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May 6
Events
1536 — Peru: Manco Inca rise up against the Spanish conquerors. In Spanish, see the Memoria del fuego page
1626 — In North America, Dutchman Peter Minuit "buys" Manhattan Island from the Manahatta Indians, (Shinnecock Indians?) who live in Brooklyn, for trinkets valued at $24.
1794 — Toussaint L'Ouverture leads Haitian revolution for independence. Inspiration for artist Jacob Lawrenceʼs "Toussaint L'Ouverture" series of paintings. [1]
1812 — Black emancipationist Martin Robinson Delany lives, Virginia. [2] [3]
1856 — Sigmund Freud lives.
1862 — Death of Henry David Thoreau. [4] [5]
1877 — United States of America: Chief Crazy Horse surrenders to US troops, who later murder him (on September 5th he is bayoneted in the back on orders; Dakota Sioux Chief Sitting Bull leads 5,000 of his followers into Canada to ask protection from the Queen and petition land for a reserve after defeating Gen. Custer and US 7th Cavalry at the Little Big Horn. The Canadian government refuses. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1880 — George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) gets hitched seven months before her death at 61, to a 40-year-old NY investment banker, Hanover Square, London.
1882 — United States of America: Congress passes the first Chinese Exclusion Act over the veto of President Garfield, making it unlawful for Chinese laborers to enter the US for the next 10 years and denying naturalized citizenship to the Chinese already here. Chinese immigration is essentially shut off for the next 60+ years, as the act is extened in both 1902 and 1904.
1882 — Irish republicans assassinate Lord Frederick Cavendish (Irish Secretary) and Thomas Burke (Under-secretary) in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Imposition of a poll tax triggers Zulu revolt [1906]. [Source: Calendar Riots]
1884 — Brokerage firm of Grant and Ward, in which former President Ulysses S. Grant was a silent partner, failed under the weight of $16,725,466 worth of debts. It soon became known that Ward was a swindler who had used Grantʼs "good" name to perpetuate one fraud after another.
1889 — Stanley Morison, typographer and adviser to Cambridge University Press and the Monotype Corporation, lives, England. Designed Times New Roman in 1932.
1890 — Mormon Church renounces polygamy.
1895 — Poet José Martà is elected jefe supremo de la revolucion cubana. [6] [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1902 — Start of Sherlock Holmes story "Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place". [7] [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1904 — Harry Martinson lives (1904 — 1978).
1905 — Toots Shor, American raconteur/restauranteur, lives.
1906 — Imposition of a poll tax triggers Zulu revolt. [Source: Calendar Riots]
1910 — United States of America: Emma Goldman is pleased by the overwhelmingly positive reception to her lectures and debate in Los Angeles; claims to have delivered that cityʼs first-ever Yiddish lecture.
1913 — Douglas Stewart, poet, playwright, and critic who helped establish an Australian national tradition through mythical re-creation of the past, lives, Eltham, New Zealand.
1914 — Belgium: Louis Mercier-Vega lives (1914 — 1977).
1915 — Filmmaker Orson Welles lives, Kenosha, Wisconsin.
1916 — United States of America: Alexander Berkman starts the No Conscription League and notes that the meetings attract crowds by the thousands. On one occasion, "there were fully 35,000 that tried to gain admission," wrote Berkman. At the same time, Liberal President Woody Wilson, elected on the promise that he would keep America out of the war, was actively preparing the country to enter the European conflict. [8]
1919 — Wizard of Oz creator L. Frank Baum dies, Hollywood, California. Wrote 14 of the series, which were continued by another author when he died. Baum actively promoted and defended the extermination of Native Americans while an editor/publisher in the Dakotas. See 1856 May 15. [9]
1926 — Fabian Socialist/dramatist George Bernard Shaw — asked if he agrees with Sinclair Lewis's refusal of the Pulitzer Prize — snaps: "I donʼt agree with anything." [10]
1931 — The 'Say Hey Kid' — African American baseball great Willie Mays — lives.
