BY WALTER OPINDE

On this day, 8^th June, 1953, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of Washington, D.C. restaurants after John Thompson’s case against the District of Columbia “District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson,” This decision was based on the validity of District of Columbia laws of 1872 and 1873. The rulings held by the Court based on these laws were still in effect notwithstanding the several changes in the forms of the District’s government over decades. However, the decision did not address the issue of the constitutionality of the predominant racial segregations.

Thompson’s case came at a moment when the court had failed to coalesce internally over how to resolve the Brown and four companion cases, including one that challenged Washington’s segregated schools.

Not until the dawn of the 1960s, Washington, D.C., was still a sleepy town from the South, within which the cases of racial segregations were prevalent. Fortunately, the process of desegregation ensued in earnest contexts around 1953, thereby continuing until the early 1960s. Earlier on, during their sit-ins, on 17^th April, 1943, and 22^nd April, 1944, African-American students from the Howard University had protested against the rampant segregations in Washington, D.C. restaurants. The sit-in protests had just preceded the famous February 1960 sit-ins, which triggered nationwide movements against segregations about one and a half decades later. As well, a group of the District of Columbia’s playwrights, working through the Dramatists Guild, had forced the racial integration of the U.S. theaters in Washington, D.C., in 1946.

During the case of the District of Columbia v. Thompson, Thompson was handed down four months after President Dwight Eisenhower vowed, during his first “State of the Union” address, to end widespread segregation in the capital. It was not brought to the court by one of the lawyers who was most associated with Brown and the civil rights movements: Thurgood Marshall. Instead, it came at the initiation of an octogenarian activist and charter member of the NAACP, Mary Church Terrell. The Terrell’s legal battle began on 27^th January, 1950, when Thompson’s Restaurant, a cafeteria at 725, 14th Street NW, a few blocks from the White House, had refused to serve her alongside other two African-American colleagues merely because they were “colored.” Terrell had been living in Washington, D.C. for over six decades. She was already aware of the segregation. The District was then 35% black; however, schools, department stores, movie theaters, and other businesses were strictly and widely separated by race. As such, most downtown restaurants denied service to the blacks while some relegated them to the counter where they had to stand.

All the above discriminations ended on 8^th June, 1953, when the court ruled unanimously in favor of Terrell after finding that the decades-old provisions banning the racial discrimination in public areas including restaurants within Washington D.C. remained “presently enforceable.”

Read more of the original story via: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-forgotten-fight-to-end-segregation-in-dc/2016/01/15/1b7cae2a-bafc-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html?utm_term=.4fd6ca4876d8

 

 

0452 – Italy was invaded by Attila the Hun.

0793 – The Vikings raided the Northumbrian coast of England.

1786 – In New York City, commercially manufactured ice cream was advertised for the first time.

1790 – The first loan for the U.S. was repaid. The Temporary Loan of 1789 was negotiated and secured on September 18, 1789 by Alexander Hamilton.

1861 – Tennessee voted to secede from the Union and joined the Confederacy.

1866 – Prussia annexed the region of Holstein.

1869 – Ives W. McGaffey received a U.S. patent for the suction vacuum cleaner.

1872 – The penny postcard was authorized by the U.S. Congress.

1904 – U.S. Marines landed in Tangiers, Morocco, to protect U.S. citizens.

1915 – U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned in a disagreement over U.S. handling of the sinking of the Lusitania.

1934 – The Cincinnati Reds became the first Major League team to use an airplane to travel from one city to another. They flew from Cincinnati to Chicago.

1947 – “Lassie Show” debuted on ABC radio. It was a 15-minute show.

1948 – Milton Berle hosted “Texaco Star Theater” NBC-TV. It was the show’s debut.

1953 – The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregated restaurants in Washington, DC.

1961 – The Milwaukee Braves set a major league baseball record when four consecutive home runs in the seventh inning.

1965 – U.S. troops in South Vietnam were given orders to begin fighting offensively.

1967 – Israeli airplanes attacked the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean during the 6-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. 34 U.S. Navy crewmen were killed. Israel later called the incident a tragic mistake due to the mis-identification of the ship. The U.S. has never publicly investigated the incident.

1969 – The New York Yankees retired Mickey Mantle’s number (7).

1969 – It was announced that there would be a single schedule for both the NFL and AFL.

1969 – U.S. President Richard Nixon met with President Thieu of South Vietnam to tell him 25,000 U.S. troops would pull out by August.

1978 – A jury in Clark County, Nevada, ruled that the “Mormon will,” was a forgery. The work was supposedly written by Howard Hughes.

1982 – U.S. President Reagan became the first American chief executive to address a joint session of the British Parliament.

1986 – The Boston Celtics won their 16th NBA championship.

