In a period of increasing disenfranchisement of blacks in the South, George White was the last of five African Americans who were elected and served in Congress during the Jim Crow era of the late 1800s.  After them, no African would be elected from the South until 1972, after federal civil rights legislation was passed in 1965 to enforce constitutional voting and civil rights for citizens. No Africans were elected to Congress from North Carolina until 1992.

George White was born in North Carolina, to a slave mother and a free, mixed-race father, Wiley Franklin White, who worked as a laborer in a turpentine camp.  He had one older brother, John.

In 1857, with his two sons in tows, George White’s father married Mary Anna Spaulding, a woman of mixed race.  Mary Spaulding’s grandfather, Benjamin Spaulding, was born into slavery, of a white plantation owner and African slave woman, however, his father freed him when he became a young man.  At the time George married his granddaughter, Benjamin Spaulding had acquired more than 2300 acres of pine woods land.  George and Mary White had produced several children.

In 1874, White entered Howard University, a historically black college, in Washington, DC, and became certified as a schoolteacher.  After college, he was hired as a principal at a North Carolina school.  And, as a legal apprentice under former Superior Court Judge William J. Clarke, he began to read and study the law.  In 1879, at the age of 27, White was admitted to the North Carolina bar.

1879: Married Fannie B. Randolph who died in 1880 soon after giving birth to their daughter Della.
1882: Married Nancy J. Scott, who died that same year.
1886: Married Cora Lena Cherry, with whom he had three children, Mary Adelyne, Beatrice Odessa (who died young), and George Henry White Jr.  Cora Lena died in 1905.
1915: Married Ellen Avant MacDonald of North Carolina, who survived him.

All of his children died (including Della) died before reaching adulthood, except for Mary Adelyne, who died in 1974.

1880: Elected to a single term in the North Carolina House of Representatives, where he helped to pass a law creating four state schools for Africans, in order to train more teachers, and then went on to develop one of the schools in its early years, acting as principal and encouraging students to go into teaching.

1884: Won election to the North Carolina Senate.
1886: Elected prosecuting attorney for the 2nd judicial district of North Carolina.
1896: Elected to the U.S. Congress, representing the predominantly black 2nd District
1898: Re-elected to Congress

White used the power of his office to appoint several African postmasters across his district.  He also worked for African civil rights, consistently highlighting issues of justice, and relating discussions on the economy, foreign policy and colonization to the treatment of black in the South. 

1900: Introduced the First
Bill In Congress to Make Lynching a Federal Crime
On January 20, 1900, White introduced the first bill in Congress to make lynching a federal crime to be prosecuted by federal courts; it died in committee, opposed by southern white Democrats.  A month later, as the House was debating issues of territorial expansion internationally, White defended his bill by giving examples of crimes in the South. He said that conditions in the region had to "provoke questions about ...national and international policy.  He said,

"Should not a nation be just to all her citizens, protect them alike in all their rights, on every foot of her soil, in a word, show herself capable of governing all within her domain before she undertakes to exercise sovereign authority over those of a foreign land—with foreign notions and habits not at all in harmony with our American system of government? Or, to be more explicit, should not charity first begin at home?"

White chose not to seek a third term, telling the Chicago Tribute, “I cannot live in North Carolina and be a man and be treated as a man.”  He delivered his final speech in the House on January 29, 1901:

"This is perhaps the Negroes' temporary farewell to the American Congress, but let me say,Phoenix-like he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal, rising people – full of potential force.

On September 26, 2009, President Barack Obama referred to White's farewell speech in his remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Annual Awards Dinner in Washington, DC.

George went on to become primary investor in the purchase of over 2,000 acres for building a town exclusively for Blacks, without the pressures of racism.  Shares were sold and the town of Whitesboro, named in his honor, was built and developed by the African community.

Whitesboro was founded about 1901 by a prominent group of black American investors, known as the African-American Equitable Industrial Association, founded by Rev. J.W. Fishburn and four other members of the Cape May City’s AME Zion Church.   During this period, there was a “Black Town” movement, where black Americans in the South and North attempted to carve out a place in American where they could live on their own terms, in a world in which they were surrounded by racism and a push for racial separation.  Most of those early settlements survive only in memories.


White people in Cape May City were creating havoc for Blacks within the city, including introducing some KKK activity.  Inspired by the self-help philosophy of Booker T. Washington, an investment group was formed to purchase 2,000 acres of land approximately ten miles north of Cape May City, exclusively for Blacks, at a cost of $14,000. 


The group investors included Paul Laurence Dunbar, Booker T. Washington, and George Henry White, the town’s namesake and principle investor. 
 
George White and the other investors wanted to create a self-reliant community for blacks, without the discrimination faced the southern states. Four months after the purchase was finalized, they began selling shares to the planned community to African Americans from North and South Carolina and Virginia.

Requirements
Prospective colonists had to be of good character, and in the spirit of Washington needed to possess steady and industrious habits. Once approved, a colonist would receive a number of lots, each 50 feet by 150 feet (about a sixth of an acre) for a down payment of $5 per lot and a promise to till the land.

In addition to purchasing the initial land for the town, the George H. White Land Improvement Company reinvested its profits back into the community. Although most of the town’s residents were preoccupied with farming the land, many residents were employed by the Improvement Company to construct the first buildings and roads in the community.

Whitesboro's population grew steadily, reaching 100 residents by 1906. By 1909 Whitesboro boasted two churches, an industrial school for children, a railroad station, a post office and a hotel, all built by residents.  The town was also on three railroad lines including one that went east to the Atlantic Coast. The slow steady growth in population continued until the Great Depression. Nonetheless, the town survived and continues to exist today with approximately 1,000 residents.

In 1903, the Second Congress of the RSDLP met in exile in Brussels.  However, due to harassment by Belgian authorities, they were forced to disband and meet later in London.

Vladimir Lenin
Before this Second Congress, a young intellectual named Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) joined the party.  In 1902, Lenin published "What is to be Done?", outlining his view of the party's task and methodology.  He advocated a disciplined, centralized party of committed activists who would blend the underground struggle for political freedom with the class struggle of the proletariat (working-class people).

RSDLP Splits into Two Factions:
Bolsheviks vs Mensheviks
Due to irreconcilable differences, at a meeting of the Congress in November of 1903, the RSDLP split into two factions, the Bolsheviks headed by Lenin, and the Mensheviks headed by Julius Martov.  Lenin's faction would end up in the minority and smalller than the Mensheviks until the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The two factions made a number of attempts at reunification, however, the split remained, as they disagreed on the vision of revolution.

Haves vs Have-Nots

Lenin and the Bolsheviks pushed for an immediate working-class revolution, while the Mensheviks believed that Russia was in too early a stage of its history to start a working-class revolution.  The Bolsheviks regarded peasants as their allies, while the Mensheviks viewed bourgeois (middle-class) liberals as their revolutionary allies.

_

The first Communist armed forces organization began with the 1905-1917 revolution, when the Bolsheviks began to attract a following.

In December 1905, eight thousand armed workers, called Druzhiniks, led an uprising in Moscow.  Separate and smaller units of them fought against police throughout the country.

Although this revolution failed, its organizers gained valuable military experience.

While the revolution was in progress, the Bolsheviks created illegal units in the army and on naval ships, that continued to function in secret after the uprising was put down.

William J. Seymour was one of the most influential individuals in the revival movement that grew into the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, along with other figures such as Charles Parham, Howard A. Goss, and Frank Bartleman.

Seymour emphasized racial equality, which drew many historically disenfranchised people to the movement, and due to his influence the revival grew very quickly.

His revivals were characterized by ecstatic spiritual experiences accompanied by amazing physical healing miracles, dramatic worship services, speaking in tongues, and inter-racial mingling. The participants were criticized by the secular media and Christian theologians for behaviors considered to be outrageous and unorthodox, especially at the time. Today, the revival is considered by historians to be the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the 20th century.

During a time when Louisiana had the highest lynching rates in the nation, William Seymour was born to former slaves, Simon and Phyllis Salabar Seymour, in Centerville, Louisiana.  He was baptized as Catholic, while his family attended a Baptist church throughout his early life.

At the age of 20 years, Seymour left the South to travel around states in the north, escaping the horrific violence aimed at Africans in the south during this period.  He continued to face racial prejudice in the north, but it was not as violent as faced in the South.

1895:  At the age of 25 years, Seymour became a born-again Christian, while attending the Simpson Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, where he had moved.

During his travels, Seymour was influenced by D.S. Warner’s holiness group dedicated to racial equality.  His views about the equality of all mankind influenced Seymour’s entire theology.

1901: At the age of 31 years, Seymour moved to Cincinnati, where his views on holiness and racial integration continued to be shaped by attending a Bible college.  During this time, he contracted smallpox and subsequently went blind in his left eye.

After overcoming smallpox, Seymour traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, where he visited Charles Price Jones, the founder of the Church of Christ (Holiness) U.S.A.  – faith healing and speaking in tongues. Seymour left the South with a very firm commitment to his beliefs.

1906: At the age of 36 years, Seymour attended a newly formed Bible school founded by Charles Parham in Houston, Texas.  Parham’s teachings on the baptism of the Holy Spirit stuck with Seymour and influenced his later doctrine and theology.  However, Seymour did not agree with Parham’s more radical views.

He developed a belief in speaking in tongues as confirmation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  He believed that this proved that the person was born-again and could go to Heaven.

After only six weeks at Parham’s school, Seymour left, against Parham’s wishes, to accept an offer to pastor a church in Los Angeles.


Seymour arrived in Los Angeles and began preaching at Julia Hutchins’ Holiness Church, in late February.  Within two weeks, Julia Hutchins threw him out of her church and padlocked the church door, outraged over Seymour’s claims on tongue-speech.


After a short while, Seymour began holding prayer group meetings at the home where he stayed.  The group quickly grew too large for his friend’s home, and was moved to another friend’s home. 

During the course of one of the prayer meetings, Seymour laid hands on the friend in whose house his was staying and the friend began speaking in tongues.  Seymour received the Holy Spirt baptism three days later.  Soon the group grew too large for the second house as well, and the Azusa Street Revival was born, after the group moved to an old African Methodist Episcopal church building on Azusa Street.

In the beginning, Africans and whites worshipped together at the same alter, against the normal segregations of the day.  Seymour rejected existing racial barriers in favor of unity in Christ, as well as barriers to women in church leadership.  Soon the membership included Africans, whites, and Latinos.

Troubles Brewing
From Azusa Street, Seymour began preaching his doctrinal beliefs, which from 1906 to 1909 became known as the Azusa Street Revival.

Seymour fell under intense scrutiny of mainstream Protestants, some felt that his views were heresy, or violated standard religious teachings, while others accepted his teachings and preached them to their own congregations.  Seymour’s revival came to be widely known as “Pentecostalism”.  Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the revival.

