Monthly Archives: February 2025

Black History, ~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

In Memory of Julian Bond ~ speaks 8/2013


FallleavesinDCThousands are in Washington, D.C. to re-create something so powerful and so vivid that it still plays on loop in my mind. They’re here for the 50th anniversary of the 1963 civil rights March on Washington.

We are returning amidst a newly reinvigorated fight for civil rights that has grown rapidly to include lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans.

After all, LGBT rights are civil rights.

No parallel between movements is exact. But like race, our sexuality and gender identity aren’t preferences. They are immutable, unchangeable – and the constitution protects us all against discrimination based on immutable differences.

Today, we are fighting for jobs, for economic opportunity, for a level playing field free of inequality and of discrimination. It’s the same fight our LGBT brothers and sisters are waging – and together we have formed a national constituency for civil rights.

And while we haven’t fully secured Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s most remarkable dream, we are getting closer every single day.

Julian Bond Then and Now Julian Bond with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and more recently at an HRC event.

In August 1963, I was the Communications Director for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), led at the time by John Lewis, the march’s youngest speaker that day.

A gay black man by the name of Bayard Rustin was one of the chief organizers – an early embodiment of the unity and commonality that bonded the movement for LGBT equality with the fight for equal treatment of African-Americans.

In his honor, HRC will help lead a commemoration of Bayard’s incredible contributions to the civil rights movement on Monday. And it was recently announced that President Obama will posthumously award Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest civilian award in the United States.

Fifty years later, I can still feel the power of that noble, August day. Its weight is what drove me for years – from founding the Southern Poverty Law Center, to overseeing the NAACP as Chairman, not to mention the ten terms I served as a member of the Georgia legislature. And later, that exact same commitment to achieving equal rights is what convinced me to stand with the Human Rights Campaign in endorsing marriage equality.

Together we have marched millions of miles to land on the right side of history, and today we stand firmly planted, hoping only that more will join us, one by one, until everyone in this nation is truly free and equal. I know you are with the marchers today – in spirit and in solidarity – and I hope you’ll follow the news coverage of today’s powerful events.

Thank you for being part of the historic struggle for civil rights.

Sincerely,

Julian Bond Chairman Emeritus, NAACP

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

1986 – The U.S. Senate approved a treaty outlawing genocide. The pact had been submitted 37 years earlier for ratification.


In 1986, the U.S. Senate approved, 83-11, the Genocide Convention, an international treaty outlawing “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” nearly 37 years after the pact was first submitted for ratification.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

History… February 19


1807 – Former U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr was arrested in Alabama. He was later tried and acquitted on charges of treason.

1846 – The formal transfer of government between Texas and the United States took place. Texas had officially become a state on December 29, 1845.

1856 – The tintype camera was patented by Professor Hamilton L. Smith.

1864 – The Knights of Pythias was founded in Washington, DC. A dozen members formed what became Lodge No. 1.

1878 – Thomas Alva Edison patented a music player (the phonograph).

1881 – Kansas became the first state to prohibit all alcoholic beverages.

1922 – Ed Wynn became the first big-name, vaudeville talent to sign on as a radio talent.

1942 – U.S. President Roosevelt signed an executive order giving the military the authority to relocate and intern Japanese-Americans.

1942 – The New York Yankees announced that they would admit 5,000 uniformed servicemen free to each of their home ball games during the coming season.

1942 – Approximately 150 Japanese warplanes attacked the Australian city of Darwin.

1945 – During World War II, about 30,000 U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima.

1949 – Bollingen Foundation and Yale University awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry ($5,000) to Ezra Pound.

1953 – The State of Georgia approved the first literature censorship board in the U.S. Newspapers were excluded from the new legislation.

1959 – Cyprus was granted its independence with the signing of an agreement with Britain, Turkey and Greece.

1963 – The Soviet Union informed U.S. President Kennedy it would withdraw “several thousand” of its troops in Cuba.

1981 – The U.S. State Department call El Savador a “textbook case” of a Communist plot.

1981 – Ford Motor Company announced its loss of $1.5 billion.

1985 – Mickey Mouse was welcomed to China as part of the 30th anniversary of Disneyland. The touring mouse played 30 cities in 30 days.

1985 – William Schroeder became the first artificial-heart patient to leave the confines of the hospital.

1985 – Cherry Coke was introduced by the Coca-Cola Company.

1986 – The U.S. Senate approved a treaty outlawing genocide. The pact had been submitted 37 years earlier for ratification.

1986 – The Soviet Union launched the Mir space station.

1987 – A controversial, anti-smoking publice service announcement aired for the first time on television. Yul Brynner filmed the ad shortly before dying of lung cancer. Brynner made it clear in the ad that he would have died from cigarette smoking before ad aired.

1997 – Deng Xiaoping of China died at the age of 92. He was the last of China’s major revolutionaries.

2001 – The museum at the Oklahoma City National Memorial Center was dedicated.

2002 – NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft began using its thermal emission imaging system to map Mars.

2004 – Former Enron Corp. chief executive Jeffrey Skilling was charged with fraud, insider trading and other crimes in connection with the energy trader’s collapse. Skilling was later convicted and sentenced to more than 24 years in prison.

2005 – The USS Jimmy Carter was commissioned at Groton, CT. It was the last of the Seawolf class of attack submarines.

2008 – Fidel Castro resigned the Cuban presidency. His brother Raul was later named as his successor.

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