The 1970 Kent State Shootings of College Protestors

Kent State Shootings victim, May 4,1970
Kent State shootings victim, May 4,1970

It happened on May 4, 1970, during a student demonstration against the Vietnam War at Kent State University. Four students were killed and nine injured when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on the protestors.

The impact of the shootings triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities to close.  The shootings have come to symbolize what happens when a severely divided country leads to protests and ultimately violence.  Despite the fact that over 50+ years have passed, two key question hangs over the events of May 4th.  How could this have happened, and who was to blame?

Just the week before, President Richard Nixon expanded the Vietnam War into neighboring Cambodia. The decision sparked protests at college campuses nationwide, including Kent State in northeast Ohio.

The Vietnam War was a decade long civil war that pitted the communists of north Vietnam against democratic South Vietnam.  The United States supported the south with thousands of troops on the ground, ships, planes and weapons.  Communist China and the Soviet Union did the same with the north.  By 1970, a significant portion of Americans was against sending even more U.S. troops to Vietnam.

President Nixon had been elected in 1968 due in large part to his promise to END the Vietnam War.  However, on April 30, Nixon authorized U.S. troops to invade next door Cambodia. North Vietnamese troops were in Cambodia using it to launch attacks on the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese. It was the intense public backlash that led to the shootings at Kent State University.

At Kent State, protests began on Friday, May 1. 

Hundreds of students gathered on the Commons, a popular green space in the center of campus. Several student speakers gave angry speeches against both U.S. involvement in the war and President Nixon.  Student organizers called for another rally at Noon on Monday, May 4.

That night, there were violent clashes between student protestors and local police in downtown Kent. Police said their cars were hit with bottles, and that students were stopping traffic and lighting bonfires in the street.  Kent Mayor Leroy Satrom declared a state of emergency and ordering all the bars closed. The entire Kent police force was called into duty.

The mayor’s order to close the bars early on a Friday night only angered the students more, and increased the size of the crowds downtown. The mayor then called Ohio Governor James Rhodes.  Fearing a larger demonstration that might lead to violence, the mayor asked for state assistance. Police were able to disperse the crowd and force protesters back to campus. However, the stage was now set for more trouble to come.

The following day, Saturday, May 2, there were rumors that radical revolutionaries were present who made threats against the university and the town. Mayor Satrom met with representatives of the Ohio National Guard sent to Kent.  Satrom was worried that his local forces would be inadequate to challenge any greater disturbance if violent radicals were involved.  At 5:00 p.m. he called Governor Rhode’s office to make a request for Ohio National Guard troops.  Rhodes agreed.

By the time they arrived at Kent State that night, someone had already set fire to the school’s ROTC Building next to the Commons.  Scores of students cheered as it burned.  Some demonstrators clashed with firefighters attempting to put out the blaze.  The wooden ROTC building could not be saved and burnt to the ground before midnight.  By that time, over 1,000 demonstrators surrounding the blaze. The mayor asked the Guardsmen to intervene. Clashes between students and the guard ensued well into the night.

Tear gas was eventually deployed and dozens of arrests made.

The next day, Sunday, May 3, was thankfully a fairly calm one on campus. The weather was sunny and warm, and students were laying on the grassy Commons.  Some even chatted with the over 1000 armed Guardsmen patrolling the campus. Radical protestors were assumed to be responsible for setting fire to the smoldering ROTC building, but no one was arrested.

The University administration banned all further rallies in the interest of campus safety. University President Robert White had 12,000 leaflets printed and distributed on Monday morning. They indicated that all rallies were prohibited as long as the Guard was on campus.

Republican Governor Rhodes, who was running for the U.S. Senate, flew to Kent on Sunday morning. At a press conference, he provocatively called student protestors “The worst of America.”  Minor confrontations between protesters and guardsmen occurred Sunday evening, with rocks thrown, tear gas deployed, and arrests made.

Then came Monday, May 4th, 1970. 

Though prohibited from occurring, a major protest was nevertheless still scheduled for Noon in the Commons.  Crowds of students began to gather at about 11:00 am.  An estimated 3,000 protesters and spectators assembled by Noon. Stationed at the ruins of the ROTC building were about 100 Ohio National Guardsmen with M-1 military rifles.

Authorities have never agreed on who exactly organized the Kent State protests— university students or external anti-war radicals. But the protest on May 4th, was initially peaceful.

Ohio National Guardsmen advance on the Kent State student protestors
Ohio National Guardsmen advance on the Kent State student protestors

About 500 active demonstrators with signs and chants gathered around The Victory Bell at one end of the Commons.  Another 1,000 people were cheering them on.  An additional 1,500 people were spectators standing around the edge of the Commons.  The active demonstrators were shouting protests against both the war and the presence of the National Guard on campus.

Though peaceful, Ohio National Guard General Robert Canterbury ordered the protesters to disperse.  The announcement was made by a Kent State police officer using a bullhorn and driving across the Commons in the back of a Guard jeep. The protesters refused to disperse and began to shout and throw rocks at the Guardsmen.

“Disperse immediately! Go back to your classes! This demonstration is not permitted!“

General Canterbury ordered his men to fire tear gas into the crowd at the Victory Bell, and to lock and load their weapons.  The Guardsmen from the ROTC building then marched across the Commons.  They forced protesters to move up Blanket Hill, then down the other side towards the Prentice Hall parking lot and a football practice field. The football field was enclosed with fencing, so the Guardsmen soon got caught up inside the angry mob. 

Yelling and rock throwing reached a peak after about 10 minutes. The Guardsmen, realizing their mistake, began retracing their steps from the football practice field back up Blanket Hill. When they reached the top, witnesses say 28 of 70+ guardsmen suddenly turned and fired their M-1 rifles down into the crowd of college protestors.  Most guardsmen fired into the air or ground to try and scare the protestors. However, a smaller portion fired directly into the student crowd.

Over just 13 seconds, nearly 70 shots were fired.

Four Kent State students lay dead on the ground—Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer.  Nine others were seriously injured. Four had been shot in the back. The dead and injured were spread across either the parking lot or the slope of Blanket Hill.

The 70+ Guardsmen retreated back down into the Commons. There they faced a hostile crowd which realized that the Guardsmen had just shot their fellow students. Many angry demonstrators attacked the Guardsmen.  This time, perhaps shocked into reality of what they had done, no more shots were fired.

Kent State University faculty marshals, led by Professor Glenn Frank, pleaded with National Guard leaders to allow them to talk with the demonstrators and avoid further violence.  After about 20 minutes of emotional begging, the faculty marshals convinced the students to peacefully disperse and leave the Commons.

Kent State shooting victims are attended to.
Kent State shooting victims are attended to, May 4th, 1970.

Back at the site of the shootings, multiple wailing and flashing ambulances had arrived.  Emergency medical attention was given to the students who had not died immediately. The ambulances then formed a screaming procession as they rushed the victims to the local hospital.

President White immediately closed the University.

Three days after the shootings, a general student strike occurred across the country, with nearly 4 million students and professors walking out of class. Governor Rhodes compared protesters to Fascist Brownshirts and communist agitators. Classes did not resume for six week until the summer, when students held a Candlelight Vigil to remember the victims of May 4th. 

So why did members of the National Guard fire into a crowd of unarmed students? Either they: a) were ordered to, b) fired in self-defense, or c) were in no immediate danger, meaning the shootings were unjustified.  Guardsmen later testified in federal court that they fired because they were in fear of their lives. They felt the demonstrators were advancing on them and shot in self defense. Disagreements remain as to whether they were under sufficient threat to use deadly force.

One interpretation is that responsibility for the shootings lied with the Guardsmen. Experts from the 1970 Scranton Commission said: “The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable.” Federal criminal and civil trials since, however, have accepted the guardsmen’ explanation.

The Kent State shootings changed American history. It reverberated throughout the final four years of the Vietnam War. Folk rockers Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quickly released a song about the shootings.

The university built a gym on part of the parking lot where students were killed. The school even tried to rebrand itself as just plain “Kent University.” Since just saying the name “Kent State” immediate brought thoughts about the shootings.

For years, some believed the Kent State students got what they deserved.

Why would anyone want to venerate those victims?   There was the common opinion that everyone college in the 1970’s were elite, rich kids. People would not accept the idea that American soldiers turned their guns on American citizens without just cause.

In a civil suit filed by the injured Kent State students, an out-of-court settlement was reached in 1979.  The Ohio National Guard agreed to pay, through the state of Ohio, those injured on May 4, 1970 a total of $675,000. In the settlement statement, signed by the Ohio National Guard members, they expressed regret, but not wrongdoing:

“In retrospect, the tragedy… should not have occurred. The students may have believed that they were right in continuing their mass protest in response to the Vietnam War … Some of the Guardsmen, fearful and anxious from prior events, may have believed that their lives were in danger. Hindsight suggests that another method would have resolved the confrontation…”

Student photographer John Filo won a Pulitzer Prize for his famous image of young Mary Vecchio screaming over Jeffrey Miller’s fallen body in the parking lot, just after the last shot was fired on May 4th.

Campus Memorial for the victims of the Kent State shootings
Campus Memorial for the victims of the Kent State shootings

In 1990, The university dedicated a small memorial was on campus and Ohio Governor Dick Celeste issued a formal apology. In the university’s mind, it was the end of the story.  Taylor Hall became home to the May 4 Visitors Center with photos, educational space and displays of artifacts related to the shootings.

“Hindsight suggests that another method would have better resolved the confrontation.” Better ways must be found to deal with future polarized confrontations in a deeply divided nation.

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The Medieval Dancing Plague of St. Vitus Dance

The Dancing Plague of Strasbourg in 1518
The Dancing Plague of Strasbourg in 1518

Five hundred years ago, during a hot July in the French city of Strasbourg, a strange mania seized its people. Hundreds of citizens became compelled to dance uncontrollably in the streets – for no apparent reason.  This collective “dance fever” lasted for WEEKS.  That is, until they collapsed from exhaustion, unconsciousness or, in some cases, even death. Only carting the victims off to the nearby St. Vitus grotto shrine appears to have ultimately halted it.  This bizarre event came to be known as the Dancing Plague or St. Vitus Dance.  It remains a puzzling and mysterious episode in European history.  But what caused it?

It all started on the 14th of July in 1518.  Strasbourg, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire (today France), sits picturesquely on the River Rhine.  A woman named Frau Troffea left her home, went into the street, and suddenly began to dance.  This wasn’t a proper court dance or even an informal country dance.  She was spinning, twisting, and hopping, all without any music. Passersby thought it at first amusing or at least curious, with other shaking their heads in disapproval.  They summoned her husband, Herr Troffea, and even he cannot get her to stop.

Neighbors slowly came to realize this is a woman will not, or cannot, stop. She continued to dance all day, until she collapsed from exhaustion. But then, after resting for a short while on the warm cobblestones, she got up again and resumed her frenzied dance.  When asked why she dances, Frau Troffea makes no eye contact and does not respond.

By the third day a crowd of spectators had gathered — venders, porters, pilgrims, nuns, and children — were all watching the bizarre spectacle.  Her confused husband had to pour water down her dancing throat.  She dances for nearly a week on now swollen feet, pausing occasionally only due to exhaustion.  Six days later, Frau Troffea was still going strong! She hadn’t eaten and barely slept. 

Day or night, rain or shine, she couldn’t seem to stop dancing.

At this point, the suspicious priests in Strasbourg were convinced she was cursed. They sent her and her husband in a wagon 30 miles away into the mountains to Saverne. There they hoped she might be cured at the grotto shrine of Saint Vitus.  They believed it was he who had cursed her as St. Vitus was the patron saint of dancers.

