This Week in People’s History, Sep 17–23, 2025
Putting the Squeeze on Haiti
SEPTEMBER 17 IS THE 110TH ANNIVERSARY of Haiti’s government bowing to overwhelming military and economic pressure and signing a treaty – the Haitian-American Convention of 1915 – that gave the U.S. complete control of Haiti’s financial and government administration for the next 10 years.
Already occupied by U.S. Marines, who had forcibly removed all of the Haitian government’s gold reserve, Haiti’s only choice was between a U.S. occupation that could last indefinitely and an occupation that would, according to the U.S., end after 10 years. Even that agreement was broken by the U.S., which did not end its military occupation until 1934. https://portside.org/2015-08-01/100-years-after-invasion-humanitarian-occupation-haiti
Slavers Flex Their Political Muscle
SEPTEMBER 18 IS THE 175TH ANNIVERSARY of the signing of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 by U.S. President Millard Fillmore. The 1850 law was a much more draconian version of the existing Fugitive Slave Act of 1793.
The 1850 law greatly strengthened the enforcement powers of both officials and of slave-catchers over anyone they accused of having escaped slavery, at the same time it eliminated almost all of the legal defenses that an accused fugitive could invoke. https://archive.org/details/slavecatchersenf0000camp/page/n3/mode/2up
Decades of Struggle Wins in the End
SEPTEMBER 19 IS THE 90TH ANNIVERSARY of an event is an inspiring reminder that the struggle to protect the environment can be won, no matter how long and difficult it may be.
In 1935, the federal government began the construction of a planned 107-mile barge canal across Florida to connect Jacksonville on the Atlantic Ocean and Inglis on the Gulf of Mexico. Environmentalists' opposition to the project was intense because the planned route would have threatened the state's supply of fresh water and destroyed or compromised many sensitive subtropical ecosystems.
Construction proceeded slowly and with long interruptions, until in 1971, when the canal was one-third completed, a lawsuit by the Environmental Defense Fund and Florida Defenders of the Environment resulted in a preliminary injunction. Four days later Richard Nixon ordered an end to the project.
Part of the route of the unfinished canal is now the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway, named to honor one of the leaders of the effort to stop the canal. https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1204/ML12044A397.pdf
Racial Justice Doesn’t Come Easy
SEPTEMBER 20 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of Florida’s governor pardoning two inmates on death row, Freddie Lee Pitts and Wilbert Lee, for a murder they did not commit. The two had already served more than 12 years in prison.
Pitts and Lee, both young Black men who were accused of having murdered two white gas station workers, appealed their convictions multiple times. Their efforts to obtain justice increased three years after they were first convicted, when a man who had no connection with Pitts and Lee confessed to having committed the murders.
Pitts and Lee eventually succeeded in winning the right to a new trial, but they were both convicted again, because the trial judge refused to admit any evidence concerning the third man’s admission of guilt.
Pitts and Lee might have been executed or spent the rest of their lives in prison had it not been for more than eight years of reporting on their case by Gene Miller, a reporter for the Miami Herald. Miller’s reporting convinced Florida governor Rubin Askew to investigate the case, with the result that Askew became convinced of their innocence. Saying that “the evidence which was not available at the trial and is now available is conclusive. These men are not guilty,” Askew pardoned them.
Pitts and Lee finally won their freedom in 1975, and Gene Miller won a Pulitzer Prize (his second) for his dogged reporting on a blatant miscarriage of justice. https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/from-death-row-to-freedom-the-struggle-for-racial-justice-in-the-pitts-lee-case-2/
Even Better Than a Boycott
SEPTEMBER 21 IS THE 86TH ANNIVERSARY of a very early example of a successful lunch-counter sit-in demonstration.
Cafeteria Employees Union Local 302 was on strike against Shack Sandwich Shops in New York City. The union was demanding a closed shop, an end to the employer’s racially discriminatory treatment of the workforce, a 48-hour week, and a very substantial wage increase.
After seven weeks on strike, on September 21, 1939, about a hundred supporters of the union occupied all the seats at one of the struck shops and refused to leave. After repeated sporadic sit-downs continued for more than three weeks, the union and the employer agreed to a contract that substantially satisfied all of the union’s requirements. https://labortribune.com/opinion-dos-and-donts-of-supporting-a-strike/
‘We Believe in Farmers’
SEPTEMBER 22 IS THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY of the first Farm Aid benefit concert, which took place in 1985 in Champaign, Illinois, in front of some 80,000 people.
Performers included The Beach Boys, Jimmy Buffett, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, John Denver, Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Billy Joel, B.B.King, Carole King, Kris Kristofferson, Loretta Lynn, Randy Newman, Joni Mitchell, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Kenny Rogers, Sissy Spacek and Neil Young, who raised $9 million for the benefit of family farmers facing foreclosure.
Additional Farm Aid benefits have taken place almost annually before huge audiences in venues all over the country, from Connecticut to Washington State, and from Minnesota to Texas. This year’s concert will take place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on September 20. For tickets to this week’s event and much more information about Farm Aid, visit https://www.farmaid.org/
Jim Crow Justice for Emmett Till’s Murderers
SEPTEMBER 23 IS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY of an all-white jury’s acquittal of Emmett Till’s murderers in Sumner, Mississippi. For a summary of the trial, visit the Equal Justice Initiative’s https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/sep/23
For a redacted version of the FBI’s shocking review of the case, visit https://famous-trials.com/images/ftrials/Emmett/documents/FBI_Admissions.pdf
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