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.

  For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
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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.

如需阅读历史作家保罗·安德鲁斯的更多作品，请点击书籍。
失落的历史
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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?

如需阅读历史作家保罗·安德鲁斯的更多作品，请点击书籍。
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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. 

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The Confederate LOST CAUSE is not Lost

Confederate flags and a modern American rally
Confederate flags and a modern American rally, 2021

A hundred and seventy years after the American Civil War ended, we are hearing again about the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.   We see it in the display of Confederate Battle Flags, the “Stars and Bars,” at political rallies/marches, not to mention flag poles and bumpers stickers. It began to resurface following the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013. BLM led to the removal of many Confederate statues, deemed racist reminders of slavery, from public squares throughout the South. The statues may be gone, but the Lost Cause survives.  What is it exactly?

The Lost Cause was a post-U.S. Civil War movement in the former Confederate states. It redefined the South’s reasons for Secession, as well as reconciling its untimely defeat.  The Lost Cause spoke of ‘chivalrous’ Confederate leaders and ‘noble’ soldiers in grey. They bravely defended state’s rights and the Southern way of life, against the cruel, industrial North. It compared them to the colonial patriots who fought against British tyranny during the American Revolution.

The Lost Cause claimed the plantation way of life and the inherent necessity for black slavery factored little into the Civil War.  [This is in direct odds with history. When the 11 Southern states seceded in 1861, they were all very clear about defending slavery.]

Each Confederate state’s Declaration of Secession, stated the need to preserve slavery. 

The Lost Cause said the Confederacy was forced to surrender to the Union, not due to any lack of will, skill or right, but simply because they were outnumbered. It stated they fought solely for state’s sovereignty, rights, and independence from the Yankee-controlled government.  They were fighting to hold back North aggression, and preserve their Southern agrarian economy.   The Lost Cause became a way to rewrite American Confederate history.

Although General Robert E. Lee accepted full responsibility for his defeat, Southern leaders refused to blame him. A new Lee Legend was created. He was a Christian soldier who fought to preserve the Confederate States of America, not slavery – even though he was a slave owner himself.  The Lost Cause even gave Lee a scapegoat: former General James Longstreet. Lee only lost the Battle of Gettysburg because Longstreet, his second in command, betrayed him.

Northern leaders argued the Confederate generals were all traitors to America. Robert E. Lee, a West Point graduate, betrayed his oath to “defend the Constitution of the United States.”  Southern leaders countered that by saying during the Revolution, the British considered Washington and Jefferson traitors as well.  So from this new, reimagined point of view, those seceding from the U.S. were the true patriots.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis proclaimed that the Confederacy had ‘perpetuated the principles of our Revolutionary forefathers.’  The Founders had left slavery intact in the Declaration of Independence. So he said it was Abraham Lincoln and his Emancipation Proclamation that had in fact betrayed the U.S. Constitution.

Lee, Davis and General Stonewall Jackson became knight-like heroes in the decades after the war.

Just look at the Stone Mountain, Georgia carving for one very large example of the Lost Cause.  The trio was contrasted with the ‘low moral standards’ of Union generals like Grant and Sheridan. Union generals had engaged in vicious campaigns against Southern cities, burning some of them to the ground.  Ulysses S Grant, now U.S. President, weighed in and flatly rejected the Lost Cause argument.

Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on Stone Mountain, GA
Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on Stone Mountain, GA

The idea was taken up in the 1890’s by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.  With the slaves now freed – the Lost Cause defended a harsh and repressive political/economic system against negroes, known as Jim Crow.  Forty years after the war, statues of Confederate Generals (and former slave owners) began appearing in town squares across the South, sending a clear message to blacks.

The inherent evil of slavery was often brought up to Southern leaders. They pointed out that Washington and Jefferson were ‘benevolent slave owners’ and they were Founding Fathers. Slaves were taught a trade, housed, and well fed by their masters. However, in setting apart people as “good” slave masters, they conveniently left out the inherent evil of owning another human being.  

Following Reconstruction, came decades of cruel “Jim Crow.”

What exactly was that?   Jim Crow was a series of Southern state and local laws that basically legalized racial discrimination.  These laws marginalized the descendants of freed slaves by denying them jobs, banks loans, land ownership, equal education, and their right to vote. Those blacks who dared defy Jim Crow laws were terrorized, jailed without trial, and all too often lynched.

The Lost Cause evolved into a racial justification for the white supremacy that grew in the 1900’s. Southern leaders defended slavery as a ‘gentile institution’ that benefitted the slaves, who’d been well cared for by their ‘compassionate masters.’  They claimed that blacks were a lower race incapable of handling their own freedom, leading to black racist stereotypes that persisted over a century.

