Today in history

May 7

1700
William Penn begins monthly meetings for Blacks advocating emancipation.
1844
Protestant mob in Philadelphia, shouting “Kill them! Kill them!” burns down over 30 homes in the predominantly Irish suburb of Kensington.
1955
The Rev. George Lee, one of the first black people registered to vote in Humphreys County and who used his pulpit and his printing press to urge others to vote, was murdered in Belzoni, Miss.
1965
“Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama as state troopers attack civil rights marchers.

1954
The Battle at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam ended after 55 days with Viet Minh insurgents overrunning French forces. An agreement for complete French withdrawal was negotiated within two months in Geneva.
The battle began in March, when a force of 40,000 Vietnamese troops armed with heavy artillery surrounded 15,000 French soldiers holding the French position under siege. The Viet Minh guerrillas had been fighting a long and bloody war against French colonial control of Vietnam since 1946.

1984
American veterans of the Vietnam War reached a $180-million out-of-court settlement with seven chemical companies in their class-action suit relating to the use of herbicide Agent Orange in Vietnam. The veterans charged they had suffered injury and illness from exposure to the defoliant used widely in the war to eliminate cover for Vietnamese forces opposing the U.S.

Agent Orange: An Ongoing atrocity

1985
City of Philadelphia bombs house of radical black group MOVE, killing 11 & destroying 62 others homes in neighborhood.
1996
Water cannon used on 15,000 protesters against import of French nuclear waste to Gorleben, Germany.