From the MilestoneDocuments.com editorial staff

Franklin D. Roosevelt

On June 25, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802. The order banned discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities in the government and defense industries. The order resulted in part from pressure placed on Roosevelt by the African American labor leader A. Philip Randolph. Earlier in 1941 Randolph had announced plans for a mass demonstration in the nation’s capital to demand fair employment opportunities in defense industries and the desegregation of the armed forces. President Roosevelt was the target of this protest. Although he had won overwhelming black support, Roosevelt was reluctant to take action against racial discrimination because he feared antagonizing southern Democrats who controlled key congressional committees.

March on Washington Movement committees sprang up in major cities across the United States and began recruiting delegations to send to the capital. The prospect of thousands of militant blacks marching on Washington, D.C., troubled the White House, but Randolph did not back down. He told the president that only an executive order banning discrimination in the government and defense industries would satisfy his demands. Roosevelt capitulated and issued Executive Order 8802 six days before the scheduled date for the march. Although the order did not extend to the armed forces, it satisfied Randolph, who called off the planned march.

Roosevelt’s order was the first significant presidential action on behalf of African American civil rights since Reconstruction. Although the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) it created did not fully live up to its promise, it was an opening wedge in the battle against Jim Crow laws. Roosevelt’s action established a precedent that other chief executives would follow. African American leaders learned that organized mass action was a powerful weapon in their quest for full civil rights.

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The Weather Manifesto assailed the Progressive Labor movement for failing to comprehend the revolutionary nature of global anti-imperialism in which American capitalism and empire were under attack in Cuba, Vietnam, Algeria, Bolivia, Angola, and throughout the Third World in conjunction with domestic revolutionaries such as the Black Panthers. Living in the belly of the beast, it was imperative that radicalized American students join the revolutionary struggle that would usher in the millennium of world communism. White youth would be radicalized to support black liberation through the example of the Weathermen renouncing nonviolence and joining the armed struggle against American imperialism. The Manifesto concluded, “The strategy of the RYM for developing an active mass base, tying the city-wide fights to community and city-wide anti-pig movement, and for building a party eventually out of this motion, fits with the world strategy for winning the revolution, builds a movement oriented toward the power, and will become one division of the International Liberation Army, while its battlefields are added to the many Vietnams which will dismember and dispose of US imperialism. Long Live the Victory of the People’s War!”

The bellicose nature of the Weather Manifesto evoked considerable controversy then and now, as the radicals sought to embody their principles with the formation of revolutionary collectives that would “bring the war home.” In other words, the goal was to subject Americans to some of the violence and destruction inflicted daily upon the Vietnamese people. Terming themselves the Weather Underground, the New York City collective planned a bombing that would simulate the Vietnam experience by creating death and destruction during a military dance at Fort Dix in nearby New Jersey. Instead, on March 6, 1970, the bomb was triggered by accident, destroying a New York City townhouse where the explosives were being assembled. Dead in the explosion were Weather members Ted Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins.

Following this tragedy, the Weather Underground re-evaluated their strategy. While not disavowing the principles of their Manifesto, the Weather Bureau, or leadership cadre, asserted that symbolic attacks against institutions and manifestations of imperialism such as military induction centers and government offices would galvanize the support of the American working class. Thus, the Weather Underground did not consider themselves terrorists, as their goal was not to induce fear among the American people but rather to demonstrate that it was possible to strike against the institutions and property of the capitalist “pig” state that sought global control over the working class and people of color. The Weather Underground conducted a series of bombings in the early 1970s that sought to symbolically bring the war home without the taking of human life. Warnings of impending explosions were provided to authorities in order to avoid the type of tragedy that occurred in the Weather townhouse explosion.

But the Weather Underground failed to incite a working-class revolution in the United States, and with the end of the war in Vietnam, many radicals attempted to re-enter mainstream society. Individuals such as Rudd, Ayers, and Dohrn surrendered to authorities and were able to arrange plea bargains as more serious charges were dismissed due to massive civil rights violations and illegal domestic surveillance by the government in the COINTELPRO or Counter-Intelligence Program. Other Weather Underground members such as David Gilbert and Judy Clark remain incarcerated for their roles in a Brink’s robbery in which three people were killed.

