Denver put a curfew in place and the Colorado National Guard has been called out to address riots in the Centennial State's capitol city.
National Guardsmen of the 40th Armored Division, California National Guard, August, 1965.
The riots stem from several recent incidents of violent deaths of African Americans, the most recent at the hands of a policeman in Minneapolis Minnesota.
Those riots have spread all across the urban United States. It's hard, from a distance, to grasp why hundreds of miles away from the scene of the offense riots take place against a community that didn't participate in the offense. It points to something underlying, and the pundits will be full of analysis over it over the next several weeks.
But on the topic in general, distant riots aren't calculated to achieve anything and end up punishing the communities that were affiliated by them. Businesses move, employment drops, and those who were deprived to start with are more deprived. It's a compounding tragedy.
And its one that, in this context, we should be well past. And yet we're not.
President Nixon visited the Lincoln Memorial and chatted with protestors who were sleeping there in anticipation of a protest organized in reaction to the American and South Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. The President encountered about nine protestors and chatted with then in the early morning hours.
Protests were occuring all across the country on this day in reaction to the Cambodian invasion and in reaction to the shooting at Kent State.
On this day, about 450 Canadian peace activist crossed into the United States at Blaine Washington, location of the Peace Arch, and committed acts of vandalism in the town. The presence of Canadian peace activist was completely nonsensical and their act of vandalism contrary to the claimed spirit of their actions. It reflected more on events in Canada than it did in the United States in which the formerly highly conservative country was rocketing into a state of liberalism in which it remains, although it is contested, that started under the leadership of Pierre Trudeau. Canada, in the less than one hundred years prior to 1970, had fought in the Boer War, World War One, World War Two and the Korean War. It opposed the Vietnam War in a way, although it's often forgotten that it contributed a hospital ship to the allied forces there at one time and its contribution in terms of military volunteers approximated the number of American draft evaders who sought refuge there.
Another Canadian protest occurred on the same day on Parliament Hill when Canadian pro abortion activist protested a recently passed Canadian law addressing abortion. This occurred three years prior to Roe v. Wade in the United States. At the time, just ten years following the advent of birth control pharmaceuticals, the direction things were going in seemed obvious. Canada would repeal its law eighteen years later and no Canadian federal law has passed since. Since that time, however, support for abortion in the United States has reversed to the point that the majority of Americans oppose it and its only a matter of time until the weakly reasoned case of Roe is repealed and the matter is returned to the states. Canada, which is highly liberalized, has been slower to follow but has started to, with there being a small resurgent conservative movement that has come about over issues such as this, but also due to really extreme social speech provisions enacted in Canadian law.
Showing how odd the times were, retrospectively, Vice President Spiro Agnew spoke to a disappointing crowd of 10,000. . . 100,000 had been expected, at Georgia's Stone Mountain Park. The Park is the location of a giant carving into natural stone depicting Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Stonewall Jackson, all mounted. It's impossible to imagine an American politician speaking there today.
The memorial had first been proposed in 1914, which was in the midst of the boom in Confederate memorial building across the south. As we've discussed elsewhere, most of the now controversial monuments to Southern rebel figures and to the Southern Civil War cause in general date from this period. The monument itself does not, however, as its construction had an exceedingly odd history.
Land for the monument was purchased in 1916 but a sculptor was not hired until the early 1920s, with that sculptor being Borglum, of Mount Rushmore fame. He was fired over a financial conflict in 1925, however. Congress got into the act in 1926 with the approval of the sale of commeorative coins for the effort thereafter.
After Borlum departed he destroyed his models which lead to the Association dedicated to the effort seeking to have him arrested. In a sort of retaliation, the Association had the face of Lee that Borglum had partially completed blasted off of the mountain. Subsequent sculptors took up the work but it lingered until 1958 when the State of Georgia purchased the area in order to complete it in a reaction to Brown v. Board of Education. The state park was dedicated on April 14, 1965, 100 years plus one day after Lincoln's assassination in 1865. The dedication of the monument occured in 1970, with Vice President Agnew appearing for the event, but it wasn't actually completed until March 3, 1972. It's now the biggest tourist site in Georgia.
