Tag Archives: peace history

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

July 5

1894
During a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company for having laid off about a quarter of its employees and drastically reduced wages, the 1892 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago’s Jackson Park was set ablaze, and seven buildings were reduced to ashes. The Pullman workers’ cause had been taken up by Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the American Railway Union helped organize a nationwide boycott of any train that included a Pullman car.

Pullman Street Strikers Statement

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

1835
Children strike in Paterson, New Jersey, for an 11-hour work day and a 6-day work week.

1860
Birthday of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author (Herland); feminist and a founder of the Women’s Peace Party.

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

July 2

1776
New Jersey becomes the first Colony to grant women’s suffrage.

1777
Vermont becomes first American colony to abolish slavery

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

July 1

1656
First Quakers arrive in America, having come to what will be Boston.

1917

8000 anti-war marchers demonstrated in Boston. Their banners read:

“IS THIS A POPULAR WAR, WHY CONSCRIPTION?
WHO STOLE PANAMA? WHO CRUSHED HAITI?
WE DEMAND PEACE.”

The parade was attacked by soldiers and sailors, on orders from their officers.

1944
A massive general strike in Guatemala led to the resignation of dictator Dictator Jorge Ubico who had harshly ruled Guatemala for over a decade.

Jorge Ubico

On March 15 of the next year, Dr. Juan Jose Arevalo Bermejo took office as the first popularly elected President of Guatemala and promptly called for democratic reforms establishing the nation’s social security and health systems, land reform (redistribution of farmland not under cultivation to the landless with compensation to the owners), and a government bureau to look after Mayan concerns.

Juan José Arévalo Bermejo

1958
700 protest at White House against nuclear testing.

1968

Sixty-one nations, including the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which set up systems to monitor use of nuclear technology and prevent more nations from acquiring nuclear weapons. 190 countries are now signatories; Israel, India and Pakistan remain outside the Treaty. North Korea joined the NPT in 1985, but in January 2003 announced its intention to withdraw from the Treaty.

1970

Women Against Daddy Warbucks destroy 1-A files in eight New York City draft boards.

2000
Vermont’s civil unions law went into effect, granting gay couples most of the rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities of marriage under state law. In the first five years, 1,142 Vermont couples, and 6,424 from elsewhere, had chosen a Vermont civil union.

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

June 30

(Sources: Peace Buttons, War Resisters League, and the Peace Center.)

June 29

1925
The South African parliament passed a bill excluding black, coloured (mixed race) and Indian people from skilled or semi-skilled work.

1963

A mass “walk-on” (trespass) was organized at a chemical and biological warfare facility in Porton Down, England. Chemical and biological warfare agents have been researched and produced there since 1916. more about Porton Down Porton Down scientists

1972
In Furman v. Georgia, The Supreme Court rules that the death penalty — as then employed by the states — is unconstitutional.