Scorned Black Soldiers Rescue Yankee Doodle
NOVEMBER 12 IS THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY of George Washington, as commander and chief of the Continental Army, issuing this order: "Neither Negroes, boys unable to bare arms, nor old men unfit to endure the fatigues of the campaign, are to be inlisted."
Washington had to eat his words less than two months later, when he wrote – referring to himself in the third person – “As the General is informed that numbers of free Negroes are desirous of enlisting, he gives leave to the recruiting officers to entertain them, and promises to lay the matter before the Congress, who, he doubts not, will approve of it.”
Historians are unsure ot Continental Army’s eventual racial makeup. It is widely believed that 10 to 15 percent of the troops were people of color (including Native Americans), but some sources argue that the true number was close to 30 percent. https://www.amrevmuseum.org/liberty-exhibit-big-idea-6-soldiers-of-african-descent-in-the-revolutionary-war
CIA Won’t Give Guatemala a Break
NOVEMBER 13 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of the beginning of the extremely brutal, bloody and 36-year-long Guatemalan Civil War. The war began in 1960 when left-wing members of Guatemala’s Army attempted a coup against the right-wing government that had been installed by the CIA in 1954.
As if to prove the adage that history does not repeat itself but that it does rhyme, the trigger for the coup attempt was the clandestine agreement by Guatemala’s right-wing military government to allow the CIA to use Guatemala as operations HQ for the U.S. attempt to overthrow the left-wing Cuban government at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961.
The CIA built a secret airstrip in Guatemala where it trained right-wing Cubans to pilot U.S. Air Force bombers for the attack on Cuba. The planes were stripped of their USAF insignia, which was replaced by the insignia of the Guatemalan Air Force, in an attempt to make the Bay of Pigs invasion appear as though it came from Guatemala.
When the left-wing coup attempt began on Nov. 13, the disguised USAF bombers, most of them piloted by the USAF pilots who were in Guatemala so they could train the right-wing Cubans, flew repeated sorties against the would-be coup-makers. The aerial attacks prevented the coup’s success, setting the stage for a civil war that lasted for more years than the average Guatemalan lives. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/world/americas/cia-latin-america-coups.html
Jim Crow on Parade
NOVEMBER 14 IS THE 160TH ANNIVERSARY of an official military parade to celebrate the end of the Civil War that deserves an entry in this country’s Hall of Shame.
A Grand Review of the Union Army’s victorious troops took place in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state’s capital. Almost all of the tens of thousands of proud, uniformed, marchers were Black because they all belonged to the United States Colored Troops (almost all of their officers were white). Not only was the Union Army that won the Civil War segregated, but every one of the Union’s Black troops had been excluded to the Grand Review that had taken place in Washington, D.C. six months previously.
The segregation of U.S. armed forces personnel would continue through the Spanish-American War, World War 1, and World War 2 until it was abolished in time for the Korean War in 1950. https://housedivided.dickinson.edu/grandreview/2010/07/22/harrisburg-grand-review-november-14-1865/
Give Peace a Chance’
NOVEMBER 15 IS THE 56TH ANNIVERSARY of the largest anti-war demonstration in U.S. history, when half a million people took to the streets of Washington, D.C.
The New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam pulled out all the stops to give the lie to President Richard Nixon who had thrown down a verbal gauntlet on Nov. 3 by accusing anti-war activists of hindering his efforts to negotiate an end to the war during a nationally televised prime-time speech.
When half a million people assembled at the Washington Monument calling for the U.S. to end the war immediately, one of the huge crowd’s most effective cheerleaders was Pete Seeger, who asked them to join him in singing “Give Peace a Chance.” As the vast throng sang, “All we are saying is give peace a chance,” over and over and over, Seeger demanded of the distant White House, with its recently demolished East Wing in plain sight, “Are you listening Nixon? Are you listening Agnew? Are you listening in the Pentagon?” This 3-minute clip gives a sense of what it was like to be there: https://youtu.be/bH2dsp4Vr3A?si=_wtSR4ZVlMuUVerF
Racist Terror at Its Worst
NOVEMBER 16 IS THE 125TH ANNIVERSARY of the lynching, by burning alive, of a 15-year-old Black teen-ager in front of at least 300 spectators in Limon, Colorado.
That 1900 execution was one of at least 6500 racial terror murders occurring in the U.S. between 1865 and 1950. Visit this Equal Justice Initiative link for more information. https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/nov/16
Honoring Frederick Douglass
NOVEMBER 18 IS THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY of the unveiling of a heroic, larger-then-life statue of Frederick Douglass and the dedication of the surrounding Frederick Douglass Square in the middle of the University of Maryland’s College Park campus. The bronze statue is the work of sculptor Andrew Edwards. Click here for a stirring rendition of “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round” https://youtu.be/8-EVRMk5Zow?si=zSUjqbbjTP6gQjWD
For more People's History, visithttps://www.facebook.com/jonathan.bennett.7771/