1906.October
Charles Parham Denounces
The Azusa Revival as False
Charles Parham came to Los Angeles and preached at the Azusa revival several times, but became disgusted with the ecstatic practices and racial mixing in worship.  He then began to preach that God was disgusted with the state of the revival, and was eventually removed by force.

Parham followed up by attacking Seymour and Azusa as being from the devil.  He claimed that speaking in tongues had to be a recognizable human language, and that Seymour had corrupted the teaching by allowing for a “divine” language that could not be understood by human ears.  Parham denounced Seymour’s doctrine as unscriptural and the racial mixing as an abomination.

1908: Seymour’s Authority
and Influence Gradually Undermined
Africans Claim Favoritism Shown White Pastors. By 1908, race issues started to become divisive.  Seymour often chose white pastors instead of black pastors in charge whenever he left Los Angeles, causing black members to fear the mission was in danger of being taken over.  Racial segregation became continually came into focus and became a larger issue as time went on.

Charges of Embezzlement.  Although eventually unfounded, Seymour was accused of embezzling funds from the Azusa Revival mission.

Rival Ministers.  Ministers formally affiliated with Azusa began to open their own missions and drew people away from the main revival.

Worshippers Do Not
Approve of His Marriage
In May 1908, Seymour married Jennie Moore Evans, but the church saw it as a violation of sanctification, which resulted in a loss of membership. 

Newsletter: Apostolic Faith
Can No Longer be Published
The coeditor of his newsletter, Apostolic Faith, used for spreading his ideas, abruptly left with the newsletter and mailing lists, and moved to Portland, and refused to give control of the paper back to Seymour.

Close Friend Turns Against Him.  William Durham was a close friend and fellow Pentecostal preacher of Seymour.  While on a revival tour, Seymour asked Durham to serve as visiting preacher.  Durham’s views on sanctification were so extreme and shocking, that Seymour’s wife felt forced to padlock him out of the church, until Seymour returned.

Durham began to attack Seymour publicly, claiming Seymour was no longer following the will of God and was not fit to be a leader, devastating Seymour and causing a big split in the Pentecostal community.  Durham’s death within a year did little to heal the split.

1922.September.28 Death
On September 28, 1922, Seymour suffered two heart attacks, and died in his wife Jennie's arms.  Jennie Seymour died on July 2, 1936, and was buried next to him.

On September 22, 1906, whites began rampaging through Atlanta’s downtown streets and continued for three days.  When it was over, as many as 40 Africans were dead, while only two whites died, one of whom was a woman who died of a heart attack after seeing the mob outside her home.  This incident made national and international headlines, and impacted the course of civil and human rights in the United States.

Racial tensions had been building in Atlanta for some time, as whites began to develop a strong resentment for the wealth of industrious African citizens working and running their businesses in and near the business district.  Competition for jobs between white wage-workers and Africans was also a source of troubles for whites.


Meanwhile, rival white newspapers, working as operatives of the two primary candidates for governor of the state, entered into competition to see which of them could print the most sensational accusation of alleged assaults of white women by African males, and report other sensationalized accounts of the vices of Africans, coined with the term “negrophobia”. 

Because sensationalized accounts sold newspapers, Atlanta newspapers had been publishing lurid and dramatic accounts of Africans attacking white women for over two months, prior to the riots, suggesting that eleven assaults of white women being attacked in their homes occurred within the two month period.   

“The Evening News” newspaper went so far as to send out an emotional call , "Men of Fulton, what will you do to stop these outrages against the women? ... Shall these black devils be permitted to assault and almost kill our women, and go unpunished?"


In addition, there was a popular anti-black play, “The Clansman”, produced by Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr., a segregationist, and supporter of the KKK, that served to further increase fears and tension.


There were a number of saloons and bars that lined downtown’s Decatur Street, where Africans and whites mingled, and this concerned many Atlantans.  The whites of Atlanta feared that the city’s segregation and separation of the races was breaking down.

Politics
During the course of the election, the gubernatorial candidates of 1906, Hoke Smith and Clark Howell, two of Atlanta’s most prosperous citizens, chose to appeal to racial fears and manipulate racial images, as part of their campaigns.  The two went so far as to jointly propose that over 200,000 African males, of voting age, be removed and entirely disenfranchised from politics, because as reported in the “Journal” newspaper, working in the interest of Hoke Smith, “We are the superior race and do not intend to be ruled by our semi-barbaric inferiors”.  And the “Constitution” newspaper, serving as mouthpiece for Clark Howell, then accused Hoke Smith of appointing Africans to federal positions while a member of Grover Cleveland’s cabinet (which he strongly denied).  Meanwhile, Hoke Smith had one of his supporters, publish the following headlines in the magazine that he owned, “What does Civilization owe to the negro? Nothing! Nothing! NOTHING!


On September 22, 1906, mobs of whites roamed the city’s downtown streets, destroying the property of Africans, beating and shooting them, pulling them from street cars to murder them.  The first incident recorded was the murder of an African bootblack who was chased down and beaten to death with fists and clubs by a drunken white mob.  And, from that point on, the mobs chased down and killed every African that they saw in the street, yelling “Save our women!”  “Kill the Niggers!”

With the actions by whites, rumors began to spread that Africans were planning an uprising.  Meanwhile, in African communities, horrifying tales were told of widespread lynchings by crazed whites, and seeking strength in number, several hundred Africans stood against the white mobs in silent protest, near Decatur Street.  For their trouble, several thousand white men, armed with iron bars, hatchets, knives and an assortment of other weapon, attacked the group of protesting Africans, who attempted to fight back, but were forced to flee.

Soon, the white mobs ruled the streets of Atlanta, and stalked the streets for Africans after dark.  Policemen did little to stop their violent rampage, and in several instances aided the rioters. 

The cut streetcar lines and pulled several African from the cars and clubbed them to death, including women.  The shattered plate glass windows of African businesses all along Decatur. 

Africans Flee City
Blacks began to flee the city at night.  Presidents of Clark University and the Gammon Theological Seminary sheltered frightened black women and children and gave them refuge on campus.  White families sheltered their African servants.  The Aragon Hotel and Silvermans restaurant locked up their African workers overnight to keep them from harm.


Many peoples’ lives were forever changed by witnessing these events, and it became a galvanizing and defining moment in the African community. Most notably, Walter White, who would eventually lead the NAACP for almost 25 years and direct a broad program of legal challenges to racial segregation and disfranchisement., witnessed the riots at the age of 13 years, and W.E.B DuBois was a professor at Atlanta University, both pointed to the riots as being a pivotal point.

What White witnessed, standing in the window of his family’s downtown home, frightened and horrified him. Du Bois secured himself and his wife in their apartment and later did what was completely out of character for him: he purchased a gun that he fully expected to use if his family was threatened. After the riot, Du Bois penned a poem, “The Litany of Atlanta,” a searing and powerful statement.  And Walter White detailed his family’s experience during the riot, in his 1948 memoir, “A Man Called White”.


The riot convinced Du Bois that the best protection for African Americans in the South as well as the North was an organization dedicated to promoting social justice and protection of legal rights. He helped found the NAACP in 1909. Walter White, who did not know Du Bois at the time, later attended Atlanta University and, after graduating, was recruited by the NAACP in 1918 to work in their New York office. Du Bois at the time worked as the founding editor of the NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis.


In the years after the riot, African were most likely to live in settled black communities, which were most likely found to the west of the city near Atlanta University or in eastern downtown. Black businesses were moved to the east, where the thriving black business district Sweet Auburn soon developed.  There was also an increase in the interest in voting.

Some Africans modified their opinions on the necessity of armed self-defense, even though they were often warned and discouraged from considering an armed political struggle.

In 1894 Russia and France entered an agreement to defend each other against attack.  Ten years later, in 1904, France and Great Britain signed the Entente Cordial (friendly understanding), and Russia followed three years later by signing a similiar agreement with Great Britain in 1907.

The Triple Entente developed from these treaties.

During this period, it was common practice to turn lynching photographs into postcards and sell them in local stores as souvenirs. In 1908 the U.S. Postal Service banned the delivery of these postcards by the U.S. mail service.

However, they remained a popular item, selling well door-to-door.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The Japanese government took over the management  of Korean businesses.  They set up many new industries on the peninsula and put them under Japanese control.  They also took much of the land and sold it to Japanese settlers.

In the 1910 census, Forsyth County was recorded as having more than 10,000 whites, 858 blacks and 440 mulattoes (or mixed race), until the largest racial cleansing event in American history.

A 22-year old white woman, Ellen Grice, married to a highly respected farmer accused two African men, Toney Howell and Isaiah Pirkle, of attempting to rape her, until they were interrupted and frightened away by her mother.

Within days, the Sheriff of Forsyth County, William Reid, had arrested and jailed the two men accused, as well as three other African men – Fate Chester, Johnny Bates, and Joe Rodgers.

As the news spread, an African preacher of a local church was overheard to say that the 22-year old woman probably lied about what happened, after she was caught in a consensual act with an African man.  Upon his words spreading to the white community, they took the preacher and nearly horse-whipped him to death in front of the courthouse, before the sheriff rescued him and locked him inside of large courthouse vault, saving his life.

One of the accused men, Toney Howell had an alibi and the charges were dropped for lack of evidence, but they were all still detained in jail.

Rumors began to flow that blacks were planning to dynamite the town, and armed white men patrolled the town to prevent such action.  Fearing a race riot, Governor Joseph Mackey Brown declared martial law, activating the National Guard as peace keepers.

With the five original suspects still under arrest, the sheriff moved the men from Cummings, Georgia to Marietta, Georgia for safety.  However, the Governor intervened and moved the men to the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, for greater protection, but the men were held for trial.

Although it was recorded that Howell had a solid alibi on the day that he was accused of rape, the police reported that Toney Howell eventually confessed to assaulting and raping Ellen Grice.  They also said that he implicated Isaiah Pirkle as his accomplice.  After his confession, he was convicted by an all white jury.

An 18-year old white woman, Sleety Mae Crow, accused 16-year old Earnest Cox of rape.  Cox was accused of attacking her from behind, dragging her into bushes, raping her, and beating her head in with a stone, crushing her skull.

Apparently, Earnest Cox had indeed committed this crime, because he brought his older sister and two neighborhood friends to the spot where Crow lay.  Together, they discussed taking her body to the Chattahoochee River, but decided that was too risky, and left her in the woods.

However, the young woman was found the next morning, lying half naked, face down in a pool of dry blood. 

Earnest Cox was immediately arrested and taken to Gainesville, Georgia county jail to avoid white mobs, and then further away to Atlanta.  Police reported Cox freely confessed to the attack. 

Earnest Cox’s sister, Jane, and the two men who reportedly accompanied her with Earnest back to the injured girl, were also arrested.

A crowd of 2,000 whites formed at the county jail in Cumming, where they were held.  Later that day, a lynch mob of about 4,000 whites attacked the jail, shot and killed one of the men in his cell, then dragged his body through the streets and hung his completely mutilated body from a telephone pole.  The other two were hidden from the mob.

