The “Subversive Historian” series on Uprising started two summers ago with the stated intent of bringing “daily reminders to the people of their history in rebellion.” Now at the onset of starting a third year cycle of new material, I’ve decided to stop writing, researching and recording the historical commentaries. This past year proved much more of an effort to find, when possible, newer and rarer instances of “back in the day” happenings that highlight racial, social, and class cleavages throughout the epochs of our experience. With an eye trained towards 2010-2011, the degree of difficulty would be raised beyond the threshold that is available to me to produce them. Simply stated, there isn’t enough people’s history to go around because at some point there would be an exhaustion of material. This lends itself to the date specificity of the task where every event must be multiply attested to have occurred on the day and year stated before research and analysis could even commence. Without the time needed to keep climbing upward, I feared the series would suffer in terms of scholastic integrity and quality.

The Subversive Historian had proven to be an odd paradox where the dates of history most often associated with the rogue memorization taught in our nation’s schools met with the social perspectives that are generally not. It is my hope that listeners enjoyed and learned from the one-minute radio spots that conveyed a wide-ranging field of topics and on occasion, when appropriate, cheap Nixon impersonations! I learned as much as anyone else over the past two years. Whether it was the story of Irene Morgan giving a swift kick to the nuts of an arresting officer after being removed from trying to desegregate a racially segregated bus or the uplifting courage of Oliver Law and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, the richness of the story of resistance was always rewarding and illuminating. One Subversive Day in History about the Black Panthers in Orange County even turned into a cover story for the OC Weekly – which I hope gets nominated for the Orange County Press Club’s ‘Real OC’ Award this summer! – with the help of my colleague Gustavo Arellano who also has run Subversive Historian on his once-a-week KPFK radio show.  I still have future plans for the work I’ve compiled. Perhaps Subversive Historian could be transferred into a book or maybe even a calendar. There would be a few dates to fill in but mostly everything is there for the taking. Who knows!

With this, Uprising Radio is currently in the process of cultivating new features for the program in the interest of keeping things fresh for our listeners ears. Subversive Historian, Empire Notes and possibly “Who Said That?” are on the outs. Coming in is a weekly look at the machinations of the right-wing, the tea party movement, and the extremists who permeate them by Chris Bennett aptly titled “The Right Hook.” Also in the mix is informing our listeners on the art of “coming up” in these difficult economic times with the soon to be debuted “People’s Marketplace” series by Martina Steiner. My own next move has yet to be determined. I’ve always wanted to do some comedic writing, news skits and off-handle impersonations surrounding leftism. We aren’t always known as the barrel of laughs bunch! Let’s see what the future brings. In the meantime, for Uprising, this has been your truth professa’ always saying it’s no mystery why they conceal our people’s history!

Cohen v. California

Back in the day on June 7th, 1971, The Supreme Court of the United States overturned a ruling in the free speech case of Cohen v. California. The legal dispute stemmed from an incident in April 1968 when 19 year old Paul Cohen wore a jacket reading “Fuck the Draft” inside a Los Angeles Courthouse. Under a California statute he was then promptly arrested, charged and convicted for “disturbing the peace…by offensive conduct.” The decision was upheld by the California Court of Appeal on the grounds that Cohen’s supposed offense had a “tendency to provoke others into acts of violence or to in turn disturb the peace.” The free speech battle, after a denial of review by the California Supreme Court, then went on to the highest court in the land.

In a narrow 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the appellate court’s ruling saying in the majority opinion that “one man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric” and that “words are often chosen as much for their emotive as their cognitive force.”

The White Night Riots

Back in the day on May 21st, 1979 demonstrators took to the streets of San Francisco in what would be known as the White Night riots. The raucous events were spurred in part by a verdict returned in the controversial trial of Daniel James White. The former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors stood accused of the murders of city mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, the first openly gay member of the city board elected. The jury in the case convicted White of lesser charges finding him guilty only of “involuntary manslaughter.” When the news hit the streets, crowds began converging in San Francisco’s Castro district and angrily marched on city hall. It was there that they were met by police and riots ensued.

Later on that night, a group of policemen entered the Elephant Walk – a popular bar in the Castro – trashing the establishment and clubbing its patrons. Despite the repression, people took to the streets once more the very next day in remembrance of Milk’s first birthday after his death.

Brown v. Board of Education

Back in the day on May 17th, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against racial segregation in the nation’s public schools. The landmark Brown v. the Board of Education case resulted in all nine justices unanimously striking down the doctrine of ‘separate but equal,’ as a violation of the 14th amendment of the constitution. The historic lawsuit filed by the NAACP on behalf of Oliver Brown, the father of an eight year-old African-American daughter who could not attend a nearby ‘white school,’ in Topeka, Kansas, also included nearly 200 plaintiffs from four different states. The ruling that followed reversed the Supreme Court’s earlier legal precedence for legal segregation established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. By deeming separate educational facilities to be inherently unequal in the case, Chief Justice Earl Warren essentially helped to dismantle the basis for racial segregation beyond the classrooms of the nation’s schools.

