Three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were found murdered and buried in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. They had disappeared on June 21 after being detained by Neshoba County police on charges of speeding. They were participating in the Mississippi Summer Project organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to increase black voter registration. When their car was found burned on June 23, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the FBI to search for the men.

historyplace.com

673 – The first recorded wine auction took place in London.

1792 – U.S. President George Washington signed the Postal Service Act that created the U.S. Post Office.

1809 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the power of the federal government was greater than that of any individual state.

1815 – The USS Constitution, under Captain Charles Stewart fought the British ships Cyane and Levant. The Constitution captures both, but lost the Levant after encountering a British squadron. The Constitution and the Cyane returned to New York safely on May 15, 1815. The Cyane was purchased and became the USS Cyane.

1839 – The U.S. Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia.

1872 – Luther Crowell received a patent for a machine that manufactured paper bags.

1872 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in New York City.

1872 – Silas Noble and J.P. Cooley patented the toothpick manufacturing machine.

1873 – The University of California got its first Medical School.

1880 – The American Bell Company was incorporated.

1901 – The first territorial legislature of Hawaii convened.

1921 – The motion picture “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” was released starring Rudolph Valentino.

1931 – The U.S. Congress allowed California to build the Oakland Bay Bridge.

1933 – The U.S. House of Representatives completed congressional action on the amendment to repeal Prohibition.

1944 – “Big Week” began as U.S. bombers began raiding German aircraft manufacturing centers during World War II.

1952 – Emmett L. Ashford became the first black umpire in organized baseball. He was authorized to be a substitute in the Southwestern International League.

1952 – “The African Queen” opened at the Capitol Theatre in New York City.

1958 – Racing jockey Eddie Arcaro got win number 4,000, as he rode the winner at Santa Anita race track in Southern California.

1962 – John Glenn made space history when he orbited the world three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes. He was the first American to orbit the Earth. He was aboard the Friendship 7 Mercury capsule. Glenn witnessed the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter while in flight.

1965 – Ranger 8 crashed on the moon after sending back thousands of pictures of its surface.

1987 – After 11 years, David Hartman left ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

1987 – A bomb exploded in a computer store in Salt Lake City, UT. The blast was blamed on the Unabomber.

1993 – Two ten-year-old boys were charged by police in Liverpool, England, in the abduction and death of a toddler. The two boys were later convicted.

1998 – American Tara Lipinski, at age 15, became the youngest gold medalist in winter Olympics history when she won the ladies’ figure skating title at Nagano, Japan.

2001 – FBI Agent Robert Phillip Hanssen was arrested and charged with spying for the Russians for 15 years.

2002 – In Reqa Al-Gharbiya, Egypt, a fire raced through a train killing at least 370 people and injuring at least 65.

2003 – In West Warwick, RI, 100 people were killed and more than 230 were injured when fire destroyed the nightclub The Station. The fire started with sparks from a pyrotechnic display being used by Jack Russel’s Great White. Ty Longley, guitarist for the band, was one of the victims in the fire.

2008 – The U.S. Navy destroyed an inoperable spy satellite with a missile from the USS Lake Erie.

2015 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record high when it closed above 18,100.

on-this-day.com

Never forget …

Many Americans worried that citizens of Japanese ancestry would act as spies or saboteurs for the Japanese government.  Fear — not evidence — drove the U.S. to place over 127,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps for the duration of WWII.War II. Their crime? Being of Japanese ancestry.

Despite the lack of any concrete evidence, Japanese Americans were suspected of remaining loyal to their ancestral land. Anti-Japanese paranoia increased because of a large Japanese presence on the West Coast. In the event of a Japanese invasion of the American mainland, Japanese Americans were feared as a security risk.

Succumbing to bad advice and popular opinion, President Roosevelt signed an executive order in February 1942 ordering the relocation of all Americans of Japanese ancestry to concentration camps in the interior of the United States.

Evacuation orders were posted in Japanese-American communities giving instructions on how to comply with the executive order. Many families sold their homes, their stores, and most of their assets. They could not be certain their homes and livelihoods would still be there upon their return. Because of the mad rush to sell, properties and inventories were often sold at a fraction of their true value.     After being forced from their communities, Japanese families made these military-style barracks their homes.

Until the camps were completed, many of the evacuees were held in temporary centers, such as stables at local racetracks. Almost two-thirds of the interns were Nisei, or Japanese Americans born in the United States. It made no difference that many had never even been to Japan. Even Japanese-American veterans of World War I were forced to leave their homes.

Most of the ten relocation camps were built in arid and semi-arid areas where life would have been harsh under even ideal conditions.orced to leave their homes.

Ten camps were finally completed in remote areas of seven western states. Housing was spartan, consisting mainly of tarpaper barracks. Families dined together at communal mess halls, and children were expected to attend school. Adults had the option of working for a salary of $5 per day. The United States government hoped that the interns could make the camps self-sufficient by farming to produce food. But cultivation on arid soil was quite a challenge.

Evacuees elected representatives to meet with government officials to air grievances, often to little avail. Recreational activities were organized to pass the time. Some of the interns actually volunteered to fight in one of two all-Nisei army regiments and went on to distinguish themselves in battle.

        Fred Korematsu challenged the legality of Executive Order 9066 but the Supreme Court ruled the action was justified as a wartime necessity. It was not until 1988 that the U.S. government attempted to apologize to those who had been interned.

Fred Korematsu decided to test the government relocation action in the courts. He found little sympathy there. In Korematsu vs. the United States, the Supreme Court justified the executive order as a wartime necessity. When the order was repealed, many found they could not return to their hometowns. Hostility against Japanese Americans remained high across the West Coast into the postwar years as many villages displayed signs demanding that the evacuees never return. As a result, the interns scattered across the country.

In 1988, Congress attempted to apologize for the action by awarding each surviving intern $20,000. While the American concentration camps never reached the levels of Nazi death camps as far as atrocities are concerned, they remain a dark mark on the nation’s record of respecting civil liberties and cultural differences.

ushistory.org