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, six of the Riders boarded a Greyhound bus and seven took a Trailways bus, planning to ride to New Orleans. The Riders —seven African Americans and six 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, 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 trucks 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 a 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.
For more by historical author Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
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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, 1911

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 his 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 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 captains 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 °F. 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 1911.

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, 1912.

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 by international explorers.  Today, numerous adventure cruise ships visit the Ross Ice Shelf in summer, so tourists can walk where the famous 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 of 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 instrument 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 Orange, 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 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. The practice was called lip-pointing, or “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 would 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’d lost most of her teeth and the mysterious ulcers spread to her tongue and the roof of her mouth.  But then the worst consequence 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"
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 asphyxiation 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 two 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 or 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 any antique from your grandparents and you’ll likely find its softly glowing green dial.

The exact number of women who became ill is not known, but the number is in the thousands. Radium has a half-life of 1,600 years, so once inside those women’s 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. It would lead to the resignation of a U.S. President.

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 ocean liner. 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 17, 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 plumbers,” a team put together to stop leaks. The men were caught by a night guard and arrested by police. 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 Chief of Staff and top White House aides to impede the FBI investigation in order to safeguard his victory in the 1972 re-election.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, 2 young Washington Post reporters, were assigned to the story and began to investigate. That summer and fall, they reported on the break-in and its shady connections to the White House. They had a government 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. Nixon easily won a second term that November, but not without storm clouds brewing on the horizon. 

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 distance 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. In the end, i was not a political witch-hunt or a deep-state conspiracy. America was a country where the Rule of Law prevailed. They trusted the facts and truth in the end, and ultimately, justice had prevailed … this time. 

Today, the Watergate Scandal may give you an unsettling sense of deja vu. America has had more political scandals per president 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 norm. The public then grows numb to their seriousness, allowing those in power to behave above the law without repercussion … yet again.

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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 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. 1979

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 a 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.

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China vs. Tibet, a Century of Occupation

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 thousand 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 China 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 the 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 8 decades, China never succeeded in destroying the Tibetan people’s spirit to resist, or their culture, or their religion.  The Dalai Lama in now 90 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.

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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, 2020

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. How was it created and what led to its demise?

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 (rotten egg smell), 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, 2020

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 high cost. Today, with a decades-long southwestern mega-drought, climate change raging, and water wars over the Colorado River, the lake continues to dry up and shrink. Currently, the stagnant lake is about twice as salty as the nearby Pacific Ocean. Care for a swim, anyone?

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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 – fair wages, fair compensation, 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 the 1960’s and 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, 1869

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 a 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 the poor.  The labor movement had finally become a 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. of Labor in 1913.  And finally, regulating child labor in the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

During the Great Depression, workers turned 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’s securing retirement, medical benefits, paid leave, fairer 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, free trade agreements and a virtual flood of cheaper foreign-made goods. U.S. and European 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 pro-corporate administrations, last seen in the Glided Age.

Between 1975 and 1985, U.S. union membership fell by 5 million. Claims of political corruption in the larger unions hurt public opinion. 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, Silicon Valley and social media 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 Democrat President Barack Obama elected (then re-elected in 2012).

With corporations shifting jobs to China and India with cheaper labor, US & EU factories were 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 to Republican in 2016.  Today, the highest labor union memberships are in the public sector (police, teachers, nurses, 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 EU countries are in favor of them. The middle class remembers the support and voice they once offered their parents and grandparents. Key themes include employee pay levels keeping up with inflation, being forced to work with no access to sick leave, medical benefits, protective safety gear, and being subjected to mass layoffs without severance.

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

In our current times, global corporations continue to rake in record profits, rewarding their CEOs and shareholders with billions. They fight the creation of unions by intimidating or, in some cases, threatening their workers with firings. Much like in the Gilded Age, a fraction of that explosive wealth is passed on to their middle-class employees in the form of fair wages and compensation.

