Enacted in response to David Walker’s Appeal, this law criminalized the distribution of materials that could incite rebellion to slavery, reflecting fears of literacy empowering resistance.
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General Dwight Eisenhower endorsed the finding of a court-martial in the case of Eddie Slovik, who deserted from the U.S. Army during World War II.
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Henry Highland Garnet, abolitionist and minister, called for a militant slave revolt.
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Adults and children, members of the organization Las Abejas (The Bees), were massacred while praying in a church in Chiapas, Mexico.
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Abolitionist and suffragist Harriet Tubman, perhaps the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad, engineered her first rescue mission in December 1850.
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Kansas reservist Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn refused orders to serve in the first Gulf War (Desert Storm).
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After a 381-day boycott, a federal ruling declared the Alabama laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.
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Tim DeChristopher of Peaceful Uprising protested a Bureau of Land Management auction of public land in Utah’s redrock country.
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Richard Nixon initiated a massive “carpet bombing” campaign in Northern Vietnam, mainly targeting Hanoi.
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu v. United States that the denial of civil liberties based on race and national origin was legal.
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Secretary of State William H. Seward declared the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution to have been adopted.
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Paul Robeson and William Patterson submitted a petition from the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) to the United Nations, signed by almost 100 U.S. intellectuals and activists.
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A group of students wore black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam. The school board got wind of the protest and passed a preemptive ban.
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The “civil war” in El Salvador officially ended, but other struggles followed, including to protect the land and water from gold mining.
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The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known as the United States Bill of Rights, were ratified.
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Wilma Mankiller took office as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
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U.S. peace activist and suffragist Kate O’Hare was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for a speech denouncing WWI.
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