Tag Archives: peace history

March 2

1807
The U.S. Congress sought to end the slave trade by passing an act to “prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States…from any foreign kingdom, place, or country.”
The first shipload of African captives to North America had arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, in August 1619, and the first American slave ship, named Desire, sailed from Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1637. In total, nearly 15 million blacks were transported as slaves to the Americas. The African continent, meanwhile, lost approximately 50 million human beings to slavery and related deaths. Despite the federal prohibition, an additional 250,000 slaves would be imported illegally by the time the Civil War began.

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March
Ash Wednesday
Women’s History Month
Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Day

1691
Salem, Massachusetts, the witch trials began.
1780
Pennsylvania abolishes slavery.
1790
First U.S. Census count includes slave & free Negroes. Indians were not included.
1875
Civil Rights Act enacted in US.
1943
A huge rally in New York City’s Madison Square called on the U.S. government to reconsider its refusal to offer sanctuary to Jewish refugees of Nazi Germany.
1954
The biggest explosion ever made by man is witnessed in the Pacific when U.S. scientists explode their second hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the south Pacific.
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February 28

Mardi Gras

1854
The Republican Party was organized. Their main platform was preventing an end to the expansion of slavery.

1877
U.S. Government seizes Black Hills from Lakota Sioux in violation of treaty.

1937
1,000 rally against war, Hyde Park, London.

1947
Peace Memorial Day, also called 228 Memorial Day, in Taiwan, commemorating a 1947 incident of government oppression.
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February 27

1927
Birth of consumer activist Ralph Nader.

1939
The Supreme Court outlawed sit-down strikes. Such strikes had become a very effective strategy employed by workers to organize unions. For example, the 1937 Flint sit-down strike of autoworkers at General Motors forced GM to recognize and negotiate with the United Auto Workers as the union representing its members.

Flint sit down strikers, 1937

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February 26

1965
Jimmie Lee Jackson was beaten and shot by state troopers as he tried to protect his grandfather and mother from a trooper attack on civil rights marchers, in Marion, Ala.

1966
Four thousand picketed outside New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as President Lyndon Johnson received the National Freedom Award. As Johnson began his speech in defense of his Vietnam policies, James Peck of the War Resisters League jumped to his feet and shouted, “Mr. President, peace in Vietnam!” On the streets, meanwhile, activist A.J. Muste presented the crowd’s own “Freedom Award” to Julian Bond, who had been denied his seat in the Georgia legislature for refusing to disavow his opposition to the war., and for his support of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

Julian Bond at a peace rally New York City, 1966.

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February 25

1836
Samuel Colt receives a patent for his revolver.

1919
Some released conscientious objectors return government pay for non-combatant services.

1932
British volunteers organize nonviolent “Peace Army” to attempt to intervene in fighting in China.
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February 24

1895
Jose Marti, a Cuban revolutionary, poet, journalist and teacher began the liberation struggle against colonial rule by Spain.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wins Jose Marti award Februaury 3, 2006

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February 23

1775
Patrick Henry addresses a Virginia convention, saying “Give me liberty, or give me death.”

1883
23-Feb American Anti-Vivisection Society formed in Pennsylvania.
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February 22

1865
Tennessee abolished slavery.

1943
Sophie Scholl, a 22-year-old “White Rose” activist at Munich University, was executed after being convicted of urging students to rise up and overthrow the Nazi government.
There are many memorials in Bavaria and Germany to Sophie and her group, the White Rose, but little is known outside of Germany. Basically they were medical students who organized non-violent resistance to Hitler. They were arrested for printing and distributing anti-Nazi flyers. Sophie, her brother Hans, and Christof Probst, the three young people in the photo, were executed. Only a few of the survived the war which is why the story is not well known.

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February 21

1848
The Communist Manifesto, written by 29-year-old Karl Marx with the assistance of Friedrich Engels, was published in London by a group of German-born revolutionary socialists known as the Communist League. The political pamphlet–arguably the most influential in history–proclaimed that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” and the inevitable victory of the proletariat, or working class, would put an end to class society forever.

Friedrich Engels Karl Marx

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