https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1jd9okm
created by isawasin on 17/03/2025 at 10:43 UTC
89 upvotes, 6 top-level comments (showing 6)
Link and transcription in the comments.
Comment by goobly_goo at 17/03/2025 at 11:25 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
History repeats itself once more.
Comment by isawasin at 17/03/2025 at 10:44 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1936
COLUMBIA HEARS PLEA FOR EXPELLED STUDENT
Burke and Two Other Speakers Demand His Reinstatement at Gathering of 500. Three members of the American Student Union, including Robert Burke, who was expelled in June for leading the anti-Nazi demon- stration last May, addressed a gathering of 500 students of the college and the various schools of Columbia University in front of Hamilton Hall yesterday noon, appealing to them to support the youth in his to fight for reinstatement. The meeting followed the statement of the dean on Wednesday that he would not reconsider his decision against readmitting Burke to the college.
Edward M. David, chairman of the American Student Union chapter, said Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president, had refused to interview student committees after promising to discuss the status of the Heidelberg celebration. He declared it was "this stubbornness and refusal to meet with them" which really caused the South Field demonstration last spring.
James Wechsler, former editor of The Columbia Spectator and an officer of the American Student Union, stated that there were two issues involved in the case, one of academic freedom and the other of fair play. "It is very evident that this is an attempt to smash the American Student," he added.
Burke, who was chosen the as president the class in '38, said in his own behalf: "It is a question whether the president, dean and trustees of Columbia will tell me what to think and do or whether I shall do what I think is right."
Vandals using red paint and rolls of absorbent cotton marred the walls of John Jay Hall and South Hall, which houses the Harkness Library, on the Columbia University campus shortly before midnight last night. Except for an abandoned two-gallon can and a quantity of stained cotton, no trace of the perpetrators was found and no motive established for their sabotage. The damage was done between 11:30 P.M. and midnight, according to university authorities.
Police of the West 100th Street station discovered that twenty-five painters employed by the university as a regular maintenance force had recently gone on strike but were unable to determine if the vandalism had resulted from the walkout. They were also attempting to investigate the movements of leaders in the group who held the meeting yesterday in front of Hamilton Hall to urge the reinstatement of Burke.
Comment by AlabasterPelican at 17/03/2025 at 13:02 UTC*
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Unrelated, on the same front page *TW, antiquated racial terminology/slurs*
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LITTLE ROCK, Sept. 24.-A Federal grand jury investigating reports of peonage in the East Arkansas Cotton Belt indicted a city official today on charges of violating the Federal anti-slavery laws by obtaining laborers for his farm through false arrests.
The indictment named City Marshal Paul D. Peacher of Earle, Ark., a cotton planter and former deputy Sheriff of Crittenden County, on eight counts alleging violation of a law enacted just after the Civil War.
Fred Isgrig, Federal Attorney, said the charge specifically was "aiding and abetting in holding in slavery."
After the grand jury was discharged, Mr. Isgrig joined Gordon Dean, special assistant to the United States Attorney General, and Richard P. Shanahan, attorney for the Criminal Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who were in charge of the inquiry, in announcing that steps had been taken 'to protect all witnesses before the grand jury from intimidation.
Only a few hours before the Federal grand jurors completed their work the Crittenden County grand jury returned a report denying that any peonage conditions existed in that section.
Peacher's bond was fixed at $5,000, but he was not immediately taken into custody.
Explaining the indictment, Mr. Shanahan said:
"The eight counts charged Peacher with falsely charging eight Negroes with agrancy and bringing them before Mayor Mitchell in Justice Court at Earle, where they were illegally convicted and senenced to work on Peacher's farm for his own use and benefit." Mr. Isgrig withheld the names of the eight Negroes involved, asserting, "I don't want them intimidated."
"The truth of the matter is the investigation involved twenty to twenty-five Negroes railroaded on trumped-up charges," he added. Mr. Isgrig said that he had notified all witnesses appearing before the grand jury to report to him "any threat of intimidation as a result of their testimony," and that he also had discussed this with Mayor T. S. Mitchell of Earle and A.B.Carter, Crittenden County deputy clerk of court, who were summoned before the jury,
''I notified Mitchell and Carter to go back home and tell the citizenship of the community they had better see that these witnesses are protected," said Mr. Isgrig. "These people must not be molested, even by suggestion. There will be prompt prosecution by the government of any threat against them."
Mr. Dean said he had written to Sheriff Howard Curlin of Crittenden County, "requesting that he see that none of these Negroes who appeared before the grand jury is intimidated.''
Mr. Isgrig said he planned to try the Peacher indictment at the regular term of District Court in Jonesboro in November
Nine Negro field hands were among those called before the Federal investigators.
Witnesses on leaving the grand jury room said they had been cautioned not to discuss their testimony.
The Department of Justice investigation followed upon charges by individuals and by the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, with headquarters at Memphis, that peonage was practiced in the sharecropper belt.
Miss Willie Sue Blagdon, 29-year-old Memphis social worker, who charged she and the Rev. CIaude C. Williams, Little Rock minister, were flogged at Earle last June during a cotton-choppers' strike called by the tenant union, ex- pressed "surprise" today at the Crittenden grand jury report, saying she "would have been glad to go over there and testify."
The county grand jurors, in their report, decried allegations "that conditions in Crittenden County are not safe, that crimes have been committed against defenseless visitors."
"It has been charged that humble citizens have been forced to labor by threats, intimidation, guns and illegal process," said the report, "Consequently we have felt it our duty to make an investigation into such alleged law violations and we beg to report that we have not found any evidence of violations of the law in any instance,
"We have further found that laborers are being well paid, farm conditions are good, and that since 1933 farm labor has received more money after the disposal of the annual crops than in many years, and propaganda to the contrary is misleading to the nation."
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Comment by JetmoYo at 17/03/2025 at 17:35 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
You gotta give it to Nazi authoritarians: *they do not give up*
Comment by ec1710 at 17/03/2025 at 19:46 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
As a rule, young demonstrators end up being right (think Vietnam) but this is only recognized in retrospect like it was an obvious thing that no one opposed.
Comment by addicted_to_trash at 17/03/2025 at 11:23 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
That's insane.