1931 — During this month Emma Goldman learns that, despite the dreadful economic situation, Knopf intends to publish Living My Life in two volumes at what she considers an exorbitant price.
1933 — Germany: Nazis raid the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, which doubles as headquarters of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, a 36-year-old gay-rights organization. All the archives, including priceless books, scientific data, photographs and manuscripts, are destroyed. The organization ceases to exist. Nazis intensify the persecution by interning gays in concentration camps and forcing them to wear a pink triangle as identification. [Insurgent Radio Kiosk]
1933 — United States of America: Ferry "Peralta" (later rebuilt as "Kalakala") burns down, Oakland. Presumably this is the one sitting on Lake Union, in Seattle, 2003, just south of Auntie Daveʼs. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1935 — United States of America: WPA is established in Beloved and Respected comrade Leader FDRʼs New Deal; the state becomes make-work employer.
1937 — United States of America: The Hindenburg disaster occurs over Lakehurst, New Jersey, when the hydrogen filled dirigible burst into flames, killing 35 of the 97 passengers on board. [11] [12]
1937 — Spain: (Thursday): "La Batalla" reprints the Friends of Durruti handbill. In the same edition, "La Batalla" appeals for workers to back down. Solidaridad Obrera disowns the Friends of Durruti handbill. [13] [14] [15] [16]
1940 — John Steinbeckʼs The Grapes of Wrath wins the Pulitzer Prize as most distinguished novel of 1939. He gets the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Banned in 1980 in two Iowa high school sophomore classes after a parent complained the book was "profane, vulgar, and obscene." The head of the school board defended the action, noting the US was "going pell mell downhill" morally and they were reversing the trend. [17]
1940 — Canada: Stella Ballantine and Emma Goldmanʼs brother Morris and his wife Babsie travel to Toronto to join Dorothy Rogers and Arthur Bortolotti at Emmaʼs bedside after she suffers a second hemorrhage on today. On May 14 Red Emma will dance no more…
1944 — India: Mohandas Gandhi (1869 — 1948) released from his last imprisonment. [18]
1949 — Nobel Prize-winner, Maurice Maeterlinck, dies at 86, Nice, France.
1949 — George Perleʼs "Two Songs in German" (from Rilke) premiers, NYC. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1953 — United States of America: William Gropper is called to testify before Joseph McCarthy and his Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Gropper allowed the State Department to distribute prints of his painting celebrating American Folklore. Tail-Gunner considered the picture "subversive", and questioned why copies were kept by US embassies abroad. To avoid self-incrimination, Gropper plead the Fifth.
1954 — Keeping Track: Roger Bannister breaks 4 minute mile (3:59:4).
1957 — Beatster Jack Kerouac and his mother move, via Greyhound Bus from Orlando, Florida to Berkeley, California; rents a small house at 1943 Berkeley Way. During thie Spring: Kerouac writes more of his Book of Dreams; writes "A Dharma Bum in Europe"; types up "Book of Sketches" (from his notebooks); begins writing the novel "Avalokitesvara"; meets LuAnne Henderson for an afternoon in Golden Gate Park. [Source: Kerouac Chronology]
1960 — United States of America: Years of agitation result in JFK signing Civil Rights Act so the South can ignore and violate it.
1960 — United States of America: In Birmingham, Alabama, 1000 children and adults are arrested, making a total of about 2500. Includes Ella Baker, Dave Dellinger, James Forman, Dick Gregory, Guy and Candie Carawan, Joan Baez. JFK ends up ordering the Alabama National Guard placed under Federal control, which is used as a display of military force to impose desegregation.
1963 — Poet William Carlos Williams and biographer Leon Edel win Pulitzer Prizes; William Faulkner wins a posthumous one for The Reivers; Samuel Barber wins for his "Piano Concerto No. 1". [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1964 — Joe Orton play "The Entertaining Mr. Sloan" premiers, London. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1965 — First two Marine divisions arrive Vietnam.
1966 — United States of America: Jefferson Airplane, and the Jaywalkers at the Fillmore Auditorium in Frisco.
