Today in history

April 17

1959
22 arrested in Times Square for refusing to take part in civil defense drill, New York City.
1960
As a response to the Greensboro sit-in, nearly 150 black students from nine states formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, with Ella Baker, James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., the founders set SNCC’s initial goals as overturning segregation in the South and giving young blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement. By that time, in mid-April 1960, over 50,000 students had participated in sit-ins over just the previous three months.

1961
The Bay of Pigs Invasion
1965
The first national demonstration against the Vietnam War took place. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the organizers, had expected about 2000 marchers; the actual count was about 25,000. This was the largest anti-war protest ever to have been held in Washington, D.C. up to that time, with the number of marchers approximately equalling the number of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. Several hundred students in the protest break away from the main march and conduct a brief sit-in at the U.S. Capitol’s door.

1986
Rev Jesse Jackson, future congresswoman Maxine Waters and others co-founded the Rainbow Coalition, initially intended as a progressive public policy think tank within the Democratic Party.

Maxine Waters, Harry Belafonte, John Sweeney, Rev.Jesse Jackson, and Willie Nelson – August 6, 2005-Atlanta, Georgia