Misplaced Pages of History

Date

Event

1-Jan

World Peace Day

1-Jan

A law making slave importation into the U.S. illegal becomes effective. (1808)

1-Jan

William Lloyd Garrison publishes The Liberator, the leading abolitionist paper in the United States. (1831)

1-Jan

Michigan becomes the first state to abolish capital punishment. (1847)

1-Jan

President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation (1863)

1-Jan

Arrest of 10 anti-nuclear activists for trespassing at Nevada Test Site culminates a 54-day encampment at the main Test Site gate. The camp establishes momentum for what became a movement of over 10,000 arrests in numerous Test Site protests over the following years. (1986)

1-Jan

Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. (1993)

1-Feb

Four African American students sit in at Woolworth's, Greensboro, NC (1960)

1-Feb

7,000 march to protest KKK in Greensboro, North Carolina. (1980)

1-Feb

President George Bush & Russian President Boris Yeltsin declare an official end to Cold War (1992)

1-Feb

Two Native American activists, Eddie Hatcher & Tim Jacobs, occupy a newspaper office in Lumberton, North Carolina, to highlight racism issues. (1988)

1-Feb

Two-month campaign of Citizens Against War begins, Belgrade, Serbia. (1992)

1-Mar

Pennsylvania abolishes slavery. (1780)

1-Mar

First U.S. Census count includes slave & free Negroes. Indians were not included. (1790)

1-Mar

President Kennedy established the Peace Corps. (1961)

1-Mar

Nuclear Free Pacific Day to commemorate 2nd U.S. hydrogen bomb dropped on Bikini Atoll. (1954)

1-Mar

Civil Rights Act enacted in U.S. (1875)

1-Mar

International Day of the Seal to promote awareness of the seal's peril. (since 1983)

1-Mar

Chicana Welfare Rights Organization is formed, with Alicia Escalante as director. (1968)

1-Mar

Women for Peace protest against militarism, Belgrade & Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. (1991)

1-Mar

15,000 demonstrate in Lunesburg against shipment of French nuclear waste to site in Gorleben. (1997)

1-Apr

Diggers occupy Saint George's Hill, seizing land to hold in common & to plant. (1649)

1-Apr

Brook Farm, history's most famous utopian community, is founded near West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Its primary appeal was to young Bostonians who shrink from the materialism of American life. (1841)

1-Apr

Michigan becomes first state to abolish the death penalty. (1847)

1-Apr

U.S. Congress overrides President Andrew Johnson's veto of Civil Rights Bill, gives equal rights to all men born in the U.S. except Indians. (1866)

1-Apr

Gandhi ends salt march by illegally collecting salt from the sea. (1930)

1-Apr

500 school children, most with haggard faces & in tattered clothes, paraded through Chicago's downtown section to the Board of Education offices to demand that the school system provide them with food. (1932)

1-Apr

Protesters at Greenham Common form a human chain 14 miles long to oppose missiles. (1983)

1-Apr

South Africa: boycott of segregated schools begins. (1955)

1-Apr

The Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty is signed. (1621)

1-Apr

Environmental Protection Agency orders end to dumping of sludge off the New Jersey coast. (1985)

1-May

Mother Jones (born Mary Harris), Irish-American anti-war activist & labor radical, born in Cork, Ireland. (1830)

1-May

International Workers Day (since 1886)

1-May

Catholic Worker newspaper founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. (1933)

1-May

Glenn Taylor, Idaho Senator, arrested in Birmingham, Alabama for trying to enter a meeting through a door marked "for Negroe.” (1948)

1-May

"Educational television Act", P.L. 87-447, is signed into law. (1962)

1-May

Second Factory for Peace opens, Onllwyn, Dulais Valley, Wales. (1965)

1-May

500,000 Vietnamese march for end of war. (1966)

1-May

Soviet youths openly defy police and dance the twist in Moscow's Red Square during May Day celebrations. (1967)

1-May

Beginning of five days of anti-war May Day protests in Washington, D.C., resulting in over 14,000 arrests—the largest mass civil disobedience in U.S. history. (1971)

1-May

24-hour occupation of Seabrook (NH) nuclear power site results in 1,415 arrests. The action, sponsored by Clamshell Alliance, becomes a model for anti-nuclear direct actions across the country. (1971)