Because Cox’s sister entered a plea bargain and testified against her brother and Earnest Knox, both Knox and Oscar Daniel were convicted of rape and murder at trial.  A crowd between 5,000 and 8,000 gather to watch the public hanging of the two young African men.

In the following months, a small group of men called “Night Riders” terrorized black citizens of Forsyth County Georgia, threatening them to leave in 24 hours or be killed. Those who resisted were subjected to further harassment, including shots fired into their homes, or livestock killed. Some white residents tried to stop the Night Riders, but were unsuccessful. An estimated 98% of black residents of Forsyth County left. 

The Africans owned over 1,900 acres of farmland, and some property owners were able to sell, likely at a loss. The renters and sharecroppers left to seek safer places. Those who abandoned property, and failed to continue paying property tax, eventually lost it, and whites took it over. Many black properties ended up in white hands without a sale and without a legal transfer of title. The anti-black campaign or racial cleansing spread across Northern Georgia, engulfing a half dozen surrounding counties with similar results of whites terrorizing and expelling blacks.

Arab troops led by Emir Feisal, and supported by British forces, capture Damascus and Aleppo, ending 400 years of Ottoman rule.

Arab Self-Rule
Paris Peace Conference
Following the defeat of Germany and the Ottoman Empire in World War I, Emir Feisal promoted Arab self-rule at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference at Versailles.

Fasil King of Syria
and King of Iraq
Emir Feisal of Iraq is proclaimed King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria (Greater Syria) in 1920.  In 1921 he also became King of Iraq (for 12 years). Fasil was a member of the Hashemite dynasty.

Pan-Arabism
Unity Between
Sunni and Shiite Muslims
Faisal fostered unity between Sunni and Shiite Muslims to encourage common loyalty and promote pan-Arabism in the goal of creating an Arab state that would include Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Fertile Crescent. While in power, Faisal tried to diversify his administration by including different ethnic and religious groups in offices.

Elaine Arkansas
Home of Cotton Plantations
and Large African Population
Elaine Arkansas is located in the rich cotton lands of the Arkansas Delta.  The entire county, Phillips County, in which it is located was developed for cotton plantations, worked by descendants of freed African slaves.  Today, the population is still mostly African (black), where they outnumber whites in the Elaine by 10-to-1, and by 3-to-1 in the entire county.

Labor Injustices
The Africans of Elaine, and surrounding cities, primarily worked as sharecroppers (required to share their crops with white landowners, in order to use the land for farming and their individual households).

This arrangement between whites and Africans (blacks, African Americans) meant that white landowners controlled the economic power, selling cotton on their own schedule, and not necessarily when the farmers completed production. They also ran high-priced plantation stores where farmers had to buy seed and supplies, and they failed to properly itemize and account for the sharecroppers actual production.

Robert Hill and the
Unionization of African Sharecroppers and Laborers
Robert L. Hill was the founder of the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America, an organization formed to help sharecroppers and tenant farmers to gain better financial arrangement with white landowners. Hill formed his organization in order to force landowners to pay tenant farmers their full shares and to establish union-owned farms.

Hill worked diligently to encourage African sharecroppers and sawmill workers to join his organization and established union chapters in many surrounding towns.


Elaine Massacre:
African Informants,
Murderous White Mobs
In the fall of 1919, two of the union chapters hired lawyers from Little Rock to try and force fair treatment in the courts. Black informants reported this information to local whites, who tried to keep track of all local meetings organized by Hill. Gunfire broke out at a September 30 meeting of 100 African (black, African American) farmers of the Hoop Spur chapter and a white man was killed; hundreds of whites poured into the area, attacking blacks throughout the county during that night and the next days.  This was known as the Elaine Massacre, where over 200 Africans (blacks, African Americans) were killed, and a total of 5 whites. 

Robert L. Hill Flees Arkansas
Hill was forced to flee Arkansas for Kansas, soon after whites went on their rampage.  Once in Kansas, Hill was arrested, but the Governor of Kansas refused to extradite him, speculating that a fair trial was impossible and that he’d likely be harmed. In his interest, the NAACP worked on his behalf with the state and federal authorities. Eventually, federal charges were dropped and a year later, Hill was released from jail. Despite Hill’s relief, 122 other Africans (blacks, African Americans) were prosecuted, 73 for murder. All of those prosecuted were rapidly convicted by all white juries.

For the next 40, or so, years, Hill worked for railroad companies in the Midwest, until his death.

Criticisms of Hill
Hill fused music, religious imagery, and patriotism into his organizing efforts. Some critics labeled him as a demagogue. There were unsubstantiated claims at the time that Hill organized the union for his own economic benefit. Hill, in a letter, denied any attempt to kill white plantation owners in Phillips County, stating that it would be senseless to murder landowners there when he had local chapters in "25 to 30 counties.

A mob of 125 gun-toating mob of white men stormed through Corbin, Kentucky announcing their mission to run the blacks out of town. They proceded to round up all the Africans in town and march them to the railroad depot.

Oral histories of the event were collected in Corbin during the 1970s as part of the country's bicentennial celebration. These interviews were supplemented by an unusually large number of documents at the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. For example, after Steve Rogers, one of the ringleaders of the mob, went to prison, he twice petitioned the governor -- once for a pardon and once to have his sentence commuted. In his petition for a pardon, which is now in the sate archives, he explains what he did and tries to justify his role. File with it are the petitions of others who supported or opposed Rogers; the petitioners also describe what they saw the night of the cleansing.

The railroad was Corbin's lifeblood, and the railroad brought Africans to Corbin. Although Corbin had some sixty long-time African residents according to the 1910 census, in 1919 the railroad had brought in a black work crew estimated at between 200 and 400 men. For a town of 2,800 peple, this was a substantial increase. These laborers ate and slept on trains parked in the rail yard only a short distance from where they were building new facilities. In addition a paving contractor, hired to upgrade the town's dirt streets, had imported his own black work crew.

The townspeople were unnerved by the sudden appearance of so many Africans in town, and began to complain that they were responsible for a crime wave. As one of the town's lawyers describe it, the African population "was a menancing and floating one, very gregarious in habits, and lawless in acts." Oscar Little said that the expulsion occurred because "colored folks were trying to force themselves on the white people here and they just wouldn't stand for it."

After this, there are a multitude of story variations, usually focused on some waywardness of the African workers, as to what actually occurred to parcipitate the start of the mob riot.

The white mob proceeded to throw rocks at houses and kick in the front doors of African residents who had established themselves in Corbin, their homes were ransacked, and they were led at gunpoint to the Colored Waiting Rom of the train station and ordered to leave town. They went from home to home, until all African residents were corralled into the train station. They hunted down blacks throughout the town, until they felt that they had discovered all of them.

The white surrounded the ever growing crowd of black in the Colored Waiting Room, until the blacks were finally loaded on to a least two different trains, one group headed for Knoville and the other to Louisville.

In the first few weeks after the cleansing, a few blacks tried to return, and attempted to return to their work. However, none stayed longer that the day they arrived, out of fear for their safety.
By 1920, there were only three blacks living in Corbin: Emma Woods and her sixty-five-year old boarder, Steve Stansbury and the affectionately nicknamed "Nigger", Dennis.

The one-of-a-kind designs made by Ann Cole Lowe were very popular among high society for about 40 years.  In 1953, she designed Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress and gowns for her bridal party. Her designs are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

San Remo Conference:
Europeans Meet to Divide
Conquered Ottoman Empire
The San Remo conference was an international meeting, held in Italy, after World War I to divide the Ottoman territories captured during the war.   The meeting was held from 19 to 26 April 1920, and attended by representatives of the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I: Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, as well as Greece and Belgium.

France Granted Syria
British Granted Palestine
During this meeting, Great Britain and France claimed administration of Syria and Mesopotamia.  And more importantly, international recognition was given to France for its claims in Syria.  As a result of the conference, Syria-Lebanon were placed under French mandate and Palestine under British control.

King Feisal of Arab Kingdom
of Syria Forced to Flee
Before French Occupation
With his sovereignty ignored, and his territories falling under French military and economic control, King Feisal fled his country just ahead of French occupation.

The French separated the population of Syria into three distinct, governing regions – the Alawi Muslim sect (regarded as heretics by Sunnis) on the coast, the Druze Muslims in the South , and the majority Sunni population in Lebanon.

In 1925 Sultan Pasha al-Atrash officially declared revolution against France and led a revolt initiated from the Druze Mountain and that eventually spread to engulf the whole of Syria and parts of Lebanon.

Modern Weaponry Wins
the Day for the French
Al-Atrash won several early battles against the French, but in response, the French sent thousands of troops to Syria and Lebanon, from Morocco and Senegal, equipped with modern weapons, allowing the French to regain many cities.

Sultan al-Atrash
Sentenced to Death
The French sentenced Sultan al-Atrash to death, but he had escaped with the rebels to Transjordan and was eventually pardoned. He returned to Syria in 1937 after the signing of the Franco-Syrian Treaty. He was met with a huge public reception.

In the early 1900s, the Bronzeville neighborhood -- of the Douglas community, on the South Side Chicago Illinois--- was known as the “Black Metropolis”, after developing into one of the most significant areas of African American.

Within the first three decades of the 1900s, after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, thousands of African Americans, escaping from the oppression of the South, emigrated to major cities like New York City, Detroit, and Chicago.  In the midst of these waves of migration, the Bronzeville neighborhood in the South Side became home to many African Americans, including many well-noted and highly esteemed black Americans of the time.

In 1928, it also became home to the Regal Theater, built in the heart of Bronzeville. The $1.5 million structure opened new doors for African Americans in the entertainment business, and hired black managers, ushers, dancers (light-skinned only), and coat checkers, which at the time was unheard of.

It was lavishly and elegantly decorated with large pillars, plush carpeting, velvet drapes, and plush seating for  3,000, making it the first large-scale theater hall built specifically for the African American community.  It created a new nightlife and perfect atmosphere for African American families to go out and have a good time in the city, as  not only music performers, but motion pictures and stage plays were featured there.

Some of the most celebrated Black entertainers in America performed there frequently, including Nat "King" Cole, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne, Dinah Washington,Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, The Jackson 5, and Gladys Knight & The Pips.  In addition, several artists recorded live performances there, including B.B. King and Motown artists Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, Smokey Robinson.

Eventually, with developments in technology, business began to decline.  Another factor that affected the Regals high unemployment and suffering during the long lasting Great Depression of 1929 to 1939.  Losing more and more business, the owner was eventually forced to file bankruptcy and close down the theater in 1968.  The building was later demolished in 1973.

Syrian nationalist present a draft constitution for Syria, which is immediately rejected by the French.