Today, families struggle with inflation to put food on the table while paying for mortgages/rent, healthcare, utility bills, and transportation. Frustrated workers are banding together and many consider unionizing to achieve collective bargaining power and fairer compensation from their powerful corporate employers. And it necessary, they strike. Sound familiar?

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Evita Peron – The Woman Behind the Musical

Portrait of Maria Eva Duarte de Peron
Portrait of Maria Eva Duarte de Peron

The beautiful Evita Perón wielded amazing power in a time and country when few women broke the patriarchy barrier. Maria Eva de Perón was the 2nd wife of Argentinian President Juan Perón. She was the First Lady of Argentina from 1946, until her very early death at only 33.  Popularized in a Broadway musical, she was so much more than just a character.  She used her position to fight for women’s rights, improve the lives of the poor, and became a legend in Argentina.  A gifted speaker and tireless advocate, she dedicated her short life to making her county better for the marginalized. They responded back by loving her deeply. 

So who was this amazing woman? Evita was born María Eva Duarte in 1919.  Her father, Juan Duarte, had 2 families – one with his legal wife, and another with his mistress, Juana Ibarguren. María Eva was the 5th baby born to the mistress.  While the couple never married, Juana used the name Duarte for herself and her children. The father eventually abandoned both his mistress and his children, leaving them with nothing. He died in a car crash when Eva was only six.

His legal wife rejected Juana and her family at the funeral church.  The legitimate family then blocked any inheritance for las ilegítimas.  Already struggling to live, this meant even greater hardship.  They moved to Junín, a city near Buenos Aires in 1930.  Eva’s mother took in boarders and worked long hours as a seamstress. Young Eva dreamed of leaving Junin and becoming an actress.  She and her sister often made up their own performances and Eva had a small role in a school play.

At only 15, Eva ran off to Buenos Aires with a young musician to seek a better life.

Both attractive and charming, Eva quickly found work as a model and actress in 1935 at only 16.  She landed small roles in theaters and low-budget movies. Later, she found steady work lending her voice to radio dramas. Young Eva played each part with gusto and became popular among Radio el Mundo listeners. She was able to earn enough by the early 1940’s to have her own apartment in an exclusive neighborhood, unheard of for an unmarried Argentinian woman.

When Eva was about 20, she boldly started her own entertainment business, the Company of the Theater of the Air, producing radio programs. In 1943, Eva portrayed a number of famous historical women on a special radio series, Great Women of History. She had a chance to play the likes of Catherine the Great and Queen Elizabeth I.  The once poor, illegitimate Eva Duarte soon became a famous personality in Buenos Aires!

In 1944, Eva met someone who would change her life, Colonel Juan Perón. 

The widower was a rising political figure in Argentina. Just a year earlier, he’d been one of the officers who overthrew the civilian government in a military coup.  The new president made Perón Minister of Labor, where he began improving the rights of poor farm workers. Eva met him at a fundraiser for earthquake victims and they fell instantly in love. He was 48, she was 24.

Part of their romance came from the fact they saw eye-to-eye politically.  They were both passionate about helping the marginalized, the Descamisados, or ‘The Shirtless Ones,’ to get their fair share. She was now president of the Broadcast Performers Union and used a daily radio program, Hacia un Futuro Mejor, to promote Perón.

I am only a sparrow amongst a great flock of sparrows.

Eva Peron

In 1945, rival military officers threw Juan in jail, his rising popularity seen as a threat. A few days later, hundreds of thousands of union workers flooded the Plaza de Mayo demanding his release.  Eva had roused the people by speaking in person to the largest unions. October 17th, the day he was released, is still celebrated as “El Día de la Lealtad” or the Day of Loyalty.

By then, the two had moved in together in an opulent mansion in Buenos Aires. Living with a much younger, unmarried woman caused problems for Perón (it was the 1940’s after all).  So less than a week after his release, Eva and Juan were formally married in a civil ceremony, and later in a church in La Plata.