1-May

Day of resistance & protest against Falklands War. (1982)

1-May

One million South Africans strike against apartheid in COSATU strike. (1986)

1-May

Marchers in Quito protest "disappeared people.” (1993)

1-May

Rally to Save Ancient Forests in Eugene, Oregon as logging season begins. (1999)

1-Jun

Mary Dyer hanged for nonviolent resistance to suppression of Quakers, Boston (1660)

1-Jun

Sojourner Truth set out from New York on an historic journey across America, preaching about the evils of slavery and promoting women's rights. (1845)

1-Jun

A Warsaw underground newspaper, the Liberty Brigade, makes public the news of the gassing of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmno, a death camp in Poland-almost seven months after extermination of prisoners began.(1942)

1-Jun

Sen. Margaret Chase Smith denounces Joseph McCarthy and his "red-baiting" tactics on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in a speech called "A Declaration of Conscience.” (1950)

1-Jun

700 protest at White House against nuclear testing. (1958)

1-Jun

First Buddhist monk, Quang Duc (73) immolates self in Vietnam. (1963)

1-Jun

Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW) is formed. (1967)

1-Jun

U.S. and USSR signed an agreement to stop producing chemical weapons (1990)

1-Jul

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

1-Jul

8000 anti-war marchers demonstrate in Boston. (1917)

1-Jul

Guatemala's dictator of 14 years deposed by massive general strike. (1945)

1-Jul

700 protest at White House against nuclear testing. (1958)

1-Jul

61 nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.(1968)

1-Jul

Women Against Daddy Warbucks destroy 1-A files in eight New York City draft boards. (1970)

1-Jul

Publication of first issue of Ms. Magazine. (1972)

1-Aug

As World War I begins, Harry Hodgkin, a British Quaker and Friedrich Siegmund-Schulte, a German Lutheran pastor, attending a conference in Germany, pledged to continue sowing the "seeds of peace and love, no matter what the future might bring," germinating the idea of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. (1914)

1-Aug

Gandhi begins movement of non-cooperation, India. (1920)

1-Aug

Britain bans cigarette advertising from commercial television. (1965)

1-Aug

Helsinki Accords on human rights & East-West relations formed. (1975)

1-Aug

First occupation of Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear reactor site. (1976)

1-Aug

Blockade of nuclear missile site begins, Grossenstringen, West Germany. (1982)

1-Aug

U.S. resumes making chemical weapons after 14 year's suspension. (1983)

1-Sep

Traditional date of the destruction of Jerusalem. (69)

1-Sep

Carl von Ossietzky founds Nie Wieder Krieg in Berlin, Germany (1920)

1-Sep

Charles Liteky & George Mizo begin Fast For Life against U.S. support of Nicaraguan contras, Washington D.C. (1986)

1-Sep

Kurdish & British activists blockade an arms trade exhibition outside London. 89 arrested. (1997)

1-Sep

International Day of War Tax Resistance

1-Oct

Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense. (1776)

1-Oct

Anti-Krieg Museum, first museum for peace, opened in Berlin (1920)

1-Oct

Army kills and injures hundreds during student protest of university policies, Mexico City. (1968)

1-Oct

World Vegetarian Day, sponsored by the North American Vegetarian Society

1-Oct

Five Plowshares activists pour blood on submarines at General Dynamics. (1984)

1-Nov

Australia abolishes peace-time compulsory military training. (1929)

1-Nov

A London organization sent a delegation of women to Geneva to lobby representatives at a test ban conference to push for an end to nuclear testing. (1958)

1-Nov

McDonald's, under pressure from environmental groups, said it would replace plastic food containers with paper. (1990)

1-Dec

International Peace Bureau launched, Berne, Switzerland. (1891)

1-Dec

Costa Rica disbands its army. (1948)

1-Dec

Rosa Parks, NAACP staff member, arrested for not giving up her bus seat (1955)

1-Dec

12 nations sign treaty for scientific peaceful use of Antarctica. (1959)

1-Dec

World AIDS Day, sponsored by the American Association of World Health. (since 1980s)

1-Dec

A silent march of women, protesting conscription, is met by a police attack & the arrest of 37 women. Khartoum, Sudan. (1997)