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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

The Black Panther Party

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4. 1964 - 1965 Free Speech Movement “The Free Speech Movement was the first revolt of the 1960s to bring to a college campus the mass civil disobedience tactics pioneered in the civil rights movement. Those tactics, most notably the sit-in, would give students unprecedented leverage to make demands on university administrators, setting the stage for mass student protests against the Vietnam War.” – Robert Cohen, author of Freedom’s Orator
5. 1961- Freedom Riders - Attack in Anniston On Sunday, May 14, 1961—Mother's Day—scores of angry white people blocked a Greyhound bus carrying black and white passengers through rural Alabama. The attackers pelted the vehicle with rocks and bricks, slashed tires, smashed windows with pipes and axes and lobbed a firebomb through a broken window. As smoke and flames filled the bus, the mob barricaded the door. "Burn them alive," somebody cried out. "Fry the goddamn niggers." An exploding fuel tank and warning shots from arriving state troopers forced the rabble back and allowed the riders to escape the inferno. Even then some were pummeled with baseball bats as they fled. A few hours later, black and white passengers on a Trailways bus were beaten bloody after they entered whites-only waiting rooms and restaurants at bus terminals in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama.
7. 1960 Lunch Counter Sit Ins (Woolworths) Sit-In Begins Blair, Richmond, McCain and McNeil planned their protest carefully, and enlisted the help of a local white businessman, Ralph Johns, to put their plan into action. On February 1, 1960, the four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, where the official policy was to refuse service to anyone but whites. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats. Police arrived on the scene but were unable to take action due to the lack of provocation. By that time, Johns had already alerted the local media, who had arrived in full force to cover the events on television. The Greensboro Four stayed put until the store closed, then returned the next day with more students from local colleges.
8. 1965 The Watts Riots On Wednesday, 11 August 1965, Marquette Frye, a 21-year-old black man, was arrested for drunk driving on the edge of Los Angeles’ Watts neighborhood. The ensuing struggle during his arrest sparked off 6 days of rioting, resulting in 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, nearly 4,000 arrests, and the destruction of property valued at $40 million. On 17 August 1965, Martin Luther King arrived in Los Angeles in the aftermath of the riots. His experiences over the next several days reinforced his growing conviction that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) should move north and lead a movement to address the growing problems facing black people in the nation’s urban areas. Frye had been drinking and was driving with his brother, Ronald, in the car, when the two were pulled over two blocks from their home. While Marquette was being arrested, Ronald retrieved their mother from her house. When Mrs. Frye saw her son being forcibly arrested, she fought with the arresting officers, tearing one officer’s shirt. An officer then struck Marquette’s head with his nightstick, and all three of the Fryes were arrested.
10. 1969 Woodstock
11. 1965 - 1975 Chicano Movement Key years were 1965-1975 - In the 1960s, a radicalized Mexican-American movement began pushing for a new identification. The Chicano Movement, aka El Movimiento, advocated social and political empowerment through a chicanismo or cultural nationalism. As the activist Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales declared in a 1967 poem, “La raza! / Méjicano! / Español! / Latino! / Chicano! / Or whatever I call myself, / I look the same.”
12. 1969 People's Park People’s Park (UC Berkeley) was born in a spirit of optimism in April and May 1969 after thousands of students, activists and community members transformed a university-owned muddy parking lot into an open, inviting green park. The builders of the park were determined to create a space controlled by the community, not by a conservative university that had a history of squelching free speech. The site has been a contested space ever since then.
15. MLK Assasination Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, an event that sent shock waves reverberating around the world. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches and nonviolent protests to fight segregation and achieve significant civil rights advances for African Americans. His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among Black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of the civil rights era.