Evita Peron giving a speech in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Eva ‘Evita’ Peron giving a speech in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Rising in popularity, Perón decided to run for president. Eva campaigned tirelessly for her new husband, both on her radio shows and on the campaign. She often appeared with him at public engagements, unprecedented for an Argentinian woman. She appealed directly to the disenfranchised in Argentina, saying she knew their plight because: Soy uno de ustedes! (I am one of you).  The public began referring to her lovingly as simply “Evita!”

Juan Perón won the presidential election with a 52% majority.

Evita proved to be a powerful influence as First Lady, fighting for women’s suffrage and to improve the lives of the poor. She kept her promise to the working class.  In everything but title, she effectively ran the Ministry of Labor, supporting higher wages and social welfare benefits.  Evita kept a high public profile, visiting factories and hospitals, and holding dozens of union meetings. She even toured Europe to raise support for her husband’s administration internationally.

But she was not without critics and detractors. Evita angered the wealthy elite with her campaign for the female vote. Suffrage for women was finally enacted in Argentina, largely due to the energy that Evita poured into the campaign. 

Like every woman of the people, I have more strength than I appear to have.

Eva Peron

Not long after the election, the National Congress passed Argentine Law #13,010 in 1947, finally granting women the right to vote.  But it did not pass without a hard fight by Eva.  All around the nation, women thanked Evita for their right to vote.  And she wasted no time in founding the Female Peronist Party.  Argentine women registered and voted in droves.

Since the 18oo’s, charitable works in Buenos Aires had been carried out by the Society of Beneficence, a group of wealthy, older ladies. Traditionally, the First Lady was the head of the Society, but in 1946, they snubbed young Evita.  She was livid!  Evita basically crushed the society by removing their government funding, then starting her own foundation:

The Eva Perón Foundation

In 1948, she established the Eva Perón Foundation – with its first 10,000 pesos coming from her own money.  The Foundation provided unprecedented relief for Argentina’s poor, giving away thousands of shoes and sewing machines annually. It provided pensions for the elderly, homes for the poor, schools and libraries in Buenos Aires. The unions and wealthy, looking for political favor, lined up to donate.

Eva personally oversaw it, working tirelessly to raise money, meet with the poor AND listen to their stories.  Having once been in poverty herself, Evita understood their lives. Even as her health began to deteriorate, Evita continued to work daily at the Foundation, ignoring the pleas of her doctors and husband to rest. That year, she’d been diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer. She initially kept the diagnosis a secret from her husband.

Juan Perón was coming up for re-election in 1952.

In 1951, he had to select a running mate and he wanted it to be Evita. The working class was overwhelmingly in favor of Evita as VP.  Even Juan was surprised at the popularity of his wife, showing him just how important she had become to his own political future. The military and upper classes however were would not accept an ‘illegitimate actress‘ running the country if her husband died.

Eva 'Evita' Peron on the cover of TIME magazine
Eva ‘Evita’ Peron on the cover of TIME magazine

At a summer rally in 1951, hundreds of thousands chanted her name. “EVITA! EVITA! EVITA!” She bowed out, however, telling her adoring masses that her only ambitions wereto serve the poor and her husband. In reality, her decision was probably due to a combination of military pressure and her own failing health.  Evita’s new female voting bloc re-elected Juan Perón with a landslide 63% of the vote.

Aggressive treatment of her cervical cancer, including a hysterectomy in New York City, could not halt its advance. In May 1952, on Evita’s 33rd birthday, Juan Peron gave her the title, Líder Espiritual de la Nación (Spiritual Leader of the Nation). Evita made her last public appearance in June 1952, at her husband’s second inauguration. She was so weak, she was unable to stand without support. Everyone knew the end was near – Evita did not deny it. 

A month after the reelection, she died in July 1952 at the age of 33.

