Vol. 80/No. 2      January 18, 2016

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

 

January 18, 1991

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians mobilized in the streets of Haiti’s capital, Port-Au-Prince, and other cities January 7 to prevent consolidation of a coup aimed at stopping President-elect Jean Bertrand Aristide from assuming office.

Protestors made barricades of burning tires and blocked access to the airport. Thousands chanted slogans.

Twenty-six demonstrators were killed outside the offices of Roger Lafontant, the leader of the coup attempt, when gunmen inside opened fire and tossed hand grenades.

Lafontant was interior and defense minister under deposed dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier and head of the Tontons Macoutes, a paramilitary group responsible for killing, torturing and abusing thousands of people.

January 17, 1966

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee statement [excerpt] presented by SNCC chairman John Lewis.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee assumes its right to dissent with United States foreign policy on any issue, and states its opposition to United States involvement in the war in Vietnam on these grounds:

We believe the United States government has been deceptive in claims of concern for the freedom of the Vietnamese people, just as the government has been deceptive in claiming concern for the freedom of the colored people in such other countries as the Dominican Republic, the Congo, South Africa, Rhodesia and in the U.S. itself.

We ourselves have often been victims of violence and confinement executed by U.S. government officials.

January 18, 1941

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Backed by high-ranking officers of the United States Navy, Representative Everett M. Dirksen introduced a bill in Congress this week to “make all crews on American merchant ships members of the active Naval Reserve.” He said the intention of the bill is to “militarize commercial shipping in event of a national emergency” and “to break the Communist grip on the American merchant marine.”

One of the real reasons behind the move is revealed in figures released by the Navy Department, simultaneously with the announcement of the Dirksen Bill. The Navy had set itself a goal of enrolling 30,000 merchant seamen in the Naval Reserve during the past four years, but only 339 such volunteers have actually been enrolled in this period.

 
 
 
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