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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, JUL 15–21, 2026  
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July 13, 2026

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_ CIA’s Brutal and Illegal Operation Phoenix (1971), The Class War
that America Forgot (1877), Right-Wing Coup Start the Spanish Civil
War (1936), U.S. Says ‘No’ to Democracy in Vietnam (1956), The
Frame-Up of Alfred Dreyfus Ends at Last (1906) _

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_EXPOSING THE CIA’S BRUTAL AND ILLEGAL OPERATION PHOENIX (1971)_

FIFTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, ON JULY 15, 1971, the curtain of secrecy that
had prevented public scrutiny of the CIA’s “Operation Phoenix”
in South Vietnam began to open, and the revelations of the program’s
illegality and brutality caused widespread outrage.

Operation Phoenix, which the CIA had started in 1968, was widely known
to be what the CIA called a non-military pacification program aiming
“to destroy the enemy [civilian] infrastructure, root out the shadow
government, and identify and arrest the infrastructure agents where
they exist,” and install a Saigon-sponsored civilian administration
throughout South Vietnam. 

Even though critics of Operation Phoenix claimed that one of its main
methods of rooting out the shadow government was to assassinate anyone
associated with it, the CIA and the Saigon government denied it. When
questioned about such killings by the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee in February 1970, the head of Operation Phoenix called such
deaths “aberrations,” saying that the program’s "policy is to
assure that they are captured and held."

Then in the summer of 1971, under the pressure for disclosure that had
been created by the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the House
Subcommittee on Government Operations disclosed that during 1970 and
early 1971, Operation Phoenix had been responsible for the summary
execution of nearly ten thousand anti-Saigon civilians and the
imprisonment of more than seven thousand after secret non-judicial
proceedings, during which the accused had no right to present a
defense or be represented by an attorney. 

Put another way, Operation Phoenix officially admitted responsibility
for murdering or imprisoning more than 285 South Vietnamese civilians
every week because they were supposedly “guilty“ of actively
opposing the U.S. refusal to allow the Vietnamese people to govern
themselves.  

As one House member said, “I am shocked and dismayed” by the new
information. “Assassination and terror by the Vietcong or Hanoi
should not, and must not, call forth the same methods by Saigon, let
alone the United States, directly or indirectly.”

“The Administration,” he continued, “must totally disassociate
itself from this Phoenix program and insist unequivocally that Saigon
stop dead in its track this mechanism for civilian murder or stand
criminally condemned before the
world.” [link removed]

 

_THE CLASS WAR THAT AMERICA FORGOT (1877)_

ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE YEARS AGO, ON JULY 16, 1877, one of the
most dramatic but now forgotten months in U.S. history began with a
spontaneous strike by railroad workers in West Virginia and Maryland,
which developed into "a national conflagration that brought the
country closer to a social revolution than at any other time in its
century of existence except for the Civil War," according to historian
Philip S. Foner. 

Over the course of four weeks more than five hundred thousand workers
in almost every industry went on strike and joined huge and sometimes
violent demonstrations in cities from coast to coast, including
Albany, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Kansas City, New York
City, Philadelphia and San Francisco.   

There were even general strikes in Pittsburgh and St. Louis, two of
the country's largest cities, which halted almost all commercial and
industrial activity for days. In several cities, troops opened fire on
large groups of unarmed or very poorly armed demonstrators, killing at
least one hundred. 

The challenge to normal authority was so prolonged and widespread as
to inspire many participants and observers to compare the events to
the 1871 Paris Commune, when an uprising of workers succeeded in
taking control of Paris for ten weeks.

The events of the 1877 upheaval are largely forgotten, but there
remain scores of unintended memorials to the unrest. The government's
inability at the time to force a quick end to the demonstrations was
due partly to the absence of well-armed army units in or near major
cities. Deciding to prevent a repetition, authorities built more than
a hundred well-fortified armories in proletarian neighborhoods over
the next five years. 

More than a few of those late-1870s-early-1880s armories remain
standing
today. [link removed]

 

_RIGHT-WING COUP STARTS THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR (1936)_

NINETY YEARS AGO, ON JULY 17, 1936, the Spanish Civil War began when
right-wing members of the Spanish Army attempted a coup against the
5-year-old constitutional government of the Second Spanish Republic.

The army was divided, and the coup makers were only partially
successful. They took control of Spanish Morocco in Africa and about
one-third of the Spanish mainland, but failed in most of Spain’s
largest city’s, leaving the country divided between areas controlled
by the elected, constitutional government and areas controlled by
right-wing soldiers and their allies.

The two sides fought for nearly three years until the constitutional
government was defeated in April 1939. The coup makers, who were
eventually led by Francisco Franco, ruled Spain until Franco’s death
in
1975. [link removed]
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_U.S. SAYS ‘NO’ TO DEMOCRACY IN VIETNAM (1956) _

SEVENTY YEARS AGO, JULY 20, 1956, was the date specified by treaty
for an election by all the people of Vietnam (in both the north and
the south) to decide whether Vietnamese government would be led by the
forces that had defeated the French Army in 1954 (centered in the
northern part of the country) or forces allied with the U.S.-supported
neo-colonial government, centered in the south.

Whichever group was elected, the new government would govern the
entire country, ending its temporary partition into North and South.

With the blessing of the U.S., the government in the south refused to
allow the election to take place. It did so because, as Dwight
Eisenhower, who was president of the U.S. in 1956, noted in his 1963
memoir, "I have never talked or corresponded with a person
knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had
elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80
percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi
Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai."

The refusal to hold the vote called for by the 1954 Geneva treaty, and
then to abide by the election’s outcome, doomed the Vietnamese
people to nearly two decades of devastation caused by one of the 20th
century’s biggest and bloodiest wars. 

When the Vietnam War was over, the country was unified as it would
have been had the election been
held. [link removed]
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_THE FRAME-UP OF ALFRED DREYFUS ENDS AT LAST (1906)_

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY YEARS AGO, ON JULY 21, 1906, French Army
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who had–by means of perjured testimony and
forged documents–been wrongfully accused and then convicted in 1894
of treason and espionage, was readmitted to the Army, promoted to
Major, and awarded the Legion of Honor.

The anniversary is a good day to recall and regret all wrongful
convictions, especially those that result from frame-ups, and to work
to ensure they will not happen in the
future. [link removed]

For more People's History, visit

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