Now, of course, a lot of the smaller Confederate monuments have come down, but many more remain. It's amazing to realize that as late as the 1970s there were still Southern public efforts to put them up, and that they were very associated with protest over desegregation. The degree to which the support for the war had been lost was demonstrated by Agnew's failure to draw a crowed in the highly conservative south where opposition to the war had not been strong.
On the same day, Jimi Hendrix played in Ft. Worth and the Doors played in Columbus, Ohio.
Yesterday, as we noted below, was the 50th anniversary of the Kent State, Ohio, incident.
The incident, to put it briefly, occured when students at Kent State University staged a protest over the invasion of Cambodia which had been announced by President Nixon on April 30 and which for the US commenced on May 1.
This blog isn't a day by day anything, but we do commemorate certain events, most frequently those of 100 years past, when they occur. Starting in 2018 we started picking up some fifty years past events mostly to mark the epicoal year of 1968. We've continued with that a bit, as that is in some ways the continuation of the original story.
I marked the 1970 invasion of Cambodia, an event that I can personally recall as I noted in a post about that, but I managed to almost miss the 50th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings. I marked it, but only with a post nothing it:
The point at which the Vietnam War took on a new, tragic, aspect, as a protest resulted in a unforeseen bloodshed.
This deserves a much better post than this, but unfortunately, it'll have to wait a bit.
The event was a huge one in the story of the war as it was the point where protests over the war resulted in bloodshed, something they had not up until then. As the anti war movement had developed some real radicals, it would have some violent incidents after Kent State, but the protest at Kent State itself was never intended to be that sort of confrontation.
It's easy to over explain what happened there, but the real oddity of it is that National Guardsmen, who were drawn from the local area and largely not reflected in the student body of Kent State, were deployed as a riot detail to the protest. That's not surprising but frankly, as a former National Guardsmen, that sort of duty is always dangerous for Guardsmen and the public, to a degree. Guardsmen are trained as soldiers, not as riot police, and the instinct of soldiers is to fire when confronted, no matter how well trained they may be. There are plenty of such incidents all around the globe that have occured when soldiers, even very well trained soldiers, fall back on their training in that fashion.
With that being the case, the shocking thing is that the Guardsmen had been issued ammunition. Normally this wouldn't be the case and I heavily doubt that even regular active duty soldiers who were deployed in similar roles in the 1950s and 1960s were issued ammunition. Likely even those men deployed to disperse the bonus marchers carried nothing more dangerous than than their sabers (they were cavalrymen) in that effort, with sabers making a pretty effective non lethal crowd control weapon in the hands of somebody who knows how to use their flats.
But at Kent State the Guardsmen were issued ammunition for their M1 Garands and at some point, they used it.
What happened remains extremely unclear. The protests had been running for several days as it was so it had grown tense. An effort was made to disperse the crowed and as part of that the Guardsmen advanced with bayonets fixed to their M1 Garands. Some students began throwing rocks and return throwing tear gas canisters. At some point the Guardsmen fired a 13 second volley, which is a long sustained volley. Sixtyseven shots were fired by the 77 Guardsmen, but slightly less than half fired at all.
That seems clear enough, but from there things deteriorate. Forensic examination of audiotape suggests that three shots were fired shortly before any others. Some witnesses claimed a sergeant opened fire with a sidearm first, but the FBI's expert stated that the first three shots were from a M1 Garand. An FBI informant inside the student body was revealed to be later armed and some have claimed that he fired the first shots, but this now seems discounted.
In the end, nine students were wounded and four killed. None of the killed was any older than 20 years old. Given the volume of shots, and the weapons used, it's amazing that only 13 people were hit, which has to lead to some speculation on whether the 29 Guardsmen who all fired actually aimed at anything or even attempted to, or even intentionally did not.