The Lost Cause narrative stopped being about the loss of the war, but rather a victory over Reconstruction.  They’d defeated the North’s efforts, and along with it – black rights.  Southern leaders made sure Southern textbooks portrayed the Confederacy’s goal as righteous and noble. It worked so well, the Lost Cause influenced U.S. education in many Southern school districts for a century.

By 1900, white northern leaders gave up trying to federally enforce blacks’ rights — ceding politics and law enforcement back to white, southern leaders and their Jim Crow laws.  Many white Americans wanted to forget about the Civil War — even if it meant leaving systemic racism behind, and the rights of African Americans forgotten.  ‘Separate but Equal’ segregation became the new mantra in the 1900’s. 

The Lost Cause was helped by Gone with the Wind, the famous 1939 film.

In the movie, Southerners were portrayed by famous Hollywood actors as noble heroes, in a civilized society, who tragically succumbed to the destructive Union army. The new Ku Klux Klan fraternity, restarted in 1915, advertised themselves as a part of the noble traditions of the South; rather than the racist, white supremacist hate group that it was.

Ku Klux Klan cross burning, white supremacist rally
Ku Klux Klan cross burning at a white supremacist rally

Segregation could be found in schools, housing, churches, hospitals, hotels, sports, even the military.  Never separate but equal, it marginalized and discriminated against African Americans for decades.  Jim Crow laws existed for almost 100 years, all the way up to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement.  Only the Civil Rights Act of 1964 put them legally to an end.

So in the Lost Cause rewrite of history, leaders, wearing slavery blinders, could celebrate the ideals of the Confederacy as a part of Southern heritage.  160 years later, we again hear of those in power trying to rewrite history, to erase our racist past, and even change the historical facts taught to our children in today’s schools. But you see, it already has been rewritten, over a century earlier, in the Confederate Lost Cause.

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The Irish Famine caused the 1st Immigrant Refugee Crisis

The Irish Potato Famine aka THE HUNGER
Starving Irish riot during the Potato Famine, aka THE HUNGER

To the people of Ireland, the Irish Famine is known simply as “THE HUNGER.” The famine began in 1845 when an infectious mold quickly spread through every farm in Ireland. The disease destroyed one-half of the potato crop that first year, and nearly all of the crops over the next 7 years. The poor tenant farmers relied heavily on potatoes as both a source of food and income, especially during winter.  So the terrible blight threw the Irish population into a devastating famine.

By its end, the Irish Famine resulted in the death of over One Million Irish from starvation and related diseases.  The famine forced at least another 1.5 Million to leave their homeland and become immigrants abroad as famine refugees.  The Hunger was also a catastrophic failure on the part of Great Britain to properly respond. Ireland was a colony of Great Britain at the time.  How could this have happened?

Ireland became a colony of England in 1801.  Together, the combined nations were known as the United Kingdom.  Ireland would remain a British colony for another hundred years, until the Irish War of Independence in 1921.

Even before the famine struck, the Ireland colony lived in poverty.

The Irish population exploded in the first half of the 1800’s, reaching about 8.5 million by 1845.  Unlike England, Ireland was not yet industrialized.  English gentry owned most of the farms, who collected rent from tenant farmers living on small squares of land separated by miles of stone fences.  Those peasant farmers grew predominantly potatoes to feed their families and pay rent.

Why potatoes? Because it produced more food per acre than grains, AND could be sold for a better price. Potatoes are also nutritious and could be fed to their livestock.  They also grew well in Ireland’s wet soil. Potatoes stored well, BUT could not be kept for more than a year. So if a crop failed … like they did in 1845 … they had nothing to replace it.

The summer of 1845 looked like any other. But when the crop was harvested in October, there were troubling signs. Plant leaves curled up and turned black. Within just a few days after harvest, the potatoes rapidly began to wither and rot, releasing a noxious stench. Atlantic winds spread the fungus across all of Ireland. Various “cures,” like drying the potatoes in ovens, or treating them with lime all failed. 

Over half the crop was lost that first year.

Dublin leaders petitioned Prime Minister Robert Peel in London for help.  Tenant farmers hadn’t been able to produce enough to eat, let alone pay rent.  By the spring of 1846, panic spread as families’ supplies dwindled and starvation set in. Helpless parents listened to the haunting crying of their malnourished children. Thousands began dying.  Hundreds of thousands more died from diseases caused by malnutrition.