The public’s grief was overwhelming and unprecedented.  Argentina went into mourning unlike any seen since the days of Spanish kings. People piled flowers high on the streets, Argentinians crowded around the presidential palace.  The nation gave her a funeral fit for a head of state. A devastated Perón planned an elaborate monument, but it was never completed before he lost power. Evita is buried in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Without Evita, another coup removed Juan Perón from power in 3 years, fleeing to Spain. Her final legacy is still hotly debated as both her supporters and enemies wrote her legacy.  Peronism is still a powerful political movement in Argentina. Evita is considered a saint by the poor that adored her. She‘s appeared on stamps and coins. There are hundreds of schools and hospitals named after her. Every year, thousands visit her tomb in Recoleta. Her husband Juan died of a heart attack in 1974 at 78.

Evita Peron has been immortalized in countless books, movies, poems, and paintings. Perhaps the most well-known is the 1978 Tony Award winning musical Evita, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. It later inspired a 1996 movie starring the singer Madonna as Evita and Jonathan Pryce as Juan.  Her leadership and dedication to the poor has served as an inspiration for millions of women around the globe. Her legend only continues to grow.

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The Rwanda Genocide – an African Holocaust

Rwanda Genocide Mass Grave, 1994
Rwanda Genocide Mass Grave in Kigali, 1994

We rarely think of “Genocide” as a modern event.  It’s what happened to the Armenians in World War I at the hands of the Turks, and the Jewish Holocaust in World War II at the hands of the Nazis.  But the Rwanda Genocide happened just 25 years ago.  In 1994, in just 100 gruesome days, nearly 1,000,000 Rwandans were slaughtered by ethnic Hutu extremists. They targeted the minority Tutsi community, as well as any unlucky sympathizers in the East African nation.

Instigated by Hutu nationalists in the capital of Kigali, the genocide spread through the country like a wildfire, with shocking brutality.  “Hutu Power” militias incited ordinary citizens to take up arms against their own Tutsi neighbors. By the time the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) finally managed to gain control of the country in July, nearly a million Rwandans laid dead.  2 Million Hutu, now refugees, had fled the country.

How could genocide have happened in modern times?

Rwanda is a small, central African nation, about the size of Denmark, located just south of the Equator. Its neighbors are the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west, Uganda to the north, Tanzania to the east, and Burundi to the south. In 1994, the population was about 7 million, 85 percent the Hutu ethnic group and 15 percent the Tutsi minority.  It was also one of the most densely populated countries in all of Africa and also one of the most volatile.

In 1918 after World War I, the League of Nations made Rwanda a Belgium Trusteeship. During this colonial period, the Belgians favored the educated Tutsi minority over the Hutus, causing decades of deep seated resentment.  A Hutu nationalist revolution in 1959 forced over 300,000 Tutsis to flee to neighboring countries, making them an even smaller minority in Rwanda. After a United Nations referendum, Belgium finally granted Rwanda independence in 1962.

Ethnic and class violence continued in Rwanda, even following independence. The Tutsis in Rwanda were now discriminated against as inferior people by the new Hutu-controlled government. Ironically, they all were black, spoke the same Bantu language, and practiced the same Christian religions, established while they were a Belgian colony.

The Belgians had instituted identity cards, clearly stating one’s ethnic group.

In 1973, a military coup placed Hutu General Juvenal Habyarimana, in power. He was the sole leader of Rwanda for the next 20 years. Habyarimana founded the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (NRMD) party. He was easily reelected in 1983 and 1988 as Habyarimana made sure he was the only candidate on the ballot.

In 1990, the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), consisting of armed Tutsi rebels, invaded from Uganda, causing a two year civil war.  A ceasefire in 1992 led to negotiations between the NRMD and the RPF.  Just a year before the genocide, Habyarimana agreed to a new government that would include the RPF.  The United Nations established the Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) to assist in the implementation.