Nearly 100 years after the upcropping of free states  in the United States, African-descended people were still primarily persona non grata, held under ridicule and regarded as unwelcomed

In 1931, the popular song writing team of Ray Henderson and Lew Brown (Louis Brownstein), wrote “That’s Why Darkies Were Born”.  Based upon all accounts, the song was not written as an expression of racism, but was intended as conciliatory satire.  It was a mainstream effort, which became a “number one” hit for Kate Smith, one of the most popular singers of the time.  And later, it was also recorded by Paul Robeson, a notoriously popular ‘Black’ singer, actor, and social activist.

The Writers:

Ray Henderson 1896 - 1970

Ray Henderson 1896 - 1970

Ray Henderson was a popular composer in Tin Pan Alley, an area Manhattan, New York where music publishers and songwriters gravitated and set up business. Working with many lyricists, and primarily with Lew Brown and Buddy De Sylva, he compiled a long list of popular hits. Lew Brown (Louis Brownstein) wrote songs for many of the top artists of the day and wrote or co-wrote several Broadway shows. Together, some of their most popular songs include: Bye Bye Blackbird, It All Depends on You, The Best Things in Life Are Free, You're The Cream in my Coffee, Button Up Your Overcoat, You Are My Lucky Star, Keep Your Sunny Side Up, If I Had A Talking Picture of You

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Pelley was born into poverty in Lynn, Massachusetts.  He was born to William George Apsey Pelley and his wife, Grace.  His father was initially a Southern Methodist Church minister, later a small businessman and shoemaker.

Pelley was largely self-educated writer.  After the end of World War I, in 1918, Pelley traveled throughout Europe and Asia as a foreign correspondent, spending a great deal of time in Russia, during the Russian Civil War. 

Upon his return the U.S., he worked as a journalist and received acclaim for his short stories.  After some time, he moved to Los Angeles to work as a screenwriter.  However, after becoming disillusioned with the film industry, he moved to Asheville, North Carolina.

Over the years, Pelley had become more and more politically active, and after moving to Asheville, North Carolina, Pelley founded Galahad College.  Galahad specialized in correspondence, "Social Metaphysics", and "Christian Economics" courses. He also founded Galahad Press, which he used to publish various political and metaphysical magazines, newspapers, and books.

TBC

Williana Jones was born on January 2, 1882, in Petersburg, Virginia.  He mother was born a slave and freed at the age of 16, her father died when Williana was four years old.  He mother moved her family from Viginia to New York City, a haven for many freed slaves, and worked as a cook.  However, Williana and her two siblings spent the next six years of their lives in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Harlem, until their mother came for them.

She attended New York public schools and attended New York City Normal College (Hunter College), where she received her teaching credentials.  At the age of 28, she started her first teaching position, teaching first grade.

Nearing her mid-40s, Willian Burroughs joined the Workers Party.  Around 1931, she became active in the campaigns for defense of the Scottsboro boys, which the Communist Party USA helped in gaining an appeal.  She was also chairman of the Blumberg Defense Council, an organization formed to defend Isidore Blumberg, a teacher removed from the New York public schools systems due to his political views.

The Communist Party sent Burroughs to the 6th World Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in the summer of 1928 as a representative of the American Negro Labor Congress, a Communist Party auxiliary group. Burroughs traveled with her husband and her two youngest sons to the convention, with the boys remaining in the Soviet Union to attend school thereafter. Burroughs would not be reunited with them until 1937.  She became prominent within the party organization and was selected as an alternate delegate to the 6th National Convention of the Communist Party USA in March 1929.

In January 1931, Burroughs returned to the United States from the Soviet Union, resuming her teaching career.  In 1933 Burroughs spoke out at a meeting of the New York City Board of Education, and in June 1933 Burroughs was dismissed from her post for "conduct unbecoming to a teacher and prejudicial to law and order.

After loss of her teaching position, Burroughs was the Communist Party's candidate for New York Comptroller in the fall of 1933 and the Communist Party's candidate for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1934. She also ran the Harlem Worker's School from 1933 to 1934.

She returned to the Soviet Union in the spring of 1937, the year of the Great Terror, where she worked as an announcer and editor for the English-language broadcasts of Radio Moscow, the international shortwave news service of the Soviet government.  Burroughs remained in Moscow for virtually the rest of her life. In the spring of 1940 she made a request to return to the United States together with her sons but was persuaded to stay. The war intervened and Burroughs and her sons remained in Moscow until 1945, when she finally managed to return to New York with the younger boy.










Her eldest son, Charles Burroughs, who had remained in Moscow, and his wife, Dr. Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, co-founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, of which he remained curator until 1980.  A Chicago high school is named after him.

In the Western world, Persia was the common name for Iran, but in Persian the country is called Iran.

In 1935, the Iranian government requested countries which it had diplomatic relations with to call Persia "Iran" in all formal communications.  Since then, the use of the word "Iran" has become more common.

In the mid-1930s, many Soviet citizens opposed the policies of Joseph Stalin, Communist Dictator of the Soviet Union.  Because of this, Stalin began a program of terror called the Great Purge.

Stalin's secret police arrested millions of people.  Neighbors and even family members spied on one another.  Fear spread throughout the country.

Stalin eliminated all real or suspected threats to his power.  Hundreds of thousands of victims, including scientist, poets, writers, artist,  were accused of various political crimes and were quickly executed by shooting, or sent to the Gulag labor camps. Many died at these labor camps of starvation, disease, exposure, and overwork. Stalin also ordered many experimental methods to be used against his victims, such as gassing people to death in batches in the back of a specially made airtight vans driven around the cities to collect the accused.

When trials were staged, arrested Communist leaders were forced to confess to "crimes against the people".  He would then replace these party leaders with young Stalinists he could trust.  The secret police enforced stict loyalty to Stalin's policies on all levels of life.  Stalin controlled everything that was published, taught, or publicly spoken.

It has been estimated that 600,000 people died at the hands of the Soviet government during the Purge.

In agreeing to work toward Syrian independence, the French maintain military and economic control and dissolve two of the three artificial regions that they created on the coast and in the south, retaining Lebanon as a separate state.

Syrian nationalist, Shukri al-Kuwatli was elected as first president of Syria, and would go on to lead his country to full independence by 1946.

Shukri al-Kuwatli was a principal leader of the National Bloc, a Syrian political party that emerged to fight for Syrian independence while Syria was under French control.  The Block was led by notable conservatives, land owners, tradesmen, lawyers, etc -- including the 50 most rich and powerful families in Syria.

After World War II, the Soviet Union took an interest in the Middle East.

On February 1, 1946, the Soviet Union and Syria signed an agreement where the Soviet Union agreed to rovide military help in the formation of the Syrian Arab Army, promising diplomatic and political support in the international arena.

During the Cold War (1947 - 1991), a stronger political bond developed and Syria was considered an ally to the Soviet Union in opposition to the Western powers.

The Japanese held control of Korea continuously for 30 years, until forced to surrender to allied forces, bringing an end to World War II.

After Japan's defeat, United States troops moved to occupy the southern half of Korea, while Russian forces occupied the northern half -- each formed separate governments in their occupied half of the country.

For the two years following, the United States, Russia, the two Korean governments and Britain tried to develop a plan for reuniting Korea.  But their attempt at cooperative effort failed, and the problem was submitted to the United Nations (UN) in 1947.

The UN devised a plan to supervise an election to choose one government for Korea, but, the Russians refused to allow UN representatives into the north.



Without cooperation from Russia, the UN supervised an of a national assembly in the south.  This national assembly drew up a constitution and elected Syngman Rhee as president of the newly formed Republic of Korea.

Approximately one month after the formation of the South Korean government, communist Russia announced the formation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

In December, 1948, Russia announced that all its troops had left Korea.  The United States announced all of its troops withdrawn from South Korea in mid-1949.

Meanwhile, each of the newly formed Korean governments claimed sovereignty over all of Korea.

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National Bloc, a Syrian political party that emerged to fight for Syrian independence.  Highly instrumental in achieving Syria's independence, the Bloc was led by notable conservatives, land owners, tradesmen, lawyers, etc -- including the 50 most rich and powerful families in Syria.

Out of the Bloc emerged two opposing parties:

• National Party, based in Damascus
• People's Party, based in Aleppo. The People's Party was friendly to interests in Hasemite Jordan and Iraq, unlike the National party

The Arab Ba'ath Party was founded in Syria by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, and Zaki al-Arsuzi, based upon an ideology mixing Arab nationalist, pan-Arabism, Arab socialist, and anti-imperialist interests.

Freedom for the Ba'ath Party means freedom from non-Arab control and interference. The party quickly established branches in other Arab countries, but only held power in Iraq and Syria.  

Arab Ba'ath Party and
Arab Socialist Party Merge
In 1952,  The Arab Ba'ath Party merged with the Arab Socialist Party, led by Akram al-Hawrani, to form the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. The newly formed party was a relative success, and became the second-largest party in the Syrian parliament in the 1954 election.

Egypt and Syria
Become Allies
This, coupled with the increasing strength of the Syrian Communist Party, led to the establishment of the United Arab Republic (UAR), a union of Egypt and Syria. 

After Japans surrender and the subsequent end of World War II,  the Korea territory that they once controlled was taken over and occupied by Russia (in the north) and the United States (in the south). 

North Korea and South Korea Established by Foreign Powers
Russia established a North Korean government, and with the help of the United Nations, the United States, established a South Korean government.  

Soon after they formalized the two separate governments in Korea,  the United States and Russia announced, over time, that they had removed all of their troops.  Each of the governments that they left behind claimed  sovereignty over all of Korea, and became involved in many border clashes. 

In June, 1950, North Korean troops invaded South Korea, to begin the Korean War.

Their civil war, soon involved the most powerful Communist and non-Communist nations in the world.

The division of Korea left the South weak economically and militarily.  It had very little industry and very few electric power plants.

The North Koreans had about 135,000 men in their army, many who had fought for China and Russia during World War II.  North Korea also had airplanes, artillery, and tanks.  The South Koreans, on the other hand, had an army of about 95,000 men, mostly whom were untrained and inexperienced.

However, with support of the Member States of the United Nations, including the United States who contributed over 700,000 troops, South Korea was greatly strengthened.  

China, on the other hand contributed a million additional troops to North Korea.

At the end of World War II, Russia and the United States, split the Korean territory, once controlled by Japan.  Russia claimed dominion of Northern Korea, the United States claimed dominion of Southern Korea. 

Communist Russia established a new government in North Korea, and the United States, with the help of the United Nations, established a new government in South Korea. 

Kim Il Sung became the first leader of communist North Korea.

Under Kim Il Sung, the government took farmland from wealthy landowners and gave it to the farmworkers.  He also took control of most industries.

In the 1950's, Kim's government organized all of the country's farmland into collective farms.

Kim's government operated as a strict dictatorship.  It carefully limited freedom of speech and of the press.  It decided which citizens would receive a higher education.  Kim's government even decided where people would live and work.

In 1977, the government announced that Kim's eldest son, Kim Chong (aka Jong) Il, would become president after Kim's retirement or death.

