- 1963: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (or "The Great March on Washington," as styled in a sound recording released after the event) was a large political rally in support of civil and economic rights for African-Americans that took place in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech advocating racial harmony at the Lincoln Memorial during the march.
The march was organized by a group of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations, under the theme "jobs, and freedom." Estimates of the number of participants varied from 200,000 (police) to over 300,000 (leaders of the march). Observers estimated that 75–80% of the marchers were black and the rest were white and other minorities.
The march is widely credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the National Voting Rights Act (1965).
Background and Organization
The march was initiated by A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, president of the Negro American Labor Council, and vice president of the AFL-CIO. Randolph had planned a similar march in 1941. The threat of the earlier march had convinced President Roosevelt to establish the Committee on Fair Employment Practice and bar discriminatory hiring in the defense industry. Randolph said "I pledge my heart, and my mind, and my body, to the achievement of social peace through social justice." The 1963 march was an important part of the rapidly expanding Civil Rights Movement. In the political sense, the march was organized by a coalition of organizations and their leaders including: Randolph, James Farmer (president of the Congress of Racial Equality), John Lewis (president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Martin Luther King, Jr. (president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference), Roy Wilkins (president of the NAACP), Whitney Young (president of the National Urban League).
The mobilization and logistics of the actual march itself was administered by Bayard Rustin, a civil rights veteran and organizer of the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, the first of the Freedom Rides to test the Supreme Court ruling that banned racial discrimination in interstate travel. Rustin was a long-time associate of both Randolph and Dr. King. With Randolph concentrating on building the march's political coalition, Rustin built and led the team of activists and organizers who publicized the march and recruited the marchers, coordinated the buses and trains, provided the marshals, and set up and administered all of the logistic details of a mass march in the nation's capital.
The march was not universally supported among African-Americans. Some civil rights activists were concerned that it might turn violent, which could undermine pending legislation and damage the international image of the movement. The march was condemned by Malcolm X, spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, who termed it the "farce on Washington".
March organizers themselves disagreed over the purpose of the march. The NAACP and Urban League saw it as a gesture of support for a civil rights bill that had been introduced by the Kennedy Administration. Randolph, King, and the SCLC saw it as a way of raising both civil rights and economic issues to national attention beyond the Kennedy bill. SNCC and CORE saw it as a way of challenging and condemning the Kennedy administration's inaction and lack of support for civil rights for African-Americans.
The March
On August 28, more than 2,000 buses, 21 special trains, 10 chartered airliners, and uncounted cars converged on Washington. All regularly scheduled planes, trains, and buses were also filled to capacity.
The march began at the Washington Monument and ended at the Lincoln Memorial with a program of music and speakers. The march failed to start on time because its leaders were meeting with members of Congress. To the leaders' surprise, the assembled group began to march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial without them.
Speakers
Representatives from each of the sponsoring organizations addressed the crowd from the podium at the Lincoln Memorial. Speakers included all six civil-rights leaders of the so called, "Big Six"; Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious leaders; and labor leader Walter Reuther. The one female speaker was Josephine Baker.
Floyd McKissick read James Farmer's speech because Farmer had been arrested during a protest in Louisiana; Farmer had written that the protests would not stop "until the dogs stop biting us in the South and the rats stop biting us in the North."
Gospel legend Mahalia Jackson sang "How I Got Over", musician Bob Dylan performed several songs, including "Only a Pawn in Their Game", about the culturally-fed racial hatred amongst Southern whites that led to the assassination of Medgar Evers; and "When the Ship Comes In", during which he was joined by fellow folk singer Joan Baez, who earlier had led the crowds in several verses of "We Shall Overcome" and "Oh Freedom". Peter, Paul and Mary sang "If I had a Hammer". Marian Anderson sang at the march as well.
King gave his famous I Have a Dream speech, which was carried live by TV stations.
Controversy over John Lewis' speech
Although one of the officially stated purposes of the march was to support the civil rights bill introduced by the Kennedy Administration, several of the speakers criticized the proposed law as insufficient.