18. Cesar Chavez Delano Grape Strike begins September 8, 1965 marks the beginning of one of the most important strikes in American history. As over 2,000 Filipino-American farm workers refused to go to work picking grapes in the valley north of Bakersfield, California, they set into motion a chain of events that would extend over the next five years. We know it as the Delano Grape Strike. READ MORE: When Millions of Americans Stopped Eating Grapes in Support of Farm Workers Filipino and Mexican immigrants had worked for decades along the West Coast, moving with the seasons to harvest the region's crops. The Filipino contingent in particular was growing restless, as many of the workers were aging and anxious for decent medical care and retirement funds. When one of their number, labor organizer Larry Itliong, declared a strike on September 8, he asked for the support of the National Farm Workers Association and its Mexican-American founders, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Although Chavez had reservations about his union's capacity to pull off the strike, he put the issue to the workers, who enthusiastically joined. The strike lasted five years and went through a number of phases. From the outset, the already poor farm workers faced opposition from law enforcement and cruel attempts at sabotage by the growers—some reported that farmers shut off the water supply to their meager dormitories. As frustration grew and workers increasingly spoke of violence three years into the strike, Chavez decided to go on a hunger strike, emulating his hero Mahatma Gandhi. In addition to ending the calls for violence, the hunger strike drew further attention to the movement, earning praise from figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
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1. 1969 Free Breakfast Program The Free Breakfast for School Children Program was a community service program run by the Black Panther Party. Inspired by contemporary research about the essential role of breakfast for optimal schooling, the Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area. Initiated in January 1969 at St. Augustine's Church in Oakland, the program became so popular that by the end of the year, the Panthers setup kitchens in cities across the US, feeding more than 10,000 children every day before they went to school. Bobby Seale believed that "no kid should be running around hungry in school," a simple credo that lead FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to call the breakfast program, "the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for. source
6. FBI Wanted Poster Angela Davis, Black Panther Party, American, 1966 - 1982
8. 1969 UCLA philosophy department hired Angela Davis
10. 1969 Bunchy Carter and John Huggins murdered on UCLA Campus https://dailybruin.com/2019/01/17/throwback-thursday-fifty-year-anniversary-of-bunchy-carter-john-huggins-shooting - The two Black Panther leaders were members of the Black Student Union, as well as a part of the High Potential Program, a program meant to increase opportunities in higher education for minority students. Tension between the Black Panthers and the US Organization was at the heart of the shooting. The US Organization and the Panthers were, at the time, vying for control of black student organizations at the collegiate and high school level. Simultaneously, the FBI was attempting to stoke tensions between the two groups through efforts that included its largely illegal surveillance program, COINTELPRO. In January 1969, the two groups backed different individuals for the role of director of the newly created Afro-American Center, now known as the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. The US Organization put forward a black psychologist with minimal background in academia as its choice. Chancellor Charles Young initially was willing to accept the choice, until a dispute arose over salary. Then, BSU announced it had reservations and wanted a different candidate, one with both an academic background and commitment to the black community. On Friday, Jan. 17, 1969, about 150 BSU members met in Campbell Hall to talk about the qualifications for the director. After the adjournment of the meeting, Harold “Tuwala” Jones entered the room and Huggins confronted him about the harassment of a fellow Panther. As a fight broke out between the two, Carter tried to intervene. Then Claude “Chuchessa” Hubert came in and shot Huggins in the back. Huggins, who was armed, fired a couple of shots back as he fell, wounded. Carter attempted to find cover behind a chair but was also shot by Hubert. “Chuchessa shot through the chair and killed him instantly,” recalled J. Daniel Johnson, a student who was present in the room, in 2008. In seconds, it was all over and two men were dead. After the shooting, university police worked in 12-hour shifts until Wednesday, Jan. 22. Police issued a bulletin announcing George Stiner and Larry Stiner as suspects, after witnesses had identified them at the scene of the shooting. George Stiner, who was also a BSU member and a part of the High Potential program, surrendered to police on Monday afternoon. His younger brother Larry surrendered later that night. The brothers eventually received life sentences based on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. Hubert, the