Portside

We’ll Meet Again Someday, Or Will We?

FEBRUARY 26 IS THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY of the first disclosure – on NBC radio and then on the front page of the New York Times – of a terrifying secret: the United States government was starting down a road that had the potential to lead to the production of a “doomsday machine,” a single bomb capable of releasing enough radioactive fallout to kill every living thing on Earth. The Times’ page-1 headline was short and to the point: “Ending of All Life By Hydrogen Bomb Held a Possibility”.

The federal government’s Atomic Energy Commission, which was in 1950 directing the design of the first-ever hydrogen bomb – it was first tested in November 1952 – did its best to suppress the news. The AEC even went so far as to seize, and then incinerate, the entire print-run of a forthcoming issue of Scientific American because it contained what the AEC said (incorrectly, as it turned out) was top-secret information about the hydrogen bomb.

Fourteen years later a “doomsday machine” exactly like what had been described on NBC and in the New York Times was the focus of the award-winning film, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” but thanks to the previous official censorship hardly anyone who saw the film in 1964 remembered that such a device could actually be built, not as a glitch, but as a feature.

Of course, to this day the secrecy surrounding atomic weapons makes it impossible for the public to know whether any nation has built a doomsday machine, but there can be no question that it is technically possible to do so. Much more information of the subject is available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb

Is Oversight of the Secret Police Possible?

And speaking of secrets, FEBRUARY 27 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of the first official disclosure that deceased FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had maintained a secret set of files, inside his private office, consisting of derogatory information about U.S. Presidents, members of Congress, federal officials including FBI officials, and targets who had been singled out because they were critical of the FBI.

The files had no conceivable law enforcement purpose, but they were replete with the kind of information that would be useful for blackmail or extortion. Notations in the files made clear that the information in them had been used to put pressure on some of the files’ targets and that some of the information had been copied and distributed to high officials.

Some of the records in Hoover’s secret files were more than 50 years old. The existence of such files, which occupied multiple file cabinets, had been rumoured for many years, but they had allegedly never been examined since Hoover’s death, which occurred more than 32 months before Attorney General Edward Levi described the files in testimony to the House subcommittee on Civil Rights and Constitutional Rights.

For 30 years after Hoover’s secret information stash was disclosed, it remained in the custody of the FBI, which controlled all access to it until 2005, when they were at last turned over to the National Archives. https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2005/nr05-89

Origins of International Women’s Day

FEBRUARY 28 IS THE 116th ANNIVERSARY of the first celebration of Women’s Day, which took place under the aegis of the Socialist Party of America. 

Less than two years later, the International Socialist Women’s Conference established the annual celebration of International Women’s Day, which was soon marked every March 8. In 1987 the U.S. Congress designated every March as Women’s History Month. For a 15-minute report from 2023 on International Women’s Day by Democracy Now! click here: https://youtu.be/sf_UmO3l2Ss?si=FjvwGPYGPtS38TW5

Gradual Emancipation Is Better than No Emancipation

MARCH 1 IS THE 245TH ANNIVERSARY of Pennsylvania to become the first state to enact “An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery.” 

The 1780 law prohibited the importation of enslaved people and declared that all children born henceforth to enslaved women in Pennsylvania would be indentured servants until their 28th birthday, when they would become free citizens. All people enslaved in Pennsylvania before the law took effect remained enslaved until freed by their enslavers or until they died. The last enslaved person in Pennsylvania died in 1857.

In 1783 New Hampshire enacted a similar law, and Massachusetts enacted a law to emancipate all enslaved people immediately; all other northern states followed the Pennsylvania model, Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784; New York in 1799; and New Jersey in 1804. (When Vermont first became a state in 1791 it had already abolished slavery.)  https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/inde-pa-gradual-abolition-act-1780.htm

Kicking Jim Crow off the Bus

MARCH 2 IS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF the beginning of the hard-fought 93-week-long struggle to end Montgomery, Alabama’s, Jim Crow public transportation system.

Montgomery’s bus segregation was particularly outrageous, because not only were most bus seats reserved for whites only, but because if all the white-only seats were occupied, then Black customers were compelled to give up the seats they already occupied so that no white person would ever need to stand.

That was the situation when 15-year-old high school student Claudette Colvin was riding home while seated in the Black section of a bus. When the whites-only section filled up, Colvin was ordered to give up her seat so that a white woman could sit without needing to sit next to Colvin. 

Colvin explained later that when she refused to move, "History kept me stuck to my seat. I felt the hand of Harriet Tubman pushing down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth pushing down on the other." In addition to being ejected from the bus, Colvin was jailed on charges of disturbing the peace, violating segregation laws and assaulting a police officer.

Colvin was convicted in state court, but before civil rights attorney Fred Gray had the opportunity to file suit on Colvin’s behalf in federal court, the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP initiated a very effective boycott of the city’s segregated buses. The boycott was still in effect when Colvin’s federal case was decided in her favor by the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that the segregation of Montgomery’s buses was illegal. Three days later Montgomery threw in the towel and gave up the fight against integrated public transportation. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/colvin-claudette-1935/

Robeson at His Best

MARCH 3 IS THE 85TH ANNIVERSARY of the release of one of Paul Robeson’s finest cinematic performances, in “The Proud Valley,” a moving depiction of the struggles of an African-American sailor who jumps ship in south Wales where he makes a new life as a coal miner. In addition to the film’s dramatic tale, the soundtrack of Robeson’s bass-baritone accompanied by a stirring Welsh chorus is unforgettable. You can watch the 75-minute-long production here: https://youtu.be/UyNWpRY5lH8?si=qTgwujO1R5sGeknp 

Happy Birthday, Vivaldi!

MARCH 4 IS THE 300TH ANNIVERSARY (approximately) of Antonio Vivaldi’s publication of “The Four Seasons,” his immortal collection of four concerti for violin. (The work was definitely published in Amsterdam in 1725, but the month and day of publication are not known.)

I, like almost anyone who has listened to them, am always thrilled to hear them again, and since March 4 is Vivaldi’s birthday, I make it a point to do so. You can hear a fine performance (with some regrettable commercial interruptions) of all four – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter – by Anne-Sophie Mutter, soloist, here: https://youtu.be/9eEap53WxKY?si=V4EPt49hfGypWE4N

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