But then … some of those who had watched her strange uncontrollable dance began to dance as well.  Like her, they cannot explain themselves. They dance as if compelled with limbs waving.  Within a week, 34 people in Strasbourg were afflicted and dancing in the streets.  The Dancing Plague had spread quickly throughout the city, affecting people from all walks of life. Men and women, young and old, rich and poor – all were seized by the uncontrollable urge to dance.

The exact symptoms of the Dancing Plague varied from person to person. Some dancers drooled, others screamed, while still others laughed uncontrollably.   Some danced alone, while others formed groups and danced in clusters. The dancers’ feet eventually bled from overuse.  Their shoes were worn to shreds.  The dancing was not limited to daylight, but continued into the night.

This is when shock and alarm began to spread through Strasbourg. 

Saint Vitus
Saint Vitus, patron of dancers

The more citizens that became afflicted, the more desperate the privy council became. The clergy insisted it had to be the work of a vengeful Saint Vitus.  The guild of physicians declared the dance to be a disease, caused by “overheated blood.” In the hopes of wearing the dancers out, the city council had a stage built in the town square and grain market, and hired musicians to play. Their theory was that the dancers could only be cured by dancing it out. So soon, the rhythm of lutes, fiddles, pipes, horns and drums filled the streets. 

It backfired horribly.  The music only induced more citizens to uncontrollably join the crazed dancers! Some of the onlookers must have saw something compelling in the frenzied dancing, something that lured them into a similar mania.

By the time August came, there were 400 dancers with no end in sight. As hot summer sun beat down on their sweating faces, they continued to hop from leg to leg, spin in circles, flail their arms and whoop loudly. Their eyes are glassy and distant. Blood seeps from swollen feet into leather boots and shoes.

Dozens now began to drop like flies, overwhelmed by exhaustion. The lucky ones merely lost consciousness. Many literally danced themselves to death, dying of heart attacks. At its height, some sources claim the dancing was killing up to 15 people a day.

The privy council ordered the stages to be torn apart.  They then prohibited all dance and music in the city for the rest of the summer.  Finally, the council agreed with the clergy. They ordered those worst afflicted to be taken by wagons on the three-day ride to the grotto shrine of Saint Vitus. 

Frau Troffea was still at the shrine and had apparently been cured!

At the grotto, priests placed the trashing dancers before a wooden carving of St. Vitus. They put red shoes on their feet, sprinkled holy water on them, and painted their heads with crosses of consecrated oil.  The ritual, carried out in a darkened grotto, thick with incense and slow, droning Latin prayers, had the desired effect in stopping the dancing.

The grotto shrine of St. Vitus in Saverne.
The grotto shrine of St. Vitus in Saverne.

When word reached Strasbourg, more and more were sent to Saverne to be “forgiven” by St. Vitus. Within a week, the stream of suffering pilgrims was complete. The Dancing Plague had lasted for over a month, from mid-July to late August.

Once roused, some dancers claimed that they were cured by the chants, while others said it was St. Vitus curse. The Dancing Plague was not limited to Strasbourg, but spread to other cities, including Basel and Frankfurt. In some places, it lasted for several months, and in others, it died out quickly. Historians have estimated the total number of dancers to be in the thousands.  The final death toll was likely in the hundreds.

Strasbourg was not the first “Dancing Plague” to hit medieval Europe. More than ten such events had broken out along the Rhine River. In 1237, a group of children from Erfurt danced 20 km (12 mi) to the neighboring town before collapsing in exhaustion.  In 1374, thousands of villagers along the Rhine fell into a dancing mania, screaming in agony as the pain increased. Up until the 15th century, nuns from different convents would climb trees and meow like cats! As they were smaller in number than Strasbourg, they were interpreted in their day as either demonic possession or divine punishment.   

In the 500 years since, many theories have been offered as an explanation. 

Just 8 years later, the famous physician Paracelsus visited Strasbourg.  He investigated what he called the choreomania and wrote a treatise on ‘The Diseases That Deprive Man of His Reason.’ Best known for his pioneering work in medicinal chemistry, Paracelsus suggested that a person’s “laughing veins” could provoke an intense ticklish feeling. This would cloud judgment and provoke extreme motions, until the “frenzied blood” was finally calmed.   

If not an angry saint or overheated blood, what did cause the Dancing Plague?  Various theories and explanations have been put forward.

The Strasbourg poor were perhaps primed for an epidemic of hysterical dancing. There had been a succession of poor harvests, resulting in high grain prices, political instability, not to mention epidemics of syphilis and leprosy. This stress could have manifested as hysterical dancing.  Why?  Because the citizens believed it could –  the power of compulsion. People were suggestible and a firm belief in the Saint Vitus Curse was enough to set them off.   

The Dancing Plague victims being lead off to St. Vitus shrine.
The Dancing Plague victims being lead off to St. Vitus shrine.

At the time, Europeans were deeply religious, and it is possible that the dancers were caught up in a kind of ecstatic religious fervor.   Perhaps the dancers were attempting to purify themselves through dance, as a form of spiritual cleansing of their sins.

In the popular Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Red Shoes. The cursed pair of beautiful, scarlet leather slippers condemn their owner into a dance as punishment for her vanity. It is so convoluted that she eventually finds an executioner to hack off her own feet!

Dancing due to tarantism was also common theory at the time, as it was believed to be caused by the bite of a large tarantula wolf spider. Its symptoms included convulsions, sweating, and a frenzied desire to move. The cure for tarantism was said to be … you guessed it – music and dancing.

Some modern theories …

Modern historians argued that the dancing plagues could have been caused by ergot, a mind-altering mold found on damp rye.  When inadvertently baked into bread and eaten, it can cause twitching, jerking, AND hallucinations similar to LSD. Ergotism was common in Europe in the 16th century. However, while ergot can cause convulsions, it also restricts blood flow to the extremities. Someone poisoned by it would most likely die and NOT be able to dance for days on end.

Some characterize choreomania as a “psychic epidemic” similar to others around the world involving involuntary laughing or fainting. Psychologists stated that it belongs to a class called mass psychogenic illnesses.  This mass hysteria is a condition in which a group of people share a common delusion or anxiety. It suggests that the dancers were caught up in a kind of trance.  And that their frenzied behavior was a result of their collective belief in the need to dance.

It’s then a type of psychic contagion, similar to the laughing epidemic that engulfed Tanzania as recently as 1963. When a couple of girls at a local mission school began to giggle, their friends followed suit until two-thirds of the pupils were laughing and crying uncontrollably.  Once home, the pupils “infected” their families and soon whole villages were consumed by hysterics. Doctors recorded several hundred cases, lasting a week on average. The epidemic lasted 18 months.

As scary as an unstoppable dance might seem, for some there is an allure to it. What might happen if we allowed ourselves to be carried up in it? What would we think and feel? In ethnic cultures, people enter trances deliberately during various ceremonies. Once entranced, their perception of pain is known to be marginalized.  Of course, Dancing Plagues do have a modern parallel — Raves. Here, often with the help of alcohol and some colored pills, partygoers go on to dance for days with few breaks, food or sleep.

The Dancing Plague remains one of the most enigmatic episodes in European history. Its continues to fascinate scientists and artists alike. The tale makes us pause – a lone figure who sparks a mass movement, in this case a dance, that is so consuming, it transcends both one’s will and physical abilities.

There’s something intrinsically unsettling when the fabric of society suddenly breaks down, replaced with inexplicable behavior, leading to chaos. St. Vitus Dance reminds us of the fragility of our own society, and of the strength of shared delusions. One only has to think back to Nazi Germany or the Jonestown mass suicides to realize the power of mass hysteria.

The trouble with mass psychogenic illness is that there’s no way to predict when it will happen. What causes them remains a mystery.  The Dancing Plague is a powerful example of how a people can become caught up in a shared delusion, anxiety or fear, and how such mass hysteria can lead to tragic consequences, even today.

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The Forgotten Freedom Riders of 1961

Freedom Riders say goodbye as they leave for Alabama in 1961
Freedom Riders say goodbye as they leave for Alabama in 1961

During the spring of 1961, both African American and white student activists launched the Freedom Rides.  Their goal was to challenge U.S. segregation on public transportation in the dangerous Deep South. Traveling on buses from Washington, D.C. to Jackson, MS, the Freedom Riders met VIOLENT racial opposition from white mobs in Alabama and Mississippi.  The brutality against the Freedom Riders gathered national attention, eventually forcing the Kennedy Administration to intervene. The 1961 Freedom Rides were able to harness American’s outrage to force a federal ban on segregation in interstate travel … but it came at a heavy human cost.

In 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation of interstate travelers, terminals, restaurants, and restrooms was unconstitutional. America’s Deep South blatantly ignored the ruling. In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) new national director, James Farmer, had the idea of a Freedom Ride to force desegregation on interstate buses.  He was inspired by the black college students who’d launched the nonviolent sit-ins at lunch counters in Greensboro, NC. Farmer decided to have an interracial group of Freedom Riders ride buses from Washington, DC to New Orleans.

College students saw CORE’s announcement recruiting volunteers to participate in the Freedom Rides.  Seminary student, and future Congressman, John Lewis joined 12 other civil rights activists to form an interracial, intersex group of Freedom Riders.  The 13 recruits underwent three days of intensive training in nonviolence – role playing the aggressive confrontations they would encounter. The black Riders would be traveling into the Jim Crow South—where segregation was enforced—and use “whites-only” restrooms, lunch counters and waiting rooms. 

CORE sent letters to President John Kennedy, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and the president of Greyhound, announcing their intentions, and hope for protection. CORE decided to move forward despite receiving no response from the federal government or the bus company.

On May 4, 1961 in Washington DC, 6 of the Riders boarded a Greyhound bus and s7 took a Trailways bus, planning to ride to New Orleans. The Riders —7 African Americans and 6 whites—knew they’d face racial epithets, brutal violence, and possibly even death. They prayed together that they had the courage to face their trial nonviolently in the fight for equality. Their plan was to reach New Orleans (with stops along the way) on May 17. It would commemorate the 7th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.

Violence in South Carolina …

In Virginia and North Carolina, they faced only shouts and arrest threats from locals. It was not until the riders arrived in South Carolina, that they encountered violence. The first attack occurred on May 12th in Rock Hill, SC.  A group of angry white men attacked John Lewis; Albert Bigelow, an older white, World War II veteran; and Genevieve Hughes, a 28 year old white activist, as they attempted to enter a “whites-only” waiting area together.  Thankfully, a local black pastor rushed them to safety.  The police arrested two more of the black Riders for using a “whites-only” restroom, but later released them.

The beating, coupled with the arrests, began to attract media coverage. The next day, the group reached Atlanta, Georgia with the press now following them. The Freedom Riders successfully ate at desegregated lunch counters and sat in desegregated waiting rooms. The Riders also met with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) in Atlanta for dinner. King shared disturbing rumors about impending violence for the Riders in Alabama. King prophetically told Jet reporter Simeon Booker, who was following them:

“You’ll never make it through Alabama.”

– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Atlanta, GA, 1961

Unbeknownst to them, a Birmingham police sergeant, Tom Cook, and the Public Safety Commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor, were in league with the Mississippi Ku Klux Klan (KKK).  They planned a violent reception for the Freedom Riders.  Cook and Connor agreed that a mob of white men could beat them up for about 15 minutes.  Then they’d send in the police and make a show of restoring order to the “black riot.” The FBI had an informant in the KKK and alerted the Attorney General. But neither did anything to protect the Riders, or even give them a ‘heads up.’  