suspected murderer of the two men, was never caught. In its private communications, the FBI reacted to the murders with some satisfaction. “It would appear that the above activity will even further split the factions of the US Group and the BPP,” reads a memo from an FBI special agent in charge office in San Diego dated Jan. 20. Chancellor Young issued two statements following the incident. “Personally we are deeply grieved by the death of these two young men who were our students,” his first statement said. “The tragic events of last Friday have in no way diminished our resolve to offer broader educational opportunities on this campus,” he added in the second statement. Reactions from campus members were generally somber. “They were doing well, they were capable and potential leaders … it was a terrible thing,” said Thomas Robischon, a faculty advisor to the High Potential Program. Unsurprisingly, most students the Bruin reached out to, especially black students, did not want to speak to the paper so soon after the shooting. According to the an article from Jan. 21, white students largely wanted to keep themselves out of the matter, with their reaction being summed up by student Mike Shatzkin, in quintessential 60s fashion: “It’s none of my dad-gummed business.” Huggins’ body was sent to his family in New Haven, Connecticut, while the funeral for Carter was held on Jan. 24. Among those in attendance were James Baldwin and Kathleen Cleaver. The campus community quickly recovered following the incident, with BSU resuming meetings on Jan. 31. The High Potential Program resumed classes on the Tuesday after the shooting. Half a century later, the program still lives on. UCLA consolidated it with the Educational Opportunity Program in 1971 to create the Academic Advancement Program. The AAP currently serves over 5,000 students from underrepresented groups at UCLA. And Campbell Hall still serves as the hub for this program. But for years after the shooting, there was no marking or sign to denote that such an incident had taken place in Campbell Hall. But the shooting hasn’t completely dropped out of the student body’s collective memory. Since 1999, family and friends of Carter and Huggins, and other students have gathered annually at Campbell Hall to remember the two. In 2010, students hung a plaque in front of Room 1201 in honor of them. And students have called regularly for Campbell Hall to be renamed Carter-Huggins Hall. So far, UCLA administration has ignored such requests. After all, they were just activists, not rich megadonors filling UCLA’s coffers. So for now, the stone in front of Campbell Hall will continue to memorialize Carter and Huggins. -
12. 1969 John Huggins and Bunchy Carter, two LA Black Panthers, murdered on campus at UCLA
14. 1969 Free Breakfast Program Bill Whitfield serving free breakfast to children in April 1969. The Panthers' breakfast program started in January 1969 at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Oakland. Ruth Beckford-Smith, a parishioner who taught Haitian dance at the church, volunteered to be one of the program’s co-organizers. Eleven children ate at St. Augustine’s on the first day. By the end of the year, the organization fed 20,000 kids in 19 cities across the country in the morning before they went to school.
15. Free Breakfast Program Panthers serving children free breakfast, Sacred Heart Church, San Francisco. Between 1969 and 1971, the Panthers established 36 breakfast programs across the country from Kansas City to New York City. It’s estimated that over time, the Panthers fed 50,000 across the country through their program. "The Panthers are feeding more kids than we are," one US government official reportedly admitted. With each mouth fed, it became increasingly difficult for government officials like Hoover to portray the Panthers in a negative light.
16. Free Breakfast Program Boys eat during a free breakfast in New York, winter 1969. Their work ultimately inspired amendments to the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 and served as the blueprint for establishing the government’s School Breakfast Program as a permanent program in 1975. According to the Food Research and Action Center, on average 13.2 million children received a free meal through that program each day during the 2013-'14 school year
17. Free Breakfast Program A Panther serving breakfast to a group of youngers. Billy X Jennings, a former Panther who now serves as the party’s archivist, worked at the original breakfast program at St Augustine’s. “Every office was required to send two people to learn how it ran so you can open one in your area,” he said. Jennings would work at St Augustine’s early in the morning before heading to class at Laney College. Soon after, the breakfast service expanded to 23 locations around Oakland
18. Free Breakfast Program Children at the Black Panthers’ free breakfast program, 1971. “This is one of the biggest and baddest things we ever did,” Jennings said. “And it’s still functioning across America … That’s what a vanguard party does. We set examples for people to follow.” Though the breakfast program is the most famous of the party’s Survival Programs, more than 60 others directly addressed the needs of the black community that were being systematically ignored.