John Lewis of SNCC was the youngest speaker at the event. His speech—which a number of SNCC activists had helped write—took the Administration to task for how little it had done to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South :
"We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here—for they have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages…or no wages at all. ...
We come here today with a great sense of misgiving. It is true that we support the administration's Civil Rights Bill. We support it with great reservation, however. ... Unless title three is put in this bill, there's nothing to protect the young children and old women who must face police dogs and fire hoses in the South while they engage in peaceful demonstration. In its present form this bill will not protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear of a police state. ... As it stands now, the voting section of this bill will not help the thousands of people who want to vote. ... We must have legislation that will protect the Mississippi sharecroppers, who have been forced to leave their homes because they dared to exercise their right to register to vote.
We need a bill that will provide for the homeless and starving people of this nation. We need a bill that will ensure the equality of a maid who earns five dollars a week in the home of a family whose total income is 100,000 dollars a year. We must have a good FEPC bill.
My friends let us not forget that we are involved in a serious social revolution. By and large, politicians who build their career on immoral compromise and allow themselves an open forum of political, economic and social exploitation dominate American politics. ... what political leader can stand up and say, "My party is a party of principles"? For the party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march on Washington? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march in the streets of Birmingham? Where is the political party that will protect the citizens of Albany, Georgia? ... We must say wake up America, wake up its now 2:00 in the afternoon! For we cannot stop, and we will not and cannot be patient."
Cut from his original speech at the insistence of more conservative and pro-Kennedy leaders were phrases such as:
In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration's civil rights bill, for it is too little and too late. ...
I want to know, which side is the federal government on?...
The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it into the courts. Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens. The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won't be a "cooling-off" period.
...We will march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground—nonviolently...
Many activists from SNCC, CORE, and even SCLC were angry at what they considered censorship of his speech. A. Philip Randolph also spoke with an inspirational speech.
Media coverage
Media attention gave the march national exposure, carrying the organizers' speeches and offering their own commentary. In his section The March on Washington and Television News, William Thomas notes: "Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would be set up than had filmed the last Presidential inauguration. One camera was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas of the marchers".
Criticism
Black nationalist Malcolm X, in his Message to the Grass Roots speech, criticized the march, describing it as "a picnic" and "a circus". He said the civil rights leaders had diluted the original purpose of the march, which had been to show the strength and anger of black people, by allowing white people and organizations to help plan and participate in the march.
(https://en.wikipedia.org)
- 1964: Bob Dylan meets The Beatles and introduces them to marijuana
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On 28 August 1964 Bob Dylan introduced The Beatles to cannabis.
The two parties were introduced by a mutual friend, the writer Al Aronowitz, at New York's Delmonico Hotel. Upon arriving at The Beatles' suite Dylan asked for cheap wine; Mal Evans was sent to get some, and during the wait Dylan suggested they have a smoke.
Brian and the Beatles looked at each other apprehensively. "We've never smoked marijuana before," Brian finally admitted. Dylan looked disbelievingly from face to face. "But what about your song?" he asked. The one about getting high?" The Beatles were stupefied. "Which song?" John managed to ask. Dylan said, "You know..." and then he sang, "and when I touch you I get high, I get high..."
John flushed with embarrassment. "Those aren't the words," he admitted. "The words are, 'I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hide...'"
The Love You Make Peter Brown
Some of The Beatles had actually been introduced to cannabis in 1960, but the drug had made little impression.
We first got marijuana from an older drummer with another group in Liverpool. We didn't actually try it until after we'd been to Hamburg. I remember we smoked it in the band room in a gig in Southport and we all learnt to do the Twist that night, which was popular at the time. We were all seeing if we could do it. Everybody was saying, 'This stuff isn't doing anything.' It was like that old joke where a party is going on and two hippies are up floating on the ceiling, and one is saying to the other, 'This stuff doesn't work, man.'
George Harrison Anthology
After the hotel room was secured, Dylan rolled the first joint and passed it to Lennon. He immediately gave it to Starr, whom he called "my royal taster". Not realising the etiquette was to pass it on, Ringo finished the joint and Dylan and Aronowitz rolled more for each of them.
I don't remember much what we talked about. We were smoking dope, drinking wine and generally being rock'n'rollers and having a laugh, you know, and surrealism. It was party time.