Ironically on May 6th, Attorney General Robert Kennedy delivered a major civil rights speech, He promised that the Kennedy administration would enforce civil rights laws. He stated that the Administration “will not stand by and be aloof.” The Freedom Riders presented an opportunity for the Attorney General to fulfill that promise.  Meanwhile, the their two buses left Atlanta for Alabama.

Fire in Alabama …

On May 14, the Greyhound bus arrived in Anniston, Alabama. The police allowed the KKK to attack the Freedom Riders however they wished.  So an angry mob of over 100 white people armed with guns, bats, and brass knuckles surrounded the bus.  The Freedom Riders held hands inside, knowing this would be their first trial by fire.  Two undercover Alabama Highway Patrol officers on the bus immediately ordered the driver to lock the doors.  But the angry mob only started shouting and smashed its windows with their bats. The Anniston police finally arrived and temporarily restored order.  The police allowed the bus to leave – with a slashed tire. 

Unfortunately, it was trailed by 30 – 40 truck and cars that surrounded it outside of town, and forced it to stop. The slashed tire finally blew out as it braked into the shoulder.  Suddenly, a member of the mob hurled a bundle of flaming rags into one of the smashed windows! It exploded into flames inside. The terrified Freedom Riders pushed to the door, but the mob blocked it. “WE’LL ROAST THEM ALIVE!” the Klan shouted. The Riders managed to escape by scrambling through windows, just as the interior of the bus burst into flames.  But the Freedom Riders were hardly out of danger. 

Freedom Riders Greyhound bus burning in Alabama, 1961
Freedom Riders’ Greyhound bus burning in Alabama, 1961

They were immediately swarmed upon by the mob and brutally beaten.  Hank Thomas, one of the young black riders (only 18), was hit on the skull by a man wielding at baseball bat.  Ed Blankenheim lost several teeth when he was hit in the face by a tire iron. The mob finally dispersed when one of the undercover officers fired his gun into the air and the bus fuel tank exploded. The Riders were taken to the local hospital, in the cars of fellow activists who’d been following them, where they were refused care. 

Beatings in Birmingham …

The second Trailways bus, traveled separately to Birmingham, Alabama. The Freedom Riders on that bus were terrorized by KKK members who’d quietly boarded in Atlanta. At first, the white men just taunted the riders with racial slurs and threats.  But when the black riders moved forward to sit in the empty white section of the bus, violence erupted. The KKK members punched two Riders in the face and pulled them to the floor, where they savagely beat and kicked them. Two other Riders, who tried to non-violently intervene, suffered the same beatings. The Klan members dragged them all to the back “colored section” of the bus.

When they arrived at Birmingham terminal, another angry white mob brandishing bats and pipes pulled the Riders from the bus and beat them again. Riders Ike Reynolds and Charles Person were thrown to the ground and bloodied by a series of vicious blows. Older white rider, Jim Peck, was struck in the head several times, later requiring 53 stitches.  Bull Connor’s police force finally showed up after the planned 15 minutes, but made no arrests. The Riders escaped and all met at a local Baptist church. Connors later proudly admitted that, he sent no police protection to the station … as it was Mother’s Day.

Photographs of the burning Greyhound bus and the bloodied Birmingham Riders appeared on the front pages of national newspapers around the world.  It drew international attention to the Freedom Riders and the state of Southern segregation in the U.S.  The violent attacks against both buses prompted CORE’s James Farmer to reluctantly end the Freedom Ride campaign.

The decision frustrated black student activist, Diane Nash, who argued with Farmer, “We can’t let them stop us with violence. If we do, the movement is dead.”  Under the new patronage and support of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC), the Freedom Ride would continue. The SNCC organized a group of 10 college students from Nashville, Tennessee to replace the original 13 Riders. 

Civil Rights leaders were wary of this risky decision, including MLK, who had declined to join the rides. Farmer questioned whether continuing the trip was “suicide.” To make matters worse, after the violence, they could not find a Greyhound or Trailways bus drivers who’d agree to transport the integrated Freedom Riders.  Though faced again with the possible end of the Freedom Ride, they would still not admit defeat.  

On 17 May, seven men and three women from Nashville Fisk University came to Birmingham. Just before reaching the city though, police pulled their bus over and ordered it to the Birmingham police station.  There they arrested all the replacement Riders for defying Segregation Laws. The Riders went on a hunger strike in the jail.  Three days later, the police finally dumped them on the side of a road – 100 miles outside of town. Undeterred, they hitched back to Birmingham to board the bus for Montgomery. 

Behind the scenes, Attorney General Robert Kennedy called Greyhound and demanded that it find a replacement driver for the Freedom Riders. He sent John Seigenthaler, a Department of Justice agent, to meet with a reluctant Alabama Governor John Patterson. Seigenthaler’s negotiations resulted in the Freedom Riders bus departure for Montgomery on May 20th with a full state police escort.

Attacks in Montgomery …

National Guard protects the Freedom Ride bus in Alabama, 1961
National Guard protects the Freedom Ride bus in Alabama, 1961

At the Montgomery city line, the state troopers left the bus, as agreed, but the local police, ordered to meet the Freedom Riders, NEVER appeared. The bus pulled into the station ALONE. At the terminal, yet another angry white mob attacked the new Freedom Riders as they disembarked.  A crowd armed with bricks, pipes, bats, and sticks shouted slurs and death threats. Jim Zwerg, a young white Rider, stepped off the bus first. The mob dragged him to the ground and knocked him unconscious. Two female riders were pummeled, one by another woman repeatedly swinging a heavy purse at her head; the other by a man repeatedly punching her in the face.

Agent John Seigenthaler attempted to rescue the women by pulling them into his car, but he too was knocked unconscious and kicked in the ribs. William Barbee, a young black Rider, was beaten with a baseball bat and suffered permanent brain damage. A black bystander was set afire after having kerosene thrown on him. The havoc ended when a state police officer fired warning shots into the ceiling of the bus station. All the Riders needed medical attention and were rushed to a local hospital.  When the police finally arrived, they served them with an injunction barring them from continuing the Freedom Ride in Alabama.

The following night, Martin Luther King came to Montgomery and led a service at the First Baptist Church.  More than 1000 supporters of the Freedom Riders attended. He told the assembly, “Alabama will have to face the fact that we are determined to be free. Fear not, we’ve come too far to turn back. We are not afraid and we shall overcome.” King blamed Governor Patterson for “aiding and abetting the forces of violence,” declaring that “the federal government must not stand idly by while bloodthirsty mobs beat nonviolent students with impunity”

When a white mob arrived, a riot ensued in the street outside the church.  As the night progressed, it spread throughout the city.  From inside the church, a desperate King called Robert Kennedy to beg for federal protection.  The Attorney General agreed and mobilized 600 federal marshals to the city to quell the violence. Governor Patterson declared martial law and dispatched the National Guard to restore order. They were forced to use tear gas to disperse the mob.  The federal marshals then escorted the people out of the church at dawn.

Arrests in Mississippi …

A compromise was worked out two days later to get the riders out of Alabama and into Mississippi. On May 24th, 27 Freedom Riders boarded buses and departed for Jackson, Mississippi, accompanied by the Alabama National Guard.  In Jackson, several hundred black supporters greeted the Riders. However, police still arrested those who attempted to use the “whites-only” terminal facilities.  The charges were violating segregation statutes.  Instead of the city jail, police took them to the maximum-security penitentiary in Parchman under brutal conditions.

Some civil rights activists, began to criticize King for offering only moral support, and not his physical presence on the buses. In a telegram, the president of the NAACP branch in North Carolina, urged him to “Lead the way by example.… If you lack the courage, remove yourself from the vanguard.”   King replied that he was on probation and could not afford another arrest.  It was a response some of the Freedom Riders found unacceptable.

That same day, U.S. Attorney General Kennedy issued a statement urging a “Cooling-off Period” in the face of the growing violence:  “A very difficult condition exists … There many persons traveling and using the interstate buses.  In this confused situation, innocent persons may be injured. A mob asks no questions. A cooling off period is needed.”

During the Mississippi hearings, the judge turned and looked at the wall of the courtroom rather than listen to the Freedom Riders’ defense lawyer.  This had happened to the lunch counter sit-in participants who were arrested for protesting segregated lunch counters. He sentenced the Freedom Riders to 30 days in jail.  Attorneys from the NAACP appealed the convictions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which eventually reversed them.

Second wave of new Freedom Riders in Mississippi.
Second wave of new Freedom Riders in Mississippi.

Though they never reached New Orleans, the white mob violence and national attention drew hundreds of NEW Freedom Riders to the cause. New Rides into southern states continued over the next several months.  Students from all over the country purchased bus tickets to the Deep South. They eventually crowded into jails, once arrested for violating state segregation laws.

In the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) finally issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals. King, Farmer, Nash and others civil rights leaders saw how provoking white southern violence through nonviolent confrontations could attract national attention and force federal action.

Over the next four years, civil rights activists directly confronted segregation through nonviolent tactics to arouse the national conscience and pressure the federal government.  The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson.  John Lewis, one of the original 13 Freedom Riders, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986 as a Democrat.  Lewis continued to represent Georgia’s 5th District, which included Atlanta, until his death at age 80 in 2020.

11 of the 13 original Freedom Riders of 1961
11 of the 13 original Freedom Riders of 1961
The 13 original Freedom Riders were: Francis Bergman, Walter Bergman, Albert Bigelow, Ed Blankenheim, Rev. Elton Cox, Genevieve Hughes, John Lewis, Jimmy McDonald, James Peck, Joe Perkins, Charles Person, Ike Reynolds, and Hank Thomas. Only 2 are still alive today.
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The 1912 Race to Claim the South Pole

Captain Robert Scott's team on their trek to reach the South Pole first.
Captain Robert Scott’s team on their trek to reach the South Pole first.

There was a time, over a century ago, when there were still amazing feats yet to be achieved on Earth.  Being first to reach the South Pole in Antarctica was one of those coveted prizes.  Those who were first would claim international fame and have their names etched into history books.  Those who failed, often lost their lives in the attempt. Despite the danger, the South Pole was still a tempting prize to achieve.  In 1911, the two biggest names in polar exploration, Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen, launched competing expeditions in a race to reach the South Pole first.

One would end in triumph, the other in tragedy.

British Royal Navy Officer Robert Scott had attempted to reach the South Pole in 1902 in the Discovery expedition.  But his party was forced to turn back due to sub-zero conditions and diminishing health. Britain still viewed is expedition as a success because of the discovery of the vast Polar Plateau. Robert Scott returned to England a hero for his attempt. But for Scott, it was a personal failure.  It was always his intention to return and try again. 

Then Ernest Shackleton, one of his former crew, tragically failed to reach the South Pole with own expedition.  Scott launched a renewed effort to reach and secure the Pole for the glory of the British Empire.  With the support of the British Admiralty, he secured a research grant of £20,000.   Now 41, Scott recruited men from his original Antarctic expedition and from Ernest Shackleton’s ship.  His ship, the Terra Nova, sailed from Cardiff in June 1910. He had married just the year before and left behind his wife Kathleen and 9-month son Peter.

After his ship got stuck in the poplar pack ice for 20 days, they arrived late on Ross Island in Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound in February 1911. While his 34-man shore party conducted scientific research and collected rock and wildlife samples, Scott was laser focused on riding out the winter and launching his second run at the South Pole. His men began laying supply depots along his planned route, but due to unlucky blizzards, they dropped their final depot 30 miles short.

