Saturday, July 6, 2019

1968 - Washington, D.C. Rebellion

.Washington, D.C. Rebellion of 1968 - ExHi > .

The Washington, D.C., riots of 1968 were a four-day period of violent civil unrest and rioting following the assassination of leading African American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1968. Part of the broader King-assassination riots that affected at least 110 U.S. cities, those in Washington, D.C.—along with those in Chicago and Baltimore—were among those with the greatest numbers of participants.

The ready availability of jobs in the United States government attracted many people to Washington, D.C. in the late 19th century through the 1960s, including African American men, women, and children during the era of Great Migration. As a result, middle class African American neighborhoods prospered, but the lower class was plagued by poor living conditions and fell deeper into poverty.

Despite the end of legally-mandated racial segregation after the 1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education, the neighborhoods of Shaw, the Atlas District Northeast corridor, and Columbia Heights remained the centers of African-American commercial life in the city.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal", and therefore violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. However, the decision's 14 pages did not spell out any sort of method for ending racial segregation in schools, and the Court's second decision in Brown II (349 U.S. 294 (1955)) only ordered states to desegregate "with all deliberate speed".

The case originated in 1951 when the public school district in Topeka, Kansas, refused to enroll the daughter of local black resident Oliver Brown at the school closest to their home, instead requiring her to ride a bus to a segregated black elementary school farther away. Unlike school districts of other states involved in the combined case, in Topeka the lower courts, while still requiring certain remedies, had found that the segregated schools were "substantially equal with respect to buildings, transportation, curricula, and educational qualifications of teachers." Hence with the involvement of the Kansas case the Supreme Court's findings specifically hinged upon the matter of segregation.

The Browns and twelve other local black families in similar situations then filed a class action lawsuit in U.S. federal court against the Topeka Board of Education, alleging that its segregation policy was unconstitutional. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas rendered a verdict against the Browns, relying on the precedent of the Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Court had ruled that racial segregation was not in itself a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause if the facilities in question were otherwise equal, a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Browns, then represented by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall, appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.

The Court's decision in Brown partially overruled Plessy v. Ferguson by declaring that the "separate but equal" notion was unconstitutional for American public schools and educational facilities. It paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement, and a model for many future impact litigation cases.

In the Southern United States, especially the "Deep South", where racial segregation was deeply entrenched, the reaction to Brown among most white people was "noisy and stubborn". Many Southern governmental and political leaders embraced a plan known as "Massive Resistance", created by Virginia Senator Harry F. Byrd, in order to frustrate attempts to force them to de-segregate their school systems. Four years later, in the case of Cooper v. Aaron, the Court reaffirmed its ruling in Brown, and explicitly stated that state officials and legislators had no power to nullify its ruling.

Whitehall

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Life of Winston Churchill - Timeline > .
Whitehall, Buckingham Palace - ViDo >> .

The name "Whitehall" is now used as a metonym to refer to that part of the civil service which is involved in the government of the United Kingdom. The street's central portion is dominated by military buildings, including the Ministry of Defence, with the former headquarters of the British Army and Royal Navy, the Royal United Services Institute, the Horse Guards building and the Admiralty, on the opposite side. Government buildings on Whitehall, from north to south, include The Admiralty Buildings, the Department for International Development at No. 22, the Department of Energy and Climate Change at No. 55, the Old War Office, the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel at No. 36, the Horse Guards, the Ministry of Defence Main BuildingDover House (containing the Scotland Office), Gwydyr House (containing the Wales Office), the Cabinet Office at No. 70, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Government Offices Great George Street (HM Treasury, HM Revenue and Customs and parts of the Cabinet Office).

Scotland Yard, the headquarters of London's Metropolitan Police Service, was originally located in Great Scotland Yard off the north-eastern end of Whitehall. The buildings had been lodgings for the Kings of Scotland, on part of the old Palace of Whitehall's grounds; by the 19th century, Little and Middle Scotland Yard had been merged into Whitehall Place, leaving only Great Scotland Yard. No. 4 Whitehall Place had become vacant by the 1820s, which allowed Sir Robert Peel to use it as the main headquarters when forming the police in 1829. It was formally named the Metropolitan Police Office, but became quickly known as Great Scotland Yard, and eventually Scotland Yard. The buildings were damaged in a series of bombings by Irish Nationalists in 1883, and an explosion from a Fenian terrorist attack on 30 May 1884 blew a hole in Scotland Yard's outer wall and destroyed the neighbouring Rising Sun pub. The headquarters was moved away from Whitehall in 1890.

Downing Street leads off the south-west end of Whitehall, just above Parliament Street. It was named after Sir George Downing, who built a row of houses along the street around 1680 leading west from Whitehall. Following a number of terrorist attacks, the road was closed to the public in 1990, when security gates were erected at both ends. On 7 February 1991, the Provisional IRA fired mortars from a van parked in Whitehall towards No. 10, one of which exploded in the gardens.

