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Attica Prison Uprising (1971)

Thu Sep 09, 1971

Image: A crowd of nearly all-black inmates with their fists raised during a negotiating session on September 10th, 1971. Photograph from AP.

On this day in 1971, 1,281 out of ~2,200 inmates at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York rioted and took control of the prison, taking 42 staff hostage. The subsequent four-day standoff became the bloodiest prison uprising in U.S. history, with 43 people killed and nearly 100 wounded.

Based upon prisoners' demands for better living conditions and political rights, the uprising was one of the most well-known and significant flashpoints of the Prisoners' Rights Movement.

The rebellion began two weeks after the killing of imprisoned revolutionary George Jackson at San Quentin State Prison. The conditions of the prison were extremely overcrowded, with the population around 2,243 - more than double of the facility's designed limit of 1,200.

Historian Howard Zinn described the conditions at the prison this way: "Prisoners spent 14 to 16 hours a day in their cells, their mail was read, their reading material restricted, their visits from families conducted through a mesh screen, their medical care disgraceful, their parole system inequitable, racism everywhere."

On the morning of September 9th, 1971, fighting broke out between inmates and prison officers, leading to ~1,200 prisoners to control about half of the facility by noon. One officer involved died of his injuries two days later, and inmates took 42 hostages and began drafting a set of demands to be met before they would surrender.

Prisoners met with the press, and a 21-year old speaker, Elliot "L.D." Barkley, delivered a "Declaration to the People of America" the same day inmates seized control of the prison.

After four days of fruitless negotiations and escalating tensions between prisoners and police, Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (who refused to come to the scene in person) ordered that the prison be retaken by force. 39 people, mostly inmates, were killed in a 15-minute assault by state police, including Barkley.

"We are men! We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. The entire prison populace, that means each and every one of us here, have set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States. What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed. We will not compromise on any terms except those terms that are agreeable to us. We've called upon all the conscientious citizens of America to assist us in putting an end to this situation that threatens the lives of not only us, but of each and every one of you, as well."

- Declaration to the People of America, Read by Elliott James "L.D." Barkley, September 9th, 1971

• Date: 1971-09-09
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.zinnedproject.org, www.socialistalternative.org, www.workers.org.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Stono Slave Rebellion (1739)

Wed Sep 09, 1739

Image: The Stono rebellion sign on a stretch of US Highway 17 in South Carolina. Photograph: Adam Gabbatt, via The Guardian

On this day in 1739, the largest slave uprising in the British mainland colonies began in South Carolina when 22 enslaved Africans looted a store at the Stono River Bridge, killing two storekeepers and seizing weapons and ammunition. In total, 25 colonists and 35 to 50 Africans were killed.

After seizing weapons and ammunition, the self-liberators marched south, to Spanish Florida, a well-known refuge for the enslaved.

As the group made their way south, they recruited others into their cause, burning plantations and killing white people as they went, approximately two dozen in total.

The rebellion was defeated when the group was confronted by a well-armed colonial militia. Around 50 slaves and 25 militiamen were killed in the fighting.

The Stono Rebellion was directly responsible for the "Negro Act of 1740", which required a ratio of one white person to ten black on any plantation, also prohibiting slaves from growing their own food, assembling in groups, earning money, and learning to read.

• Date: 1739-09-09
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.blackpast.org, www.theguardian.com.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Ben Gold (1898 - 1985)

Thu Sep 08, 1898

Image: Ben Gold, president of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union, addressing the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) convention in Portland, Oregon, in November 1948. [Wikipedia]

Benjamin Gold, born on this day in 1898, was an American labor leader and Communist Party member who was president of the International Fur and Leather Workers Union (IFLWU) from 1937 to 1955.

In 1926, Gold led a fur worker's strike in New York City that included all 12,000 workers in the industry. His leadership style was aggressive, and the relatively moderate American Federation of Labor (AFL) sought to undermine his influence in the strike, although their efforts failed due to worker loyalty to Gold.

Although the strike was ultimately successful due to Gold's efforts, the AFL expelled him, accusing Gold and other strike leaders of debauchery, wasting union money, bribery, forcing workers to join the Communist Party, among other grievances. Despite this, he remained a powerful figure within the organized labor of the fur industry, often competing directly with AFL-backed unions for influence among workers.

Gold was also a victim of anti-communist purges on many occasions. In 1950, Gold resigned from the Communist Party and signed an anti-communist oath related to the Taft-Hartley Act. The Justice Department argued that Gold had not really resigned, and indicted him for perjury in August 1953 one day before the statute of limitations ran out.

Although he was successfully convicted, Gold managed to get the conviction overturned on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court (Gold v. United States) and all charges were dropped.

• Date: 1898-09-08
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.encyclopedia.com.
• Tags: #Communism, #Labor, #Birthdays.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Lela Karagianni Executed (1944)

Fri Sep 08, 1944

Eleni "Lela" Karagianni was a Greek anti-fascist leader during World War II, executed in the Haidari concentration camp on this day in 1944. Today, a central Athens street that runs close to her home is named in her honor.