The entire matter was a national tragedy, to say the least. It put protests on the war on a new footing, even though the United States was already withdrawing from South Vietnam at the time, something not entirely evident to Americans given the recent news. It was also a local tragedy, however, which is rarely noted as like a lot of university towns, the residents of Kent Ohio, whose families had contributed those who were in the National Guard, never saw the incident in the same light.
October 17, 2019 marked the 50th Anniversary of Coach Eaton unceremoniously tossing fourteen black University of Wyoming football players off the team, thereby wrecking the team for the season and effectively for the remainder of Eaton's career. Indeed, recollection wise, that's now what Eaton is remembered for.
In 1969, when the action happened, the student body largely supported Coach Eaton, although the faculty in significant numbers did not.* Governor Hathaway sought to have Eaton and the players reconcile, followed by a similar action by Federal District Court judge Ewing T. Kerr, which also failed.
Around the state feelings were strongly in support of Eaton, in 1969 Now, the opposite is overwhelmingly true. Some years ago it effectively shifted, symbolized, perhaps, by the fourteen players being featured in a mural in downtown Laramie. This year, 2019, the players were invited back to speak at the University and the University officially apologized for what had occurred.
But what did occur, and what are the dynamics of it? And does that even matter now.
Much of the story, as the fourteen players have noted, was mythologized right off the bat and their story never managed to get out. To most Wyomingites in 1969, the height of the period of 60s unrest, the players were demanding to convert their status as UW football players into active protesters for something, with that something having something to do with the Mormon church. Visions of black radicalism of the period circulated in people's head, such as black athletes raising their fists in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. But in reality what the UW football players were seeking didn't go that far at all.
The players did want to protest, in the form of wearing black armbands at the upcoming game with the Brigham Young University Cougars. Why?
The reason was two fold, both of which had their roots in Mormon religious tenants. While very early on Mormon church did include a small number of black in the priesthood category, following Joseph Smith's death the church under Brigham Young moved away from that. Young was noted to be strongly opposed to blacks being Mormon priests and the religion came to have a tenant of prohibiting it. This remained the case in 1969 but it is no longer today, having been changed in the 1970s.
The Mormon's certainly did not condone racial epithets in the 1960s and in fact culturally they emphasize politeness which doesn't tend to be a universally held American quality (note the thread on Syria and New Yorkers). Be that as it may, where ever there is a racial view held of any type a prejudice that expresses itself will follow, and certainly any living American, even in 2019, has heard such views expressed about some group by people who surprise you when they state it. The UW football team, with its starting black players, had accordingly endured racial slurs from the BYU students at the games at BYU.
With both of these in mind, the racial slurs and the Mormon policy of excluding blacks from the Mormon priesthood, the black players determined to seek to wear black armbands at the BYU game.
Now, let's stop here for a second as what they were doing is important to note correctly.
They were seeking to wear black armbands.
They were not demanding to do so.
And that's what they went to see Coach Eaton about, their desire to wear black armbands.
Eaton wouldn't give them a hearing, and simply tossed them off the team.
Now, let's go into this a little deeper.
Eaton's action was wrong. The fourteen players were his players and they deserved a hearing. He wouldn't give them one, and he wouldn't even reconsider giving them one. He just flat out fired them, so to speak. They weren't even given a chance to change their minds, assuming they had them fixed, which they did not.
It destroyed the team, but beyond that, it was deeply unfair. They were seeking a hearing at that point, that's all. Being tossed off the team deprived them of their scholarship and put them in distress. Ten of them managed to graduate from the University of Wyoming, but the difficulties they were then forced into were severe.
But what about the proposed protest? That's a bit more tricky.
The change in views that has happened over the years would have occurred in any event, and that's how we view this matter today. Part of that, however, is that the Mormons themselves changed their views and reverted to their original policy of allowing blacks into the Mormon priesthood. Given this, the underlying difficulties presented by student athletes protesting a religious tenant of a religion that sponsors a university is now basically removed. Nobody anywhere would feel compelled today to defend the tenant and indeed Mormons themselves do not hold it any longer and, in addition, are undoubtedly embarrassed by the epithets used by the BYU students at the time.