John Lennon Anthology
The Beatles spent the next few hours in hilarity, looked upon with amusement by Dylan. Brian Epstein kept saying, "I'm so high I'm on the ceiling. I'm up on the ceiling."
Paul McCartney, meanwhile, was struck by the profundity of the occasion, telling anyone who would listen that he was "thinking for the first time, really thinking." He instructed Mal Evans to follow him around the hotel suite with a notebook, writing down everything he said.
I remember asking Mal, our road manager, for what seemed like years and years, 'Have you got a pencil?' But of course everyone was so stoned they couldn't produce a pencil, let alone a combination of pencil and paper.
I'd been going through this thing of levels, during the evening. And at each level I'd meet all these people again. 'Hahaha! It's you!' And then I'd metamorphose on to another level. Anyway, Mal gave me this little slip of paper in the morning, and written on it was, 'There are seven levels!' Actually it wasn't bad. Not bad for an amateur. And we pissed ourselves laughing. I mean, 'What the fuck's that? What the fuck are the seven levels?' But looking back, it's actually a pretty succinct comment; it ties in with a lot of major religions but I didn't know that then.
Paul McCartney
Evans kept the notebooks until his death in 1976, when they were confiscated and later lost by Los Angeles police.
(https://www.beatlesbible.com)
- 1968: Demonstrators clash with police at Democratic National Convention in Chicago
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August 28, Wednesday: 10-15,000 gather at the old Grant Park bandshell for the MOBE’s antiwar rally. Dellinger, Gregory, Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Jerry Rubin, Carl Oglesby, Hayden, and many others speak. 600 police surround the rally on all sides. National Guardsmen are posted on the roof of the nearby Field Museum.
In the Convention at the Amphitheatre, the peace plank proposed for the Democratic party platform is voted down.
At the bandshell rally, news of the defeat of the peace plank is heard on radios. A young man begins to lower the American flag flying near the bandshell. Police push through the crowd to arrest him. Then a group, including at least one undercover police officer, completes the flag lowering and raises a red or blood-splattered shirt. Police move in again. A line of MOBE marshals is formed between the police and the crowd. Police charge the marshal line. Rennie Davis is beaten unconscious.
At rally’s end Dellinger announces a march to the Amphitheatre, while Hayden urges the crowd to move in small groups to the Loop. 6,000 join the march line, but, since it has no permit and the police refuse to allow it to use the sidewalks, the march does not move. After an hour of negotiation, the march line begins to break up. Protestors try to cross over to Michigan Avenue, but the Balbo and Congress bridges have been sealed off by National Guardsmen armed with .30 caliber machine guns and grenade launchers. The crowd moves north and finds that the Jackson Street bridge is unguarded. Thousands surge onto Michigan Avenue. Coincidentally, the mule train of Ralph Abernathy’s Poor People’s Campaign, which has a permit to go to the Amphitheatre, is passing south on Michigan. The crowd joins it. At Michigan and Balbo the crowd is halted again. Only the mule train is allowed to continue.
Deputy Police Superintendent James Rochford orders the police to clear the streets. Demonstrators and bystanders are clubbed, beaten, Maced, and arrested. Some fight back and the attack escalates. The melee last about seventeen minutes and is filmed by the TV crews positioned at the Hilton. While this was probably not the most violent episode of Convention Week—the Lincoln Park and Old Town brawls were more vicious—it drew the most attention from the mass media.
Inside the Amphitheatre, presidential nominations are underway. Senator Abraham Ribicoff, in his speech nominating George McGovern, denounces the “Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago.” Mayor Daley’s shouted reaction was on-camera, but off-mike. Lip-readers later decoded a vulgar rage. Hubert H. Humphrey wins the party’s nomination on the first ballot.
500 antiwar delegates march from the Amphitheatre to the Hilton; many join the 4,000 protestors in Grant Park. Again, protestors are allowed to stay in the park all night.