The wife of an Attican pharmacist and the mother of seven children, Karagianni worked to coordinate Greek resistance cells and their activities against the occupying Axis forces.

Karagianni formed her own cell within the wider movement, code-named "Bouboulina" in reference to Laskarina Bouboulina, a female Greek captain who had fought against the Ottoman Empire during the Greek War of Independence.

The cell operated out of her husband's pharmacy, distributing information to other cells, smuggling wanted individuals into areas controlled by Greek partisan forces, forging documents, and coordinating with British military intelligence to disrupt the Axis occupation.

In July, 1944 Karagianni was captured by Nazi forces and sent to Haidari concentration camp, where she continued to organize a resistance against the Germans before being executed on September 8th that year.

Her name has been given to a street in central Athens (Lelas Karagianni St., formerly Limnou St.), close to her house, which is now a protected monument.

• Date: 1944-09-08
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.greeknewsonline.com.
• Tags: #Fascism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Arvid and Mildred Fish-Harnack Arrested (1942)

Mon Sep 07, 1942

Image: A photo of Arvid and Mildred Harnack

Mildred Elizabeth Fish-Harnack was an American literary historian, translator, and Resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. Her husband, Arvid Fish-Harnack, was a German jurist and Marxist economist.

Together, they formed a discussion circle which debated political perspectives on the time after the expected downfall of the National Socialists. From these meetings arose what the Gestapo called the "Red Orchestra" resistance group.

Beginning in 1940, the group was in contact with Soviet agents, trying to thwart the forthcoming German attack upon the Soviet Union. Fish-Harnack even sent the Soviets information about the forthcoming Operation Barbarossa.

The Gestapo broke the code of the group's messages and, on this day in 1942, Arvid Harnack and Mildred Fish-Harnack were arrested while on a weekend outing. Arvid was executed that December and Mildred was executed February the following year.

Mildred's last words were purported to have been: "Ich habe Deutschland auch so geliebt" ("I loved Germany so much as well"). Mildred is the only member of the Red Orchestra whose burial site is known, as well as the only American woman executed on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler.

• Date: 1942-09-07
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, news.wisc.edu, www.pbs.org.
• Tags: #Marxism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Miss America Protest (1968)

Sat Sep 07, 1968

Image: Protesters denounce the swimsuit competition as a cattle auction on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey, September 7th, 1968 [time.com]

On this day in 1968, a feminist protest was simultaneously held alongside the Miss America contest, becoming a widely publicized event in which women threw their bras, hairspray, and makeup into a symbolic "Freedom Trash Can".

The event was organized by "New York Radical Women", and included putting symbolic feminine products - including bras, hairspray, makeup, girdles, corsets, false eyelashes, and mops - into a "Freedom Trash Can" on the Atlantic City boardwalk.

Protesters also crowned a live sheep, comparing the beauty pageant to livestock competitions at county fairs, including an illustration of a woman's figure marked up like a side of beef.

According to author Beth Kreydatus, the protest "'marked the end of the movement's obscurity' and made both 'women's liberation' and beauty standards topics for national discussion".

• Date: 1968-09-07
• Learn More: time.com, en.wikipedia.org, www.smithsonianmag.com.
• Tags: #Feminism, #Protests.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Nada Dimić (1923 - 1942)

Thu Sep 06, 1923

Nada Dimić, born on this day in 1923, was a Yugoslav communist who was tortured by the Ustaša and killed in the Stara Gradiška concentration camp, posthumously proclaimed a People's Hero of Yugoslavia.

When Yugoslavia was invaded in June 1941, she joined the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment, the first Partisan unit in Croatia. The same year, the Ustasha police arrested her in Sisak, but as they transferred her to the prison in Zagreb, she swallowed poison in order to avoid interrogation.

Dimić survived the poisoning and was later rescued. She was eventually caught working as a spy by the Italians, who surrendered her to the Ustaša police on December 3rd, 1941, who then tortured her.

She refused to give them any information and was sent to the Stara Gradiška concentration camp in February 1942. Nada Dimić was murdered there a month later, aged eighteen.

• Date: 1923-09-06
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, snv.hr.
• Tags: #Birthdays.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

President McKinley Assassinated (1901)

Fri Sep 06, 1901

Image: Leon Czolgosz shoots President McKinley with a revolver concealed under a cloth rag. Clipping of a wash drawing by artist T. Dart Walker. [Wikipedia]

On this day in 1901, President William McKinley was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York by anarchist Leon Czolgosz.

Czolgosz became an anarchist after losing his job during the Panic of 1893. He regarded McKinley as a symbol of oppression and was convinced that it was his duty as an anarchist to kill him.

McKinley died eight days later of gangrene caused by the wounds, succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt in office. Czolgosz was tried and found guilty just over a month later. Before his execution, Czolgosz explained "I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people - the good working people...I am not sorry for my crime".

