This Week in People’s History, May 14–20, 2025
Gun Control? Not Now, Not Soon (2000)
MAY 14 IS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY of the Million Mom March, a day when hundreds of thousands of mothers and other gun-control advocates turned out in Washington, D.C. to protest gun violence. At the same time, tens of thousands more joined in smaller demonstrations in cities across the U.S. including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. In Washington, the marchers, who filled the National Mall, cheered speakers demanding “sensible gun laws” and vowed to transform the politics of gun control.
Despite the enormous turn-out on that day in 2000, and the continued work of such organizations as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and Everytown for Gun Safety, gun-control advocates have had slight success. In fact, restrictions on gun ownership have been substantially relaxed since 2000.
During the quarter-century after the Million Mom March, there have been at least 21 mass shootings in U.S. schools resulting in four deaths or more. Plus there have been at least seven mass shootings in entertainment venues and other commercial spaces, and three shootings in houses of worship.
During the same 25 years, the National Rifle Association has spent enormous sums lobbying Congress to oppose any new legislation to regulate gun ownership and to pass legislation to reduce the regulation of gun ownership. In the same period, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled at least four times against gun ownership restrictions and one time for gun ownership restrictions. https://portside.org/2014-05-20/how-nra-rewrote-second-amendment
Many Bullets, No Justice in Jackson (1970)
MAY 15 IS THE 55TH ANNIVERSARY of 75 police officers in Jackson, Mississippi, firing at least 460 rounds of ammunition at a group of unarmed Jackson State College students and at a nearby dormitory. Police claimed they had seen a sniper in the dormitory, but no sniper was ever identified nor did any civilians corroborate what the police said. Two students, 21-year-old Phillip Gibbs and 17-year-old James Green, were killed by the police fusillade and 12 others were wounded.
Even though the deaths of Gibbs and Green were ruled to have been homicides, no criminal charges were filed against any of the officers responsible.
The Jackson State killings took place in 1970, 11 days after four students at Kent State College had been killed by shots fired at them by a platoon of Ohio National Guard members. Shortly after the Jackson State killings, President Richard Nixon established the President’s Commission on Campus Unrest, which published a 415-page report four months later. Of the Jackson State shooting, the Commission concluded "that the 28-second fusillade from police officers was an unreasonable, unjustified overreaction.... A broad barrage of gunfire in response to reported and unconfirmed sniper fire is never warranted."
For more information about the events of May 15, 1970, at Jackson State, visit https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/may/15 where you can follow a link to a 22-minute documentary film on the subject.
A Famous Case You Probably Never Heard Of (1950)
MAY 16 IS THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY of the 1950 filing of Briggs v. Elliott, which would be a world-famous lawsuit against the segregation of South Carolina schools, had it not been for the fact that Briggs v. Elliott was consolidated by the U.S. Supreme Court into the case known as Brown v. Board of Education.
Briggs v. Elliott was the oldest and perhaps most egregious of the five cases that came to have the collective name Brown v. Board. It ought not be forgotten. You can learn more here: https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/briggs-v-elliott/
What’s In a Classification? A Lot (1990)
MAY 17 IS THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY of the World Health Organization’s decision to end its previous practice of classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder.
As a result of the WHO’s 1990 decision, homosexuality was omitted from the list of conditions in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, a standard guide used the world over as the basis for health statistics with implications for funding for health services and health insurance.
May 17, the day when WHO announced the change, has been designated as International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201509/when-homosexuality-stopped-being-a-mental-disorder
A Rebellion, Not a Riot in Miami (1980)
MAY 18 IS THE 45TH ANNIVERSARY of the first full day of a 4-day outburst of deadly violence in Miami, Florida, known to some as the 1980 Miami Rebellion and to others as the Miami Riots.
The rebellion took place after four Miami police officers who had all been involved in brutalizing Arthur McDuffie, a 33-year-old Black insurance executive, were acquitted of all charges related to McDuffie’s having been beaten to death after a traffic stop in December 1979.
Eighteen people were killed in the rebellion, at least 350 were injured, some 600 were arrested, and property damage was estimated to amount to $100 million.
The reaction to the acquittals was so powerful because there was absolutely no question that McDuffie had been beaten to death by police. The only question was exactly which officers of all those charged and those who received immunity in exchange for their testimony had been responsible and exactly what each of them had done while the beating took place.
“America On Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s,” by Elizabeth Kai Hinton, which was published in 2021, makes a strong case that “rebellion” is a more accurate characterization of those events than “riot.” For informative interview with Hinton, who teaches law and African-American studies at Yale University, click here: https://portside.org/2021-05-20/reclaiming-power-rebellion
Gonna Lay Down My Sword and Shield (1960)
MAY 19 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of an anti-nuclear weapons rally by some 20,000 supporters of the National Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.
The crowd cheered anti-war presentations by Eleanor Roosevelt (FDR’s widow), Harry Belafonte, Norman Cousins, Alf Landon, A. Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther and Norman Thomas.
When the rally ended near midnight, some seven thousand people marched to UN headquarters, where they called upon all the world’s nations, particularly the U.S. and the Soviet Union, to agree to a permanent ban on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and on an effective disarmament-promoting treaty. https://portside.org/2017-06-12/time-ban-bomb
Who Needs Democracy When You’ve Got the Cops? (1960)
MAY 20 IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of the climax of what is known in Japan as the “May 19th Incident,” when Japan’s political leadership used grossly undemocratic and illegal means to ram through a tremendously unpopular military treaty with the United States.
On May 19, 1960, Japanese Prime Minister (and probably guilty but never indicted World War 2 war criminal) Kishi Nobusuke deployed 500 police officers in Japan’s parliamentary chamber, where the officers physically removed enough Japan Socialist Party members to make possible the treaty’s ratification by parliament at 12:17 a.m. on May 20. https://apjjf.org/2020/18/kapur
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