(http://chicago68.com/)
- 1971: Oscar Zeta Acosta is arrested for Benzedrine possession
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DRUG CHARGE Biltmore Trial Lawyer Arrested
Oscar Zeta Acosta. the attorney for two Chicanos being tried in the Biltmore conspiracy case. was jailed early Saturday [August 28, 1971]on suspicion of possession of dangerous drugs. Acosta, 36. was arrested about- 4 a.m. on Camrose Drive near Highland Ave. by undercover sheriff's deputies who said they followed him from East Los Angeles and off the Hollywood Freeway before stopping him. Deputies claim that when Acosta stepped from his car a crumpled cigarette packet containing white tablets fell to the ground. Acosta denied the charge, claiming he did not know where the packet came from. Three men who were in the car with Acosta were not held. The re-port filed by sheriff's detectives did not identify them. The deputies reported that they began following the lawyer and his companions in East Los Angeles when they heard a radio report of shots being fired in the area. Acosta and other attorneys representing Mexican-Americans accused of disrupting a speech by Gov. Reagan at the Biltmore in April, 1969, concluded their final summations to jurors Friday in Superior Court. Acosta suggested the arrest was part of the "harassment" he claims he has been subjected to by police because of the trial, He was freed about noon Saturday on $1,250 bail and was ordered to appear for arraignment Thursday.
(The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California), 29 Aug 1971, Sun, Main Edition, Page 3)
Ex-Attorney Acquitted of Drug Charge
Former attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta, charged with illegal possession of 47 benzedrine tablets, was found innocent Wednesday by a Superior Court Jury. The eight men and Tour women who heard testimony during the eight-day trial before Superior Judge William Caldecott deliberated for only two hours before returning the verdict. The 36-year-old Acosta was arrested about 4 a.m. last Aug. 28 by undercover sheriff's deputies who said that Acosta tossed away a package of cigarettes containing the tablets. He testified that he had no knowledge of the pills or the package. After his arrest, Acosta announced that he was leaving the practice of law to move to Modesto, where reportedly he has been living the life of a farmer while preparing a book. Acosta represented numerous Chicano movement leaders, including defendants in the Biltmore arson conspiracy case where Gov. Reagan's speech was disrupted during his appearance there in 1969.
(The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California), 17 Feb 1972, Thu, Main Edition, Page 57)
- 1973: Abbie Hoffman is busted for selling nearly 1.5 kilos of cocaine
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Abbie Hoffman Among 4 Held On Charges of Selling Cocaine
By LINDA GREENHOUSEAUG. 29, 1973
Abbie Hoffman, the antiwar activist, Yippie and defendant in the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial, was arrested last night along with three other persons and charged with selling three pounds of cocaine to two undercover narcotic agents for $36,000.
The four were arrested by eight police officers from the narcotics unit minutes after the money changed hands In Room 1015 of the Diplomat Hotel, at 108 West 43d Street. They were scheduled to be arraigned this morning in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Mr. Hoffman's conviction on charges of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention was overruled by, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit last November. He gave his address yesterday at 640 Broadway in Greenwich Village. He is 36 years old.
The others arrested with him were A. Drosman, 27 years old, of the same address; Carole Ramer, 24, of 239 West 20th Street, and Diane Peterson, 36, who gave no address.
According to the police, the arrests were the result of a “lengthy” investigation. However, Mr. Hoffman's alleged participation in the sale apparently came as a complete surprise to the police, who said they had not known the identities of any of the people from whom they had arranged to buy the cocaine. Continue reading the main story
The two plainclothes officers who had arranged the alleged sale, Arthur Nascarella and Robert Sasso of the 17th narcotics district, bought a small quantity of cocaine from the group on Monday, to test the purity of the drug and gain the group's confidence, the police said.
Then, according to the police, the two parties arranged to meet at the hotel at 6:45 last night, where the officers turned over $36,000 in cash and received the cocaine before the eight arresting officers closed in. That group was led by Capt. John Keane, commander of the Queens narcotics unit. The police said the cocaine had a “street” value of $500,000.
The four suspects were held at the Midtown South Precinct last night.
Under both the present drug law and the state's new law that goes into effect Saturday, the alleged sale is a Class A felony with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
(https://www.nytimes.com)
Edited by Learyfan (08/28/21 05:41 AM)
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