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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, OCT 29-NOV 4, 2025  
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_ ‘No Kings’ Has Long Pedigree (1795), Jim Crow Can’t Ride
(1870), Halloween Parade Grows Up (1985), Whose Right to Vote? (1890),
Hope for Everything, Expect Nothing (1920), When Communists Filled
Madison Square Garden (1940), Racism’s Admirers (1890) _

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_‘NO KINGS’ HAS A LONG PEDIGREE (1795)_

OCTOBER 29 IS THE 230TH ANNIVERSARY of an ancient precedent for last
week’s No Kings Day.

On that day in 1795 King George III’s horse-drawn carriage was set
upon by a crowd of stone-throwing radicals. George was not hurt, but
one of the carriage windows was shattered.  

The King was extremely unpopular at the time. The ongoing French
Revolution and the war Great Britain had been fighting against the
radical French regime for more than two years had helped to inspire a
wave of anti-monarchist sentiment throughout England. The war had
driven food prices so high that many workers with jobs could not
afford enough to eat. Bread riots were frequent.

The founding of the radical London Corresponding Society had given
rise to scores of local corresponding societies, with thousands of
members throughout Britain. Gigantic open-air political meetings had
become a regular occurrence. One such meeting – where speaker after
speaker denounced the war, high prices, famine, corruption, and
political repression – took place in London three days before the
attack on the King’s carriage. 

Then on the 29th, a crowd of men and women, many of them carrying
pamphlets with titles including “King Killing,” “The Reign of
the English Robespierre,” and “The Happy Reign of George the
Last,” besieged the King’s carriage while calling for “peace”
and “bread” and “Down with George! No King!.”

The drawing above by cartoonist James Gillray, which was published
just days after the event, is worth a close inspection.  Rather than
siding with the King, as it might appear at first glance, at bottom
right it shows the figure of Britannia being trampled by the horses.
The man holding the horses’ reins is none other than William Pitt,
the King’s Prime Minister, who is driving recklessly, without regard
for the damage he is causing. Britannia is the victim of hit-and-run,
and it is the government’s fault.
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_STRUGGLING TO THROW JIM CROW OFF THE TROLLEY (1870) _

OCTOBER 30 IS THE 155TH ANNIVERSARY of the beginning of a very long
and successful struggle by Louisville, Kentucky’s, Black community
to prevent the segregation of the city’s public transportation
system.

The struggle began on this day in 1870, five years after the end of
the Civil War, when representatives of the city’s large population
of Black citizens staged a non-violent sit-in on one of Louisville’s
horse-drawn streetcars. 

The sit-in, and the streetcar company’s resistance to the demand for
an end to Jim Crow transportation, led to protracted litigation and
negotiation, at the end of which the protesters won the right for
anyone with the price of the fare to use the city’s public
transportation network.

For a detailed account of the long and militant struggle to integrate
public transportation in Kentucky’s largest city, visit
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_WORLD’S LARGEST HALLOWEEN PARADE (1985)_

OCTOBER 31 IS THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY of the annual Greenwich Village
Halloween Parade’s big break.

When the first parade had taken place eleven years previously, in
1974, it was very much a neighborhood affair; about 200 people, almost
all of them friends and acquaintances, held a festive, noisy, costumed
procession on the sidewalks (not the streets) of Manhattan’s
artistic mecca, Greenwich Village.

With each passing year, the parade grew larger as a result of
word-of-mouth and other free publicity, until in 1985 it was too
well-attended to be restricted to the neighborhood’s narrow side
streets. Its organizers received permits for the parade to fill a long
stretch of one of Manhattan’s major north-south thoroughfares,
causing headaches for hundreds of uninformed motorists, but joy for
everyone who wants to join the world’s largest Halloween parade. 
Ten of thousands of marchers and some two million spectators are
expected to take part this year.
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_SUBVERSION OF THE RIGHT TO VOTE (1890)_

NOVEMBER 1 IS THE 135TH ANNIVERSARY of Mississippi adopting a Jim Crow
constitution that disfranchised almost every Black citizen of the
state by requiring poll taxes, residency tests, and impossible-to-pass
“literacy” tests.

Mississippi’s 1890 Constitution is described this way by a 1964
pamphlet published by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee:
“Before 1890 the Constitution and laws of Mississippi provided that
all male citizens could register to vote [if they were 21 and] over,
and had lived in the state six months and in the county one month. The
exceptions were those who were insane or had committed crimes which
disqualified them.

“In 1890 there were many more Negro citizens than white citizens who
were eligible to become qualified electors in Mississippi. Therefore,
in that year a Mississippi Constitutional Convention was held to adopt
a new state Constitution. Section 244 of the new Constitution required
a new registration of voters starting January 1, 1892. This section
also established and new requirement for qualification as a registered
voter: a person had to be able to read any section of the Mississippi
Constitution, or understand any section when read to him, or give a
reasonable interpretation of any section.” Visit
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illustrated pamphlet titled “Mississippi: Subversion of the Right to
Vote”

_HOPE FOR EVERYTHING, EXPECT NOTHING (1920)_

NOVEMBER 2 IS THE 105TH ANNIVERSARY of the Election Day on which
nearly a million U.S. voters cast their votes for a federal prison
inmate, Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs, to become President of the
United States. 

Debs was in prison because he had been convicted of violating the
Espionage Act, the infamous law that defined espionage as including
giving a public speech in opposition to U.S. participation in World
War 1. Visit the Zinn Education Project website for more information
and to see Mark Ruffalo’s recitation of the speech that resulted in
Debs going to jail.
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_WHEN COMMUNISTS FILLED MADISON SQUARE GARDEN (1940)_

NOVEMBER 3 IS THE 85TH ANNIVERSARY OF the final rally of Communist
Party’s 1940 presidential campaign, during which a
standing-room-only crowd of some 22 thousand filled Madison Square
Garden, where they heard their candidate, CPUSA General Secretary Earl
Browder, tell them “the road to life, to prosperity, to peace, to
the future, is the road to socialism. And this road is charted only by
the Communist Party.” For the full text of another 1940 campaign
speech by Earl Browder, visit 
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_RACISM HAS ITS ADMIRERS (1890)_

NOVEMBER 4 IS THE 135TH ANNIVERSARY of the 1890 Election Day when
South Carolina voters elected a new governor, Benjamin Tillman, who
had started his political “career” by participating in the
premeditated 1876 massacre of at least six Black men in Hamburg, South
Carolina.

Tillman had created his political identity based on white supremacy, a
deep commitment to blocking educational opportunity for Black people,
and advocating violence against Black voters. Concerning the education
of Black people, Tillman argued, “when you educate a Negro, you
educate a candidate for the penitentiary or spoil a good field
hand.” For more information about Tillman’s career, visit
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For more People's History, visit
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* No Kings Day
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* Jim Crow race laws
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* Halloween
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* voter suppression
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* Eugene Debs
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* CPUSA
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* racist ideology
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