Additional security measures have been put in place along Whitehall to protect government buildings, following a £25 million streetscape project undertaken by Westminster City Council. The project has provided wider pavements and better lighting, along with installing hundreds of concrete and steel security barriers.

Richmond House, at No. 79, has held the Department of Health since 1987. The building is scheduled to be a temporary debating chamber from 2020, while the Houses of Parliament undergo a £7 billion refurbishment and modernisation programme.

The Whitehall Theatre (now Trafalgar Studios) opened in 1930 at the north west end of the street, on a site that had previously been Ye Old Ship Tavern in the 17th century. The revue Whitehall Follies opened in 1942, which drew controversy over its explicit content featuring the stripper and actress Phyllis Dixey

Worst Prime Minister?


"Everyone has their view on who the worst prime minister is, but ... the first would be Ramsay MacDonald. After heading two minority Labour governments in 1924 and 1929-31, he then became prime minister in the national government from 1931 to 1935. But as his health declined, effective power gradually flowed to his Conservative colleague and, subsequently his successor, Stanley Baldwin. It was 1945 before Labour was in office again.

For Labour supporters, MacDonald was synonymous with the word “betrayal”. They felt he had sold out to financial interests, and the blandishments of King George V, and introduced a programme of austerity that deepened the recession of the 1930s. He seemed unable to grapple with the scope and depth of the problems he faced.


Neville Chamberlain (1937-40) has his defenders. Like many men of his generation, he was understandably scarred by the experience of World War I and genuinely wanted peace. His advocates argue that by giving in to Hitler’s demands and postponing war as long as possible, he gave the country more time to prepare and rearm.

The counter argument is that each capitulation simply encouraged Hitler to ask for more. It was remarked that Chamberlain had never met anyone like Hitler in Birmingham, where he came from. His experience was in municipal and domestic politics and his grasp of the imperatives of foreign policy in the late 1930s was limited, although that didn’t stop him intervening. When he came back from the Munich talks with Hitler, he was a national hero, in tune with the pacifist mood of the country. However, opinion quickly changed and he was castigated as one of the “guilty men” of appeasement."

Neville Chamberlain: A Failed Leader in a Time of Crisis

Three months after Hitler came to power in Germany, the British ambassador in Berlin dispatched a prescient 5,000-word report to London. Having just read “Mein Kampf,” Sir Horace Rumbold correctly saw the book as Hitler’s master plan for the conquest of Europe. To his superiors, Rumbold outlined how the German leader planned to pick off countries one by one, all the while promising that his latest victim would be his last.

In “Appeasement,” Tim Bouverie notes that Rumbold’s April 1933 dispatch caused a momentary stir in the Foreign Office. But the ambassador’s warning, like later admonitions from Winston Churchill and others, made no dent in the British government’s unflagging commitment to come to terms with Hitler, no matter the consequences.
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Throughout his minutely detailed survey, Bouverie rightly rejects the arguments of revisionist historians who claim that Britain’s lack of military preparedness, as well as the strength of pacifist public opinion, justified its determination to offer repeated concessions to Hitler. In fact, from the early 1930s, British leaders, fearful of further damaging their Depression-afflicted economy, fought to keep military spending to a minimum. They then used the country’s military deficiencies as an excuse to turn a blind eye to Germany’s increasing aggression and explosive rearmament, a flagrant violation of the 1919 Versailles Treaty
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In April 1940, however, Germany invaded Norway and Denmark, and Chamberlain’s campaign of secrecy and misinformation finally rebounded on him. Caught off guard by the surprise attacks, the British government scrambled to dispatch troops to aid the Norwegians. Barely two weeks later, Chamberlain made a stunning admission to Parliament and the nation: The badly armed and equipped British forces had been routed by the enemy and were being evacuated from Norway.

For more than a year, the British public had shown increasing signs of hostility toward Germany and disaffection with the prime minister’s inertia. When news broke of Britain’s humiliating defeat in Norway, that simmering discontent boiled over into fear and fury.

Capitalizing on the public mood, the Tory anti-appeasement rebels began an all-out effort to get rid of Chamberlain. On May 7 and 8, 1940, the House of Commons, in perhaps the most consequential debate in parliamentary history, engaged in a passionate examination of the prime minister’s conduct of the war. Before the debate, almost no one believed that Chamberlain could be ousted. Yet in the vote of confidence that followed, more than 80 M.P.s deserted him. Even though Chamberlain actually won the vote, such a large Tory defection was widely considered a resounding defeat.

On May 10, Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill became prime minister. That same day, Hitler launched his blitzkrieg of Western Europe. In the nick of time, the House of Commons had reasserted itself as a guardian of democracy and taken the first critical step toward victory in the war.

With their action, the M.P.s underscored the truth of a comment made earlier by one of them: “No government can change men’s souls. The souls of men change governments.”

WWII?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRz4B7HleWE&list=PL6EAD1A2ABDE96E23&index=9

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...