The Syrians aligned themselves with the other local Arab states that wanted to destroy the state of Israel.  
The Syrian army entered norther Palestine, but was gradually driven back to the Golan Heights by the Israelis.

It was during this period that many Syrian Jews, who faced growing persecution, fled Syria as part of Jewish exodus from Arab countries.

After the United States occupied the South Korean territory after the defeat of Japan, at the end of World War II,  the United Nations intervened to supervise an election of a national assembly made up of the Korean people there.  The newly formed national assembly drafted a constitution and elected their first president, Syngman Rhee, who was 73 years old at the time.  

Rhee Faces a Korean Civil War
Two years into his presidency, South Korea was invaded by the newly formed government of North Korea and the Korean (Civil) War began.  Each side had powerful allies who provided millions of troops to each.  Communist China contributed close to a million troops to North Korea, and the United States contributed nearly a million troops, along with military contributions made by other UN Member States.  A truce was called in 1953.

Rhee Amends the Constitution to Ensure His Reelection
Because Rhee feared that the legislators would not reelect him in 1952, he submitted an amendment to the constitution that turned over election of the president to the people.  As a result, the voter reelected him twice, in 1952 and 1956.

Rhee Fixes Fourth Term Election
In 1960, Rhee ran for a fourth term, determined to keep control of the government, so he fixed the election to ensure victory.

Rhee Resigns Office Under Pressure of Political Protests
At the age of 85 Syngman Rhee resigned from the office of President, following nationwide demonstrations against the government, soon after his fraudulent reelection.

For several months following there was political upheaval and turmoil in South Korea.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (aka North Atlantic Alliance), a political and military alliance formed by European governments with the issuance of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949. Each member government (or member state) of NATO agrees to mutually defend any other member, if they are under armed attacked by any non-NATO member. There are 28 member states across North America and Europe. The combined military spending of all NATO members is 70% of total global spending on military defense.


Over the cross of several years and world events, NATO has evolved from a pure political alliance, into a functional integrated military infrastructure among European nations. The first military intervention of NATO forces would not occur until events in Bosnia in 1992.

NATO Members

1949 Belgium Canada Denmark France Iceland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Norway Portugual United Kingdom United States 1952 Greece Turkey 1955 Germany

1982 Spain 1999 Czech Republic Hungary Poland 2004 Bulgaria Estonia Latvia Lithuania Romania Slovakia Slovenia 2009 Albania Croatia

Jesse B. Blayton was an Atlanta businessman, accountant, and professor at Morehouse College.   In 1925, he was one of a group of 15 Black businessmen who founded the Mutual Federal Savings and Loan Association, of which later he would become president.  This organization made millions of dollars in loans to Black businesses over the years.

In 1928, he became the first Certified Public Accountant in Georgia.  He started his own accounting firm, which later evolved into a business college.  And in 1949, he overcame decades of obstacles faced by Black Americans throughout the period of segregation and purchased a white owned radio station losing money ---WERD.  He installed his son, Jesse Jr. as manager

WERD had only 1000 watts and was a “daytimer,” on the air only from sunrise to sunset.  But it became the home of some of black radio’s most famous radio announcers, most notably “Jockey Jack” Gibson.  Not only did WERD serve a 14 county area, providing news, music, and community service to Atlanta’s black population, but as Blayton had thought it would, the station made money

WERD played a mix of the popular black music of that era:  some jazz, rhythm-and-blues, and gospel. When black recording artists came to town, they would stop by the station to say hello and do an interview.  WERD also offered public service programs, educational shows, church services for shut-ins, radio plays, and news the black audience couldn’t get anywhere else.  The public admired the station’s announcers and regarded them as friends.

The WERD venture was so successful that in June of 1954, the Blaytons purchased a second AM radio station, KREL in Baytown TX, part of the Houston market.  During the turbulent times of the Civil Rights era, black radio stations like the Blaytons kept the community informed in a way that southern white stations often did not.  In fact, during the 60s, WERD’s offices were in the same building as the Southern Christian Leadership Council, and speakers from that group were able to communicate with a very large audience thanks to the Blaytons’ on-going commitment to racial equality.

In 1995, Jesse B. Blayton Sr., the first African-American to own a radio station, was posthumously inducted into Museum of Broadcasting’s Radio Hall of Fame.

1950 marked a period in the United States, that lasted nearly ten years, where a campaign of fear against communism was mounted. During this period, often termed the “Red Scare”, or the “McCarthy Era”, many peoples character or patriotism was attacked.

Thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators, and union activists. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment.

J. Edgar Hoover was one of the nation’s most fervent anti-communists, and one of the most powerful. Hoover maintained an extreme sense of Communist threat, and as head of the FBI, designed a security program for President Truman. The security standards applied caused thousands of government workers and other professionals to lose their jobs, primarily due to secret informants. Often, many people were not informed about what they were accused of and fired without further process.

Under Hoover, the FBI engaged in a number of illegal practices – burglaries, opening mail, wiretaps, planting forged documents, spreading rumors, leaking information, creating “blacklists”, and calling for IRS audits. One of Hoover’s primary targets was Martin Luther King.

Hazel Scott was a singer and a jazz and classical pianist. She was very prominent in the 1930s and 1940s. She often played herself in films. In 1950, she became the first Black woman to have her own TV show --- The Hazel Scott Show, which featured a variety of entertainment.

In 1949, she brought a lawsuit against the owners of Pasco, a Washington restaurant, when a waitress refused to serve her and a companion because “they were Negroes.” She publicly opposed racial segregation throughout her career.

To evade oppression in the United States, Scott moved to Paris in the late 1950s, and did not return to the United States until 1967.

Dr. James Blaine “Jim” Blayton lived with his family in Grove Community in James City County Virginia, and practiced medicine for more than 50 years.  Born in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), he earned his medical degree from Howard University in Washington D.C..His set up his medical practice to service Black residents who previously traveled about 30 miles for medical appointments and care.During the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he served as a “New Deal” public health physician, and built a two-bed maternity hospital for the Black community.  And then in 1952, he opened a 14-bed hospital with an emergency room in Williamsburg to serve the Black community, who at that time were only allowed beds in the basement of “white” hospitals.  This hospital served as the primary health care facility until 1961.  During the course of this time, he also opened a sandwich and soda shop to serve young people shut out of other facilities by segregation.He was very civic minded, a member or on the board of many organizations.

Harry S. Truman is most well-known as the President who approved the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. He presided over the end of WW II, the start of the Cold War and the Korean War.

In his final State of the Union address before Congress, in 1953, he announced that the United States had completed development of a hydrogen bomb. This only three years after he announced his approval for the Atomic Energy Commission to continue its work on development of a super bomb and other forms of atomic energy weapons.

On September 23, 1949, President Truman announced to the American people, "We have evidence that within recent weeks an atomic explosion occurred in the USSR."

At that time, some of the Los Alamos scientists, who had worked on developing the atomic bomb, feared that the USSR might already be working on a hydrogen bomb. Hungarian-born physicist Edward Teller and American-born business man, and Atomic Energy Commissioner (AEE) Lewis Strauss urged the rapid development of a weapon with an explosive force equivalent to 16 million tons of TNT, 800 times as much as the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

Over serveral months, both men dedicated their efforts to bringing everyone in Washington around to their point of view. Strauss made his views very clear in a letter to President Truman on November 25th. "I believe that the United States must be as completely armed as any possible enemy. From this, it follows that I believe it unwise to renounce, unilaterally, any weapon which an enemy can reasonably be expected to possess. I recommend that the President direct the Atomic Energy Commission to proceed with the development of the thermonuclear bomb..."

Arms Race

In 1953, USSR scientists, tested their first hydrogen bomb, designed by Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov.

In 1953, Big Mama Thornton became the first to record and publish “Hound Dog”, later made popular by Elvis Presley. She was a singer, songwriter, who taught herself how to play harmonica and drums. Her blues-style of music was heavily influenced by gospel music, witnessed while growing up in the home of a preacher. She became famous for her powerful voice, improvisational skills, numerous blues songs written, and for often dressing as a man in her performances. She was nominated for the Blues Music Award six times. In 1984, she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

James Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.

1953 marked the 1st Published

Novel by James Baldwin

Soon after the end of the Korean War, the North Koreans reach out to the Soviet Union for help in developing nuclear weapons, but the Russians refuse their request.

However, the Soviets did concede to help them in developing a peaceful nuclear energy program by training their scientist and engineers in the "basic knowledge" of atomic energy.

Over the course of the next several years, the North Koreans sent delegations to the Soviet Union to study the use of atomic energy, and welcomed the Soviets into their country for the same.

Guyana (full name is Republic of Guyana) is a tropical country situated on the northern coast of South America. It is the only country in South America where English is the official language. It is bordered by Venezuela on the west, Suriname on the east, Brazil on the south and the Atlantic Ocean on the north.

Guyana is about the size of Great Britain. The indigenous people of Guyana are the Amerindian, and the name Guyana is an Amerindian word meaning Land Of Many Waters.

Guyana has been called the "Country of Six People- Africans, Amerindians, Chinese, East Indians, Europeans and Portuguese. Guyana is notably famous for Kaieteur Falls.

In October 1953, the democratically elected Government of Guyana (then known as British Guiana) was removed from power by the British Government which was at that time the colonial ruler.

The People's Progressive Party (PPP) had won a landslide victory in the April 1953 election, but the British Government suspended the British Guiana constitution and simultaneously deployed British troops in the country.

The Ministers of the Government, as well as the House of Assembly, were dismissed by the British Governor, who proceeded to appoint an interim Government made up of persons who were political opponents of the PPP. Most of these persons had been defeated as candidates in the April general election. In the aftermath, many leading members of the PPP were detained without trial while, under a state of emergency declared by the Governor, civil rights were suspended.

Some of the anti-PPP politicians, who had lost their privileges after the April election, spoke against the PPP saying that they were a "communist organisation" bent on "subverting the Government" and making it an ally of the Soviet Union. The British Government believed the untruths. Declassified documents show that the British Government was surprised by the PPP electoral victory, and that it was intent on removing them from power.

Cheddi Jagan was a labor leader, born of East Indian sugar plantation workers. He attended Northwestern University, and was also a founder of PPP, but Cheddi became head of PPP, Chief Minister of Guyana, and Premier of British Guiana.

Cheddi Jagan leaned more towards communism, while Burnham was more moderate. Forbes Burnham eventually split from PPP to form the People's Nationation Congress (in 1958). It was Jagan's goverment that was toppled by the British, after which more favor was shown to Burnham.

The Parliament of South Africa enacts the Bantu Education Act (Act No. 47 of 1953; later renamed the Black Education Act, 1953). This law legalized serveral aspects of the apartheid system.

The primary purpose of this law was to enforce racially separated (but equal) educational facilities. However, with this act, the majority of the missionary schools closed down due to lack of funding. And, as a result, black and many non-white African citizens were channeled into the unskilled labor market.

