This Week in People’s History, Jun 18–24, 2025
Jim Crow’s Brutal Defenders
JUNE 18 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of an unusually ugly moment in Mississippi’s losing battle to preserve some of the worst aspects of Jim Crow politics.
As the photo shows, a beefy Mississippi Highway Patrolman, nightstick in hand, wrestled a tiny U.S. flag from the hands of 5-year-old Anthony Quin, who was part of a picket line demanding an end to the state’s Jim Crow voting regulations.
The incident was photographed by Matt Herron, who captured many iconic images of the long struggle for civil rights in the deep South.
The unprovoked attack on a 5-year-old was part of a series of confrontations in Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, where civil rights activists staged six days of daily demonstrations against an ongoing special session of the state legislature. The special session had been called to consider a package of bills amending the state’s electoral regulations. The draft legislation was being proposed, not to make elections fairer, but to give them the appearance of being fairer.
At the time, in 1965, Mississippi had an all-white legislature, as had been the case for more than 70 years, even though the state’s population was more than 40 percent Black. The protests that week were to demand an immediate end to the travesty of the all-white legislature amending Mississippi’s election laws. According to the demonstrators, the legislature had been elected fraudulently and therefore had no right to amend the law.
Non-violent demonstrations against the special session took place for six days, during which at least 850 people had been arrested for “parading without a permit.” Many of those arrested were injured as they were taken into custody or transported to cattle pens in the nearby state fairgrounds, where many were held for weeks without opportunity to make bail in conditions that were widely described as being like a “concentration camp.” https://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim65b.htm#1965jackson
Free At Last, Free At Last!
JUNE 19 IS THE 160TH ANNIVERSARY of the day that has come to be known as Juneteenth, when all enslaved people in Texas were formally emancipated.
In theory all of the enslaved in Texas had been freed on 10 weeks earlier, when Ulysses Grant accepted the surrender of rebel commander (and traitor) Robert Lee, bringing the bloody Civil War to an end, but as a practical matter, freedom was only realized where Union troops were present to enforce it.
On June 19, 1865, Union Gen. Gordon Granger and a company of Union infantry arrived in Galveston, Texas, on a troopship. On the same day Granger issued General Order No. 3, declaring all enslaved people in Texas to be free.
For more than a century, Juneteenth was a folk holiday celebrated for the most part by people residing in the states of the former Confederacy. In 1980, Texas was the first state to make it an official holiday; more and more states followed suit until four years ago it became a national, federal, holiday for the first time. https://portside.org/2021-06-18/hidden-history-juneteenth
‘Her Power Shall Rest on the Strength of Her Freedoms’
JUNE 21 IS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY of Peter Seeger recording the album “God Bless the Grass” for Columbia. Tracks include Phil Ochs’ “The Power and the Glory” and Richard Fariña’s “The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood.” You can listen to “The Power and the Glory” here: https://youtu.be/wAm8iU1GcRA?si=qZDgWrhhbi0E0wxo
Simpler Than, and Just as True as E = mc2
JUNE 22, 1940, IS THE 85TH ANNIVERSARY of Nazi Germany’s defeat of France, which gave Germany control of most of Europe. It was also the day that the NBC Radio Network interviewed Albert Einstein, who had been living in New Jersey as a refugee since 1933.
Among other things, Einstein told the interviewer: “Several years ago, when asked why I had given up my position in Germany, I made this statement: ’As long as I have any choice I will only stay in a country where political liberty, toleration and equality of all citizens before the law is the rule.’
“I think from what I have seen of Americans since I have come here, they are not suited by temperament or tradition for existence under a totalitarian system. I think that most of them would not find life worth living so. Therefore, it is very important that they consider how these liberties that are so necessary to them may be preserved and defended. . . .
"I do not think words alone will solve humanity’s present problems. The sound of bombs drowns out men’s voices. In times of peace I have great faith in the communication of ideas among thinking men, but today, with brute force dominating so many millions of lives, I fear that the appeal to man’s intellect is fast becoming virtually meaningless." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Rescue_Committee
Happy Birthday, Industrial Workers of the World!
JUNE 24 IS THE 120TH ANNIVERSARY of the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World, aka IWW, aka One Big Union, aka the Wobblies. The IWW quickly became one of the most dynamic, militant and innovative labor organizations of the age or any age since.
In December 1906 the IWW pioneered the use of a sit-down strike, which they used successfully against General Electric’s huge factory in Schenectady, N.Y.
In 1909 the IWW organized a 7-week-long strike by thousands of workers at the vast Pressed Steel Car factory near Pittsburgh, where the workers stood up to deadly attacks by Pennsylvania State Troopers and won most of their demands in the end.
Also in 1909 the IWW pioneered the civil disobedience tactic of the Free Speech Fight, which succeeded in making it impossible for police in scores of U.S. cities to enforce laws against unpermitted rallies.
In 1912 the IWW led a successful 9-week strike by some 20 thousand textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1913 the IWW led a successful strike by thousands of longshore workers in Philadelphia. In 1917 the IWW led a strike by more than 30 thousand lumber workers in Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington that succeeded in shortening the industry’s workday to 8 hours.
The IWW’s great success led to fierce repression by both state and local government. Almost the entire leadership of the organization was arrested on trumped-up charges, and then tried, convicted and sentenced to long prison sentences by a legal system that would stop at nothing to destroy the organization.
Despite the repression, the IWW carries on, but its days of leading one massive successful strike after another are nearly forgotten, at least for now. https://portside.org/2013-06-02/100-year-old-idea-could-transform-labor-movement
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