19. Health Clinics "Testing for sickle cell anaemia, Late 1960s or Early 1970s, Oakland, California. As Fred Hampton is often quoted as saying in an undated speech, “First you have free breakfasts, then you have free medical care, then you have free bus rides, and soon you have FREEDOM!” The Black Panthers’ emphasis on providing community health services grew out of a deep distrust in minority communities towards the traditional health care system, which they saw as potentially dangerous to themselves and their families"
20. Health Clinics "Boston’s Franklin Lynch PFMC, located in a trailer parked on a city street. Clinics varied by chapter and according to each chapter’s resources. This mission was frequently manifested as activist-run no-cost or low-cost clinics, such as the Panthers’ PFMCs. Consistent with the period’s anti authoritarian zeitgeist, activists encouraged patients to have a voice in the medical encounter and urged laypeople to claim the mantle of expertise by taking a hand in their healthcare—and, sometimes, in producing medical knowledge as well. The democratization of both medical practice and biomedical knowledge, often in the clinic setting, was a tactical cornerstone of radical health politics"
21. Health Clinics
22. Health Clinics "A flyer announces the opening of the Bobby Seale PFMC in Berkeley in April 1971. With the formal establishment of a national network of PFMCs, health politics came to have an integral role in the Party’s plan to “serve the people, body and soul.” The plan to expand the clinic program was first announced by the Party’s minister of education Ray “Masai” Hewitt at a press conference in the fall of 1969. PFMCs were launched as early as 1968 in several cities, including Kansas City, Missouri; Chicago; and Seattle, with Portland following suit in 1969. The Los Angeles chapter’s Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter Clinic, located in the Watts neighborhood, opened in late December 1969. Soon after the clinic mandate was handed down, Panther clinics were launched in New York, Cleveland, Boston, Winston-Salem, and Philadelphia"
23. Health Clinics Healthcare services were coupled with other social services at the PFMCs, as shown on this flyer from 1970 advertising Los Angeles’s Alprentice Bunchy Carter clinic. The equipment necessary to operate the PFMCs was begged, borrowed, purchased, scavenged, and sometimes just appeared on the doorstep.136 Businesses, churches, and other organizations provided financial support for the Party’s health programs. Pharmaceutical companies donated drugs to the Black Panther clinics in Oregon.137 Corporate donations were similarly an important source of support for the Seattle chapter.138 Kupers, who helped shape the Los Angeles chapter’s Bunchy Carter People’s Free Medical Clinic, and Small sought donations from medical supply and pharmaceutical companies on behalf of the Panthers
24. Free Huey Huey P. Newton, in full Huey Percy Newton, (born February 17, 1942, Monroe, Louisiana, U.S.—died August 22, 1989, Oakland, California), American political activist, cofounder (with Bobby Seale) of the Black Panther Party (originally called Black Panther Party for Self-Defense). An illiterate high-school graduate, Newton taught himself how to read before attending Merritt College in Oakland and the San Francisco School of Law. While at Merritt he met Seale. In Oakland in 1966 they formed the Black Panther group in response to incidents of alleged police brutality and racism and as an illustration of the need for Black self-reliance. At the height of its popularity during the late 1960s, the party had 2,000 members in chapters in several cities. In 1967 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the death of a police officer. His imprisonment sparked protests—and the popular rallying cry “Free Huey.” His conviction was overturned in 1970, and he was released from prison. In 1971 he announced that the party would adopt a nonviolent manifesto and dedicate itself to providing social services to the Black community, which included free meals for children and health clinics. In 1974 Newton was accused of another murder and fled to Cuba for three years before returning to face charges; two trials resulted in hung juries.
26. 1969 Black Panther LA Headquarters SWAT Raid
27. 1969 John Huggins and Bunchy Carter, two LA Black Panthers, murdered on campus at UCLA
28. 1969 LAPD launched assault on the LA Black Panther headquarters "In the early morning hours of Dec. 8, 1969, Bernard Arafat awoke to explosions rocking the library of the Black Panthers’ 41st and Central Avenue headquarters in Los Angeles. Above him, footsteps stomped across the roof. Then gunfire erupted. Arafat wasn’t a seasoned Panther. He was a 17-year-old runaway from juvenile hall whose parents had both died when he was 13. After years of committing small-time crimes, Arafat was taken in by the Panthers and gained a sense of purpose. He helped with the organization’s breakfast program, feeding hungry kids on their way to school. Arafat had never fired a gun. But as he listened to the sound of bullets and heard the screams of his fellow Panthers, he made a decision. “I found an automatic shotgun and defended myself.” Arafat didn’t know it then, but he was part of an experiment in policing. On that morning 50 years ago, the Panthers became the targets of the world’s first major raid by a Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT, team. More than 350 officers took on 13 Panthers, ostensibly to execute arrest warrants. The group they battled included three women and five teenagers." - Matthew Fleischer, LA Times
29. 1969 Los Angeles, Police officers hold two members of the Black Panther Party under arrest