The Minister of Natie Affairs at the time, the "Architect of Apartheid" Hendrik Verwoerd, state that:
"There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice?"

Education of black Africans was under direct control of the state. The National Party had the power to employ and train teachers as they saw fit. Black teachers salaries were extremely low, which resulted in a dramatic drop of trainee teachers. Only one third of the black teachers were qualified.

Education was mandatory for white children and the schools reserved for them were free. 30% of the black schools did not have electricity, 25% no running water and less than half had plumbing. The education for Blacks, Indians and Coloureds was not free. In the 70s, the per capita governmental spending on black education was one-tenth of the spending on white.

Black-Owned Buses Illegal

On June 15, 1950, the city council of Scotlandville, the largest of many neighborhoods in the state capitol of Baton Rouge, Lousiana, outlawed the operation of all independent Black-owned public bus services. Instead, all routes which they serviced became the monopoly of the white-owned Baton Rouge Bus Company.

By 1953, Black Americans made up 70%-80% of the ridership of the Baton Rouge Bus Co, but were restricted to a limited numbers of seats in the designated "colored" section of the buses. Seats reserved for white passengers were required to remain unoccupied, even if no white passengers boarded the buses. On the other hand, if a white passenger chose to sit in the "colored" section, it was required that all Black passengers stand in honor.

T.J. Jemison was a minister of a large Baptist church in Baton Rouge. He came from a family of prominent ministers and church going women. He was born in Alabama and attended segregated schools there. He earned a bachelor's degree from Alabama State University, a historically black college in the state capital of Montgomery.

In 1945, at the age of 27, T.J. Jemison married Celestine Catlett of Virginia, his wife of 61 years. Celestine received her degree from Virginia Union University and was a high school English teacher for many years. Together, they had three children, (1) Diane Jemison Pollard, (2) Bettye Wagner and (3) Ted Jemison.

In February of 1953, at the age of 35, T.J. Jemison went before the Baton Rouge City Council to make an appeal on behalf of Black bus riders, who were forced to stand on buses filled with empty seats.

Within a couple of weeks of his appeal, the city council issued Ordinance 222, which established a first come- first served service policy for the bus system.

The provisions of Oridnance 222 state that whites were to board buses from the front, and Blacks at the back, and each were to take any empty seats available. However, there was no change, as bus drivers refused to comply with the ordinance.

In June of 1953, T.J. Jemison decided to push the issue, and bus drivers went on strike after two drivers were suspended for not complying with the ordinance.

During this time, the bus company was also making its appeals, and by the end of the strike, state Attorney General, Fred S. LeBlanc declared city Ordinance 222 unconstitutional, on the grounds that it violated the state's compulsory segregation laws.

In response to the revocation of Ordinance 222, in June of 1953, Jemison and a group of churches formed the United Defense League, and by holding several mass meetings, organized a bus boycott. To support the boycott, they established a free-ride network to transport Blacks to and from their destinations. The official boycott lasted only two weeks, but the Black community was inspired to continue the boycott under their own efforts and refusal to ride buses.

Meanwhile, Jemison and other black leaders negotiated with the city council to eventually reinstate Ordinance 222.

T.J. Jemison was diligent in documenting the Baton Rouge experience, and his records and insight proved invaluable to the civil rights leaders that would follow.

When the armistice (formal agreement to stop fighting and negotiate) was signed, at the end of the Korean War, it included a deadline of three months (which was not met) “to settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea, the peaceful settlement of the Korean question, …”

As follow-up to the Berlin Conference, held two months earlier, the Soviet Union, United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the People’s Republic of China convened as a group to settle outstanding issues regarding Korea and to discuss strategies for restoring peace in Indochina.

Indo-China

The 3-month long conference, held in Geneva Switzerland, ended without any declarations or proposals being adopted on Korean issues --- both North and South Korean representatives forced a standstill, insisting that each of their governments should be acknowledged as the only true, legal government.

The second primary concern at the conference was the long and bloody battle between Vietnamese nationalist forces, under the leadership of the communist Ho Chi Minh, and the French, who were intent on continuing colonial control over Vietnam. For nine years, the two sides had been hammering away at each other. By 1954, however, the French were tiring of the long and inclusive war that was draining both the national treasury and public patience. The United States had been supporting the French out of concern that a victory for Ho’s forces would be the first step in communist expansion throughout Southeast Asia. When America refused France’s requests for more direct intervention in the war, the French announced that they were including the Vietnam question in the agenda for the Geneva Conference.

In to this Indo-China issue, an agreement was reached called the Geneva Accords, which temporarily separated Vietnam into two zones, a northern zone and southern zone, governed by the Viet Minh and State of Vietnam, respectively.

In 1951, Linda Brown Smith was a 9 years old, 3rd grade student when her father started a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. She had been denied admission to her local elementary school because she was Black. Combined with several other cases, her suit reached the Supreme Court.

Oliver Brown, father of Linda Brown, was convinced by a childhood friend to join a lawsuit against the Board of Education. He was a welder by trade, and minister by profession. His daughter had to walk six blocks to catch a school bus to ride to her school, one mile away, because she was prohibited from attending an all white school seven blocks from her home.

The Supreme Court broke with long tradition and unanimously overrule the “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. The recently appointed Chief Justice Earl Warrant wrote an opinion that de jure (upheld by law) segregation in public schools violated the principle of equal protection under the law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And in response to arguments presented by NAACP lawyers led by Thurgood Marshall, the Supreme Court further stressed that the “badge of inferiority” stamped on minority children by segregation hindered their full development no matter how “equal” physical facilities might be.

The decision by the Supreme Court, however, did not succeed in fully desegregating public schools, but placed the law on the side of racial equality.

In 1951, based upon successful development of nuclear plants, the U.S. Congress authorized construction of a nuclear-powered submarine. The first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, was launched by the United States in 1954. It could remain underwater for up to four months without resurfacing.

Previous to their development, submarines were slow and designed primarily to travel on the surface and dive on occasion, while the Nautilus was designed to remain underwater and only surface on occasion. Nuclear powered subs revolutionized Navy strategy and tactics. Men were now able to remain underwater for weeks at a time while crossing the globe, with a nearly limitless supply of power and means to destroy several large cities. Being able to travel the globe undetected meant that enemy military and commercial ships were exposed to submarine attack at any time and virtually any place on the Earth's oceans

Eventually, the technology was shared with Britain, while the French, Russian and Chinese proceeded along their own development paths. And, a few years after the Nautilus, an alarmed Soviet Union developed its own nuclear submarine capabilities.

W. Leonard Evans, Chicago advertiser, founded the first Black-owned radio network in the United States in 1954, a collection of about 40 radio stations, called the the National Negro Network (NNN).

His network featured a variety of different programming, including the broadcasting of Black sports and Black news, musical variety shows and soap operas. The soap opera, The Story of Ruby Valentine was very popular, and starred Juanita Hill, Ruby Dee and Terry Carter. Other programs included Black college concerts.

Some shows were produced by Calloway and Ethel Waters, while, sponsors Philip Morris and Pet Milk were on board from the beginning. The network drew up plans for several more series, but—with the TV era exploding—fell apart within a year due to inadequate capital.

During the period of the Cold War, in June 1956, The SAC [Strategic Air Command] Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, was produced --- a comprehensive and detailed list of U.S. nuclear targets and target systems.  It was a plan for the strategic use of the weapons of mass destruction. 

The document was declassified on December 21, 2015 and published by the National Security Archive (nsarchive.org) on December 22, 2015.  


In the interest of nation defense and protection of its NATO allies, the SAC study was undertaken to present a plan for the “systematic destruction” of urban-industrial targets in the Soviet bloc, including “population” in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw.  The fact that the plan explicitly targeted civilian populations (as opposed to military installations with civilians nearby) was in direct conflict with international norms of the day, which prohibited attacks on civilian populations.


The study identified over 1,100 airfields in the Soviet bloc and assigned a nuclear target to each, with the Soviet bomber force assigned the highest priority.  SAC’s top priority for destruction was Soviet “air power” because of the apparent immediate threat that Soviet bombers posed to the continental United States and to U.S. forces in Europe and East Asia. 

A second list was of urban-industrial areas identified for “systematic destruction”, with over 1,200 cities in the Soviet bloc listed, from East Germany to China, also with priority numbers assigned.  Moscow and Leningrad were priority one and two respectively.

According to the study, SAC would have targeted Air Power targets with bombs ranging from 1.7 to 9 megatons, exploding them at ground level.  A megaton equals about 70 times the destruction of a single Hiroshima bomb, and detonating the weapons on or close to the ground would maximize blast effects (reducing chances of retaliation), destroy the target and produce significant radiation fallout to be picked up by winds to be spread near and far, directly exposing civilians to radiation fallout, if not direct obliteration.

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Syria and Egypt for a short-lived political union, which ended when Syria seceded from the union in 1961.

The union was planned as the 1st step towards a larger pan-Arab state, and was created when a group of political and military leaders in Syria proposed a merger between the two states to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

In 1959, North Korea and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy that included a provision for Soviet help to establish a nuclear research complex in Yongbyon and supply them with a research reactor.

In the early 1960s, North Korea received the Soviet IRT-200 nuclear research reactor and the Soviet Union provided extensive technical assistance to North Korea in constructing the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center and associated facilities. North Korea used this small research reactor to produce radioisotopes and to train personnel.

Although the cabinet and the Academy of Sciences were given operational and administrative oversight of the nuclear facilities, then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung retained ultimate control of the nuclear program and all decisions associated with weapons development.

Despite the early assistance from Moscow (and minor assistance from China), the North Korea nuclear program developed largely without significant foreign assistance.

After China completed its first nuclear test in October 1964, Kim Il Sung asked China to share its nuclear weapon technology, but Chinese leader Mao Zedong refused. Shortly thereafer, North Korean relations with China began to deteriorate.

Patrice Lumumba was the founder of the MNC (Mouvement Nactional Congolais) party that worked and campaigned for independence from Belgium’s colonial rule.

In 1960, the Congolese finally received their independence and Lumumba was elected leader.  However, it was not a smooth transition and there was little stability.  Instead, a great political upheaval and a climate of civil war ensued.  The erupting conflicts were so tragic that nearly 100,000 people were killed within 5 years of Congo independence.

In the first week following, mutiny broke out in the army, and violence erupted between black and white civilians.   Belgium was forced to send troops to protect fleeing whites.

Although the Republic of Niger was created in 1958, the nation did not receive its complete and formal independance from France until August 3, 1960.

In the late 1960s, North Korea expanded its educational and research institutions to support a nuclear program for both civilian and military applications with the opening of the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center.

The military committee of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party planned a coup and seized power in Syria.

The Ba'ath Party was able to mobilize Syria's ethnic minorities, who were often underprivileged. The Alawits, the Druzes and the Isma'ilis, for instance, were ethnic groups with low social class who began to embrace a radical form of Arab nationalism, found in the ideology of the Ba'ath Party.