The aftermath of the assassination saw a backlash against anarchist movements. Several anarchists, including Emma Goldman, were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the attack, and vigilantes attacked anarchist colonies and newspapers.

Fear of the movement also led to government surveillance programs of anarchists, which were eventually consolidated on a federal level when the Bureau of Investigation (BOI, later to become the FBI) was formed in 1908.

• Date: 1901-09-06
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, libcom.org, theanarchistlibrary.org.
• Tags: #Assassinations, #Anarchism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

RAF Kidnaps Schleyer (1977)

Mon Sep 05, 1977

Image: Schleyer holding a sign that says "SEIT 20 TAGEN" with an RAF logo in the background [dw.org]

On this day in 1977, the revolutionary Red Army Faction (RAF) kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer (1915 - 1977), a German capitalist and ex-member of the SS, to use as collateral to negotiate the release of RAF members from prison.

Schleyer's conservative anti-communist views, anti-union activities, and his past as a former SS officer made him a target for radical elements of the German student movement in the 1970s.

On September 5th, 1977, the RAF (a militant West German, far-left organization) kidnapped Schleyer in an attempt to force the West German government to release Andreas Baader and three other RAF members.

The government steadfastly refused to negotiate with the RAF, and, after discovering that three RAF members were killed in prison, his kidnappers executed Schleyer in a car en route to France on October 18th, 1977.

• Date: 1977-09-05
• Learn More: www.dw.com, de.wikipedia.org.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Claudette Colvin (1939 - )

Tue Sep 05, 1939

Image: Claudette Colvin in 1953, aged 13. Two years later, she would be arrested for refusing to comply with racial segregation on the bus. [Wikipedia]

Claudette Colvin, born on this day in 1939, is a retired American nurse who was a pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement, refusing to give up her bus seat to a white woman at age 15, nine months before Rosa Parks did the same.

On March 2nd, 1955, she was arrested at the age of fifteen in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. This occurred nine months before the more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.

For many years, Montgomery's black leaders did not publicize Colvin's pioneering effort. She was an unmarried teenager at the time, and was reportedly impregnated by a married man. It is widely accepted that Colvin was not accredited by the civil rights campaigners at the time due to her pregnancy shortly after the incident, with even Rosa Parks saying "If the white press got ahold of that information, they would have [had] a field day. They'd call her a bad girl, and her case wouldn't have a chance."

Colvin left Montgomery for New York City in 1958, because she had difficulty finding and keeping work following her participation in the federal court case that overturned bus segregation (similarly, Rosa Parks left Montgomery for Detroit in 1957). Colvin stated she was branded a troublemaker by many in her community. She withdrew from college and went on to become a nurse in Manhattan.

"My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through. It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn't get up."

- Claudette Colvin

• Date: 1939-09-05
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.npr.org, www.youtube.com.
• Tags: #Civil Rights, #Birthdays.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Victorine Brocher (1839 - 1921)

Wed Sep 04, 1839

Victorine Brocher, born on this day on 1839, was an anarchist Parisian Communard and writer who served as a delegate to the 1881 London Anarchist Congress and First International, where she was a member of the Bakunist faction.

During the Paris Commune uprising, Victorine was arrested and sentenced to death for setting the Court of Auditors on fire. She subsequently absconded to Geneva, remaining in hiding for over a year.

Brocher was initially considered dead when her mother mistakenly identified her among the remains of those shot dead at Versailles. She later wrote a memoir detailing her experience participating in the Commune.

Brocher was also a delegate to the 1881 London Anarchist Congress and the First International, where she was a member of the Bakunist faction. Brocher was a lifelong contributor to anarchist periodicals, and co-founded and taught at Louise Michel's international school.

• Date: 1839-09-04
• Learn More: libcom.org, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #Birthdays, #Anarchism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Mobile Bread Riot (1863)

Fri Sep 04, 1863

Image: An illustration of the Mobile Bread Riot, 1863 [encyclopediaofalabama.org]

On this day in 1863, hundreds of rioters took to the streets in Mobile, Alabama during the American Civil War, chanting "Bread or blood!", looting stores, and destroying property. Confederate soldiers refused to intervene.

The Mobile Bread Riot was one of several bread riots that took place in the South during the Civil War. The uprising was a culmination of rising prices and food shortages caused by the Union's naval blockade of Mobile Bay and Confederate general John C. Pemberton's order to not let any corn leave the state of Mississippi.

The scale of inflation was staggering - molasses, which before the war sold for less than $.30 per gallon, rose to $7.00 per gallon; the cost of a barrel of flour rose from $44.00 to more than $400.00. On this day, hundreds of rioters took to the streets, chanting "Bread or blood!", looting stores and destroying property.

Confederate General Dabney H. Maury dispatched the Seventeenth Alabama Regiment to quell the riot, but the soldiers refused to intervene.

• Date: 1863-09-04
• Learn More: www.encyclopediaofalabama.org, www.nytimes.com, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #Riots.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org