Be that as it may, Eaton was faced with a serious two part question, that being, should he allow a protest that: 1) was directed at voiced racial slurs and 2) protested a tenant of a religion.
That's not an easy question to really answer. Eaton himself didn't try to really answer it as he simply grossly overreacted and fired all fourteen players.
Starting off, should student athletes be allowed to protest things by using their student athlete status at all? Most Americans would say yes, but if we stop to think about it, we generally become uncomfortable with the concept. Most likely, in 2019, most Americans now would still say yes, and indeed such a protest would be regarded, for the most part, as an individual act.
Having said that, the last few years have certainly demonstrated that people don't feel that way universally. Black football players taking the knee in the NFL have been met with storms of protest by individuals who feel that they should not be able to use their highly paid status in protest. Indeed, I have to wonder what would occur (assuming that it hasn't occurred) if this occurred in large scale in university games. I suspect it would be tolerated now, but lots of people would be outraged. I'm sure there'd be cries for them to forfeit their scholarships just as there seems to be a view that professional football players should not protest on the field with many feeling that they should forfeit their careers if they do.
Focusing in just a bit, however, almost all Americans today would be comfortable with some sort of protest that was aimed at racial exclusion generally. Many, however, would not be comfortable with protest that have something racial underlying them with specificity. In spite of what we may think, we've come a long ways in fifty years and blanket racism is no longer really tolerated in the United States. Subtle racism is, but that's a different matter and harder to recognize. Outsiders have a difficult time, for example, seeing it quite often. But, to give a really minor example, I suspect that most people wouldn't get too excited about players protesting the use of an Indian mascot team name. But if players sought to support something like BLM is some definitive way, the opposite is likely true.
And all of this is 2019 when racial protests, in spite of our belief to the contrary, really don't have the same edge that they did in 1969. In 1969 there were plenty of examples of openly held racism that was publicly voiced all over the country. And in 1969 the spirit of the times was becoming increasingly radical. Today we have BLM, of course, but in 1969, the age had the Black Panthers. That's quite different.
The point is that a team tolerating a protest of this type is hard to imagine in 1969. It's impossible to imagine in 1959. It's difficult to imagine in 1979. So, had the players received a hearing, it's unlikely that any team anywhere would have allowed it.
Beyond that, the aspect of protesting a religious tenant is a really difficult one. In 69 the black exclusion was a Mormon tenant. By 1979 it would no longer be. So its all in the past now. But that doesn't remove the fact that a religious tenant that is unpopular with the population as a whole is still a religious tenant.
In our own times there have been examples of various western societies really reacting to the wearing of female Islamic dress. I have a hard time grasping why this is controversial, but it very much is among some people who are very willing to voice their opinions. In Europe this has been particularly controversial with some efforts to preclude it legislatively. Given that there are no Islamic universities in the US, it's hard to make an analogy to the Black Fourteen in 1969, but would the U.S. Olympic team allow athletes to protest a foreign team that mandated Islamic dress for its athletes and culture? Probably not.
A better analogy may be the question of what would occur is students at a state school like UW sought to protest religious tenants that apply to women today. In recent years there's been a culture wide evolution towards allowing women to be ordained as clergy in Christian and Jewish denominations, but this is not universal. In the Apostolic Churches the opposite is true and there's not only no indication that this will change, but in fact at least in the Catholic Church most theologians regard this question as settled with infallibility. There is dissent, of course, and therefore its not impossible to imagine female athletes of a state school wearing those pink "kitty hats" (yes, I'm changing their name) when playing against a Catholic university, save for the fact that most American Catholic universities are Catholic in name only.
Many Catholic high schools, are not, however, and you can imagine the controversy in that context. Would the women volleyball players of Broderdorp Central High be allowed to wear the aforementioned caps if they were playing against Broderdorp Catholic High? Of course the fact that I'm putting this down at the high school level complicates this a bit further.
