Portside

A Martyred Miner’s Sacrifice in 1925

JUNE 11 IS THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY of the murder of Nova Scotia coal miner William Davis, who was shot by a mine guard during a violent confrontation between striking miners and a squad of guards working for British Empire Steel and Coal Corp.  

The anniversary – Davis Miners’ Memorial Day – is marked every year by the residents of Cape Breton County to honor Davis and the more than 2500 Nova Scotia miners who have either lost their lives while extracting coal from the largest coalfield in eastern Canada or, like Davis, while defending their right to earn a living wage while doing so.

Davis was a member of the United Mine Workers of America District 26. He and his co-workers had gone on strike three months previous when British Empire Steel and Coal, which owned all the mines Cape Breton coalfield, had unilaterally imposed a ten-percent wage cut on the miners, take it or leave it.  The miners, who lived in an area where mining was virtually the only industry, chose to hold out for a better deal, and the strike was bitter. 

When the strike entered its fourth month, the union became convinced that Empire Steel and Coal had no intention of reaching a settlement, and that the company’s objective was actually to destroy the union, which made the strikers even angrier.  When their anger reached such a pitch that they confronted the well-armed mine guards, a riot ensued. The guards killed Davis and seriously wounded two of his comrades. 

Every year since then for a century, June 11 has been a day of rest and remembrance for Nova Scotia coal miners. https://graphichistorycollective.com/project/poster-15-cape-breton-coal-strikes-1920s

An Empty Threat  in 1775

JUNE 12 IS THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY of an attempt by General Thomas Gage, commander of British troops in North America, to bring the 8-week old Revolutionary War to a quick conclusion. Gage proclaimed that he would pardon every rebel colonist who would lay down their arms with only two exceptions: Samuel Adams and John Hancock would be tried for treason, the penalty for which was death.

Adams and Hancock had little to fear from Gage, because outside of Boston, which was occupied by British troops, he had no power to enforce his threat. Boston was surrounded by rebel militias, leaving the British only one way in or out, via ship. 

When the cannons that had been captured at Fort Ticonderoga finally arrived in the heights above Boston and began to bombard the city, the British had no choice but to evacuate, leaving Hancock and Adams free to pursue their treasonous ways. https://www.telegram.com/story/news/2022/04/19/john-hancock-samuel-adams-america-independence-patriots-day/7307642001/

‘The Part Which Black Folk Played’

JUNE 13 IS THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY of a 1935 publishing event that deserves celebration. The stirring and bitterly eloquent “Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward the History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America 1860-80” by W.E. Burghardt Du Bois arrived in bookstores. 

The 746-page volume more generally known as “Black Reconstruction in America” began to force a sea-change in the historical understanding of the period that followed the Civil War. Before Du Bois’ study appeared, the history of Reconstruction had been built on the racist assumptions of white historians that African-Americans had almost no agency in the Reconstruction period, and to the extent they had agency, Reconstruction was a failure because the Black population of the U.S. lacked the skills and character needed to make it work. 

Du Bois’ monumental work not only began to shake those assumptions, it received rapturous reviews, including the Herald Tribune’s, which called it "a solid history of the period, an economic treatise, a philosophical discussion, a poem, a work of art all rolled into one." https://archive.org/details/racerelationsinu0000rabi_d3v1

Danger! Curriculum Deviation! In 1965

JUNE 14 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of a sit-in by 18 African-American parents of students at Christopher Gibson Elementary School in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.

The protesters refused to leave both a classroom and the principal’s office for four hours until the principal agreed to consider their demand that the school reinstate Jonathan Kozol, who was then a 28-year-old school teacher. Kozol had been fired for committing “curriculum deviation” by reading a poem by Langston Hughes – “The Ballad of the Landlord” – to his fourth grade class. 

Kozol was not rehired, but he later reflected on his act of academic disobedience in his book “Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools,” published in 1967.  

Here’s the poem’s text: 

Landlord, landlord,
My roof has sprung a leak.
Don't you 'member I told you about it
Way last week?

Landlord, landlord,
These steps is broken down.
When you come up yourself
It's a wonder you don't fall down.

Ten Bucks you say I owe you?
Ten Bucks you say is due?
Well, that's Ten Bucks more'n I'l pay you
Till you fix this house up new.

What? You gonna get eviction orders?
You gonna cut off my heat?
You gonna take my furniture and
Throw it in the street?

Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.
Talk on-till you get through.
You ain't gonna be able to say a word
If I land my fist on you.

Police! Police!
Come and get this man!
He's trying to ruin the government
And overturn the land!

Copper's whistle!
Patrol bell!
Arrest.
Precinct Station.
Iron cell.

Headlines in press:
MAN THREATENS LANDLORD
TENANT HELD NO BAIL
JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL!

https://portside.org/2016-07-24/how-racial-bias-affects-quality-black-students-education

A Very, Very, Unpopular Treaty in 1960

JUNE 15 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of a general strike by more than six million Japanese workers culminating in a massive and violent protest against a new military treaty between the U.S. and Japan. One demonstrator was killed and more than a thousand were injured.

The outpouring of anger was partly due to the treaty’s disregard for Japan’s sovereignty, but also to the May 19th Incident, when Japan’s Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke – a rehabilitated former high official of Japan’s fascist World War 2 government – railroaded the treaty through parliament by physically preventing opposition lawmakers from voting to reject it. https://apjjf.org/2020/18/kapur   

How to Shrink an Economy in 1930

JUNE 17 IS THE 95TH ANNIVERSARY of President Herbert Hoover signing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law.  Suddenly the U.S. went from having been a country with lower-than-average tariffs to a country imposing some of the world’s highest taxes on imported goods. The supporters of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs claimed they would boost employment and also help to pull the U.S. economy out of the depths of the Great Depression which had started in October 1929. 

Of course, neither of those claims proved to be true. The unemployment rate doubled in the year after Smoot-Hawley was signed, from six percent to 12 percent. The high U.S. tariffs and the high retaliatory tariffs that other countries placed on U.S. goods caused the U.S. economy to shrink even faster than previously. The lesson was clear: economic dislocations have complex causes, not simple ones.  Anyone who claims they have simple solutions is fooling themselves or trying to fool others, or both. https://jacobin.com/2025/01/tariffs-nonsolution-trump-social-crisis

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