What are we to make of the Weather Manifesto and Underground after forty years? Efforts by the political right to keep the cultural wars of the 1960s alive were negated in the 2008 presidential election as few voters were influenced by accusations that Barack Obama was linked to terrorism through his far from intimate associations with Ayers, now a professor of education at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

The Weather Manifesto was a product of the times and reflective of an increasing radicalization of the antiwar and civil rights movements fostered by government suppression and the frustrations of addressing de facto segregation, economic inequality, and the intransigence of a government intent upon pursing a war of aggression in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the Weathermen destroyed SDS, the organization best equipped to organize the growing campus unrest with the Vietnam War. In addition, the Weather Manifesto abandoned the principles established in the 1962 founding document of SDS, the Port Huron Statement. Addressing issues of imperialism, racism, economic inequality, the military-industrial complex, and the sense of alienation experienced by many individuals seemingly overwhelmed by the powers of impersonal institutions such as the university, the Port Huron Statement advocated greater democracy rather than armed revolution. The document concluded, “America should concentrate on its genuine social priorities: abolish squalor, terminate neglect, and establish an environment for people to live in with dignity and creativeness.” These sentiments would seem to resonate well with the young people of today who have re-established SDS. The youth of the twenty-first century are technologically savvy and intent upon creating a world community to formulate solutions for environmental concerns of which the protesters of the 1960s were only dimly aware. Perhaps social networking will provide the organizational impetus to implement the democratic vision of the Port Huron Statement rather than the days of rage envisioned by the Weather Manifesto.

Ron Briley is a history teacher and assistant headmaster at Sandia Preparatory School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he has taught for over thirty years. His teaching has been recognized by the AHA Beveridge Prize, the Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award from the Society of History Education, and the OAH Tachau Precollegiate Teaching Award. His books include Class at Bat, Gender on Deck, and Race in the Hole (McFarland, 2003), James T. Farrell’s Dreaming Baseball (Kent State, 2007), and All Stars and Movie Stars (Kentucky, 2008).

Although it appears that Nixon did not directly order the Watergate break-in, he quickly understood the potential political damage it could do to his reelection campaign. Thus, within six days of the break-in, in a June 23 Oval Office meeting with chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, Nixon initiated an effort that included key members of his administration to cover up any White House connection to the crime. Over the next twenty months, however, the cover-up steadily unraveled. Because the June 23 meeting—like all Oval Office conversations in Nixon’s administration—was recorded, it provided proof of Nixon’s role in the cover-up when it was released to investigators in July 1974 via an order from the Supreme Court. Ultimately, to avoid impeachment on charges of obstruction of justice, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 8, 1974.

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Abraham Lincoln

On June 16, 1858, the Republican Party of Illinois convened at Springfield to nominate its candidate for the U.S. Senate. Taking a first step toward the popular election of U.S. senators, the convention bypassed the state legislature and unanimously nominated Abraham Lincoln as its candidate. Anticipating his nomination, Lincoln had been preparing his acceptance speech a month before the convention, writing out parts on scraps of paper and depositing them in his stovepipe hat. It would be known to history as the “House Divided” Speech.

The speech is divided into three parts. The opening section discusses the crisis of a nation torn apart by slavery. The second part details the involvement of northern Democrats in a scheme to nationalize slavery. The closing section opposes Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s opponent in the election, as leader of the antislavery forces.

While Lincoln ended up losing the election to Douglas, the “House Divided” Speech and the ensuing Lincoln-Douglas debates catapulted him to national prominence. By spring 1860 the debates had been published in book form. Selling for fifty cents a copy, the first run of thirty thousand copies quickly sold out, and subsequent printings also sold quickly. While it is too much to attribute Lincoln’s nomination for the presidency to the debates, the speech and the subsequent debates advertised Lincoln throughout the North and made his name a household word.

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Labor, too, was intended to benefit. By acquiescing in corporate exemption from antitrust laws, labor would be granted the right to bargain collectively “through representatives of their own choosing.” The bill’s famous Section 7 (a) specifically outlawed the so-called yellow dog contract, by which a corporation could prohibit a prospective employee from joining a union. Also illegal was pressuring the employee to join a “company union” sponsored and controlled by management. The National Recovery Administration (NRA) codes would require minimum wages and humane working conditions, thereby preventing the continuation of sweatshop conditions.

The unemployed made up another group that would benefit from the new bill. A last-minute insertion allocated $3.3 billion for a massive works program, soon to be implemented by the Public Works Administration, or PWA. The consumer was not neglected, being aided by the general increase in purchasing power and by a specially created watchdog group, the Consumers Advisory Board.

The act’s success was mixed. It gave jobs to two million relief workers, helped stop a highly destructive deflationary spiral, and improved business ethics. Maximum hours and minimum wages were established, trade unions were encouraged, and child labor and the sweatshop all but abolished. But the NRA failed in its major objective—to speed recovery—and its support of restricted production and price-fixing undoubtedly hindered it.

