25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

February 3, 2025

January 31, 2000

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Tens of thousands marched through the streets here demanding the Confederate battle flag no longer be flown over the capitol building. The marchers wound through the streets chanting, “We’re fired up! Take it Down!” and “Hey Hey! Ho Ho! The racist flag has got to go!” It was the largest civil rights march ever in the state.

The march was one of many commemorating slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The flag was installed in 1962 as a calculated insult and in defiance of the advancing civil rights movement.

January 31, 1975

It was an ironic coincidence. Two painters who were working on the project to shine up the Statue of Liberty for the celebration next year of 200 years of freedom in the United States were seized by Immigration Department agents. It turns out they lacked the proper papers.

Immigration laws, like most others, are drafted for the needs of the rich. One of their needs is to regulate and control their labor supply. The economic crisis has raised the immigration barriers again. The broad and intensive campaign against “illegal aliens” is one of the fake cures for unemployment.

January 30, 1950

The conviction of Alger Hiss has spread fear among the liberals and left-wing Democrats while jubilation reigns on the extreme right. These contrasting reactions cast light on the political significance of the case.

It is often forgotten that the idea of a “loyalty” probe of government employees was projected in 1939 to expose “Communist” agents. The lesson from the Hiss trial is that the loyalty purge cannot be limited. Once started, it sets into motion forces which can boomerang against its own sponsors. Truman persecuted Stalinists, Trotskyists and others. But this was only a beginning.