Prime Minister Peel came up with a lackluster solution. He purchased shipments of cheap Indian corn from America to be distributed. To distribute the corn meal, parliament formed local relief committees that sold it at one penny per pound. Peasants that had any money saved, soon ran out.  Plus, the corn meal was difficult to cook, hard to digest, and caused diahhrea. By June 1846, the corn supplies were gone.

Throughout the summer of 1846, the Irish people prayed and prayed for a good potato harvest that fall. But the blight did not go away. At first, the crop appeared healthy. But by harvest time, the terrible blight had struck again. In the fall of 1846, the ENTIRE Irish potato crop was destroyed.

The desperate Irish people began living off nettles, seaweed, roots, and even bark, leaves and grass.  They sold their livestock and even their own clothing to avoid eviction. Fish, although plentiful along the west coast, remained out of reach in water too dangerous for small Irish fishing boats. Starving fishermen could not afford salt to preserve it. They pawned their precious nets just to buy food.

Some Catholics saw the Irish Famine as Divine punishment for the “sins of the people.” Others saw it as Judgment against their abusive English landlords. Ironically, there was other food available in Ireland – wheat, meat and dairy, but the British gentry exported nearly all of it to Great Britain. 

Starvation panic and riots swept the island again.

Hungry mobs stormed local relief committees demanding food. The Irish watched with increasing anger as boatloads of food sailed for England. Food riots erupted in ports where peasants tried to confiscate ships. British military escorts were sent in to guard shipments. As the Irish Famine worsened, the British sent in even more troops.

A British Magistrate reported to London: “Entire villages ravaged by hunger, with human specters in rags, skeletons with skin stretched across bone, huddled on hut floors, dying of fever.  The half naked children looked like shadows of their former selves.”

In 1846, parliament tried another solution.  500,000 men, women and children were put to work on public work projects, building stone roads. Many desperate workers were poorly clothed, malnourished and weakened by fever.  They often collapsed or even fell dead on the job. Those that could work were given paltry salaries inadequate to feed families.

By 1847, the new PM Lord John Russell tried but could not ignore the starving colony. He grudgingly made money available for soup kitchens. By that summer, 3 million Irish lined up across the island to get a vile-tasting soup. This was the only food they had each day. Demand quickly exceeded supply and after 6 months, the soup kitchens were bankrupt and shut them down.

The 1847 potato crop was only a quarter of normal so The Hunger marched on. Hundreds of thousands of starving Irish, now evicted, poured into towns for relief, begging for food or work. They were infected with lice, Typhus (Black Fever), cholera, dysentery, and fever.  Little, if any, medical care was available. The doctors and priests who attended to the sick succumbed to the same diseases.

The massive numbers of new dead each day also had to be buried.  But there were not enough coffins. Towns planted bodies just a few inches below the soil, to be gnawed at later by hungry rats and dogs. In some family cabins, the dead remained for weeks, amongst the living, who were too weak to bury them.

An Immigrant Refugee Crisis soon emerged.

Driven by desperation, starving emigrants began leaving Ireland in 1847. Because fares on Canadian timber ships were cheaper, many went by way of Canada.  Most were dressed in rags, with not enough food onboard to last for a 40-day to 3 month journey across the Atlantic.  They hadn’t enough money to buy food aboard ship, so were given starvation rations by the captains.

Shipowners were happy to carry the Irish, but their ships were not equipped for passengers. The conditions below decks were horrific. Hundreds of people, of all ages, huddled together for warmth, wallowing in filth and vomit, and breathing the foul air from sick bodies. Anyone who died during the voyage was simply tossed overboard, without any religious rites.

Ships with immigrant Irish refugees arrive in New York City
Ships with Irish immigrant refugees arrive in New York City

The Canadian ships became known as “Coffin Ships” because so many emigrants died before reaching America. Almost at third of the 100,000 immigrants bound for Quebec in 1847 died during their journey, or during quarantine in port. The ports places the sick in quarantine “fever sheds” onshore to either live or die.

Those who could afford it, arrived in Boston or New York City, where U.S. ship conditions were better. Most were illiterate though and many spoke only Gaelic. Their new life in America would not be easy at all as they were forced to take the lowest of jobs [READ MORE]  in U.S. slums. Americans shunned the immigrants, but at least they now had jobs, earning enough money to finally buy food and fill their bellies.

The poorest of the poor never made it to North America. They boarded cheaper steamers and crossed the Irish Sea to Britain. Everyone in England shunned the ragged Irish refugees as well, treating them like a rat infestation. Englishmen also viewed them as rivals for unskilled jobs.  They ended up in the slums of Liverpool and London.

