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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, MAY 28–JUNE 3  
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_ Can’t Understand a Word (2019), Go to Jail and Stay There (1964),
Deadly Force on Film (1937), Just Following Orders (1779), A New Broom
for Civil Rights (1909), Too Young to Work? Think Again. (1924), 149
Seconds (1954), Wasn’t That a Time? (1949) _

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_CAN’T UNDERSTAND A WORD_

FIVE YEARS AGO, on May 28, 2019, Levi Oakes, the last of the Mohawk
code talkers, died on the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation in Quebec. He
was 94. 

Code talkers were soldiers who served in both the U.S. and the
Canadian Army during World War II, Code-talking was a method of using
a little-known language to make radio transmissions that are almost
impossible to decode because they are spoken in a language that has
very few speakers. Hundreds of Native Americans who were fluent in
their traditional languages were recruited by the U.S. military during
World War 2.  The link here leads to a 14-minute film about a Cree
(not Mohawk) code talker who served in the Canadian army. It’s
informative and well done, even if it isn’t about Levi Oakes. Hear
the Untold Story of a Canadian Code Talker from World War II | Short
Film Showcase [[link removed]] 

_GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL AND STAY THERE_

60 YEARS AGO on May 29, 1964, police in Canton, Mississippi, arrested
52 participants in a Freedom Summer demonstration on charges of
parading-without-a-permit while demanding the right to become
registered voters. All those arrested were kept in a dangerously
overcrowded jail for four days because the police would not allow any
of them to speak with a lawyer and arrange to get bailed out before
June 1. Such police tactics were standard police operating procedure
during Mississippi Freedom Summer.
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_DEADLY FORCE ON FILM_

87 YEARS AGO, on May 30,1937, Chicago police opened fire on a group of
unarmed striking steelworkers, forcing them to retreat across an open
field while the police continued to shoot at them. Ten strikers were
killed and more than ninety wounded. Seven of those who died had been
shot in the back. The vicious police action was recorded by a newsreel
camera crew, but Paramount News kept the footage under wraps for more
than a month because, according to the New York Times, "Paramount . .
. felt that the showing of the pictures might have resulted in
considerable ill-feeling if they had been released immediately." Even
when the film was released, it was banned in Chicago. For many more
details of how Paramount helped the police get away with murder, click
here 
[link removed]…
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_JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS _

245 YEARS AGO, on May 31, 1779, before the United States had
celebrated its third birthday, its infant government established a
precedent that has haunted it ever since. George Washington, the
revolutionary commander-in-chief, considered many groups of Native
Americans to be as big a danger to the success of the revolution as
the British Redcoats. As a result, Washington embraced the policy of
what he called “the total destruction and devastation” of the
Native Americans who controlled most of the land in what is now
western New York State. 

On this day, Washington prepared written orders to one of his
generals, John Sullivan. He directed Sullivan to lead a force of four
thousand men against the “Six Nations of Indians” who were also
known as the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) and who were the sole
inhabitants of almost all the land in central and western New York.
Washington instructed Sullivan “to lay waste [to] all [the
Haudenosaunee] settlements . . .  in the most effectual manner, that
the country not be merely overrun, but destroyed . . . [causing] the
total ruinment ot their settlements . . . “ Washington’s orders
said nothing about preparing for a battle against the “hostile”
Haudenosaunee because they lacked anything like an army. They were
almost all agriculturalists who were dangerous because they sided with
the British. Sullivan was instructed to “capture . . . as many
prisoners of every age and sex as possible” and to “ruin their
crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.”

Sullivan followed Washington’s orders. He and his men burned more
than 40 unfortified Haudenosaunee settlements, along with their
cornfields and orchards of fruit trees. Sullivan encountered almost no
resistance nor did they take prisoners, because the Haudenosaunee
could flee north and west on horseback and on foot faster than the
Sullivan’s slow-moving army could travel. After 15 weeks of
unrelenting scorched-earth destruction, Sullivan led his men south to
Pennsylvania, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of what had been
farms and orchards uninhabited and largely uninhabitable. What had
been Haudenosaunee territory was turned into a no-man’s land that
presented a major obstacle to the possibility of a British army
attacking Pennsylvania and southeastern New York from their
strongholds in Canada. At the time, neither “ethnic cleansing” nor
“genocide” were in anyone’s vocabulary, but the policies they
represented were not new.
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_A NEW BROOM FOR CIVIL RIGHTS_

115 YEARS AGO, June 1, 1909, the National Negro Conference at the
Henry Street Settlement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side wrapped up.
During the 2-day conference, some 300 participants heard two dozen
presentations delivered by a who’s who of civil rights activists,
social reformers, clergy and academics, including presentations by
sociologist W.E.B. DuBois on the “Evolution of the Race Problem,”
by journalist and civil rights activist Oswald Garrison Villard on
“The Need of Organization,” by journalist Ida Wells-Barnett on
“Lynching, Our National Crime,” and by civil rights activist Rev.
John Milton Waldron on “The Problem’s Solution.”  

The presentations made clear that the civil, legal and political
status of African-Americans in the U.S. was deplorable. Despite the
15th Amendment’s guarantee that African-American would have the
right to vote, during the quarter century before the meeting took
place every state that had joined the Confederacy during the Civil War
had made it impossible for Blacks to exercise that right. During the
same period white mobs had staged at least six massive attacks on
Black communities in Mississippi, North Carolina, Arkansas, Georgia,
Indiana and Illinois, killing Black citizens at will and forcing
hundreds to flee for their lives, never to return. And the incidence
of such violence was growing; three of the six attacks had taken place
since 1906. Violence on a smaller scale was routine, and also growing.
African-Americans were being forced by white mobs to “run out of
town, their lives endangered, their families abused, their property
destroyed, merely because they happened to be considered too
prosperous, too well-to-do, to suit their neighbors of another
race,” according to one of the presentations.

The conference participants agreed to establish the first national
organization devoted to protecting the rights of Black citizens –
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
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_TOO YOUNG TO WORK? THINK AGAIN._

100 YEARS AGO, on June 2, 1924, the proposed Child Labor Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, which would give Congress authority to regulate
"labor of persons under eighteen years of age," which had passed both
houses of Congress by large majorities, was submitted to the states
for ratification. Today, a century later, it remains a proposal and
not the law of the land because the required three-quarters of the
states have not ratified it. With the regulation of child labor still
under the control of the individual states, and with the support of
the Cato Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education,
Commonwealth Foundation and the Foundation for Government
Accountability, during the last four years state legislatures in at
least 28 states have taken up proposals to make it easier to employ
children for profit. Such laws have passed in 12
states.[link removed]…
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_149 JOYFUL SECONDS_

70 YEARS AGO, on June 2, 1954, Leroy Anderson’s joyous Bugler’s
Holiday was first recorded for Decca.  If you need a quick
pick-me-up, you can listen to it here: 1954 HITS ARCHIVE: Bugler’s
Holiday - Leroy Anderson (original version)
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_WASN’T THAT A TIME?_

75 YEARS AGO, on June 3, 1949, Pete Seeger and Lee Hays gave the
premiere performance of their composition, The Hammer Song (better
known as If I Had a Hammer), in Manhattan at a fundraising dinner for
the Smith Act defendants, 11 leaders of the Communist Party USA who
had been indicted (and were later convicted and jailed) for violating
the federal law that made it a crime to be a member of an organization
advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Click here to listen
to a performance by The Weavers: Seeger, Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, and
Fred Hellerman.  The Hammer Song - The Weavers - (Lyrics)
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