30. 1970 Stokely: A Life As biographer Peniel E. Joseph writes in Stokely: A Life, the events in Mississippi “catapulted Stokely into the political space last occupied by Malcolm X,” as he went on TV news shows, was profiled in Ebony and written up in the New York Times under the headline “Black Power Prophet.” Carmichael’s growing prominence put him at odds with King, who acknowledged the frustration among many African Americans with the slow pace of change, but didn’t see violence and separatism as a viable path forward. With the country mired in the Vietnam War, (a war both Carmichael and King spoke out against) and the civil rights movement King had championed losing momentum, the message of the Black Power movement caught on with an increasing number of Black Americans. King and Carmichael renewed their alliance in early 1968, as King was planning his Poor People’s Campaign, which aimed to bring thousands of protesters to Washington, D.C., to call for an end to poverty. But in April 1968, King was assassinated in Memphis while in town to support a strike by the city’s sanitation workers as part of that campaign. In the aftermath of King’s murder, a mass outpouring of grief and anger led to riots in more than 100 U.S. cities. Later that year, one of the most visible Black Power demonstrations took place at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, where Black athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised black-gloved fists in the air on the medal podium. By 1970, Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture) had moved to Africa, and SNCC had been supplanted at the forefront of the Black Power movement by more militant groups, such as the Black Panther Party, the US Organization, the Republic of New Africa and others, who saw themselves as the heirs to Malcolm X’s revolutionary philosophy.
32. 1970s Flier for "The Struggle for National Democracy in the Philippines" This flier advertises an event titled "The Struggle for National Democracy in the Philippines" which was sponsored by the Union of Democratic Filipinos and Liberation Books. A sideshow, songs and discussion are advertised. In this movement, Asian Americans, who had individually become involved with the causes of the times, drew together to address their own racial status and identity. They confronted enduring stereotypes of the unassimilable heathen, the Yellow Peril, and the perpetual foreigner. This generation of students faced the model minority myth, that Asian American students were expected to be hard-working, studious, and quiet even in the face of discrimination. While many sought to assimilate to mainstream Anglo-American cultural norms, they soon recognized that they could not assimilate fully into the white mainstream. The other racial model for Asian Americans was the Black Power movement, which rejected American racism and promoted Black autonomy, racial pride, and community control. For those African American activists, the ideologies of self-determination and cultural nationalism became realized through militant organizations, a flowering of Black arts and expression, and a reclamation of indigenous and ethnic histories. Some of the subsequent Asian American organizations, such as the Red Guard, modeled themselves partially after the Black Panthers, while others were more connected to diasporic movements, such as the Union of Democratic Filipinos, which was also involved in opposing martial law in the Philippines.
33. Black Panther Party Service to the People Programs
34. Black Panthers from Sacramento, Free Huey Rally From PBS: "Newton had been charged with 1st degree murder, assault and kidnapping in October 1967. This brought the Black Panther Party into international prominence and made Huey a revolutionary icon during 3 years of rallies & protests by tens of thousands of people across North America to "Free Huey". As Roger points out though, once Huey was released, a new problem was created: "Yeah they freed Huey. Then Huey came out and they wanted Huey to free them and I keep trying to tell the people, I say people, that's the true power of the people, you freed me, you freed Huey, now why don't you all go ahead and free yourself? But see, they can't do that can they? They can't do that cause the people always have to create what they call a leader and a leader is everything that the people want to be but the leader is everything that the people can never be so then when the leader fails, he's gonna fail, he's just flesh and blood, he's gonna fail, when the leader fails then the whole construction of the concept of leadership fails and then it just becomes a matter of contempt. And that's when they assassinate you and then put your image on a postage stamp so they can keep lickin' you in the grave."
35. Free Huey Rally Newton was arrested on the day of the shooting on October 28, 1967, and pled not guilty to the murder of officer John Frey. The Black Panther Party immediately went to work organizing a coalition to rally behind Newton and champion his release. In December the Peace and Freedom Party, a majority white anti-war political organization, joined with the Black Panther Party in support of Newton.[42] This alliance served the dual purpose of legitimizing Newton's cause while boosting the credibility of the party within the community of more radical activists.[43] Under the leadership of the Black Panther Party and the Peace and Freedom Party, 5,000 protesters gathered in Oakland on Newton's birthday, February 17, 1968, in support of Newton. They garnered the attention of international news organizations, raising the profile of the party by astounding measures. The phrase "Free Huey!" was adopted as a rallying cry for the movement, and it was printed on buttons and T-shirts. Prominent Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver claimed the goal of the Free Huey! campaign was to elevate Newton as a symbol of everything the Black Panther Party stood for, creating something of a living martyr.[44] The trial, which began on July 15, quickly ascended beyond the scope of Newton himself, evolving into a racially-charged political movement. Over the two year course of Newton's original trial and two appeals, the coalition continued to offer its support until the charges were overturned and Newton was released on August 5, 1970.
