Vol. 80/No. 16      April 25, 2016

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

 

April 26, 1991

The successful challenge against the U.S. ban on art from Cuba pokes another hole in the more than 30-year U.S. trade embargo.

The Miami city government’s move to shut down the Cuban Museum of Art and Culture by evicting it from its city-owned premises is an attempt to push in the opposite direction. The city commissioners’ action is governmental censorship plain and simple. It is an attempt to push back democratic rights and to narrow the breach in the U.S. economic and ideological blockade against Cuba.

Forces supporting the museum’s shutdown do not want working people to know the truth about Cuba; and their attack on democratic rights is part and parcel of the U.S. employer-government offensive against the rights, unions, and standard of living of working people.

April 25, 1966

A fresh affirmation that it pays to fight for your rights is provided by the victory in the five-year battle to overturn the Arizona State “loyalty” oath. When the Arizona legislature adopted the McCarthyite oath proviso in 1961, Vernon and Barbara Elfbrandt and two other school teachers refused to sign it because it violated their constitutional rights. Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, they challenged it in the courts.

In striking down the state oath, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it rested on the doctrine of guilt by association. At the same time the court limited the scope of its ruling to avoid knocking out similar oath requirements in other states. That means the fight against these anti-democratic strictures must be continued. Meanwhile Mr. and Mrs. Elfbrandt are to be congratulated on their well-earned victory.

April 26, 1941

NEW YORK, April 20 — The picket lines of the United Negro Bus Strike Committee yesterday succeeded in gaining a contract from the Fifth Avenue Bus Co. and the New York City Omnibus Corporation to hire a minimum of 100 colored bus drivers, 70 colored maintenance men, and eventually a total of 17 percent of the company’s employees will be colored.

At the close of the recent 11-day strike of the bus workers, a movement started in Harlem to do something about getting Negroes jobs as chauffeurs and mechanics on the bus lines. The United Negro Bus Strike Committee was formed and at a mass meeting in the Abyssinian Baptist church attended by more than 1,000 Harlemites, it was enthusiastically decided to boycott and picket the bus lines at all Harlem bus stops.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home