Tag Archives: peace history

March 14

1879
Physicist and Peace activist Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. The Nobel Prize winner opposed militarism and became a champion of nuclear disarmament. Though he supported the development of the atomic bomb in fear that Germany would develop it first, he warned in a 1944 letter to the Manhattan Project’s Niels Bohr: “When the war is over, then there will be in all countries a pursuit of secret war preparations with technological means which will lead inevitably to preventative wars and to destruction even more terrible than the present destruction of life.”

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March 13

1864
The first contingent of 14,030 Navajo reached Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Men, women and children were marched almost 400 miles from northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico to Bosque Redondo, a desolate tract on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Traveling in harsh winter conditions for almost two months, about 200 Navajo died of cold and starvation. More died after they arrived at the barren reservation. The forced march, led by Kit Carson became known by the Navajos as the “Long Walk.”

A grueling 400-mile march to imprisonment in a sterile land.

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March 10

1910
Slavery abolished in China
1913
Harriet Tubman Day, on the anniversary of her death in 1913 to honor her work freeing slaves.
1969
James Earl Ray was jailed for 99 years by a court in Memphis, Tennessee, after admitting he murdered American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.King, who preached non-violence and was shot dead by Ray in Memphis, Tennessee in April 1968 as he stood on a hotel balcony.

moments before the murder

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March 9

1839
The U.S. Supreme Court freed slaves who had seized the slave ship Amistad in 1839. The slaves had taken control of the ship off the shore of Cuba (then a colony of Spain)and demanded to be taken back to Africa but wound up in U.S. waters off the coast of Long Island, New York.

Slave Ship

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March 8
International Women’s Day, since 1945
1908
Thousands of workers in the New York needle trades (primarily women) demonstrated & began a strike for higher wages, a shorter workday and an end to child labor.
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March 7

1965
Civil rights advocates attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to promote voting rights for blacks. Enforcing an order by then Governor George Wallace, the march was broken up by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse who used tear gas, nightsticks and whips.

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March 6

1836
Mexican troops defeat foreign slaveholders and mercenaries at the Alamo.

1857
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Dred Scott decision which declared that an escaped slave could not sue for his freedom in federal court. In his opinion Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, stated that the “unhappy Black Race” had never possessed “rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Dredd Scott

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March 5

1970
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty went into effect after ratification by 43 nations.

1994
Ukraine, having voluntarily agreed to give up nuclear weapons, began transfer of its nuclear stockpile to Russia.

Schoolchildren preparing to turn the keys to destroy the last missile silo in the Ukraine. October 30, 2001

March 4

1912
Suffragists, walking single file in Knightsbridge, London, smash every window they pass to protest government inaction.

1917
Montana elected Republican Jeanette Rankin as the first woman to sit in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rankin voted against both WW I and WWII, and later led marches against the Vietnam war.

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March 3

1863
In the midst of the Civil War, the U.S. Congress passed a conscription act that produced the first wartime draft of American citizens. The act called for registration of all males between the ages of 20 and 45, including aliens with the intention of becoming citizens, by April 1. Exemptions from the draft could be bought for $300 or by finding a substitute draftee. This clause led to bloody draft riots in New York City, where protesters were outraged that exemptions were effectively granted only to the wealthiest citizens.

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