Scott and Amundsen, South Pole Competitors
Scott and Amundsen, South Pole Competitors

Norwegian Roald Amundsen was also a respected explorer determined to beat the British to the South Pole. Polar expeditions captivated Amundsen and he had signed up for the 1897 Belgian Antarctic Expedition as a first mate. Although it ended in failure, Amundsen learned valuable lessons about polar exploration. In 1903, he successfully traversed Canada’s Northwest Passage. During the expedition, he learned from indigenous Inuits about the best techniques to survive in the Artic.  This including wearing animal skins rather than wool sweaters and using sled dog teams.

He’d originally planned to be first to the North Pole. But that honor was taken by American Robert Perry in 1909.  So the South Pole became the next obvious choice.  Now 38, he also left in June of 1910.  He was a lifelong bachelor by choice and left no family behind. Amundsen’s ship, the Fram, reached the Ross Ice Shelf before Scott on 14 January 1911.  He chose to land at the Bay of Whales. This gained his expedition a 60-mile advantage over Scott.  And unlike Scott, Amundsen was focused only on reaching the Pole. “The Science,” he admitted, “would have to look after itself.” 

The two groups were well aware of each other’s competing expeditions and behaved civilly. The captain’s of the Terra Nova and Fram even traded dinners with each other aboard their ships. Scott and Amundsen did not. The sun set over the Ross Ice Shelf in mid April, not to reappear for four, long winter months. The men hunkered down in their ships with only each other for company.

The Race to the Pole is On!

On 8 September 1911, Amundsen could wait no longer and his party set off. The very next day, after traveling only 4 miles, the temperatures plunged to −56 °C/−69 °. Amundsen realized he had started too soon and turned back. On 18 October, after the Antarctic winter truly ended, the race began again. Roald Amundsen’s team of five men set out on its drive toward the Pole. Three weeks later, Captain Scott left his base camp for the Pole with his own team on 1 November 1911. 

Amundsen brought 52 sled dogs, along with ample seal meat. His team also wore water repellent animal skins, much better at keeping his men warm and dry than the wool that was favored by the British.  Soon after landing, Amundsen had organized depot-laying journeys across the Barrier. Hit team laid out supply depots using dog sleds at regular intervals along his route. This limited the amount of food and fuel his party had to carry. 

Scott, on the other hand, set out with far fewer dogs, 17 Siberian ponies, and 2 remaining motorized sledges. The gasoline motors proved useless in the harsh Antarctic conditions and stopped working after only 50 miles. The supplies they pulled then had to be man-hauled the rest of the way. His Siberian ponies proved not as resistant to the polar cold as the Canadian sled dogs.

Roald Amundsen and his men at the South Pole
Roald Amundsen and his men at the South Pole in 1912.

For Amundsen’s team, it was a harsh 800 mile trek, marred by extreme temperatures, glaciers, crevices, and the Transantarctic Mountains. Nevertheless, Roald Amundsen’s group arrived FIRST at the South Pole at 3PM on 14 December 1911.  They raised the flag of Norway, smoked cigars, and took celebratory photos. They also left a note there in a tent, declaring their achievement – just in case they failed to return home. Thanks to his dog teams, Amundsen’s party had raced to the Pole at over 20 miles per day.

Captain Scott’s trek was fraught with difficulties and misery.

Their tortuous, 862 mile return journey was faced with even more endurance challenges and ultimately tragedy. The British team had left for the pole later in the Antarctic summer, and temperatures were dropping rapidly as winter approached. Two of the men already suffered from severe frostbite. His ponies grew too weak to walk and regrettably had to be shot.  They would now have to pull their sleds completely by hand.  The men laid out the ponies as meat for the return trip. Scott choose 4 men to continue on to the pole. The rest were to return to the ship, then meet them at a supply depot.

Captain Scott (holding flag) and his team at the South Pole.
Captain Scott (holding flag) and his team at the South Pole.

Captain Robert Scott reached the South Pole 33 days after Amundsen, on 17 January 1912.  His team’s spirit was shattered upon seeing the Norwegian flag flying and realizing Amundsen had beaten them. “Great God!” Scott wrote in his diary. “This is an awful place, and terrible enough for us to have labored to it without reward.”

Amundsen and his team returned to their Ross base camp on 25 January 1912, just 99 days after their departure, more than a week early.  They had no loss of life – except for over half of the sled dogs, which they were forced to eat along the way and feed the remaining dogs.  14 of the 52 sled dogs made it back to the ship.

Captain Scott’s team would not be so lucky. 

Due to a combination of brutal weather, hunger, and exhaustion, Scott and his men began to slump less than halfway back. The five men were meant to be met by a support team, but due to injuries on that team’s return to the ship, the British support party never reached them.

On February 17, Edgar Evans became the first of the British party to collapse and die of exposure. A severely frostbitten Lawrence Oates followed him a month later. By now, the three remaining men, including Scott, were suffering from severe frostbite on their hands, feet and face. They were averaging less than 5 miles a day.

Scott, his close friend Dr. Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers bravely continued for another few days, but temperatures continued to plunge.  Then came a severe temperature drop and blizzard.  Trapped in their tent and only 12 miles from the next supply depot, Scott and his men wrote farewell letters. Running low on heating fuel, weak from starvation and exhaustion, Scott’s last diary entry was dated 29 March 1912.

“We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.” He died in his tent alongside his men a short time later.  Scott was just 43 years old, leaving behind his new wife and child in England.

Roald Amundsen’s celebrated his success worldwide.  He received personal telegrams of congratulations from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt and British King George V of England.  By the time the frozen bodies of Scott, Wilson and Bowers were found, 8 months later, Roald Amundsen had already embarked on a lecture tour.  The Terra Nova crew erected a rock cairn over the remains of the three men. 

Map of Scott's and Amundsen's race to the South Pole
Map of Scott’s and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole in 1912.

Amundsen continued his expeditions.  He explored the Arctic in a dirigible, reaching the North Pole in 1926.  He died two years later, at 55, in a plane crash while searching for a missing explorer in Norway’s Svalbard.  His body was never found.  Captain Robert Scott was recognized for his achievements and posthumously made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath. Despite Scott’s poor preparation and ultimate tragedy, he and his men have been immortalized in legend for pursuing a noble cause with bravery and courage.

It was not until 1956 that an expedition of humans once again stood on our planet’s South Pole. Antarctica has been continuously inhabited ever since.  Today, numerous adventure cruises visit the Ross Ice Shelf in summer, so tourists can walk where the explorers once did.  Its two earliest pioneers are now honored by Antarctica’s permanent research facility – the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

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The Tragic Story of the Radium Girls

A Radium Girl, hand painting clock faces in a New Jersey factory.
Radium Girls hand painting clock faces in a New Jersey factory.

Radium clocks and watches were all the rave during the Roaring Twenties. The watch faces glowed all the time and didn’t require charging in sunlight, like florescent paint. Everyone who was anyone had to have one. The Radium Girls were not rich debutants who flashed their wristwatches, but rather the simple factory women who hand painted the radioactive radium onto the clock faces.

The new element Radium was discovered in Paris in 1898 by Nobel laureates Marie and Pierre Curie.  Radium was particularly intriguing because it glowed in the dark. Marie Curie herself noted, “These gleamings suspended the darkness, stirred ever-new emotion and enchantment”. 

Soon enough, radium became a veritable craze. After doctors learned that radium could treat some cancers, many thought it could also be used to treat virtually ALL diseases. Before long, radium was widely considered the long awaited “Miracle Cure,” or a least a very powerful health tonic. Bottles were sold in pharmacies for everything from arthritis to aging to impotence. Newspaper advertisements boldly claimed its use would “Add years to your life!”  

Radium gave the illusion of good health because it stimulated the production red blood cells giving you a healthy blush. Companies sold radium toothpaste, radium cosmetics, and even radium water. People took this “Perpetual Sunshine” like we take vitamins and supplements today.  Radioactivity was after all … energy! So people didn’t see how adding some extra energy to their bodies could possibly be dangerous, right?  

Far from being a cure-all, radium in fact released deadly levels radioactivity.

American inventor William Hammer went to Paris and obtained a sample of radium salt crystals from Marie Curie. Hammer discovered that by mixing the radium with zinc and glue, he could make a glow-in-the-dark paint. His discovery would be used by the new U.S. Radium Corporation to manufacture wristwatches with light-green glowing dials. Paint advertisements for UNDARK, boasted “The Magic of Radium!”   

Glow-in-the-dark radium watches were an instant hit. U.S. Radium Corp. also received lucrative government contracts during World War I to produce instruments dials for the army and navy.  One of the first factories to produce watches opened in Orange, New Jersey in 1916.  It hired about 70 women, the first of thousands to be employed across the U.S. Many of them were teenagers fresh out of high school, with small, petite hands, perfect for the tedious, artistic work.

A few of the Radium Girls of New Jersey
A few of the Radium Girls of New Jersey

Being a ‘Radium Girl’ was a well-paid, even glamorous job.  After all, it used one of the most expensive substances in the world. Adding to the allure, the girls were listed as ‘Artists’ in their town directories. Dial painting was an elite job for poor working girls and paid 3 three times the salary of a grueling factory job.  It provided them financial freedom and even female empowerment. Word spread and ladies encouraged their sisters and girlfriends to join them. The Radium Girls believed the hype, that they were getting healthier as a fringe benefit.

At the USRC factory, NO safety precautions were taken to protect the young girls.  For the delicate task of applying the paint to the small dials, the women were trained to point their fine brush tips with their lips or tongue. A practice called lip-pointing, or a “Lip, Dip, Paint.” Unfortunately, the women were ingesting small quantities of radioactive radium with every lick and brushstroke.

By the end of the day, the women would actually glow!

It came from the radioactive paint on their clothes and skin. Dust swept from the workroom was all luminous in the dark. Their hair, faces, hands, arms, dresses, even their corsets were luminous.   At the time, the girls loved it. They wore their best dresses to the plant, so that when they’d go to dance halls later that night, they’d be literally be glowing.  Female dial painters also became known as “The Ghost Girls” as they themselves now glowed in the dark.

The girls didn’t blindly embrace this brush wetting technique. They asked their foremen, Was the radium paint harmful?  But managers repeatedly said it was perfectly safe. The women were lied to. Marie Curie herself suffered radiation burns and warned the French public of its danger. Men at the radium manufacturing companies were given lead aprons and handled the radium with tongs. The Radium Girls weren’t given such protection, or even warned it might be necessary. 

Radiation poisoning isn’t immediate, so years went by before any of the women started developing symptoms. Within a few years though, dozens of the girls began showing serious signs of illness. The human body takes in radium much like calcium, incorporating it into your bones, then irradiating them from within. In the early 1920s, it began innocent enough, with some of the girls developing toothaches.

Then the first Radium Girl death occurred in 1922.

Poor 22-year-old Mollie Maggia died after living through a year of horrendous symptoms. Mollie had to quit working because of her illness. She didn’t know what was wrong with her.  It had started with aching teeth.  Her dentist pulled them. Then in the place of the missing teeth, painful red ulcers erupted.  They seeped pus constantly into her mouth. She then suffered aching limbs, so agonizing she was unable to walk or move her arms. The doctor thought she had rheumatism and prescribed her aspirin, the new painkiller.

Mollie became desperate.  She’ lost most of her teeth and the mysterious ulcers spread to her tongue and the roof of her mouth.  But then the worst consequenc of all came.  Her dentist was able to remove her diseased lower jaw by simply lifting it out with his fingers.  By this time, other Radium Girls were having trouble with their teeth, jaw and joints as well.  Suddenly their once attractive glow at night brought new meaning to their nickname “The Ghost Girls.”

