Saturday, October 24, 1874. Domestic terrorists.

 

October 24, 1874 political cartoon by Thomas Nast decrying the alliance between the White League and the Ku Klux Klan in the South.

Last edition:

Monday, September 28, 1874. The Battle of Palo Duro Canyon.

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Monday, May 27, 1974. Memorial Day and Los Seis de Boulder.

It was Memorial Day for 1974.  Two days earlier President Nixon had issued this proclamation:

By the President of the United States Of America

A Proclamation

The defense of freedom and the search for peace cannot be separated. Together, they are an essential part of the American ideal. During the past two hundred years, our Nation has endured sacrifice in battle for the sake of this ideal. Americans died valiantly at Saratoga, King's Mountain, and Yorktown because they would not buy peace at the price of liberty. Americans died at Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg because a peace that cost the division of the Nation and the enslavement of a people could not be accepted.

We have occasion to show special gratitude this Memorial Day to those who fell in the cause of freedom in the longest and perhaps the most difficult war in our history. Because of their efforts, and the efforts of all our fighting forces, we can celebrate a year in which no American serviceman has fallen in the defense of his country.

During the past year, we have made progress toward the creation of a stable world order based on respect for the dignity and the larger interests of all nations. We have made this progress in part because America has pursued its tasks from a base of strength—not only military and economic strength, but strength of conviction and strength of purpose. We have been steadied in our resolve by the example of patience, self-sacrifice, and courage of our servicemen and women during the difficult years now past.

To our valiant dead we can pay no greater tribute than to emulate their dedication to a world free from the threat of force and the rule of fear. To them we dedicate our prayers for a new generation of peace and a new spirit of community among all the peoples of the world.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, 1974, as a day of prayer for permanent peace, and I designate the hour beginning in each locality at eleven o'clock in the morning of that day as a time to unite in prayer.

I urge the press, radio, television, and all other information media to cooperate in this observance.

I direct that the flag of the United States be flown at half-staff all day on Memorial Day on all buildings, grounds, and naval vessels of the Federal Government throughout the United States and all areas under its jurisdiction and control.

I also call upon the Governors of the fifty States, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and appropriate officials of all local units of government to direct that the flag be flown at half-staff on all public buildings during that entire day, and I request the people of the United States to display the flag at half-staff from their homes for the same period.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fifth day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-eighth.

RICHARD NIXON

A bomb went off in the car of lawyer Reyes Martinez at Chautauqua Park killing Martinez, his girlfriend Uma Jaakola and her friend Neva Romero were all killed in the blast.

Two days later, another car bomb went off in the parking lot of a Burger King which was closed for the evening, killing Florencio Granado, Heriberto Teran and Francisco Dougherty. Antonio Alcantar Jr., who was standing outside lost his leg.

No suspects have ever been arrested. The victims are known as the "Los Seis de Boulder", or "The Boulder Six".  All involved, save for Reyes Martinez, were Hispanic activists protesting the conditions at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  The FBI concluded that the bombs were made by the victims themselves and accidentally triggered, a thesis their supporters reject.  

Monuments have been placed to them at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was inaugurated as President of France.

I had just turned eleven.  I have no personal recollection of any of these events.

Last prior edition:

Monday, May 13, 1974. 55

Labels: 1970s, 1974, 93d Congress, American Indian Movement, Government, law, Mohawk People, Native Americans, New York, Transportation

Monday, April 29, 1974. Transcribing tapes.

The President I used to think was the benchmark for corruption, Richard Nixon, held a nationally televised speech in which he indicated that he had arranged to have his staff transcribe some of the White House tapes, and would do that rather than release them.

Patty Hearst as a member of the SLA made the covers of Time and Newsweek.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, April 27, 1974. Aeroflot disater, War of Attrition winds down.

1970s, 1974, Aircraft, Arab Israeli Conflict, Disaster, Israel, Syria, USSR, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War

Monday, April 15, 1974. The Hibernia Bank Robbery.

The Symbionese Liberation Army committed an armed robbery on the Hibernia bank in San Francisco.  "Tania", aka Patty Hearst, was, a member of the group, carrying a cut down Iver Johnson M1 Carbine "Enforcer".

A coup overthrew the government of Niger.  Aissa Diori, the First Lady of Niger, was killed in the event.

Ivor Bell, leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, escaped from the Maze Prison in Belfast.  In the facility for only seven weeks, he posed as another prisoner who was getting a furlough to attend a wedding.  He was captured thirteen days later.

Bell was a hardliner was expelled from the IRA in 1984.  He remains alive today, suffering from dementia.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 4, 1974. I wanted to note Hank Aaron. . .

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Monday, February 4, 1974. Patty Hearst kidnapped.

Patty Hearst, a grandchild of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California by the  Symbionese Liberation Army.  She was 19 at the time.

Hearst right during later bank robbery.

The group had first appeared in November when it had murdered Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools, and wounded his deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn.

The name of the entity, it might be noted, came from this, according to the organization:

The name 'symbionese' is taken from the word symbiosis and we define its meaning as a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body.

It's hard to seem how murdering public school superintendents fits that supposed goal.  Robert Blackburn, who survived his wounds, noted:

These were not political radicals, They were uniquely mediocre and stunningly off-base. The people in the SLA had no grounding in history. They swung from the world of being thumb-in-the-mouth cheerleaders to self-described revolutionaries with nothing but rhetoric to support them.

Emblematic of the times, the goof ball entity was a kind of sort of Communist terrorist cell that rapidly became disenchanted with "the people" after distributions of food, which it had demanded as a ransom in Berkeley, didn't go well.

In April, the group raided a bank in San Francisco, in which Hearst seemed to take part, although she denied doing so willingly. She nonetheless was convicted due to the actions and served two years out of a seven-year sentence before Jimmy Carter, ever the kind man, had her released.  Bill Clinton pardoned her.

In May the organization moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, where they got into a shootout at a sporting goods store where Hearst, on guard duty, fired shots.  A shootout a couple of days later at a supposed safe house killed six of them.

Hearst was arrested in September 1975, back at a San Francisco safe house.

Hearst, as noted, was convicted, but she claimed she had never participated willingly, and had been raped and threatened while a captive.  Given the nature of the SLA, that's certainly possible. Early on, however, after her arrest she had said that she comported her thoughts to theirs and was given a choice of being freed or fighting with them, and she elected to fight.

After her release, Hearst married Bernard Lee Shaw, a policeman who was part of her security detail during her time on bail.  They had two children.  He died in 2013.

The Provisional IRA bombed a bus on the M62 Motorway in England, killing nine solders and three civilians, including two children.

The Yom Kippur War resumed, but only as between Syria and Israel, with 500 Cuban soldiers joining a Syrian tank unit.  Fighting resumed in the Golan Heights.

Time Magazine featured Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil on the cover, with the caption "The Impeachment Congress.