1987 – Fawn Hill began testifying in the Iran-Contra hearings. She said that she had helped to shred some documents.

1988 – The judge in the Iran-Contra conspiracy case ruled that Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord and Albert Hakim had to be tried separately.

1991 – A victory parade was held in Washington, DC, to honor veterans of the Persian Gulf War.

1994 – The warring factions in Bosnia agreed to a one-month cease-fire.

1995 – U.S. Air Force pilot Captain Scott O’Grady was rescued by U.S. Marines after surviving alone in Bosnia after his F-16 fighter was shot down on June 2.

1996 – China set off an underground nuclear test blast.

1998 – The National Rifle Association elected Charlton Heston to be its president.

1998 – In the U.S., the FTC brought an antitrust complaint against Intel Corp., alleging its policies punished other developers of microprocessor chips.

1998 – Honda agreed to pay $17.1 million for disconnecting anti-pollution devices in 1.6 million cars.

1998 – The space shuttle Discovery pulled away from Mir, ending America‘s three-year partnership with Russia.

2000 – The Dallas Stars and the New Jersey Devils played the NHL‘s longest scoreless game in Stanley Cup finals history. The fifth game of the series lasted 106 minutes and 21 seconds. The game ended with a goal by Mike Madano that allowed the Stars to play a game six back in Dallas.

2001 – Marc Chagall’s painting “Study for ‘Over Vitebsk” was stolen from the Jewish Museum in New York City. The 8×10 painting was valued at about $1 million. A group called the International Committee for Art and Peace later announced that they would return the painting after the Israelis and Palestinians made peace.

2004 – Nate Olive and Sarah Jones began the first known continuous hike of the 1,800-mile trail down the U.S. Pacific Coast. They completed the trek at the U.S.-Mexico border on September 28.

Thirteen years after American settlers founded the city named for him, Chief Seattle dies in a nearby village of his people.

Born sometime around 1790, Seattle (Seathl) was a chief of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes who lived around the Pacific Coast bay that is today called Puget Sound. He was the son of a Suquamish father and a Duwamish mother, a lineage that allowed him to gain influence in both tribes.

By the early 1850s, small bands of Euro-Americans had begun establishing villages along the banks of Puget Sound. Chief Seattle apparently welcomed his new neighbors and seems to have treated them with kindness. In 1853, several settlers moved to a site on Elliott Bay to establish a permanent town—since Chief Seattle had proved so friendly and welcoming, the settlers named their tiny new settlement in his honor.

The Euro-American settlers picked the site because of the luxuriant forest on the bluff behind the new village. The Gold Rush in California had created a booming market for timber, and soon most of the villagers were at work cutting the trees and “skidding” them down a long chute to a newly constructed sawmill. The chute became known as “skid road,” and in time, it became the main street in Seattle, though it kept its original name. When the Seattle business district later moved north, the area became a haven for drunks and derelicts. Consequently, “skid road” or “skid row” became lingo for the dilapidated area of any town.

Not all the Puget Sound Indians, however, were as welcoming toward the white settlers as Chief Seattle. War broke out in 1855, and Indians from the White River Valley south of Seattle attacked the village. Although he believed the white settlers would eventually drive his people to extinction, Chief Seattle argued that resistance would merely anger the settlers and hasten the Indians’ demise. By 1856, many of the local Indians had concluded that Chief Seattle was right and made peace.

A celebration that has persisted for over a century receives its first official recognition on June 7, 1979, as the Texas Legislature passes a bill declaring Juneteenth a state holiday. The annual June 19 celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation—not the announcement itself, but the arrival of the news of the proclamation in Texas—is now officially observed in almost all 50 states.

President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation officially freed the enslaved peoples of the rebellious Southern states on New Year’s Day of 1863, but the order only applied to territories currently held by the Confederacy. Southerners did not recognize Lincoln’s authority, and in many cases slaveowners and whites simply withheld the news from enslaved people. The wait was especially long in Texas, where news of slavery’s demise did not arrive until two months after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox ended the Civil War. On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas and proclaimed the news to the enslaved people there.

Black History

African Americans have played a central role in shaping U.S. history. From slavery and its abolition to the Great Migration, the civil rights movement and military, scientific, cultural and political achievements, explore key moments, milestones and figures in Black History.

Source: history.com

…ELEVATED FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS AGAIN WEDNESDAY… by NWS Seattle

Dry and unstable conditions are expected over much of the interior lowlands Wednesday. Minimum relative humidity values are expected to range between 20 to 30 percent. While this does not meet critical fire weather thresholds, these conditions are rather unseasonable for June and will produce a favorable environment for fire starts and fire spreads, particularly in finer fuels such as brush and grass.