The growth of a new middle class in Syria fueled discontent and they became radicalized, as the traditional elite dominated the largest sectors of the economy and created the most wealth for themselves.

Salah Jadid was a Syrian general and political figure in the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party who stage a military coup against civilian Syrian leadership.  

Although he played in the background, he had many men allied to him in some of the top Syrian government and military posts.

After the coup, Hafez al-Assad was appointed defense minister.  Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad maintained highly public policy differences.  While Jadid retained allegiance of most of the civilian Ba'ath, Assad gradually asserted control over the military wing of the party.

Maulana Karenga was a major figure in the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and in 1965 co-founded US, a black nationalist organization, with Hakim Jamal.

Karenga was born in Parsonsburg, Maryland, the 14th child and 7th son in his family.  His father was a tenant farmer and Baptist minister, who hired out his family to work as sharecroppers.

At the age of 18 years, he moved to Los Angeles to live with his older brother, who was a teacher, and immediately enrolled in Los Angeles City College.  As a young man, he became active with the civil rights organizations CORE and SNCC, and developed an interest in African studies.  He became the first African student elected president of Los Angeles City College.

After earning his associate degree, he earned BA and MA degrees, from UCLA, in political science.  During the course of his education, he studied Swahili, Arabic, and other African-related subjects.  During this period, he took the name Karenga (Swahili for “keeper of tradition”) and the title Maulani (Swahili-Arabic for “master teacher”).

While pursuing his PhD. at UCLA, he taught African culture classes for local African community members and joined a study group called the Circle of Seven.

After the Watts Riots, Karenga and the Circle of Seven established a community organization called US (meaning “Us black people”).  Karenga cited Malcom X’s Afro-American Unity program as an influence on the US organization’s work.  The US organization joined in several community revival programs.

As racial disturbances spread across the country, Karenga appeared at a series of Black Power Conferences, joining other groups in urging establishment of a separate political structure for Africans.  US developed a youth component with para-military aspects called the Simba Wachanga, which advocated and practiced community self-defense and service to the masses.

Karenga created Kwanzaa in 1966 to be the first Pan-African holiday.  He said Kwanzaa was created to “give [Africans] an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.”

The rituals of the holiday promote African traditions and Nguzo Saba, the seven principles of African Heritage.

Umoja

Unity

Strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.

Kujichagulia

Self-Determination

Define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.

Ujima

Collective Work & Responsibility

Build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and solve them together.

Ujamaa

Cooperative Economics

Build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and profit from them together.

Nia

Purpose

Make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.

Kuumba

Creativity

Always do as much as we can, in the way that we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

Imani

Faith

Believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

In 1966, cross-dressing was illegal, and unwelcome in gay bars,  Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco was one of the few places where transgender people could congregate publicly.   In addition, the cafeteria was open all hours.

At some point, however, Compton’s Cafeteria staff, began to calling the police to crack down on transgender and transsexual individuals, who would frequent the restaurant.  In response to police arrests, the transgender and transsexual community launched an unsuccessful picket of Compton’s Cafeteria.

One another night, Compton’s staff called police when some transgender customer began acting loud and out of hand, and when an officer attempted to arrest one of the transgender women, she threw her coffee in his face.  At that point, the riot began, with dishes and furniture being thrown, and the restaurant’s plate-glass windows smashed.  Reinforcements were called and the fighting spilled into the street, where structures were burned and a police car destroyed.

The next night, more transgender people, and Tenderloin street people, and other members of the LGBTcommunity joined in a picket of the cafeteria, which would not allow transgender people back in. The demonstration ended with the newly installed plate-glass windows being smashed again.

The riot marked a turning point in the local LGBT movement, as in its aftermath, a network of transgender social, psychological, and medical support services was established, which culminated in 1968 with the creation of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit [NTCU], the first such peer-run support and advocacy organization in the world.

Also following the riot, transgender and transsexual individuals were allowed to live their lives more freely and openly because police brutality towards them subsided.  For example, they had much less fear of being heckled by the police department for dressing how they chose to during the daytime.

The United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, invalidates laws prohibiting interracial marriage as unconstitutional, overturning Pace v Alabama (1883).

Between June 5th and June 10th, 1967, Israel engaged in a war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, at the end of which, Israel had gained control of the Golan Heights from Syria. 

In the attack, much of Syria's air force was destroyed.

Carl Stokes was elected on November 7, 1967 and took office on January 1, 1968.

Stokes defeated Seth Taft, the grandson of former President William Howard Taft, with a 50.5% margin. At the time of the his election, Cleveland was a majority white city with a 37% black population.

As mayor, Stokes opened city hall jobs to blacks and women. He was known as a strong administrator, and is remembered for his vision and motivation. Stokes feuded with City Council and the Police Department for most of his tenure.

After his mayoral administration, Stokes lectured to colleges around the country. In 1972, he became the first black anchorman in New York City when he took a job with television station WNBC-TV.

Richard G. Hatcher
Richard G. Hatcher was actually the first Black candidate elected mayor of a U.S. city larger than 100,000 people and the first Black mayor in the state of Indiana, but Carl Stokes, elected to office days after him, was was sworn into office prior to Hatcher's inauguration, although Stokes, claiming the title of "The First".

In 1969, Della Reese began hosting a syndicated talk show, The Della Reese Show, to become the first African American woman to host a TV show in America.  Her show lasted on air for one year.

She was born in 1931, as Delloreese Early, to a Cherokee mother and a black father.  At the age of 13 years, she began touring with famed gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson.  After leaving the gospel tour, five years later, at the age of 18, she began an independent career as a gospel, jazz, and R&B artist.

Della Reese had a big, boisterous personality and was a natural conversationalist.  In 1969, while nearing the age of 40 years, and after over two decades in the entertainment filed, she was offered the opportunity to host her own syndicated talk show.  She enjoyed successful ratings for several months, even in the most racist southern states, but based upon her own account, she was terminated because her "gums were too dark", instead of pink, and America could not adjust to her wide smile.

In 1979, surviving an aneurysm that burst in her brain while appearing on the Tonight Show, Della began studying spirtuality and eventually became an ordained minister, to found the nondemoninational Christian church called "Understanding Principles for Better Living" (or UP), where she preached every Sunday.  During the course of her ministry, she also authored several books on spirituality, including  "Metaphysically Speaking" and "Angels Along the Way".



In her senior years, Della Reese became more famously known for her role as Tess, the wise angel, on the long-running TV show, "Touched by an Angel".


Della Reese remained active and involved throughout her long life.  She died at the age of 86 in November 2017.

The United Nations sponsored an organization called Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament to negotiate an international treaty to:

• prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology
• promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy
• further the goal of achieving complete nuclear disarmament.

On March 5, 1970, two years after the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons opened for signature, it was entered into force. 

More countries have adhered to the NPT than any other arms limitation and disarmament agreement.

UN Member Nations that
Never Accepted the Treaty

1. India
2. Israel
3. Pakistan
4. South Sudan (founded in 2011)

The following five nations are termed Nuclear-Weapon-States  and are also the permanent members of the UN Security Council. They are the only sovereign nations allowed to develop and posses nuclear weapons, by virtue of the NPT, based on the rationale that they  had already built and tested nuclear explosives prior to 1967.

All other nations, termed non-nuclear-weapons states, agree never to acquire nuclear weapons.  And, in exchange for their compliance with total nuclear disarmament and refraining from pursuing the development of nuclear technology, the nuclear-weapon states promised that they would share in the benefits of peaceful nuclear technology.

In 1969, while Salad Jadid was still in power, Hafez al-Assad, Defense Minister, purged several Jadid loyalists.

In 1970, when Jadid sent Syrian-controlled Palestinian troops into Jordan to help the PLO, al-Assad took exception to the move.

Whe the Soviets sent an ambassador to mediate the power struggle between Jadid (whom they supported) and al-Assad, al-Assad was angered. 

Later in the year, Jadid attempted to fire al-Assad and his supporters. This in turn caused al-Assad to launch a coup against Jadid.

Jadid was arrested on November 13, 1970, and was confined to prison until his death in 1993.

Hafez al-Assad declared himself President of Syria in 1971.

Without consulting, or advising, the other nations, the United States pulled out of the Bretton Woods Accord, abandoning the Gold Exchange Standard, whereby the value of the dollar is pegged to the price of gold.   With this, the value of the dollar was left to float, based upon the rise and fall of market demand.  This was done despite the fact that all other currencies were pegged to the value of the dollar.

OPEC was organized in 1960 to resist pressure by the "Seven Sisters" (seven large, Western oil companies) to reduce oil prices. OPEC was formed by the following countries:

• Iran
• Iraq 
• Kuwait 
• Libya 
• Qatar 
• Saudi Arabia  
• United Arab Emirates 
• Venezuela 
• Indonesia 
• Nigeria 
• Ecuador

Leonard Matlovich,  of Croatian decent, was a Vietname War veteran, recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, and a race relations instructor.   In 1975, he publicly  “came out of the closet”, in protest of the military ban on gays.

Sometime in 1974, Matlovich contacted gay activist, Frank Kameny.  Kameny had been looking for a gay service member, with a perfect record, to create a test case to challenge the military’s ban on gays.  After several months of discussion with Kameny and ACLU attorney David Addlestone, a plan was formulated that resulted in him hand-delivering a letter to his commanding officer.

In the late 1970s, around 1976, Egypt sent North Korea several Soviet Scud-type missiles, which North Korean engineers began to reverse engineer to begin their ballistic missile program.


Over the next several years, the North Koreans also began uranium mining operations at various locations.

Beginning in the 1980s, North Korea began making significant strides in the development of nuclear weaponry.

In 1980 they built a factory at Yongbyon to refine yellowcake, used in the preparation of uranium fuel for nuclear reactors.

In 1984 they completed construction of a gas-cooled, graphite-moderated nuclear reactor for plutonium production, and began construction of a second nuclear reactor.

Following a failed military coup in June 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat ordered a major crackdown, culminating in the arrest of 1,600 opponents, mostly Muslim fundamentalists and extremists, for “sectarian sedition” --- inciting rebellion against his regime.  Some Coptic Christian priests also were arrested and the community's Pope, Shenuda III, was stripped of power and advised to stay at his remote desert monastery.  

In the days following, after being rudely challenged by the press on his position, an ABC news reporter was expelled and the video footage of a British journalist critical of the Sadat regime was confiscated at the Cairo airpot.

Blaming Soviet diplomats for instigating unrest, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat expelled hundreds of representatives of the Soviet Union from Egypt.

Along with expelling the Soviet Ambassador Vladimir Polyakov, six Soviet diplomats, two Soviet journalists,  and a Hungarian diplomat were expelled and requested to be out of the country within 48 hours. 