A Radium Girl afflicted with “Radium Jaw”

Within months, Mollie’s strange infection spread down to her throat.  She subsisted on a liquid diet and no longer went out in public. Then her jugular vein hemorrhaged. Her mouth flooded with blood and she died of asphixiation and blood loss. She was only 24.  Her baffled doctor listed the cause of her death on the death certificate as “Syphilis.”  Like clockwork thereafter, Mollie’s friends and colleagues followed her to the grave, one by one by one.

For 2 years, USRC denied any responsibility for the Radium Girls’ deaths. 

Attempts by employees to receive compensation from USRC were all futile. Medical and legal costs were enormous for a young unmarried girl. And U.S. Radium held a prominent position as an important government contractor.   Sales began to suffer though due to the inevitable public gossip. So USRC commissioned an independent expert to look into the so-called “rumors.” 

In 1924, their expert confirmed the link between the radium and the women’s illnesses.  USRC’s President was livid and continued to deny the link.  He paid for new studies by other “experts” that published the opposite conclusion. He publicly denounced the women as trying to blame their illnesses on USRC in an attempt to get their medical bills paid for.

Then in 1925, Grace Fryer, one of the workers from the New Jersey plant, decided to sue.  Eight years earlier, at just 18, she started work as a dial painter at USRC.  With 2 enlisted brothers in World War I, Grace wanted to do her part for the war effort. She led the legal fight for the Radium Girls. Grace was determined to find a lawyer after countless turned her down, either from disbelief, fear of the powerful USRC.  The challenge was proving the link between their mysterious disease and radium paint.

Grace Fryer was the daughter of a union delegate, and would NOT give up the fight.

They had to fight the widespread belief that radium was still safe and in fact healthy.   In 1925, Dr. Harrison Martland devised a medical test proving that radium had poisoned the women.  Dr. Martland also was able to explain what was happening inside the girls’ bodies.  He realized the poisoning was fatal AND there was no way of removing the radium from the poor girls’ bones.

The women continued to have their teeth fall out, bones break, and spines collapse. By 1927, more than 50 had died.  Then finally, a young lawyer named Raymond Berry accepted their case.   Grace finally filed her suit in 1927 along with 4 fellow workers for damages of $250,000.  It made front-page news around the world. The radium industry banded together and attempted to discredit Dr. Martland while dealing with the tenacity of the radium girls.  Their story became a national sensation

“It is not for just myself that I care, but for the hundreds of girls to whom this may serve as an example.”

Grace Fryer, 1927

But time was running out: Their doctors had given the five women just four months to live. By then, Grace Fryer’s own spine was crumbling and she had to wear a steel back brace.  With the clock ticking, they would eventually settle a year later for just $10,000 each and a $600 annual payment. None of them would live longer than two years after the historic settlement.

There were other small victories.  Death certificates would now start reporting the correct cause of death – Radium Poisoning. They had successfully raised the warning flag.  The Food and Drug Administration eventually banned the deceptive packaging of radium-based products as good for your health.

The Radium Girls’ case became a milestone of occupational hazard and safety law. The dangers of radium were now in full view to the world. The lip-pointing technique was stopped in all factories and the workers were being given protective gear to wear.

A second, more-decisive trial occurred in 1938. 

Radium Girl Catherine Wolfe Donohue vs. the Illinois Radium Dial Company.  It ended in victory after an ugly decade-long cover up.  Catherine had also watched her friends die, lost her teeth and developed a large cancerous tumor on her hip.  She gave evidence to the judge from her deathbed.  With the help of a brave, pro bono lawyer, Leonard Grossman, she finally won justice not only for herself, but for all the Radium Girls.

In 1939, the Supreme Court rejected the radium companies’ last appeal.  In 1949, the United States Congress passed a historic workplace safety law which gave workers the right to receive compensation for occupational illnesses. That case led to life-saving regulations and, ultimately the creation of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1970.

While the use of UNDARK paint for decades was a catastrophe, it nevertheless disclosed the dangers of radiation exposure. Robert Oppenheimer and scientific teams researching the properties of plutonium for the Manhattan Project wrote regulations and took appropriate safety precautions.  Safety regulations based on the Radium Girls experience.

The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission noted, “If it hadn’t been for those female dial-painters, thousands of workers on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos would have been in great danger.” A great deal that we know about the effect of radiation in the human body, we owe to them. A movie about their struggles, Radium Girls, was released in 2018, starring the actress Joey King.

Watches and clocks would continue to be manufactured safely with radium paint until 1968, when the practice was discontinued.  Look at an antique from your grandparents and you’ll likely find its softly glowing green dial.

The exactly number of women became ill is not know, but the number is in the thousands. Radium has a half-life of 1,600 years, so once inside those women’s bodies on bones, it is there for centuries. So The Ghost Girls will in fact be glowing in their graves for a very long time.

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Watergate – the Scandal that took down a President

U.S. President Richard Nixon at a Watergate press conference, 1973
U.S. President Richard M. Nixon at a Watergate press conference, 1973

The Watergate Scandal may seem tepid compared to recent presidential escapades, but in 1973, it shocked America to its core. One of the most disturbing episodes of abuse of power occurred on the evening of October 20th, 1973. The press would dub it The Saturday Night Massacre. 

President Richard Nixon ordered his Attorney General to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.  Cox was investigating Nixon and the White House’s role in the Watergate cover-up. The Special Prosecutor was demanding the release of Nixon’s Oval Office tapes. The AG, Elliot Richardson, and Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus both refused to comply with the President’s order, and instead both resigned. The Solicitor General ultimately fired Cox.

By 1973, Richard Nixon’s presidency was a slowly sinking freighter. The Watergate Scandal would be his legacy. At the time however, his Republican base, still considered it all a Democrat conspiracy, inflamed by the liberal press. They firmly stood by their man, Nixon. Democrats controlled Congress and his base saw the Senate Watergate Hearings as a partisan Witch Hunt out to get their president.

For those too young to know about the Watergate Scandal …

It began in June 1972, when 5 burglars broke into the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC. They were trying to wiretap it on orders from the White House. The men were caught by a night guard and arrested. As part of the cover-up, the White House worked to hide the fact that the men were paid by the Republican Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP). Nixon conspired with his top White House aides to impede the FBI investigation in order to safeguard his victory in the 1972 re-election.

Nixon easily won a second term that November, but not without storm clouds brewing on the horizon.  Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, 2 young Washington Post reporters, began to investigate. They reported on the break-in and its shady connection to the White House. They had an informant whistleblower, memorably code-named ‘Deep Throat,’ who they met in a parking garage at night.  The burglars were convicted and, facing stiff prison sentences, began to tell the truth about who paid them.

In February 1973, the U.S. Senate voted to establish a select committee to investigate Watergate, with Senator Sam Ervin as chairman. In April, Nixon fired or forced the resignation of 4 top White house aides instrumental in the Watergate Scandal. This included Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldemen, and close political aide John Ehrlichman. Nixon was trying to distancing himself from his own men. The Attorney General then appointed a Watergate Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox, to investigate the break-in and cover-up. 

U.S. President Richard Nixon at a Watergate press conference, 1974
U.S. President Richard M. Nixon at a Watergate press conference, 1974

Richard Nixon repeatedly lied and denied any involvement in the scandal. At Senate Watergate Committee hearings in the summer of 1973, fired White House counsel John Dean testified against the president on national TV. He said Nixon was involved in the cover-up from the start. At the very least, the President was guilty of obstruction of justice. It was Dean’s word against the President though. That is, until the Senate Committee learned that Nixon had tape recorded all his meetings in the Oval Office! Cox knew those tapes were the evidence he needed to prove the President of the United States was a criminal.

An angry Richard Nixon cited Executive Privilege and refused to hand over the audio tapes.

On October 12th, a federal appeals court ruled the White House must surrender 10 key hours of Oval Office tapes. Nixon was cornered and appealed to the Supreme Court seeking Presidential immunity. He knew he was guilty and the tapes would prove it.  Then the president panicked. When the Special Prosecutor refused to drop the investigation, Nixon ordered his Attorney General to fire Cox.

Thus began the Saturday Night Massacre of Oct. 20th, 1973. Nixon ordered his Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to fire Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned on the spot. When the deputy AG, William Ruckelshaus, also refused, Nixon fired him that same night. The Solicitor General, Robert Bork, reluctantly complied with the President’s orders and fired Cox.

The White House Press Secretary issued a statement at 8:25 PM saying the President had ordered the Office of the Watergate Special Prosecutor abolished and its investigation turned over to the Justice Dept. The President discharged Cox because: “He refused to comply with direct orders of the President of the United States.”

The Justice Dept. ordered FBI agents to seal off the Special Prosecutor’s office.

News bulletins interrupted primetime TV. NBC’s anchor John Chancellor told viewers, “Our country tonight is in the midst of a Constitutional Crisis.” There were comparisons made to Third World dictator coups d’état.

“Whether ours shall continue to be a government of the rule of law and not of a single powerful man, is now for Congress and the American people to decide.”

Archibald Cox statement to the press, after his firing by President Nixon

The new White House Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig, rightly predicted an impeachment stampede would begin in Congress. He was right. Newspaper editors across the country called for President Nixon to resign. 100,000 citizens sent angry messages to Washington. 21 members of Congress introduced resolutions for Nixon’s impeachment.

President Nixon had seriously miscalculated the American public’s outrage.

They looked at the Watergate Scandal and the Saturday Night Massacre and saw the actions of a guilty president using his power to fire those investigating him.  The president’s motives were obvious.  He had committed a crime with Watergate, attempted to cover it up, and was now out to save his own skin at any cost.

“People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”

President Richard Nixon – November 1973 press conference

In the March 1974, a grand jury indicted Nixon’s Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldemen, political aide John Ehrlichman, and Chairman of Nixon’s Re-election Campaign, John Mitchell. In the weeks to come, a corned Nixon stated that some of the tapes Cox sought were “missing,” and that one in particular had a suspicious 18 minute gap.  Nixon retreated from his attacks on the investigation. Under pressure from his fellow Republicans in Congress, he agreed to appoint a 2nd Special Prosecutor, Leon Jaworski.

In July 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed Executive Privilege did not apply and the President must turn over the White House tapes. One tape in particular showed the president had colluded in the cover-up since the day of the burglars’ arrest. The House of Representatives voted to impeach the President for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and criminal cover-up.

Headlines from President Nixon’s Resignation, August 1974

With the Smoking Gun tape in the hands of an impeachment-hungry Congress, the President had few options remaining. Richard M. Nixon went on national television and shocked the nation by resigning as President on August 8, 1974. He flew to California the next very day to retire there in disgrace. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court swore in Vice President Gerald Ford as President the same day.  In September, Ford would issue a hugely unpopular full and unconditional pardon of Nixon.

America was stunned because, well … these things happened when dictators are overthrown in Third World countries, NEVER in America!

In the end, the American people, Republicans and Democrats alike, put their faith in the U.S. Constitution, the American Justice System, and the Free Press – NOT the President and the White House. It was not a political witch-hunt or a deep-state conspiracy. America was a country where the rule of law prevails. They trusted the facts and truth in the end, and that ultimately, justice had prevailed … this time. 

Today, the Watergate Scandal may give you an unsettling sense of deja vu. America has more political scandals today than they can count. That’s not surprising, as leaders and government generally do not learn from history. It has a sad tendency to repeat itself all too soon. The danger arises when there are so many scandals, trials, hearings, and impeachments that it becomes the weary norm. The public then grows numb to their seriousness, allowing those in power to behave above the law.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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America’s Chernobyl – Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, 1979
Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant during the 1979 incident.

The Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear incident is the closest the United States ever came to a Chernobyl or Fukushima-level nuclear disaster.  In March 1979, a series of human and mechanical errors caused the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.  It resulted in a partial meltdown of the reactor core, and a release of dangerous radioactive gases into the atmosphere of the Pennsylvania countryside.

Metropolitan Edison built the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the early 1970’s, in south-central Pennsylvania.  It sits on a 3 mile long, skinny island in the middle of the Susquehanna River. Just 10 miles to the north is the state capital of Harrisburg. You can see its 4 tall cooling towers from the city’s bridges and roof tops.

Ironically a movie thriller, The China Syndrome starring Michael Douglas, opened in theaters that very same month. It was about a fictional Los Angeles power plant, and a near nuclear meltdown caused by human negligence.  The nuclear industry scoffed at The China Syndrome, calling it “Hollywood fiction.”  When a reactor meltdown gets uncontrollably hot, it causes a gas explosion and breach in its containment structure. This is exactly what would happen to Ukraine’s Chernobyl seven years later.

Three Mile Island had two uranium reactors. TMI-1 started up in 1974 and TMI-2 which was brand new in 1979.  At 4:00 AM on Wednesday, March 28, the cooling circulation system in TMI-2 malfunctions, allowing coolant surrounding the hot reactor core to overheat. A relief valve on top of the chamber opens, allowing coolant to escape as steam. But heat continues to rise due to the lack of coolant circulation.  Within 10 seconds, alarms begin to blare across the plant. Control rods are automatically inserted into the hot core, shutting the reaction down.

Unknown to the night crew, the relief valve was still stuck in the OPEN position. 

With the rods in, the now boiling coolant level begins to drop. Water pumps rush new coolant into the reactor. The plant engineers in the control room, unaware of the open/stuck value, think there is plenty of coolant and turn OFF the water flow. This was a terrible human error.  Although the reaction is stopped, the core is still VERY hot.  The night operators have no clue of the seriousness of what’s happening. The remaining coolant surrounding the core boils away as steam. The exposed fuel rods quickly overheat again, this time melting though their metal container.

It’s not until after 6:00 AM, over 2 hours later, that a new shift of shocked plant engineers realized the pilot-operated relief valve (PORV) is in fact OPEN. They quickly close a manual back-up.  Another hour passes before they realize the relief valve’s been open since 4 AM and the reactor is running dangerously low of coolant.  At 7:20 a.m. they finally turn on pumps to add water back into the reactor chamber. They sigh as the core is finally submerged again.

However, the water can’t penetrate the melted fuel rods, which continue to heat up.

By 8 in the morning there are at now 20 sweating and very worried operators and their supervisors hunched over consoles in the control room. Radiation levels in the reactor building are so high that regulations require the declaration of a General Public Emergency. Metropolitan Edison station manager Gary Miller gets on the phone with both federal officials and the Pennsylvania governor. He informs them of the elevated radiation levels within TMI-2, AND an unknown amount leaked into the air.

No one yet realizes the core had been partially melted down.  Some 20 tons of molten fuel and metal lay on the bottom of the reactor vessel. While the walls are 5 in. (13 cm) thick steel, even that will only hold for a few hours against such intense heat. The gas pressure will eventually cause an explosion and rupture of the containment structure. This is what would happen at Chernobyl in 1986.

Luckily, by 9:00 am, 5 hours after the incident started, the reactor vessel gradually begins to cool and the walls hold. The initial danger is past, without anyone yet knowing how dangerous it had been.  However, the melting fuel created a large hydrogen bubble inside the reactor unit that might still cause an explosion. This would release even larger amounts of radiation into the Pennsylvania countryside.

Governor Richard Thornburgh was told a geyser of steam released from the plant that night, dumped radioactive contamination into the surrounding counties.  Although a General Emergency is declared by breakfast, it will be DAYS before any true emergency is felt.  President Jimmy Carter is briefed on the accident at the White House that afternoon. By evening, the reactor condition appears to improve as radiation levels in TMI-2 fall a bit.  The control room operators still do not know that major damage to the reactor’s core has occurred.

The message to the public downplayed any real danger.

It wasn’t until the next day, March 29, that two nuclear engineers entered the reactor building and determined that major damage had occurred. AND that possibly large quantities of radioactive xenon gas had escaped into the local atmosphere.  Two Different federal agencies, including the NRC, relay conflicting information as to whether an evacuation of Harrisburg should happen or not. After waffling, the Dept. of Energy (DoE) finally advised everyone within 10 miles of TMI to just stay inside. Pregnant women and small children within 5 miles should leave the area.

Three Mile Island newspaper headlines, 1979
Three Mile Island newspaper headlines, 1979

Meanwhile, the large hydrogen bubble in the reactor still threatened to trigger an explosion. Officials finally faced facts: They might need to evacuate everyone within a 20-mile radius, over 600,000 people reaching the Harrisburg suburbs. But what residents and the press soon realize is that there were NO Evacuation Plans in existence, None. The DOE had never considered it a breach.

By Friday, March 30, after 2 days of underestimating the accident, DoE officials in Washington DC now overestimate the danger. Governor Thornburgh gives the recommendation that pregnant women and young children within a 10 mile radius should evacuate.  Hearing this on the TV and radio, the public began to panic. Rumors quickly spread neighbor-to-neighbor by telephone. There was no internet in 1979.

WHAT TO DO? Grab the kids and leave? Stay indoors, and pray for the best? 

Catholic priests stoked fears by granting “General Absolution”—a blanket Forgiveness of Sins, usually reserved for wartime. The Federal Reserve sent armored cars to help local banks keep up with the cash demands of evacuating people. Hospitals began to admit only emergency cases in preparation for the worst case scenario.  The American Red Cross began to prepare for a mass exodus of south-central Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Governor Thornburgh announces the Three Mile Island evacuation of pregnant women and children.
Pennsylvania Governor Thornburgh announces the Three Mile Island evacuation of pregnant women and children.

By Saturday, the Metropolitan Edison plant managers at TMI-2 accept the fact that half of reactor’s core had melted down.  So fears now turn to the large hydrogen gas bubble that could still explode. Again, federal officials heighten fears by telling reporters that a general evacuation out to 10, or even 20 miles (15 to 30 km) might be needed.  The press picks up on this and reporters begins to fuel panic via TV and radio news.

For bank tellers in Harrisburg, chaos erupts as cars and customers pile up outside, desperately trying to withdraw ALL their cash. The response by local, state and national officials is both contradictory and confusing. The public doesn’t know what to think OR DO. Hunker down in the basement or pack up the car and evacuate?

Was the area on the verge of a Chernobyl-level catastrophe? The poor government response to the Three Mile Island ‘Incident‘ is considered a textbook example of what NOT to do during an serious state-level emergency. But before 1979, nobody had made adequate plans as to how to respond to an accident at ANY nuclear power plant, anywhere in the world.

Some of the local residents simply were not going to risk it. 

40% of people who lived within 15 miles of TMI self-evacuate, order or no order.  Interstate 81 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike become jammed with bumper to bumper clogged traffic. Governor Thornburgh came under fire for supposedly hesitating to evacuate pregnant women and children in the closet zone to TMI. He’d been pleading with Washington, to no avail, for a single point person. What he got was a dozen agency ‘experts’ with conflicting opinions.

On Sunday, April 1, President Jimmy Carter flies in and tours the control room of the TMI facility personally. Within minutes, the press swings around to the view that the danger must be over.  It still takes a week though, until April 9, for the Evacuation Order to be lifted. Nevertheless, an estimated 2 million people were exposed to small amounts of radiation in the air.  Fear of potential cancers and birth defects were raised by families and the press.

Three Mile Island galvanized the U.S. anti-nuclear movement. Public support for nuclear energy plummets nationwide. High profile protests take place around the country, including one in New York City involving 200,000 people. Congress imposes a moratorium on new reactors which lasts for 30 years. The power national industry switches back to building CO2 producing coal and natural gas burning plants.

The cleanup effort lasts 14 years and costs almost a billion dollars.

Workers removed radioactive fuel and water, shipping 100 tons to an Idaho National Laboratory storage facility.  The damaged TMI-2 reactor is permanently closed and was entombed in thick concrete. The accident led to sweeping changes in the way the U.S. regulates its remaining nuclear plants.

TMI-1 is today owned by Exelon Corporation and generated electricity in TMI-1 for the next 40 YEARs. Exelon finally shut down and closed the aging plant in September, 2019. Dismantling the remaining reactor could take up to 10 years though, until at least 2029. TMI-2 reactor core will remain in its concrete sarcophagus for the foreseeable future.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, 2019
Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in operation in 2019

In the years since, several federal agencies conducted health studies of the people in the area. No adverse effects could be linked to the Three Mile Island Incident. There are no proven health impacts in the nearby population, including cancers caused by radiation exposure. The amount released was determined to not be enough to harm people, animals, or crops.

As for the people who still live in the area, the disaster hasn’t been forgotten and is still debated. Lawsuits claimed there were above-average cancer and birth defect rates in Dauphin County. Hundreds of lawsuits were settled out-of-court. Millions of dollars compensated parents of children born with birth defects.

As frightening at the U.S. Three Mile Island Incident was, the impact was nowhere near the next 2 nuclear power plant disasters. The 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster in Ukraine cost several hundred billion to contain. It led to the permanent evacuation of 300,000, and caused 4,000 projected deaths.  The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan was caused by an offshore earthquake’s tsunami. It caused the death of 19,700 and the evacuation of 150,000 people.

The United States should consider itself lucky, in that respect.

  For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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China vs. Tibet, a Century of Stalemate

Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet in the Himalaya Mountains
Lhasa, the capitol of Tibet in the Himalaya Mountains

Before Communist China existed, for over a 1,000 years, Tibet was a ‘protectorate’ of the Manchu/Qing Dynasty.  Tibet however maintained its own language, governor, laws, army, and paid no taxes. China’s control over Tibet weakened during the 1800’s, when China suffered assaults from the Japanese and British Empires.  By the turn of the 1900’s, Tibet was nearly independent … but not for long.

When the 1912 Revolution overthrew the Manchu Dynasty in 1912, it gave the Tibetan government the chance to expel all Chinese troops. Emboldened Tibetan soldiers drove the Chinese military back across its borders. For the first time in a millennium, Tibet was an independent nation, with Lhasa as its capital.  It maintained diplomatic relations with neighboring Nepal, Bhutan, and India, as well as Great Britain.  Relations with the new Chinese Republic, however, were tense and strained. 

After the death of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1933, Tibet fell under the rule of a corrupt Regent, Reting Rinpoche.  Unrest plagued the nation until a new Lama was found.  In 1937, a young candidate was discovered on a farm in the Chinese-controlled province of Amdo.  It took 2 years of negotiations with China, and a ransom to be paid, before Beijing allowed the young boy, Tenzin Gyatso, to leave for Lhasa.  He was ordained and declared the 14th Dalia Lama in 1940 … at only 5!   The government would remain under the control of the Regent till he came of age.

The Chinese Republic continued to claim to the world that Tibet was still one of China’s Five Races, and forever a part of China.  It sought to “liberate” Tibetans from their serf-like existence and return Tibet to the “motherland.”  Western countries, including Britain and the U.S., sided with Chinas and refused to recognize Tibetan independence.

The Founding of Communist China in 1949 changed everything.

