Today in history

(Sources: Peace Buttons and War Resisters League Calendar)

December 2

1942
Enrico Fermi, the Italian-born Nobel Prize-winning physicist, directs and controls the first self-sustaining fission reaction in his laboratory beneath the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago. The result of this experiment made the atomic bomb possible and ushered in the nuclear age. Upon successful completion of the experiment, a coded message was transmitted to President Roosevelt: “The Italian navigator has landed in the new world.”

1954
The U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.” The condemnation, with all the Democrats and about half the Republicans voting against him, was equivalent to a censure, and was related to McCarthy’s controversial investigation of suspected communists in the U.S. government, military, and civilian society.

1977
Demonstration erupts outside South African court after a magistrate rules security police are `exonerated of any blame in the death of black consciousness leader Steve Biko, who died while in their custody. His funeral had been attended by more than 15,000 mourners, not including the thousands who were turned away by the police.

December 2, 1980
Two Maryknoll nuns, one Ursuline nun and a lay missionary are raped, murdered, buried outside San Salvador, and unearthed shortly thereafter. U.S.-trained and -supported Salvadoran national guardsmen, widely known to act as death squads, are suspected.

The Reagan administration, taking office seven weeks later, and relying in part on the Salvadoran military to rid Central American of communism, denies the National Guard’s involvement. General Alexander Haig, the president’s secretary of state, suggests the nuns provoked the incident, running a roadblock in Marxist jeeps, and were shot trying to flee. The FBI and CIA report this is a total fabrication and five national guardsmen were later convicted of murder.

1964
Thousands in the Berkley Free Speech Movement gather on the steps of Sproul Hall, the administration building at the University of California campus to protest four students being disciplined for distributing political literature. Joan Baez performed. The next day, police arrested 773. 10,000 more students then go on strike and shut down the school.
The Free Speech Movement began in October 1964, when three thousand students surround a police car for 36 hour. Inside the car was a civil rights worker who had been arrested for distributing political literature on the UC-Berkeley campus.