Vol. 80/No. 27      July 25, 2016

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

 

July 19, 1991

DURBAN, South Africa — Fifty thousand people at King’s Park Stadium here gave a tumultuous welcome July 7 to the newly elected leadership of the African National Congress.

The event came at the end of the ANC’s five-day 48th National Conference, the first such meeting held in South Africa in more than 30 years.

Singing freedom songs and chanting slogans, the overwhelmingly young crowd cheered and saluted the leadership.

Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, elected president and chairperson of the ANC respectively, reported on the conference’s decisions and introduced the liberation organization’s National Executive Committee and the six national officers elected by the 2,200 delegates in a secret ballot.

July 25, 1966

CLEVELAND, July 17 — Disorderly assembly charges were dismissed last week against all 29 defendants arrested in a midnight raid by police and state liquor agents at the Eugene V. Debs Hall here last November. Another defendant was found not guilty of the charge that he was a keeper of an establishment for illegal sale of liquor.

On separate charges, two defendants were found guilty of minor liquor law violations.

Herman Kirsch, Chairman of the Socialist Workers Party of Ohio, testified that his organization maintains Debs Hall, where a benefit buffet for the Militant was held last Nov. 13. “The raid on Debs Hall was a new low in crude political harassment,” Mr. Kirsch said. “They used an unnamed informant’s tip as an excuse.”

July 19, 1941

MINNEAPOLIS, July 15 — Acting on the demand of the Roosevelt Administration, a federal grand jury handed down indictments on “seditious conspiracy” charges against 29 CIO leaders and Socialist Workers Party members.

The leaders of Local 544-CIO — President Miles B. Dunne, Vice President George Frosig, Secretary-Treasurer Kelly Postal, Organizers V.R. Dunne, Ray Rainbolt, Harry De Boer, Emil Hansen and Walter Hagstrom — were among those indicted.

James P. Cannon, National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party; Farrell Dobbs, the party’s Labor Secretary; Felix Morrow, editor of the THE MILITANT, were among the Socialist Workers Party members indicted. Albert Goldman, Trotsky’s attorney in his lifetime and now attorney for the Socialist Workers Party, was likewise named.  
 
 
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