Map of Rwanda in Africa surrounded by its neighbors.
Map of Rwanda in Africa surrounded by its neighbors.

This compromise only infuriated Hutu extremists. Coupled with decades of discrimination and hatred, it lit the fuse of genocide. On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying General Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali, leaving no survivors. Who were the culprits?  Hutu extremists quickly blamed the RPF and immediately started a campaign of killing Tutsis in Kigali. The RPF blamed the Hutus, saying they shot down the plane to provide an excuse for the killings.

Within an hour of the crash, Hutu members of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and 2 Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, set up armed barricades throughout the capital Kigali. They then started killing Tutsis … and moderate , sympathetic Hutus.  The next day, the Hutu military assassinated moderate Hutu Prime Minister Uwilingiyimana and 10 Belgian Peacekeepers. This left a huge political vacuum, into which extremist “Hutu Power” militia leaders quickly stepped in.

The killing of UN Peacekeepers provoked Belgium to withdraw nearly all its UN troops.

From an international standpoint, Rwandan was now on its own. The mass killings in Kigali by Hutus quickly spread into a wholescale slaughter of Tutsi civilians in the countryside. Armed by the NRMD, the Interahamwe, young ‘Hutu Power’ men, were the blood-thirsty maniacs behind the genocide.   Those ID cards had people’s ethnic group stamped on them, so it was all too easy.

Hutu extremists set up a radio station, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which broadcast daily hate propaganda, urging Hutus to “Squash the (Tutsi) Cockroaches.” The names of prominent Tutsis, and Hutu sympathizers, to be killed were read out loud. Radio commentators reminded the Hutus of the discrimination they suffered under the elite Tutsis.  They called on all Hutu civilians to arm themselves and murder their Tutsi neighbors.

“All Tutsis must perish! They will vanish from this country of ours.”  

Rwanda RTLM radio broadcast, 1994

By April 18th, in just two weeks, they’d killed most anyone who dared resist. Any other Hutu opponents fell quickly silent out of fear, allowing the killings of their neighbors to proceed. The military handed out long lists of Tutsi names to the Hutu Power militia. The militia leaders rewarded their ruthless killing squads with booze, drugs, money and women. 

Hutu militiamen with long machetes slaughtered entire Tutsi families.  Militias went house to house. They dragged them out screaming for mercy, and hacked them to death in the streets. They murdered women, and even children and elderly in their homes, leaving the bloodied corpses behind. Mutilated bodies were left to rot in the streets and houses. The long-bladed machete became the feared Rwandan symbol of genocide.

Discarded militia machetes following the Rwanda Genocide
Discarded militia machetes following the Rwanda Genocide, 1994

The genocide was supported by the Hutu army and government.  Civilian Hutus willingly or fearfully collaborated. They handed over their Tutsis or moderate Hutu neighbors, anyone who showed sympathy. And neighbors killed their neighbors.  Some Hutu husbands murdered their Tutsi wives, saying they’d be killed if they refused. Even some Hutu clergy killed Tutsis who took shelter in their churches.

“You cockroaches are made of flesh.  We will kill you.  The graves are not yet full!”

Rwanda RTLM radio broadcast, 1994

Where was the rest of the world while this massacre was occurring?  Unlike the earlier genocides of the 20th century, the Rwanda genocide was broadcast internationally on television.  Journalists and reporters from dozens of networks and newspapers covered the events daily, including the BBC, CNN, Washington Post and New York Times.  So the world knew of this genocide from its first day to its last.  

After a year of losing troops in the Somalian civil war, the U.S. elected not to get involved in another bloody African conflict. Despite the glaring press it received, the Clinton Administration avoided calling the massacre a “Genocide” to evade involvement. They said there were no U.S. interests in Rwanda, so it was not their place to interfere, massacre or not.  

U.S. Military intervention was never on the table.