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Earl Warren

Miranda v. Arizona, with a majority opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, was announced on June 13, 1966. Miranda is a major landmark in the Supreme Court’s expansion of rights of the accused. The decision reversed criminal convictions and threw out statements made by the defendant while in police custody. The accused, the Court wrote, had not been apprised of his right not to incriminate himself or of his right to consult an attorney and have one present during interrogation. This violation of constitutional rights made inadmissible his confession to the police, the major piece of evidence upon which the state relied for his conviction.

The impact of Miranda v. Arizona, measured purely as a legal standard, began to dissipate shortly after it was handed down. Congress announced its displeasure with the Miranda rules in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. As led by Chief Justice Warren Burger from 1969 to 1986, the Supreme Court never overruled Miranda but instead chipped away at it by developing, in cases where defendants claimed a Miranda violation, exceptions to the requirement that the warnings always be given. Nonetheless, the general impact of the case cannot be denied. Police departments incorporate the Miranda rules into their training and practices, sometimes printing the Miranda rights on cards for officers to hand to suspects. Americans are likely more familiar with the particulars of the holding in this case than in any other ever heard by the Supreme Court, for the Miranda warnings are common parlance on television and in crime fiction. Thus, the clamor trailing this case through American culture more than a half century after its disposition has instructed people, in a simplified manner, about important constitutional rights.

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George Mason

On June 12, 1776, the Virginia Convention formally adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights. In May 1776, the convention had formed a committee to draft a declaration of rights. George Mason was put in charge of composing the document, which outlined the rights of Virginians. Drawing on the 1689 English Bill of Rights (which, in tandem with the 1701 Act of Settlement, amounts to Britain’s “constitution”) and the views of such English Enlightenment social philosophers as John Locke, the Virginia Declaration of Rights was the first of its kind to fully define the rights of citizens and the relationship to their government and was the first colonial statement of individual rights. In addition, it essentially gave the colonists permission to declare independence from Great Britain.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights had an enormous influence. Not long after Virginia passed the document, five other colonies passed similar bills of rights. By the following year, eight additional states had composed similar documents declaring the rights of their citizens. By 1783 all of the states had some sort of bill of rights, and all were modeled extensively on the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Additionally, in drafting the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson relied heavily on Mason’s Declaration of Rights. Indeed, much of the language in the Declaration of Independence was drawn from Mason’s document.

As a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Mason argued for the inclusion of a bill of rights. Although the idea was defeated at the time, the tenets in Mason’s Declaration of Rights were eventually incorporated into the first ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. In 1789 the Virginia Declaration of Rights also became the basis for France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. In addition, the United Nations modeled its 1948 Declaration of Human Rights on Mason’s document.

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John F. Kennedy

President John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address, delivered to the nation by radio and television on June 11, 1963, marked the first time that a president called on Americans to recognize civil rights as a lofty moral cause to which all persons should contribute, so that the nation might fully end discrimination against and provide equal treatment to African Americans. In 1963, the centennial year of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, to which Kennedy alludes in his speech, the movement led by African Americans and their allies for civil rights reached the center stage of American politics. Although Kennedy had hesitated to seek progress with regard to civil rights during his first two years in the White House because of the strength of southern Democratic opponents in Congress, he now added the moral weight of the presidency to the demand for civil rights, and he emerged as an ally of the movement. Kennedy explained the economic, educational, and moral dimensions of racial discrimination and announced that he would be submitting legislation to ensure equal access to public accommodations and to address other aspects of ongoing discrimination. On July 2, 1964, seven months after Kennedy was assassinated, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, abolishing discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and federally funded programs, became law.

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Dwight Eisenhower's Order of the Day

On June 6, 1944, at a critical stage of World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower oversaw the launching of the world’s largest armada. An extraordinary flotilla of 176,000 men, 20,000 vehicles, and thousands of tons of stores and munitions left the shores of England and headed toward Normandy in France as part of the D-day invasion. Eisenhower’s description of this colossal human enterprise drew from a spiritual, not secular, vocabulary. This Texas-born Presbyterian saw the invasion quite simply as “the Great Crusade.” He also sought “the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.” Eisenhower’s message to the troops, known as the Order of the Day, is a remarkably succinct call to arms and rallying cry for battle. Essentially, Eisenhower’s appeal to the assembled forces—”Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force”—is built around no more than two full paragraphs; five exclamation points; less than three hundred words; and a terse, staccato, intensive series of short sentences. The tone, while calm and collected, is quintessential Eisenhower. His message is that the country was facing a monumental challenge and a daunting task but that the outcome could not be in doubt.

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