Brown v. the Board of Education was an important step in the right direction for racial equality in the U.S. even as the nation, to this day, continues to struggle in finding its stride

Emma Goldman Passes Away

Back in the day on May 14th, 1940, anarchist, feminist, and revolutionary agitator Emma Goldman passed away in Toronto, Canada at the age of seventy. She had crossed the Atlantic from London that year to raise money for the Iberian leftist crusade against the Spanish fascist forces of Francisco Franco. While in Canada, Goldman suffered a debilitating stroke in February before another stroke eventually took her life the following May. Her passing marked the end of remarkable career lived in rebellious notoriety. Goldman, a Russian-Jewish immigrant, came to the United States in 1885 at the age of seventeen. She worked as a seamstress in a clothing factory before evolving to become of the country’s most outspoken anarchists. Deported from the U.S. in 1917 for her radicalism, “Red” Emma eventually settled in revolutionary Russia. Unimpressed by Bolshevik governance, she became disillusioned as the title of her subsequent book recounting such experiences suggests.

After her death, the United States allowed her body to be buried in Chicago’s Waldheim Cemetery near the graves of the anarchist Haymarket martyrs.

The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil

Back in the day on May 13th, 1888, Brazil became the last nation in the Western hemisphere to abolish slavery. The centuries-old practice established in the former colony of Portugal and continued after independence was finally overturned in full by the sanctioning of “Lei Aurea” or the Golden Law. Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II had been in Europe when Imperial Princess Isabel acted as regent in his absence and abolished the abhorrent economic institution. For all its societal repercussions, the Golden Law contained just two articles. The first simply stated the end of slavery. The second noted that “all dispositions to the contrary” were revoked. The enslavement of Africans, which began in the 16th century, would, over time, eventually see the transference of an estimated 3.6 million people from their mother continent to Brazil. In both the colonial period and in independence, slave labor was a pivotal backbone to the economy. The brutal conditions moved many caught within its oppressive chains to flee and form maroon communities called quilombos, the most famous being Palmares.

Although abolished without the instance of a civil war as in the United States, slavery left a legacy of racism and accompanying socio-economic inequalities just the same that continues to plague Brazilian society to this very day.

Bob Dylan Walks Out of The Ed Sullivan Show

Back in the day on May 12th, 1963, a young, talented yet relatively still unknown Bob Dylan walked off the Ed Sullivan Show. The singer-songwriter had been booked on the highly rated television program ahead of the release of his second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.” He rehearsed and planned on performing his song, “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” when CBS network censors suggested he change his tune – literally. Dylan’s selection poked fun at the conservative John Birch Society and its insistence on communist conspiracies with the lyrics of the song singing, “I wus lookin’ high an’ low for them Reds everywhere / I wus lookin’ in the sink an’ underneath the chair / I looked way up my chimney hole/ I even looked deep down inside my toilet bowl.” Rather than acquiesce to the censors’ objections and perform another song, Dylan simply decided walk out of The Ed Sullivan Show altogether.

News of the musician’s principled stance raised his reputation as an artist with integrity among an ever emerging audience – that is until he appeared in a Victoria’s Secret commercial decades later!

The Pullman Strike

Back in the day on May 11th, 1894, three-thousand workers staged a wildcat strike in Pullman, Illinois. As an economic recession gripped the nation starting a year prior, the notorious George M. Pullman targeted cutbacks against hourly workers employed in his Pullman Palace Car Company. The conditions for many of the non-management employees were already untenable prior to the wage cuts and layoffs and with Pullman city once described as a “relic of European serfdom,” workers had few options at their disposal. Nevertheless, the Pullman Strike commenced and in June 1894, the American Railway Union voted to refuse work on any train that carried a Pullman car and by doing so, effectively took the stoppage national. The Pullman strike would end later that summer, however, when Attorney General Richard Olney obtained an injunction at the behest of President Cleveland to deploy the US Army to break the boycott.

And here I was, thinking capitalism really detested state intervention!

The Death of Roque Dalton

Back in the day on May 10th, 1975, leftist Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton was executed just days shy of his fortieth birthday. The acclaimed wordsmith, whose works include “The Window in My Face,” “The Injured Party’s Turn,” and “Clandestine Poems,” had lived a life as rebellious as his poetry. Early in his adulthood, Dalton joined the Communist Party before being arrested for his activities. His life was spared only by the overthrow of the dictatorship that ruled El Salvador. Forced into exile, Dalton resided in Mexico before heading to Cuba. Firm in his commitment to the struggle, the poet returned to his homeland clandestinely only to be arrested once more. Facing execution, he miraculously escaped prison after an earthquake struck. At this point, Dalton sought to embody his revolutionary ideals by joining the guerrilla movement. Rejected by the Popular Liberation Forces, he was ultimately accepted into the ranks of the ERP or People’s Revolutionary Army. A schism ensued, however, when Dalton advocated for building a mass base through civil society groups. Rivals within the ERP accused him of divisiveness and being complicit with the CIA. Soon thereafter, the shots rang out in San Salvador.

And with that, the voice of the poet who once wrote that “my veins don’t end in me but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle,” was silenced.

The Murder of Reverend George W. Lee

Back in the day on May 7th, 1955, Reverend George W. Lee was murdered in Belzoni, Mississippi. The Vice President of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and member of the local branch of the NAACP was in his car, when unknown assailants in another car pulled up next to him and opened fire. Lee died after receiving multiple shotgun blasts to his face. NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers came down to investigate the killing as the local sheriff scandalously deemed the assassination of the successful businessman and early civil rights leader the result of a “traffic accident.” Members of the White Citizens Council were suspected of involvement in the crime but were never arrested and brought to trial.

Three months prior to the killing of Emmet Till, Reverend Lee’s wife decided to hold an open casket funeral despite the fatal wounds her husband sustained to his face.