Back in Ireland, the colony was going bankrupt.

An estimated half-million Irish were evicted. So landlords, with their own London mortgages to pay, were not receiving rents. Merchants went broke, closed up shops, and joined the beggars on the streets.  The 3 million Irish with no cornmeal or soup, no employment, and no homes continued to die from malnutrition and disease.

In the fall of 1847, Prime Minister Russell demanded that the loans be collected from Irish landlords BEFORE any further aid would come. Such a heartless statement caused even more widespread starvation, riots and violence. Russell had to send some 16,000 Redcoats to Ireland to deal with it. Stopping the Irish food exports was also NOT acceptable to the Prime Minister.

“God sent the Blight, but the English caused the Famine.”

  • Common Irish quote during The Hunger

Evicted Irish families wandered the countryside in tattered rags. Workhouses were jammed and had no heat or sanitary facilities. Anger and resentment grew over The Hunger happening year after year. The result was an intense hatred for British authority. Fearing the violence might spread, British officials sent another fifteen thousand soldiers to Irish coast.

Starving Irish family begging for food from English landlords
Starving Irish family begging for food from English landlords

Though hard to imagine, things got even worse. In the fall of 1848, the blight returned again and destroyed the entire potato crop. People watched in horror as their potato plants blackened, withered and rotted. Now more than ever, the Irish needed immediate British assistance to survive. But British officials were angry over the riots and resented the “ungrateful” Catholic Irish.

The return of The Blight sparked a second immigrant exodus. Tens of thousands of Irish departed for Montreal, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, arriving sick in tattered clothes, but at least with a glimmer of hope. Irish men in London deliberately committed crimes in order to be arrested and transported to the Australia penal colony. There, work and food were at least guaranteed.

The potato crops didn’t recover until 1852, seven long years later. By then, as many as 1 Million had perished of starvation and disease.  Another 1 to 2 million emigrated to escape The Hunger. The immigrants who reached America began new lives in coastal states and Canadian provinces.  Even there, they lived in squalid conditions at the very bottom of society [READ MORE].

Ireland was now a decimated island. 

In the years following the Irish Famine, there were reforms enacted to the Irish agrarian and landlord system. But the intense Hatred toward the British never faded and in fact sparked a renewed call for Irish independence.  It wasn’t until the end of World War I, after the Irish fought along side the British against Germany, that Irish Independence finally occurred in 1921.

The Irish Famine and immigration crisis was much more complicated than a Potato Blight.  Parliament ignored the plight of Ireland’s starving poor out. Their inaction and poor responses could be attributed to sheer malice, utter obliviousness or political incompetence. The Irish could be faulted for depending too much on a single crop for their survival.

The Irish today refer to the famine simply as THE HUNGER. Dying of starvation is a terrible way for a human being to go, lasting up to two months of agony, usually ending in organ failure caused by malnutrition. Panic and desperation are an understandable human response. 

British PM Tony Blair issued a statement in 1997 offering an apology of sorts from the British government to Ireland for ‘Failing their people in their inadequate handling and response to the Famine, leading to a massive human tragedy.’  Many in Ireland felt it was too little too late. National Famine Commemoration Day is observed in the Republic of Ireland, on a Sunday in May.  

Sadly, famine-induced refugee crises continue around the world, even in our modern times.  Climate change-induced droughts or social unrest caused by cruel dictatorships are often the cause.  The difference is that today we can, and should, respond quickly and globally … something the Irish refugees of 1845 would have been very grateful for.

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The Deadliest Circus Train Wreck in History

The crash scene of the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus train wreck in Hammond, Indiana
The crash scene of the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus train wreck in Hammond, Indiana

One of the worst train wrecks in U.S. history happened with, of all things, a Circus Train.  It was carrying over 400 performers when another train rear-ended it in the dead the night; and they burst into flames. The horrific tragedy happened to the famous Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus at Dutchman’s Curve near Hammond, Indiana on 22 June 1918.  The circus train was stopped on the tracks for repairs. The circus train wreck killed 89 performers and roustabouts, and injured over 150 more.   How could such a terrible disaster have occurred during the Golden Age of railroads?  

The Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus was the third-largest in the U.S., a Midwestern version of the Barnum & Baily Greatest Show. The H-W Circus had some of the most excellently trained animals, well-known trapeze artists, and spectacular equestrian routines.  By 1918, the company employed around 250 performers – acrobats, trapeze artists, clowns, and wild animal tamers; not to mention all the roustabouts who kept it going.  Circus owner Benjamin Wallace purchased the Carl Hagenbeck Circus in 1907.  In just a decade, the combined circus grew into a million-dollar extravaganza, which even owned its own trains. 