In addition, the contracts of more than 1,000 Soviet technical advisers who helped set up and run Egypt's heavy industry were asked to leave the country within a week..

Sadat took these actions after Egyptian military intelligence uncovered three plots involving Soviet and Hungarian diplomats aimed at toppling the regime.  Reports also indicated that the Soviets had played an "outstanding role instigating and escalating Muslim-Christian strife" in Egypt.

Anwar Sadat, the President of Egypt, was assassinated during the annual victory parade held in Cairo to celebrate Operation Badr, during which the Egyptian Army had crossed the Suez Canal and taken back a small part of the Sinai Peninsula from Israel at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War. 

Although Sadat could claim many enemies, members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad were held accountable for the murder.

Sadat was protected by four layers of security and eight bodyguards, and the army parade should have been safe due to ammunition-seizure rules.  

As Egyptian Air Force Mirage jets flew overhead, distracting the crowd, Egyptian Army soldiers and troop trucks towing artillery paraded by.

One truck contained the assassination squad, led by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli. As it passed the tribune, Islambouli forced the driver at gunpoint to stop. From there, the assassins dismounted and Islambouli approached Sadat with three hand grenades concealed under his helmet.

Sadat stood to receive his salute (Anwar's nephew Talaat El Sadat later said, "The president thought the killers were part of the show when they approached the stands firing, so he stood saluting them"), whereupon Islambouli threw all his grenades at Sadat, only one of which exploded (but fell short), and additional assassins rose from the truck, indiscriminately firing AK-47 assault rifles into the stands until they had exhausted their ammunition and then attempted to flee.


Sadat and ten others were killed outright or suffered fatal wounds.   Hosni Mubarak, Vice President of Egypt and several others were wounded in the attack, which lasted about two minutes.

Israel invaded Lebanon to occupy a strip of South Lebanon.  Funded by Iran to combat Israel's occupation, the group Hezbollah is formed and engages in guerilla warfare against Israel.

The military strength of Hezbollah continued to grow, forcing Israel to withdraw on May 24, 2000.

North Korea signs the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) but is not immediately compliant with the safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Under Article III of the NPT, North Korea has 18 months to conclude such an arrangement.

In the years that follow, North Korea stalls compliance, determining that it will not comply unless the United States withdraws its nuclear weapons from South Korea. 

Oprah Winfrey's talk show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show", was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011.

North Korea signs the Geneva Protocol and agreed to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).

As Soviet control of the communist governments begins to weaken, the security guarantees and economic support provided North Korea for nearly 45 years begin to erode.

The United States makes an offer of normalized diplomatic relations with North Korea, in exchange for their compliance with the NPT.

Although North Korea had signed the NPT in 1985, it had not yet allowed inspections of its nuclear facilities, and U.S. satellite surveillance indicated that they were in the early stages of building a nuclear bomb.

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Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United Sates was charged with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice, and impeached on December 19, 1998 by the House of Representatives.  He is only the second president in American history to have been impeached. 

However, despite Republican control of the Senate, they were unable to muster the required 2/3 supermajority to actually convict him.


On May 6, 1994, two days before the three-year statue of limitations, Paula Jones a former Arkansas state employee, sued President Clinton for sexual harassment, related to an incident that had reportedly occurred in 1991, while Clinton servered as Governor of Arkansas.

Jones sought $750,000 in damages for Clinton propositioning her and exposing himself to her inside of a hotel room, where she had been escorted by staff.

It was found that for 1-1/2 years, President Clinton had nearly 12 sexual encounters in the White House with Monica Lewinsky, an unpaid intern.


After a few months of working at her new job at the Pentagon, Monica Lewinsky confided in a co-worker, Linda Tripp, that she had had an affair with the president.

President Clinton’s attorneys argued a defense against the sexual harassment lawsuit that pushed the case to the Supreme Court  on January 13, 1997.  And on May 27, 1997, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Clinton, and allowed the lawsuit to proceedd.

Over 6 months after Monica Lewinsky revealed her affair to Linda Tripp, she and Linda Tripp continued to engaged in conversation about the affair.  It was reported that Tripp began to “secretly” record these conversations, held much later, where Monica Lewinsky revealed additional details.  In November 1997, Monica Lewinsky told Linda Tripp that she a a blue Gap dress that still bore the semen stain resulting from administering oral sex to President Clinton in February 1997.

Paula Jones’ lawyers decided to show the court a pattern of behavior by Clinton that involved his allegedly repeatedly becoming sexually involved with state or government employees.  Jones’ lawyers therefore subpoenaed Monica Lewinsky.

On January 17, President Bill Clinton offered testimony in a deposition for the Jones lawsuit, where he denied having “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky.

On April 2, 1998, before the case could reach trial, Judge Susan Webber Wright granted President Clinton’s motion for dismissal, ruling that Jones could not show that she had suffered any damages.  Jones appealed this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit.

Linda Tripp channeled the details that she had obtained from Monica Lewinsky to Kenneth Starr’s investigative team.  And, in late July, 1998, after signing an immunity agreement, Monica Lewinsky turned the blue dress, which she claimed contained Bill Clinton’s semen, over to Kenneth Starr’s investigators. On August 17, the FBI reported its conclusion that Clinton was the source of the semen on the dress.

Politicians and commentators alike agreed that the blue dress proved Clinton lied when he denied a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.


Kenneth Starr had been rising in Republican ranks for two decades, and served as a federal Court of Appeals judge and as solicitor for George H.W. Bush.  He was appointed to investigate the suicide death of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster and the Whitewater real estate investments of Bill Clinton, which had occurred 20 years prior.  However, the scope of his inquiry expanded to include a range of accusations of fraud, obstruction of justice and abuse of power allegedly involving President Clinton and the first lady, as well as some of their closest friends and advisers.  It also expanded to include Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

After four years of exploring a wide-range of accusations, Kenneth Starr released his impeachment report, the  “Starr Report”.   In it, he made a wide-range of claims against the Clintons.  He also included a  “pornographic” account of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.  Quoting Lewinsky's extended descriptions of each of her multiple sexual encounters with Clinton, the report laid out a case that the president had committed perjury in denying the affair. It did so in a manner calculated to maximize his embarrassment and encourage a Nixon-like resignation to avoid impeachment. 

Because Starr primarily acted as a political operative, seeking the impeachment of Clinton, and was found to present less than credible details,  he was eventually charged for violating legal ethics for presenting (and leaking) information irrelevant to an investigation as evidence of legal wrongdoing.

Kenneth Starr 2016 Update: In May 2016, Baylor University’s Board of Regents voted to fire Ken Starr as university president and chancellor following investigation into the university’s sexual assaults scandals.

On November 13, 1998, President Clinton settled with Jones for the entire amount of her claim, but without an apology, in exchange for her agreement to drop the appeal.  His attorney stated that Clinton only settled so he could end the lawsuit and move on with his life, and that her claims were actually baseless.

In March 1999, Judge Wright ruled that Jones would only get $200,000 from the settlement and that the rest would be used to pay legal expenses.

The following month, Judge Wright found Clinton in civil contempt of court for misleading testimoney in the Jones case.  She ordered him to pay 12 hundred dollars to the court and 90 thousand dollars to Jones’ lawyers for their expenses.

After finding Clinton in contempt of court, she also referred his conduct to the Arkansas Bar for disciplinary action, and on January 19, 2001, the day before he left the office of the president, he was stripped of his license to practice law in Arkansas for a period of five years.  His fine was paid from a fund raised for his legal expenses.

Natural disasters frequently occur in Thailand, including floods, droughts, tropical storms and forest fires. Earthquakes and landslides occur occasionally.

The rural area is the most vulnerable to disasters because of infrastructure underdevelopment. Moreover, the rural people that are mostly poor agriculturists are unable to invest in resources for reducing their vulnerability to disasters. 

By January 29, 1999, it was reported that 6 million people in 44 provinces had been affected by Thailand's worst drought in decades. The areas concerned were 11 provinces in the North, 17 provinces in the North-East, 9 provinces in the Central Plains, 6 provinces in the East, and 1 province in the South.

A heavy downpour of rain, lasting several days, averted severe impact of the drought in the East.
 
Reduction in Use of Water Advised, Especially in Farming
The people were urged to make careful use of the limited water supply.  In particular, farmers were discouraged from planting a second rice crop, in favor of planting  short-lived crops that consume less water, or instructed turn to poultry farming.


The drought has affected the infrastructure of outlying areas in Bangkok, where some roads alongside canals collapsed as their banks caved in due to low water levels.

Unfortunately, the drought coincided with a difficult time of economic recession in Thailand, when it was hoped that agriculture production would help them move  towards economic recovery.

Water shortages in the lowlands of Thailand are one of the most important social and environmental problems experienced each year.  The drought-stricken people suffer water shortage, especially water for drinking, cropping and livestock farming. 

exacerbate (ig ZASS er bate) to make a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling worse

Droughts annually occur in the dry season of October to April, and they become much worse that ever before. The problems are exacerbated by water demands for agricultural and industrial purposes due to increase in population and economic development.

The root cause of droughts (an flash floods during the rainy season) in Thailand is deforestation associated with soil characteristics and dry climate. In 1998 the problems are reinforced by the El Nino phenomenon. Deforestation reduces cloud formations, resulting in decreased rainfall ; it also reduces the water retention capacities of watersheds. 

Government agencies ae seeking new sources of water.

artesian (are TEEE shun) a well dug at a particular angle to allow for natural pressure to produce a constant supply of water with little or no pumping)

The Ministry of Industry through the Department of Mineral Resources has started to dig artesian wells in many areas of the country to help drought-hit people.

When Thailand experienced the worst drought in decades, it was at the height of economic turmoil that first began to surface in 1997. And tens of thousands of farmers affected by the drought, with severe crop loss, arrived in the capital city of Bangkok demanding compensation and a larger share of the available water.

Their leadership said, "The government is not showing any sincerity to solve farmers' problems.  It always takes the side of the rich people in the cities who do not know about our situation.  At the momemt, we are being reasonable.  But if delays continue, we will take to the streets and maybe even chase out the government".

Government officials disputed farmers' claims, saying, "We cannot control the amount of rain that falls, so we have to control the amount of water we release from the reservoirs in the dry season.  We have told the farmers to cut their cultivating area in half to save water, but because of the high price of rice, they do not listen.  Now everyone is suffering".

Maurice Ashley was born in St. Andrew, Jamaica.  He attended Wolmer's Boys School in Jamaica, then moved to the United States when he was 12.  He graduated from City College of New York (CCNY), which he represented in intercollegiate team competition   He is an author, app designer, puzzle inventor, and motivational speaker.

In 1999, at the age of 33, he was awarded the lifetime title of Grandmaster by the world chess organization FIDE.   Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain.

With an approval rating at an estimated 2%, Boris Yeltsin, after 9 years in office, resigned as President of Russia, by way of a taped message aired on Russian television.


Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of Russia was then named acting president.