1968 — England: Apple Corps Ltd., the Beatles' new record company, management and publishing firm, opens offices at 95 Wigmore Street, London.
1968 — France: Parisian Universities are closed, and new demonstrations of solidarity with those rounded up and jailed May 3 ends in violent confrontations with the forces of repression. [19] [20] [21]
1968 — United States of America: Norman Mailerʼs Armies of the Night published.
1968 — United States of America: Columbia University reopens following student occupations in April; students boycott classes.
1970 — Congressional hearings begin on ratification of Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution.
1970 — Between today and about the 20th, student strikes disrupt 448 colleges, involving 1 million+ students (possibly as many as "4 million students"; Todd Gitlin believes 750+ campuses (of 2500 nationwide), with demonstrations at 1200+ demonstrations against sending troops to Cambodia) Stanford University experiences "worst riots in its history". 75 campuses stayed closed thru rest of the school year). source ftp.std.com/obi/Emi.Anthology/ http://www.neravt.com/left/contributors/jacobs1.html [22]
1970 — Cambodia: US forces open 3 new fronts. More than 100 US colleges shut down to protest US invasion of Cambodia [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1973 — France: Demonstrations against Pacific nuclear tests in 14 cities.
1973 — United States of America: Federal Bureau of Investigations besieges Native Americans at Wounded Knee because of activities of the newly emerging American Indian Movement (AIM).
1975 — Philip Glassʼs "Another Look at Harmony" (parts 1 and 2) premiers, NYC. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1979 — United States of America: 125,000 rally in Washington, D.C. to oppose nuclear power.
1980 — Russia: 170,000 workers in Togliatti auto plant stay home in support of bus-driver walkout.
1982 — United States of America: Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates explains how a disproportionate number of blacks have been injured or killed by police choke holds "because in some blacks . . . the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do in normal people."
1982 — United States of America: CBS-TV cancels "Lou Grant" because Ed Asner opposes US Salvadoran policy. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1983 — United States of America: Gasquet-Orleans Road bulldozers blockaded by Earth First! and the Kalmiopsis Action Alliance. An injunction is finally granted in late May.
1986 — Belgium: A general strike is held to protest austerity measures. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1987 — United States of America: PTLʼs Jim Bakker and Rich Dortch dismissed from Assemblies of God, for some really "good" ministering.
1990 — South Africa: Formerly banned CP leader Joe Slovo speaks to 30,000 [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1991 — 16,000th performance of Agatha Christieʼs "The Mousetrap," London. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1992 — Alone at last. Film actress, recluse Marlene Dietrich dies.
1992 — Eric Overmyer play "Dark Rapture" premiers, Empty Space, Seattle, Washington. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1993 — United States of America: The "NY Times" reveals Walt Disney was an Federal Bureau of Investigations informer on Hollywood "subversives". [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1994 — The famed Pearl Jam vs. Ticketmaster fight begins as the band files a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department charging that the company has a monopoly on the master ticket business.
1996 — Germany: 15,000 police protecting a nuclear-waste train clash with antinuclear demonstrators (-May 8). [Source: Robert Braunwart]
1999 — Recollection Used Books receives Links2Go Award as a key resource page for its Seattle Used Bookstore Guide.
2000 — Canada: Montrealʼs first-ever Anarchist Book and Freedom Fair. Includes AK Press, Black and Red Books, Marginal Distribution, as well as distributors from Toronto, Syracuse, Boston and elsewhere. Quebec-based booksellers and distributors include Édition et diffusion l'Aide-mutuelle (ŠDAM), La Sociale, Ecosociété, Planéte rebelle, le Groupe Emile-Henri, Ao!/Espaces de la Parole from Drummondville and the Alternative Bookshop, among others. [23]
2002 — United States of America: The Bush administration "unsigns" the UN treaty for an International Criminal Court, fearing that it would prosecute US war crimes. [Source: Robert Braunwart]
2002 — Burma: Government releases opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi after 19 months of house arrest.