The circus required two, 28-car trains to transport all the tents, performers, animals, and midway across the U.S. The expansion of railroads in the latter half of the 1800’s fueled a Golden Age for circuses, as well as railroads. By 1900, nearly 100 circuses travelled between U.S. towns and cities. Back then, live circuses were an unmatched spectacle of daring, humor, and shear amazement. When the circus came to town, it was an unofficial holiday, schools and stores were closed and even factories shut down.

“The circus is coming to town!” 

he Hagenbeck-Wallance Circus Side Show performers
The Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus Side Show performers

The Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus had just wrapped up 2 successful shows in Michigan City, Indiana.  They were now enroute overnight to Hammond, only 45 miles away. The first train contained the performing animals, tents, midway and most of the circus workers.  The second train carried the performers and the remaining roustabouts. It was standard to send the animals in the first train ahead of the performers. That way, the animals could be unloaded, penned, and fed. This practice saved all the circus animals, but doomed the performers.

The first train made it safely to Hammond that night without incident.  But engineers on the second were forced to stop that train to fix a “hotbox” or overheated axle bearings – a serious problem if not addressed. They were able to pull the first cars off on a side track, but five of the rear ones, including 4 sleeper cars, remained on the main track.  This should not have been a problem as the rail line was aware and turned on red warning lights along the tracks.

Around 4 o’clock in the morning on Saturday, June 22, an empty Michigan Central train, led by an experienced railroad engineer, Alonzo Sargent, was rapidly approaching on the tracks behind them.  He and his train were headed to the west coast to pick up U.S. army soldiers for The Great War in Europe (World War I).  Sargent knew he was following 2 circus trains that were going much slower than his empty train.

As the crew worked, and the performers slept, the empty train came barreling towards them.

The engineer blew past several red stop signals AND the frantically waving lanterns of the circus train’s engineers. All his experience and knowledge was for naught as Sargent’s train inexplicably slammed into the back of the stopped circus train at close to 45 mph. The collision was so loud that farmers asleep in the countryside were startled awake.  They dressed and went to see what on earth had occurred.  

When the Michigan Central train rammed into the red caboose of the circus train, it splintered the caboose like kindling.  Then it continued on into the four wooden sleeper cars, filled with sleeping circus performers. The empty troop train’s massive engine and steel Pullman cars tore easily through the 4 wooden cars as well. Dozens were killed instantly.

Henry Miller, the assistant lighting manager, was a survivor thrown from the wreckage with minor injuries. “I was in the last coach, and was asleep when we were hit. I woke to the sound of splintering wood … Then there was another crash, and another, and another … The train buckled on itself.”

To make matters worse, the circus cars were lit inside with kerosene lamps hanging on the walls.  They smashed and exploded, spewing flames across the shattered wood, rapidly igniting the 4 cars.   Wherever the oil splattered, the fire followed.  Some survivors not killed instantly managed to claw their way out of the debris.  Others desperately cried out for help before the hungry fire engulfed them.

All four sleeping cars were completely engulfed in flames in a matter of minutes.

Survivors from the front of the train were knocked out of their berths when their cars jumped the tracks.  They climbed outside into the dark night and saw the rear of the train ablaze.  They ran back to the shouts and screams of their surviving coworkers.  The uninjured survivors risked their own lives trying to rescue their companions trapped in the burning wreckage.  One acrobat, trapped beneath the wooden walls, was pulled out by a clown just as the flames were licking his legs.  But most weren’t so lucky.

Fire engines from both Hammond and Gary, Indiana rushed to the scene.  But delivering enough water to fight the huge fires was next to impossible.  The only supply came from the shallow marshes aside the tracks. Hammond also brought in a wrecking crane to dig people out.  But it couldn’t be used because the fire’s heat was too intense. The survivors could only stand back helplessly and watch the four train cars burn.

The aftermath of the Hagenback-Wallace Circus Train Wreck in Hammond, Indiana
The aftermath of the Hagenbeck–Wallace Circus Train Wreck in Hammond, Indiana

By dawn’s pink light, the burning cars were consumed down to blackened metal wheels and smoking heaps of ashes.  The engineer, Alonzo Sargent, and his fireman were uninjured and arrested by local police. Most of the dead were burned beyond recognition. The task of identifying the corpses was hopeless. Some survived the initial crash but succumbed to their injuries at the Hammond and Gary hospitals. Many of the dead were simple circus roustabouts, people who joined the travelling circus doing odd jobs.