36. PANTHER POWER Original Caption: PANTHER POWER---BLACK PANTHERS, TEENAGERS AND CHILDREN ALIKE, GIVE THE PANTHER BLACK POWER SALUTE OUTSIDE THEIR "LIBERATION SCHOOL" IN THE FILLMORE DISTRICT OF SAN FRANCISCO. DECEMBER 20, 1969. UPI B/W - By 1966, the civil rights movement had been gaining momentum for more than a decade, as thousands of African Americans embraced a strategy of nonviolent protest against racial segregation and demanded equal rights under the law. But for an increasing number of African Americans, particularly young Black men and women, that strategy did not go far enough. Protesting segregation, they believed, failed to adequately address the poverty and powerlessness that generations of systemic discrimination and racism had imposed on so many Black Americans. Inspired by the principles of racial pride, autonomy and self-determination expressed by Malcolm X (whose assassination in 1965 had brought even more attention to his ideas), as well as liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Black Power movement that flourished in the late 1960s and ‘70s argued that Black Americans should focus on creating economic, social and political power of their own, rather than seek integration into white-dominated society. Crucially, Black Power advocates, particularly more militant groups like the Black Panther Party, did not discount the use of violence, but embraced Malcolm X’s challenge to pursue freedom, equality and justice “by any means necessary.” Bettmann Archive/Getty ImagesPHOTOGRAPH.
38. The Black Panther Party
39. 1968 Eldridge Cleaver addresses an estimated 7,500 students at UCLA
40. 1966 Stokely Carmichael defines "black power" at the University of California's Greek Theatre in Berkeley
41. 1966 Stokely Carmichael, speaking with crowd at Will Rogers Park in Los Angeles

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2. 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS For thirteen days in October 1962 the world waited—seemingly on the brink of nuclear war—and hoped for a peaceful resolution to the Cuban Missile Crisis. In October 1962, an American U-2 spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union on the island of Cuba. President Kennedy did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had discovered the missiles. He met in secret with his advisors for several days to discuss the problem. After many long and difficult meetings, Kennedy decided to place a naval blockade, or a ring of ships, around Cuba. The aim of this "quarantine," as he called it, was to prevent the Soviets from bringing in more military supplies. He demanded the removal of the missiles already there and the destruction of the sites. On October 22, President Kennedy spoke to the nation about the crisis in a televised address. Click here to listen to the Address in the Digital Archives (JFKWHA-142-001) No one was sure how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would respond to the naval blockade and US demands. But the leaders of both superpowers recognized the devastating possibility of a nuclear war and publicly agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would dismantle the weapon sites in exchange for a pledge from the United States not to invade Cuba. In a separate deal, which remained secret for more than twenty-five years, the United States also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey. Although the Soviets removed their missiles from Cuba, they escalated the building of their military arsenal; the missile crisis was over, the arms race was not. Click here to listen to the Remarks in the Digital Archives (JFKWHA-143-004) In 1963, there were signs of a lessening of tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States. In his commencement address at American University, President Kennedy urged Americans to reexamine Cold War stereotypes and myths and called for a strategy of peace that would make the world safe for diversity. Two actions also signaled a warming in relations between the superpowers: the establishment of a teletype "Hotline" between the Kremlin and the White House and the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on July 25, 1963. In language very different from his inaugural address, President Kennedy told Americans in June 1963, "For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
3. 1968 MLK Assassination Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, an event that sent shock waves reverberating around the world. A Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of impassioned speeches and nonviolent protests to fight segregation and achieve significant civil rights advances for African Americans. His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among Black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of the civil rights era.
