Today in history

April 4

1958
4,000 begin first of what would become eleven consecutive annual Easter protest marches from London to Aldermaston AWRE spy base in England. (1958)
1967
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in a speech at the Riverside Church in New York City, called for common cause between the civil rights and peace movements. The Nobel Peace Prize winner proposed the United States stop all bombing of North and South Vietnam; declare a unilateral truce in the hope that it would lead to peace talks; set a date for withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam; and give the National Liberation Front a role in negotiations.

“…this war is a blasphemy against all that America stands for….”

Read the speech
Listen to the speech

1968
Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed at 39 in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had come to lead a march of sanitation workers.
Riots in reaction to the assassination broke out in over a hundred cities across the U.S., lasting up to a week; cities included Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Cincinnati, Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toledo, Pittsburgh, and Seattle. The government deployed 75,000 National Guard troops. 39 people will be dead and 2,500 injured.
He was shot by James Earl Ray, who confessed to the slaying, was sentenced to 99 years in prison, but then recanted. Numerous people originally involved in investigating him have raised serious doubts about his involvement; after Ray’s death, a 1999 civil jury trial in Memphis concluded that Ray did not act alone.

1981
Henry Cisneros becomes mayor of San Antonio, Texas; the first Mexican-American elected mayor of a major U.S. city.
1984
The women of the main peace camp at Greenham Common in Berkshire, England, were evicted by British authorities. They had been encamped for over two years to oppose the presence of nuclear-armed cruise missiles at the military base there. They said it would not end their protest.

1985
Columbia University students occupy Hamilton Hall to demand South African divestment