The circus kept few records on their roustabouts, most of whom were immigrants.

When reports of the circus train wreck made the newspapers, scenes of unspeakable horror were retold to a shocked country.  89 people were killed and more than 150 injured. Railway investigators believed most victims died within the first minute after the collision.  Among the dead were some famous circus performers – wild animal trainer Millie Jewel, “The Girl Without Fear”; Jennie Todd, an aerialist in the Flying Wards; bareback rider Louise Cottrell; Wild West rider Verna Connor; the strongmen Derickx brothers; and the wife and sons of head clown Joe Coyle.

Five days later, 53 were buried in a mass grave plot.  As luck or fate would have it, the Showman’s League of America, a fraternal order, had purchased an area of Woodlawn Cemetery in Forest Park, IL, for circus performers. When the coffins arrived, more than 1,500 mourners gathered to pay their final respects.   Only 5 of the 53 victims were identified.  Most were marked as “unknown,” or under markers like tent man, smiley clown, or 4 horse driver.

Mass grave for Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train wreck victims
Mass grave for Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train wreck victims

The Showman’s League memorialized the mass grave with a statue of a stone elephant, its head and trunk drooping in sorrow. Today, that portion of Woodlawn Cemetery is known as Showman’s Rest.

In the aftermath, families of the deceased struggled with who they should blame. The circus company?  The railway? The engineer?  All of them pointed fingers at the others. Engineer Alonzo Sargent and his fireman Gustave Klauss were criminally charged with manslaughter. Sargent reportedly had fallen asleep and therefore responsible for the crash. In the 1910s, there was no oversight of train conductors.

Sargent had been awake on the job for over 24 hours, driving trains across the Midwest. A few hours before the accident, he’d eaten a heavy supper and taken some medication.  All that, plus driving a train in the dark of night, he dropped into a deep sleep. He had known circus trains were in front of him, but didn’t know one had stopped for repairs. Sargent slept through two warning signals as well as the waving lanterns from the frantic circus train engineers.

At the trial, the jury was dead-locked, and a mistrial declared.

The Indiana prosecutor decided NOT to re-try the case and all of the charges against the two men were dismissed. The Interstate Commerce Commission investigating the accident cited the use of wooden train cars as a contributing factor to the deaths. “We discourage the use of wooden cars on passenger trains and urge the substitution of steel ones. That is all we can do.”

What became of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus? Its owner and the surviving performers decided to continue the show, for no other reason than to honor their dead companions.  Despite the physical and psychological toll of the accident, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus missed only two performances in its summer schedule.  Thanks to other circuses providing spare equipment and crew, they were able to continue their mid-west tour. The remaining members, and those from circuses from around the country, all pitched in. 

The show must go on.

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Senator Joe McCarthy and The Red Scare

Senator Joe McCarthy at a press conference, 1952
Senator Joe McCarthy at a press conference in 1952

Senator Joe McCarthy was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1947 as a Wisconsin Republican. During his tenure, the bombastic McCarthy played upon America’s fears of “communist traitors everywhere” to gain unheard of political power. He abused his oversight authority by accusing thousands of government staff members and ordinary citizens of secretly being communists, spies, or left-leaning sympathizers. He skillfully used the press to amplify lies and feed the people’s frenzy of fear, suspicion and anger. 

During this “Red-Scare” period, Americans lived in fear of being Black-Listed by Joe McCarthy as a communist.  Lives and careers were destroyed even by the mere accusation, without any real proof. For a time, he was above the law; for to criticize McCarthy meant being accused of being a communist sympathizer, or worse. Who was this politician who so skillfully manipulated the truth and stoked fear to gain power? And how did he accomplish it?

Joseph R. McCarthy was born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin to an Irish farming family.  Rather than work on the farm, he went to law school instead.  He became the youngest circuit court judge in the state when he beat the incumbent by smearing him during the campaign.  When World War II erupted, he enlisted in the Marines as a lieutenant. McCarthy served as an intelligence officer on a bomber squadron in the South Pacific, earning the nickname “Tail-Gunner Joe.” He was never actually the tail-gunner though, only an intelligence observer.

After the war, he returned to being a judge while running for U.S. Senator at the same time. McCarthy heavily exaggerated his military service during the campaign.  He lied about having flown twice as many mission as he actually did.  He lied about a broken leg, calling it a “War Wound,” when he actually broke it during a ship-board party.  He lied about receiving a letter of commendation from Admiral Chester Nimitz and had forged his commanding officer’s signature.  