The international community as well largely watched from the sidelines.   Despite UNAMIR’s warnings, the UN Security Council voted in April not to intervene, and instead pulled their forces out.  Almost overnight, 4,500 UNAMIR Peacekeepers still on the ground in Kigali were reduced to a mere 260. They could provide the Tutsi no protection and gave the Hutu’s free reign to continue the slaughter.

Not until over half a million Rwandans had been slaughtered, did the UN finally recognize that “Acts of Genocide” had been committed.  The Security Council voted a month later in May 1994 to resupply more than 5,500 UN troops.  This was delayed, however due to arguments over the costs and who would pay for it.  By the time the UN force could mobilize and arrive, the genocide was all but over. 

“In their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.”

Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General

The Tutsi RPF resumed fighting, so a Civil War raged alongside the genocide. 100 bloody days later, on July 4th, the RPF forces finally stormed and gained control over Kigali and most of country. Now more than 2 million Hutus fled Rwanda for fear of Tutsi reprisals.  They crowded into refugee camps in neighboring Congo, Burundi and Tanzania. They left behind almost a million Tutsi corpses.  Macheted bodies lay everywhere – in the streets, in the ditches, and in their homes.

In just 3 months, by the end of the 100-day killing spree, over 900,000 had been slaughtered. An estimated 250,000 Tutsi women were raped, murdered, or taken away as sex slaves.  It’s estimated that nearly 100,000 children were orphaned, abducted or abandoned.

Rwanda genocide victims lie where they were killed
Rwanda genocide victims lie where they were killed, 1994

Human rights groups say Tutsi RPF fighters, as they took power, next killed thousands of Hutu militia in retaliation.  The RPF denies this to this day. They established a coalition government with a Hutu president and a Tutsi VP, RFP leader Paul Kagame.  General Habyarimana’s NRMD party was outlawed.  Now, they faced the enormous task of dealing with the bodies of almost 1 million victims.

Mass graves were dug and quickly filled in every town and city.

After the RFP victory, UNAMIR finally returned. They remaining there for 2 years, as one of the largest humanitarian relief efforts in world history.  Due to worsening conditions in the Congo and Tanzania refugee camps, more than a million Hutu refugees returned home to Rwanda by 1997. 25% of the Rwandan people still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to living through the genocide.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) was established as an extension of The Hague World Court.  It was the first international tribunal since the post-WWII Nazi Nuremburg Trials.  12,000 Gacaca community courts met weekly in towns across Rwanda, trying more than 1.2 million cases of the Rwanda Genocide.  Their aim was to achieve both justice and reconciliation among Rwandans.

A new constitution in 2003 eliminated any reference to Hutu or Tutsi ethnicity. This was followed by Paul Kagame’s election as President, and the first-ever legislative elections in the country’s history.  He was re-elected in 2010 and again in 2017 by wide margins. Genocide Trials continued over the next 15 years.  The Tribunal indicted 93 Hutus leaders and convicted 62 of war crimes and acts of genocide.

What about Rwanda since then?  The Tribunal closed at the end of 2015.  President Kagame has been hailed for transforming the devastated country by encouraging economic growth, including better healthcare and technological.  But his critics say he is also a repressive dictator and does not tolerate dissent or political opposition. 

The Oscar nominated 2004 movie, HOTEL RWANDA, depicts the efforts of Kigali Hutu Paul Rusesabagina, manager of the Belgian owned Hôtel des Mille Collines. His wife is a Tutsi and he manages to shelter other Tutsi refugees in his 4 star hotel. He negotiated with the militia to keep them alive until they could be safely evacuated by a UN convoy. 

So, could such an atrocity happen again TODAY, elsewhere on earth, with the world watching?  Say, in a deeply divided country, with decades of resentment between opposing sides. Half the population angry and heavily armed, just waiting for the seeds of Hatred & Fear to be planted. Then a single spark to ignite the flame of deadly violence yet again. Sadly … yes. 

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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