
paused near the front door. When Coleman aimed the shotgun at Ruby
Sales, Daniels pushed Sales out of the way and caught a full blast of
buckshot in the abdomen, which killed him instantly.  When the SNCC
volunteers turned to flee, Coleman shot Morrisroe in the back,
critically injuring him. 

It is widely believed (but not proven) that the SNCC activists’
eviction from the jail was a set-up, intended to end as it did in a
fatal confrontation. Coleman, who was charged with manslaughter,
claimed he had acted in self-defense because Daniels and Morrisroe
were armed with knives. (No knives were ever found.) Coleman was
acquitted by an all-white jury.
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The image is an outdoor mural by Chris Lovelady, which located at 25
Lamson St., in Keene, New Hampshire (Jonathan Daniels’ birthplace),
courtesy of Jonathan Daniels Center for Social Responsibility

 

_TAKE YOUR RACIST LAW AND SHOVE IT IN 1850_

AUGUST 21 IS THE 175TH ANNIVERSARY of the first session of a memorable
2-day Fugitive Slave Law convention in the upstate New York village of
Cazenovia.

Chaired by Frederick Douglass and attended by some two thousand
participants, including some about fifty self-emancipated (or
“fugitive’) slaves, it was the largest meeting of its kind ever. 

The meeting took place four weeks before the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850 passed Congress and became law. The U.S. had had a Fugitive Slave
Law ever since 1793, but the law’s 1850 re-write had the effect of
making the law much easier to enforce and the penalties for violating
it more draconian.  The 1850 law’s passage was a foregone
conclusion at the time of the meeting, so the meeting did not concern
itself with attempting to prevent it from passing.  Its focus was,
instead, a discussion of the many important ways the new law could be
resisted and sabotaged. 

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detailed article about the Cazenovia Fugitive Slave Convention.

 

_LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR!_

AUGUST 22 IS THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY of George III’s “Proclamation
for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition,” which was issued in
response to the news of the Battle of Bunker Hill at the beginning of
the Revolutionary War. 

The 1775 proclamation declared the North American colonies to be in a
state of "open and avowed rebellion" and ordered officials of the
British empire "to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and
suppress such rebellion."

On December 6, 1775, the Continental Congress issued a response to the
Proclamation of Rebellion saying that, while they had always been
loyal to the King, Parliament never had legitimate claim to authority
over them, because the colonies were not democratically represented in
Parliament. Congress argued it had a duty to resist Parliament's
violations of the British Constitution. You can view an image of the
original Royal Proclamation here
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_NEVER FORGET HOW WE GOT HERE_

AUGUST 23 IS the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave
Trade and Its Abolition, which was designated as such in 1998 by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO). 

The date is significant because, during the night of August 22-23,
1791, on the island of Saint Domingue (which is now known as Haiti),
an uprising began that was a major factor in the abolition of the
transatlantic slave trade.
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_THIRTY YEARS TOO MANY_

AUGUST 24 IS THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY of the first day of the top-secret
program that the U.S. government designated by the code-name Project
SHAMROCK.

Project SHAMROCK which continued from 1945 until 1975, was the U.S.
government’s warrantless interception and copying of every
telegraphic message that passed through the hands of every commercial
telegraphic operation. It processed as many as 150,000 messages per
month.  Soon after its existence was exposed by investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh in December 1974, Project SHAMROCK was
terminated, even though the same information continued to be collected
under other bureaucratic designations. 

Until recently, the website of the Central Intelligence Agency’s
Center for the Study of Intelligence included a detailed history of
Project SHAMROCK, a program that was terminated in 1975.
Unfortunately, that history is no longer accessible; here is what has
replaced it:
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_BORN TO RUN, INDEED, IN 1975_

AUGUST 25 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of Columbia Records’ release of
“Born to Run,” featuring Bruce Springsteen on vocals and guitar
and the E Street Band (Clarence Clemons, saxophone, Danny Federici,
organ, David Sancious, piano, Garry Tallent, bass, and Ernest Carter,
drums).

The album has eight tracks: Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,
Night, Backstreets, Born to Run, She's the One, Meeting Across the
River and Jungleland. It was Springsteen’s third album, but his
first commercial success, his breakthrough. You can listen to it here:
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_NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS_

AUGUST 26 ISTHE 55TH ANNIVERSARY of the Women’s Strike for Equality,
which was organized by the National Organization for Women and
spearheaded by Betty Friedan.

In 1970, some 50 thousand feminists and supporters paraded down 5th
Avenue in Manhattan, behind an open car carrying several women who had
been active in the campaign to pass the 19th Amendment 50 years
earlier, which established the right of women to vote in U.S.
elections. 

Similar events took place the same day in many locations throughout
the U.S.
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For more People's History, visit
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* Voting Rights Act of 1965
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* Fugitive Slave Law
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* U.S. revolution
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* TransAtlantic Slave Trade
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* Government Spying
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* Bruce Springsteen
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* National Organization for Women
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