None of his lies came out until much later, so McCarthy won the election in 1946.

In February 1950, he gave a now famous speech at a Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, that thrust him into the national spotlight. Waving a piece of paper in the air, he shouted that he had a list of 205 Communists! working in the State Department. He never gave his list to the press, OR to the Senate Subcommittee that was formed to investigate his accusations. Regardless, simply by making the shocking allegations, Senator Joe McCarthy was now the darling of the press and public.

During the 1950’s Cold War with the Soviet Union, communist traitors seemed a frighteningly real possibility. McCarthy told the public to be fearful of communist influence. THEY could be lurking anywhere – journalists, school teachers, college professors, labor organizers, liberal elites, the gay community – all with the goal of communist domination! After all, in 1949, Communists established the People’s Republic of China. In 1950, North Korea’s communist army invaded South Korea, starting a war.

This American paranoia—The Red Scare—reached a fever pitch in 1950. Joe McCarthy expertly took advantage.  He launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged communist infiltration in the State Department, White House, and even the U.S. Army. McCarthy took to the press with his fear-mongering, becoming the voice of the Red Scare, creating suspicion across the US. Insinuations alone were enough to convince Americans that their country must be overwhelmed with traitors and spies.

Initially, no one in the Eisenhower Administration dared tangle with McCarthy for fear of being labeled a communist. Senator Joe McCarthy spent five years exposing supposed communists in the government and American society. In the public’s eye, a staunch anticommunist like Joseph McCarthy – a “War-Hero” – Tail-Gunner Joe, was just the patriot for the job. Hearst newspapers, the Fox News of the day, amplified every word he said.

The press labeled his harsh methods, “McCarthyism.”

A Senate subcommittee launched to investigate his list found no proof of any subversive activity. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, disapproved of McCarthy’s tactics saying, “I will not get into the gutter with this guy.” Nevertheless, fellow Republican McCarthy continued his campaign, planting seeds of falsehoods and suspicion in American minds. His base of loyal supporters hung on every word he said.

Joe McCarthy was elected to a second term in 1952 and married one of his staff members.  In 1953, he was put in charge of the Senate Committee on Government Operations.  This allowed him to launch investigations into his alleged “communist infiltration of the federal government.” In hearing after hearing, he belligerently interrogated witnesses, often in a blatant violation of their civil rights. Despite a lack of any proof, more than 2,000 government employees lost their jobs as a result of McCarthy’s hearings. 

Senator Joe McCarthy at the PSI Hearings, 1953
Senator Joe McCarthy at the PSI Hearings, 1953

Republicans had gained control of the Senate that year and Senator McCarthy also became chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI).  He hired a young lawyer, Roy Cohn, as his chief counsel to investigate suspected communists further.  Cohn was famous as one of the prosecutors who had successfully tried Russian spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

McCarthy ruled the PSI like a baron. He denied members full access to the information being gathered.  In July 1953, the three Democratic senators resigned en masse.  McCarthy plowed ahead with 11 hearings examining the State Department, which he alleged employed traitorous communists or sympathizers. None were found, but one government staffer, Raymond Kaplan, committed suicide.

Senator Joe McCarthy also launched an inquiry into the U.S. Information Service Libraries.  What he called “Red Books,” written by alleged communist sympathizers, were banned and removed from shelves. McCarthy called the authors in to testify and interrogated them about their leftist, liberal-leaning beliefs.

In other hearings, McCarthy targeted professors, especially those at prestigious Ivy League universities. In hearings, he challenged the principles of academic and intellectual freedom. A number of professors lost their jobs, even though he’d provided no evidence of them being communists.  106 witnesses invoked the Fifth Amendment. Senator McCarthy ridiculed them, labeling them “Fifth Amendment Communists,” and stating that it was equal to an admission of guilt.

Why didn’t President Eisenhower do more to confront McCarthy?

Despite the President being Republican as well, Ike refused to engage McCarthy. Eisenhower did not want to appear “soft” on communists. He hoped the Senate would simply censure the reckless senator. But over half the Republican senators supported McCarthy’s efforts.  Battling McCarthy would only stir up a civil war inside the GOP. By avoiding the senator, some have argued that Eisenhower allowed McCarthyism to spread unchecked.  What then could be done about him?