4. 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike
5. 1965 Watts Writers Workshop
6. 1964 Forced sterilization policies in the US targeted minorities and those with disabilities – and lasted into the 21st century In August 1964, the North Carolina Eugenics Board met to decide if a 20-year-old Black woman should be sterilized. Because her name was redacted from the records, we call her Bertha. She was a single mother with one child who lived at the segregated O'Berry Center for African American adults with intellectual disabilities in Goldsboro. According to the North Carolina Eugenics Board, Bertha had an IQ of 62 and exhibited “aggressive behavior and sexual promiscuity.” She had been orphaned as a child and had a limited education. Likely because of her “low IQ score,” the board determined she was not capable of rehabilitation. Instead the board recommended the “protection of sterilization” for Bertha, because she was “feebleminded” and deemed unable to “assume responsibility for herself” or her child. Without her input, Bertha’s guardian signed the sterilization form.
7. the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) issued a statement opposing the Vietnam War "On July 4, 1964, the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) wrote a letter to the Vietnamese Front of National Liberation congratulating them on their “victories against U.S. imperialism.” They expressed their commitment to creating “a new world free from exploitation of man by man,” and explained their rejection of U.S counter revolutionary measures against their Third World brothers. Eighteen months later, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) issued a statement opposing the Vietnam War, exposing that the U.S. hid behind the discourse of democracy and freedom to undermine the sovereignty and self-determination of racialized people throughout the Global South and in the United States. Given this deception and hypocrisy, SNCC offered its support to those who refused to be drafted into the service of U.S. imperial aggression, and encouraged Americans to put their energy toward the struggle for civil and human rights, instead of the propagation of war and suffering."
8. 1967 Century City Antiwar Demonstration Protestors fill Motor Ave. as they start marching toward Century Plaza Hotel for an anti-Vietnam War protest. Ten thousand protesters turned out during speech by President Lyndon Johnson.(Ray Graham / Los Angeles Times) . Ten thousand marchers, by most estimates, were assembling across the street from the Century City hotel. Hundreds of nightstick-wielding police — using a parade permit and court order that restricted the marchers from stopping to demonstrate — forcibly dispersed them. The bloody, panicked clash that ensued left an indelible mark on politics, protests and police relations. It marked a turning point for Los Angeles, a city not known for drawing demonstrators to marches in sizable numbers. The significance of the evening lay not simply in the 51 people who were arrested and the scores injured when 500 of the 1,300 police on the scene pushed the demonstrators into, and then beyond, a vacant lot that is now the site of the ABC Entertainment Center. Far more powerfully, the Century Plaza confrontation foreshadowed the explosive growth of the national antiwar movement and its inevitable confrontations with police. It shaped the movement’s rising militancy, particularly among the sizable number of middle-class protesters who expected to do nothing more than chant against Johnson outside the $1,000-a-plate Democratic Party fundraising dinner and were outraged by the LAPD’s hard-line tactics. Johnson rarely campaigned in public again, except for appearances at safe places like military bases. Within nine months, opposition to the war grew so strong that he shelved his reelection campaign. White liberals in Los Angeles, meanwhile, began to complain about excessive force by the LAPD, a subject traditionally raised only by black and Latino residents. By the next summer, when Chicago police beat demonstrators in the street outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the country was at war with itself. In retrospect, the Century Plaza demonstration was one of the earliest battlegrounds. …
10. 1965 El Teatro Campesino Founded Since its inception, El Teatro Campesino and its founder and artistic director, Luis Valdez, have set the standard for Latino theatrical production in the United States. Founded in 1965 on the Delano Grape Strike picket lines of Cesar Chavez’s United Farmworkers Union, the company created and performed “actos” or short skits on flatbed trucks and in union halls. Taking the “actos” on tour to dramatize the plight and cause of the farmworkers, El Teatro Campesino was honored in 1969 with an Obie Award for “demonstrating the politics of survival” and with the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award in 1969 and 1972.
11. 1960 Greensboro Sit-ins "The Greensboro Four were four young Black men who staged the first sit-in at Greensboro: Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil. All four were students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College. They were influenced by the nonviolent protest techniques practiced by Mohandas Gandhi, as well as the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) in 1947, in which interracial activists rode across the South in buses to test a recent Supreme Court decision banning segregation in interstate bus travel. The Greensboro Four, as they became known, had also been spurred to action by the brutal murder in 1955 of a young Black boy, Emmett Till, who had allegedly whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi store."