The Communists once again claimed Tibet as part of Red China, and this time had the military power to enforce it. China wanted a formal agreement from the Dalai Lama himself towards reunification.  The Tibetan government refused, and the Chinese military invaded. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) crossed Tibet’s eastern border. Sadly, the PLA quickly defeated the small Tibetan army and China occupied half the country.  As the Chinese army advanced towards Lhasa, religious leaders urged power be transferred to the young Dalai Lama.  

A month later, at only 15, the Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso assumed full political control of Tibet and its 6 million people.

China sent a military delegation to Lhasa demanding reunification.  Tibet pleaded to the world for help, but neither the US, Britain, India or the United Nations responded. Tibet faced the entire might of Communist China alone.  The Dalai Lama reluctantly sent a negotiating team to Beijing. Once there, the Tibetan negotiators were NOT allowed to communicate with Lhasa. Communist leaders pressured them to sign an agreement, despite having NO authority to do so. Under threat of a full scale military invasion, they had no choice but to sign. It became the 17-Point Agreement on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet in 1951.

The young Dalai Lama bravely chose not to flee into exile and abandon his people, but rather stay and reluctantly accept the terms.  It forced Tibet to return to Chinese jurisdiction, while maintaining some domestic autonomy and religious freedom.   The presence of 40,000 Chinese troops in eastern Tibet, the threat of an occupation of Lhasa, and the obliteration of the Tibetan state, left the boy little choice.

Because it was signed under duress, the agreement lacked validity under international law.  The 17-Point Agreement also proved difficult to implement.  Throughout the 1950s, China’s Communist Party expected Tibetans to convert to Socialism.  ‘Reforms’ sparked resistance when authorities tried to take land from Buddhist monasteries.  Relations between Tibetan Buddhists and Chinese Communists worsened as monasteries became sites of resistance and shelter for rebels.  As resistance escalated, Chinese repression increased. They began destroying religious temples and imprisoning monks. 

The Dalai Lama visited Beijing in 1954, and met with Chairman Mao Zedong.  But to no avail. 

By 1958, rebellion was simmering in Lhasa, and the PLA military commander threatened to bomb the city.  After 8 years of occupation and repression, the Tibetan Uprising of 1959 erupted.  Tibetans rebelled in an attempt to overthrow the Chinese occupying government. The popular uprising culminated in March with massive demonstrations in Lhasa.  They were triggered by fears of a Communist plot to arrest the Dalai Lama and imprison him in Beijing.

Tibetans banded together in defiance and took to the streets to protest in front of the white Potala Palace. Chinese military officers invited the Dalia Lama to visit PLA military headquarters in Lhasa for an “official Tea,” including a theatrical dance show.  He was told however, he must come alone, with NO Tibetan military bodyguards. The PLA would handle his security. Of course, the Dalai Lama’s staff feared he would be arrested once in Communist hands

Dalai Lama in 1958
The Dalai Lama in 1959 exile

300,000 loyal Tibetans surrounded the Norbulinka Summer Palace, protecting the Dalai Lama.  In response, Chinese artillery was moved in and aimed directly at the palace demonstrators.  After learning of Buddhist lamas being arrested in the night, the Dalai Lama, now 23 years old, reluctantly agreed to flee from Lhasa that very night.  Disguised as a common soldier, he fled with about 20 loyal followers, including family and 6 members of his cabinet.

Fighting broke out in Lhasa 2 days later, with Tibetan rebels hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. The Chinese army began shelling Norbulinka Palace, slaughtering tens of thousands of Tibetan demonstrators, including women and children camped outside. The PLA executed the Dalai Lama’s guards then began destroying Lhasa’s monasteries and the Buddhist monks inside.  By the time China had crushed the uprising, 87,000 Tibetans were dead in Lhasa alone.

After the imprisonment of the Panchen Lama, Tibet’s 2nd ranking spiritual leader, China no longer felt bound by any of its earlier promises.  China abolished the Tibetan government, violated human rights, and instituted agricultural communes.  This was described by the Tibetan people as a cultural genocide. 

Indian Prime Minister Nehru agreed to host the Dalia Lama. He has lived in exile in northern India ever since.  The Dalai Lama now heads the Tibetan Government-in-exile, headquartered in Dharmsala, India in the Himalayan foothills. About 80,000 Tibetans fled and eventually followed him into exile.  In 1963, he released  a new Constitution for a democratic, semi-autonomous Tibet, implemented by his Government-in-exile. 

The Dalai Lama wanted a compromise with China that would give them defense and foreign affairs.

No such compromise was ever made. The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) attempted to completely destroy Tibetan religious life, including its temples and monasteries. Religious figures and other educators were forced into their infamous Re-education Camps. The vast Buddhist monastic system was dismantled, and religious activities prohibited. Tibetan monks were forced out of their monasteries and ordered to marry, a violation of their vows of celibacy.

After the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976, these hardline policies shifted a bit.  The 1980s were a somewhat better period of China-Tibet relations. Some monasteries were allowed to be rebuilt and Buddhist monks returned. People were again allowed to practice their religion publicly and Tibetan culture was even promoted. There were also tentative talks again between the Dalai Lama and Beijing … but as in the past, they broke down without any progress. 

“China can keep her troops on Tibet frontiers and we will pledge to accept a form of union with China.”

Tibetan Dalai Lama

Riots once again spread throughout Lhasa in 2008 and Beijing declared Martial Law, resulting in the deaths of 400 protestors.   All foreign nationalists were evacuated.  Demonstrations for democracy and Dalai Lama, or even Buddhism, was seen again as treason by Chinese Communists. From India, the Dalia Lama proposed a compromise relationship with China, promoting autonomy, not independence.  One that would maintain Beijing control of defense and foreign affairs, and return domestic control back to him.  It went nowhere once again.

Over the last 60 years, about 1.2 million Tibetans have lost their lives (almost 1/6th the population) as a result of the Communist China occupation. All throughout those 7 decades, China never succeeded in destroying the Tibetan people’s spirit to resist, or their culture, or their religion.  The Dalai Lama in now 88 and still living in exile. The newest millennial generation of today’s Tibetans seems just as determined to regain their independence from China as did their parents and grandparents. 

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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California’s Vanishing Salton Sea

The dry lake bed of California's Salton Sea
The dry lake bed of Southern California’s Salton Sea

California’s largest lake is the man-made Salton Sea, a shallow, salt water lake in the middle of the southern California desert.  It sits just north of the Mexican border.  The Salton Sea lies in what used to be an ancient dry lake bed, only five feet higher than Death Valley. Today it is sadly vanishing back into dust.

The original Lake Cahuilla occupied the basin until about 300 years ago. It was a part of the Colorado River’s path to the Gulf of California.  Silt build-up over the centuries changed the river’s course to the east, drying up the lake.  The desert area was avoided by man until the early 1900s. That’s when farmers realized that, with massive irrigation from the Colorado River, the soil would produce valuable farmland. A series of long canals were built and water flowed into the dry desert.  Soon, more than 10,000 workers moved into the region.  The area was dubbed “Imperial Valley,” and quickly turned 100,000 acres of desert into rich farm land.

The current Salton Sea was formed completely by accident.

In the spring of 1905, heavy flood waters on the Colorado River burst through the walls of the irrigation canals in southwestern Arizona. Almost the entire Colorado River changed its route, back to its ancient path and began refilling the Salton Basin. It also inundating the path of the Southern Pacific Railroad line. Initial efforts to seal the breach failed and for 18 months, the river flooded in, filling the Salton basin like a huge bath tub.

Water continued to fill the newly named “Salton Sea” until 1907.  The railroad company built a line of new levees using railcars, filled with boulders, unloaded into the breach. 2,000 workers dumped more than 3,000 railroad cars full of boulders and dirt. It worked! 

But by then, a new shallow inland lake had formed. It was about 40 miles long and 15 wide, covering about 500 square miles, though only 30 feet deep on average. It all seemed unnatural, this shimmering lake surrounded by chalky sand, spiked cactus and dusty tumbleweeds.

Once the canal was repaired, the Salton Sea no longer had an intake source of fresh water.  The new lake was more or less left alone.  Water runoff from the Imperial Valley farms offset the heavy desert evaporation and kept the lake alive.  The new sea grew to support an ecosystem that attracted hundreds of species of migratory birds.  Thousands began to spend their winters there every year.  The state stocked the lake with salt water fish and they flourished.  By the late 1950’s, the Salton Sea was the most productive fishery in California.

In the 1950’s, developers also saw resort opportunities in California’s largest lake.

Towns like Salton City and Bombay Beach popped up along its shoreline.  Resorts were built catering to tourists interested in the endless California sunshine. Water skiing, swimming, fishing, and bird watching were quite popular.  Bombay Beach in particular was built as a celebrity destination. The likes of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and the Beach Boys frequented its new luxury resorts. At its peak in the 50’s and 60’, the Salton Sea drew 1.5 million visitors annually, more than Yosemite National Park!

Map of the Salton Sea location in California
Map of the Salton Sea location in California

However, all was not sunny in southern California.  Little thought and few resources were devoted to the management of this accidental body of water. It was a terminal lake as well so the Salton Sea lacked any outflow.  The agricultural runoff that sustained the lake contained not only nitrate fertilizers, but herbicides, pesticides, and high quantities of salt. All this quietly settled into the mud at the bottom of the shallow lake.

In the 1970s, scientists started warning the towns that the increasing salt would cause the Salton Sea to dry up and shrink, making it inhospitable to wildlife. Sure enough, before the decade was out, fish started dying off and the migratory birds declined. The lake began to smell of sulfur, spurring the state to issue periodic Odor Advisories. Tourism and its economy quickly began to flee to more marketable locations like Palm Springs.

As the agricultural runoff drained through the basin’s soil, it raised the salinity even further. Over the years, the salinity slowly rose enough to kill off most of the lake’s fish. By the 1980s, the salt level was about 1.5 times higher than the Pacific Ocean.  As the salinity increased, all the fish, except tilapia, stopped reproducing. Tilapia was introduced into the Colorado canals to control algae growth.

In the 1990s, the lake began to recede, stranding residences and businesses far from the water’s edge. 

Water-management priorities diverted more water to California’s southern cities. Scores of stinking dead fish now lined the dry shore line. In 2003, the state agreed to transfer water to San Diego County. Farmers were forced to switch from flood to drip irrigation. There was still enough for agriculture, but not the runoff needed for the Salton Sea. California was supposed to implement a plan to reduce habitat loss for migrating birds by 2018. But that plan stalled in Sacramento. The lake continued to shrink, and a new Public-Health Crisis was born.

The Salton Sea had yet another problem: Climate change was making this dry desert region even drier. The growing demand for water in the suburbs of Los Angeles and San Diego continues to reduce the amount of the Colorado River diverted to the Imperial Valley. All this increased the pace at which the Salton Sea is shrinking. More dry lake bed was exposed and along with it, the agricultural toxins trapped in the mud for decades. 

Desert winds lift dust off the dry lakebed and into the sky. The toxic residue of 100 years of agricultural runoff blows into the air … and into human lungs. The Salton Sea area has some of the worst air quality in the country. Local residents of Bombay Beach have some of the highest rates of asthma and other respiratory problems in the state. Many who once relied on the lake have left, driven away by the lack of tourism, the nauseating stench of the lake, or mounting health problems.

The few who remain – farmworkers and the elderly are too poor to live elsewhere in CA.

The Imperial Valley still produces 2/3 of the country’s winter fruits and vegetables, thirsty plants like lettuce and honeydew. But farming the desert requires a heavy cost. The Imperial Irrigation District diverts 3 million acre-feet of water from the Colorado River, about half of California’s entire allotment. Ironically, Imperial County has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Today, 1 in 4 people there live in poverty.