Tail-Gunner Joe instituted his own downfall when he decided to also attack the U.S. military. In August 1953, Senator Joe McCarthy held a closed-door session investigating the Army. He claimed to have received a phone call from an Army informant with intel on communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps. When pressed for details, Senator McCarthy provided nothing.

Senator Joe McCarthy at the Army Hearings, 1953
Senator Joe McCarthy at the Army Hearings, 1953

Alleging that a communist spy ring was operating at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, Senator McCarthy questioned several civilian employees. He told the press exaggerated claims about the damaging evidence he obtained. The Army suspended 42 Signal Corps employees, despite the FBI finding NO evidence of a spy ring. Allegations of McCarthy’s anti-Semitism arose when it was discovered that 39 of those suspended were Jews.

On November, 1953, Senator Joe McCarthy met with U.S Army Secretary Robert Stevens. He demanded information about the Army’s loyalty investigations, despite them being classified as secret by a Presidential Executive Order. Witnesses called to testify at PSI public hearings, refused to defy the presidential order, making McCarthy furious.

Then in March 1954, news broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, host of the popular TV show “See It Now,” had enough.  He dedicated an entire evening program to condemning McCarthy and his hearings. Murrow was one of the most respected and trusted journalists in the country.  The broadcast exposed Senator McCarthy’s lies and ruthless tactics. Mr. Murrow explained:

“The line between a congressional committee investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.”

Edward R. Murrow, host of CBS See it Now, March 1954.

This was the first domino to tip over.  McCarthy’s aura of invulnerability began to erode. Democratic Senator John McClellan provided the press with transcripts of Roy Cohn’s threatening phone calls to Army officials.  Due to the growing factual disputes, the other PSI members voted unanimously for Senator McCarthy to step down as both member and chair. He had no choice but to comply.

The Army-McCarthy Hearings continued for 35 days, beginning April, 1954.

They were broadcast live on TV and 20 million Americans watched. Despite losing his position on PSI, McCarthy used a variety of his usual tactics to dominate the hearings. He interrupted multiple witnesses, frequently crying “Point of Order” to manipulate facts.  Americans were shocked to see him bullying witnesses and make baseless accusations and lies without facts.

The U.S. Army countered by compiling a damaging dossier on Roy Cohn, showing that he used threats and intimidation to force witnesses to testify. The Eisenhower White House secretly leaked this dossier to both the press and Congress. McCarthy and Cohn now stood accused of rampant abuse of power.

Americans also saw the contrast between his conduct and the Army’s unflappable attorney, Joseph Welch.  The most dramatic moment of the hearings came on June 1954. Welch asked why, if the senator had evidence of a spy ring he did not inform the Army. Joe McCarthy challenged that a young lawyer at Mr. Welch’s firm, Fred Fisher, had once been a member of a supposedly “subversive” group. An exacerbated Welch responded:

“Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel … You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?”

Joseph Welch, U.S. Army attorney at Army-McCarthy Hearings, June 1954

The hearings ended that month. The hearing’s final report absolved the Army of any wrongdoing. The Army-McCarthy hearings struck many observers around the world as a shameful moment in American politics.

By the time the hearings were over, Senator Joe McCarthy had lost most of his allies. On July 1954, Republican Senator Ralph Flanders of Vermont introduced a resolution to censure McCarthy for his “inexcusable, reprehensible, vulgar and insulting conduct.”  In December 1954, the Senate finally voted 67 to 22 to condemn Joe McCarthy, with all Democrats voting for the measure and the Republicans evenly split.

McCarthy, his credibility in tatters, was now ruined. 

The era of McCarthyism was over.  He was powerless, ignored by his fellow senators and the press for the remainder of his term.  Joe McCarthy was an alcoholic and his mental and physical health declined after his fall from grace.  He died three years later while still in office, at age 48, of hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver related to his excessive drinking.

Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine later described his tenure as “a shameful chapter in American history, … a time with little regard for due process or constitutional rights, a time when character assassination, mud-slinging, and guilt by association trumped truth and fairness.”

In the 15 months that McCarthy chaired the PSI, he called over 500 people to appear. Nearly 400 were questioned at 160 closed sessions and 200 public hearings, producing over 9,000 pages of transcript. By federal statute, all hearing records were sealed for 50 years.  It was not until 2004 that those records were unsealed. The Senate prefaced the release with a joint statement and warning for the future:

“Senator McCarthy’s zeal to uncover supposed subversion led to disturbing excesses. His browbeating tactics destroyed careers of people never involved..… These hearings are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget, nor permit to reoccur.”

U.S. Senate on the release of the McCarthy Hearings transcripts in 2004.
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