Bombay Beach sign at the Salton Sea in California
Bombay Beach sign at the Salton Sea in California

Tourists at Bombay Beach are mostly snowbirds from Palm Beach.  They come to see the ruins of the once-famous party town.  Across the shrinking, shimmering lake, the Santa Rosa Mountains loom. The town’s population has shrunk to under 200.  It is by all means a modern, living ghost town. The nearest gas station is 20 miles away.  The only market is a small convenience store. The temperature reaches 110F in the summer.  The town is littered with abandoned homes and trailers, covered in graffiti. Signs warn against swimming, not that anyone could, as the shore is now miles away.

A few tourists still arrive today, mainly out of curiosity. Ironically, there is a state recreation area there. They come for no more than an hour or two though, due to the poor air quality and the stench of dying fish. Businesses don’t want to come to the area for the same reasons. The smell was once described by the U.S. Geological Survey and “Noxious and Pervasive.”

Bird watching used to be very good.  But with the sea at such low levels, fewer birds stop there, as there’s no food in the sea. The locals have noticed fewer birds are coming back each year. Those that don’t get enough food to continue their migration, die on the lake shore, along with the rotting fish.

The California Natural Resource Agency released a Salton Sea Restoration Plan in 2007.

The idea of the plan was to redirect the remaining inflows to small, man-made wetlands, not the lake. It would both suppress dust and recreate bird habitat.   The plan lacked state funding however. Over the years, promises of money evaporated, just like the Salton Sea, as political priorities and parties shifted in the state capital. Varner Harbor is closed to fishing boats as the sea had retreated from the docks.

The lack of action led to alternative plans from various environmental groups. One proposed creating a pipeline from the Sea of Cortez, pumping in ocean water and returning the lake to its original size. Any plan however lacked funding and water rights.  The nonprofit Pacific Institute estimates that without human intervention, the 350-sq. mi. lake will shrink to 100 sq. mi. by 2030. The salinity will triple over 15 years. And the remaining Tilapia will disappear and die in 5 years.

California’s Salton Sea is a hard lesson of man’s attempts to intervene once Mother Nature has set her course.  Turning the desert into cities and farmland came at a cost. Today, with a southwestern mega-drought, climate change raging, and water wars, the lake continues to dry up and shrink. Today the stagnant lake is about twice as salty as the nearby Pacific Ocean. Care for a swim, anyone?

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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The Fall and RISE of Labor Unions

Labor union members strike in the 1950's
Labor union members on strike in the 1950’s

Labor unions grew over a hundred years ago during the Industrial Revolution out of a relatively simple concept.  The idea of protecting and advancing the common interest and rights of Workers, both men AND women. Sounds fair, right? Fair pay, fair hours, fair conditions. Still, labor unions had a long and torturous rise to influence. They fought powerful industries and their wealthy owners every step of the way. They peaked in 1970’s and then slowly began to lose influence … until today.

So where did it all begin and why did it wane?

The most powerful tool of organized labor is of course the STRIKE. Workers boldly walking off the job, risking unemployment, and picketing the business. Then, through collective bargaining, union leaders and owners painstakingly negotiate a new contract. One that specifies pay, hours, benefits, and safety.  Organized labor was far from perfect and large national unions were prone to corruption.  Nevertheless, labor unions brought tremendous positive change to low income workers being taken advantage in every industry.  

When the Industrial Revolution began in the 1800’s, a new economy, built on capitalism and wealth, ran counter to the worker’s view of fair play. There was no middle class back then, only the idle rich and the working poor.  And the old cliché was never truer: The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Laborers slowly realized they must unite to collectively demand change.

By the late 1800’s, the global economy revolved around industrial factories.

Large factories put multiple trades under one roof, making alliances possible across the nation and between unions. Even though they lacked money, education, and power, common workers knew they had strength in numbers.  There was a lot of disagreement at the start.  Some considered Marxism the solution, others Anarchy. How long would the downtrodden stand to be taken advantage of by Robber Barons like the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Carnegies?

Owners and their bosses often took extreme measures, including violence, to prevent labor unions from taking hold. Angry workers, too, often chose the path of violence when peaceful protests failed. The National Guard was often called in by governors to block their efforts. Judges almost always ruled in favor of the wealthy bosses. 

Most workers toiled in 10-12 hour shifts, 6-7 days a week, for wages barely enough to pay rent and food for their families. Poor children as young as eight did not go to school, but rather worked in the factories as well. Men AND women worked until their bodies literally gave out. There were NO health or retirement benefits back then.

In the U.S., the Knights of Labor was created as a society of tailors in Philadelphia in 1869.

It was founded by Uriah Stephens, a New Jersey Quaker. Stephens’ experiences as an indentured tailor led him to believe that change was needed. He believed it wasn’t just enough for a group of workers to strike for higher wages. Instead, ALL tradesmen had to be brought together into a single organization, which could then fight for the interests of ALL.

Members of the Knight of Labor Union
Members of the Knight of Labor Union

Members of the “The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor,” followed rituals similar to Free Masons. Over the next decade, they expanded across the nation, attracting everyone from blacksmiths to boilermakers to bricklayers. The only occupations they excluded were the wealthier bankers and lawyers. The Knights grew in size and prominence, eventually playing a key role in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

They helped launch strike after the B&O Railroad instituted a second 10% pay cut in a year.  It was the first mass strike to involve different types of railroad workers from Baltimore to Chicago.  More than 100,000 had gone on strike, shutting down nearly half of the nation’s rail systems.  The National Guard and federal troops were called in by President Hayes. When the strike ended, over 100 workers were killed and a thousand imprisoned. Strikers caused millions in damage to rail lines and trains.

In 1879, the Knights claimed 700,000 members. An Irish Catholic machinist from Pennsylvania, Terrence Powderly, was elected the new leader. In 1884, when the Union Pacific Railroad similarly cut workers’ wages by 10%, the Knights organized yet another strike, shutting down every one of their railroads from Nebraska to Utah. It only took 5 days for the railroad bosses to finally capitulate and withdraw their pay cut.

And it wasn’t just fair wages the Knights campaigned for. They championed an eight-hour work day, safety guarantees to protect workers, and compensation if they were injured on the job—workers insurance.  The Knights also advocated an end to child labor, equal pay for women, and laws requiring owners to arbitrate.

By 1886, the Knights suffered several setbacks that started their eventual decline.

They mounted another strike against the Southwest Railroad in Texas. The Great Southwest Strike, spread to other states, but led to violent clashes where some local police were killed.  Bosses used the major newspapers to shift public opinion against the Knights. In the end, the strikers got nothing.

Chicago Haymarket Labor Riot of 1886
Chicago Haymarket Labor Riot of 1886

A second Knights setback occurred at a labor demonstration in Chicago’s Haymarket Square.  It turned into a bloody riot, resulting in 4 workers and 7 policemen killed. Someone had thrown a bomb at the police.  Law enforcement responded with crackdowns on ALL labor groups across the nation. The Knights were blamed, labeled as anarchists, and members fled. Public opinion continued to turn against them and the union eventually collapsed.

Regardless of its ultimate demise, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor stand as a significant stepping stone in the labor movement.

In 1886, labor unions joined together to form the American Federation of Labor. The AFL represented ALL workers, irrespective of race, nationality or gender. By 1910, new steel mills sprung up along rivers to stand alongside textile factories employing women. There were now too many workers unwilling to accept industries making obscene profits for its wealthy owners on the backs of poor.  The labor movement had finally become force to be reckoned with.

When it came to politics, unions were never far from their governments. 

The AFL served as labor’s lobbying arm in Washington. With U.S. President Wilson, organized labor had been leaning toward the Democrats, because of their support of the (mainly immigrant) working class. With the coming of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, this alliance solidified. From 1936 onward, the Democratic Party could reliably count on the votes of its members.  In the UK, an independent, left-leaning Labour Party was formed in 1906, representing social democrats and trade unions.

Several memorable U.S. strikes took place in the early 1900’s including the Great Coal Strike of 1902 (United Mine Workers), and the Great Steel Strike of 1919, against U.S. Steel.  The Robber Barons fought back, labelling them immigrant communists and employing the private Pinkertons to intimidate strikers.  Nevertheless, the new voting power led the U.S. Congress to create the Dept. Labor in 1913.  And finally, regulating child labor in the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

During the Great Depression, workers turning to their labor unions to find employment and protection.  Membership grew exponentially. In 1935, a faction of the AFL broke away and formed the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), which aided emerging unions in auto, steel and other industries. By the end of World War II, more than 12 million workers belonged to unions.

The end of World War II also saw thousands of soldiers return home, get factory jobs and join unions.  The Middle Class was born. The AFL merged with the CIO, becoming the powerful and influential AFL-CIO in 1955. Thanks to a wave of successful strikes in many industries; union power and membership reached a high point by the 1960s. 

Strikes and collective bargaining worked impressively, more than tripling earnings between 1945 and 1970.  Workers gaining salaries that kept up with inflation, pension securing retirement, illness, unemployment, fair treatment, and safer workplace conditions. All were thanks to large unions like UNISON, the Teamsters, and the United Auto Workers.

Organized labor’s grip on industry and its political clout began to weaken in the 1970’s.  

New competitive forces swept through industries, set off by federal deregulation and a virtual flood of cheaper foreign-made goods. U.S. and British manufacturing factories moved to India and China for cheap labor. Concessions became widespread and U.S. plant closings decimated union memberships. The election of staunchly conservatives Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s brought in anti-union administrations, last seen in the Glided Age.

Between 1975 and 1985, U.S. union membership fell by 5 million. The unionized portion of the manufacturing labor force dropped below 25 percent. Only in the public sector did the unions continue to hold their own. By 1990, less than 15 percent of American workers were organized, half that of the 1950s.

The new high-tech industries, with a college educated workforce, seemed beyond the reach of the “old-fashioned” labor unions.  Nevertheless, the AFL-CIO still held political clout in Washington.  In 2008, unions were key to getting President Barack Obama elected (then re-elected in 2012).

With corporations shifting manufacturing jobs China and India with cheaper labor, hundreds of factories shuttered. Labor union membership continued to shrink.  This led many blue collar union members to switch their political support for the first time in a hundred years. They went instead with a Republican billionaire without a political background, Donald Trump in 2016.  Much like the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age, he successfully drummed up a fear of immigrants flooding in across the borders to steal their jobs.

Today, the highest labor union memberships are in the public sector (police, teachers, etc.). Private-sector industries that still have high union rates include utilities, transportation, food, and health care. In 2021, 14 million U.S. workers belonged to unions, about 1/10 of the working population.

Modern labor union members on strike today.

Today however, approval for labor unions are back on the rise, at its highest point since 1965. 65% of Americans and British are in favor of them. The Middle Class remembers the support they offered their parents and grandparents. Key themes include employees being forced to work with no access to sick leave, medical benefits, protective gear, and being subjected to mass layoffs without severance.

There are others signs that the popularity of unions is on the rise.  The Millennials and Gen Z graduated with college degrees only to be disillusioned with wealthy global corporations and their multi-billionaire CEOs. The biggest gains in union membership have been among ages 35 and under. Young people are slowly unionizing franchises, digital-media, and tech companies. 

Today, global corporations continue to rake in record profits, rewarding their CEOs, boards, and shareholders with millions. They fight the creation of unions by lying to, intimidating, or even threatening their workers. A fraction of that explosive wealth is passed on to their workers in the form of fair compensation. Families struggle to save while paying for mortgages/rent, healthcare, bills, food, and transportation. Frustrated workers band together and consider unionizing to achieve collective bargaining power with their unfair employers. Sound familiar?

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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