Also complicating this example is that anti Catholicism is the last safe prejudice in the United States and perhaps the Western world. If I changed the example and changed it to a contest between New Wessex High School vs. New Wessex Orthodox Jewish Academy, what occurs?
All this sounds rather unlikely, of course, but probably not as unlikely as it may seem. Sooner or later one of these examples is going to occur. And hence the problem faced by Eaton, which he never addressed, in 1969. No matter how you may feel about it, can you license players on a team protesting a religious tenant?
Now, again, many feel yes. But the bounds of that are pretty problematic. At some point, something occurs that crosses an uncomfortable threshold.
Indeed, the reverse, or perhaps something analogous, has occurred in recent years. Locally, a stand out high school wrestler sat the state championships out every year while he was in high school as his religious tenants (he was Mormon) precluded him from wrestling against girls. Frankly, I highly admire his actions, which many would have not undertaken, and it was not in protest, but it something like this rose to the level of a protest in which those of a religious faith demanded that their views be taken into consideration, then what?
Not exactly of that nature, but close, something like this has been occurring in some schools where women have found themselves competing against men who identify as transgender. Transgenderism is of course a hot story but no matter what a person feels about it, those who "trans" their gender are genetically their original gender, and in the case of men, they still have the male attributes of strength that men have. This has proven to be a real controversy in female athletics as women have suddenly found themselves grossly outclassed where this has occurred, and some have taken to official protests as a result.** Women's athletics only very recently have started to reach the same level of prominence that male athletics have had for years, and so this sudden development has been distressing to female athletes rather understandably.
So what should have occurred at UW in 1969?
Bare minimum, Eaton should have heard them out. By all appearances, they appeared to be fairly reasonable in their views. Chances are that if he could have made a compromise. An obvious one would have been to tell them they couldn't wear the armbands, but nothing could keep them from making a public statement on their own time prior to the game. If given that option, I suspect they would have taken it.
Easton would have taken heat for that, but its not like he would have lost his position for it. Probably most people would have supported him at the time, although a surprisingly high number I'm sure would not have, including probably a surprisingly high percentage of the student body at the time.
Of course, Eaton's firing them deprived them of the chance to be voluntary martyrs for their views, which is always the ultimate test for the committed. I.e, would they have had the courage of their convictions if Eaton had refused them any leeway after hearing them out and giving them a choice. I suspect they would have. Ironically however, his actions granted them that status anyhow and the attention they received was likely at least as great as that which they would have received had they carried out the protest while members of the team. In suffering the sanction for their actions, they remained remarkably dignified and almost uniformly carried on with their educations, which says a lot for them.
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*Some faculty members stepped in to make up portions of the resulting lost scholarships so the ejected football players could continue on in their educations.
**It's also a very hot topic in feminist circles as one class of feminist reject transgenderism outright on genetic and social grounds, their thought being that their struggle for equality for their gender is damaged by people of another gender seeking to claim that status through chemical and surgical means.
On this day in 1919, racial murders came to Montgomery Alabama when two black veterans, one still in uniform, were pulled from a police car and gunned down in nearby woods. They'd been accused of assaulting a white woman, but obviously had not been convicted. A third black man then in hospital would be lynched the following day in a completely unrelated event.
This followed race riots that occurred in Omaha Nebraska the prior day which saw violence on a large scale. It was based on a similar accusation but required military intervention to be put down and saw the horrific lynching of Willie Brown, whose body was subsequently burned, resulting in a widely distributed photograph.
The news from Omaha made front page news in Wyoming, but interestingly would be remarkably different from the front page that was found in Omaha. There, the victim of the lynching was simply proclaimed to be guilty and the mob enacting vigilante justice. In Wyoming, the heroic actions of the mayor in attempting to stop the mob were the focus.
While a 1919 act of racial violence in Montgomery Alabama isn't surprising to read about today, many would be surprised to learn of one in Omaha. But Omaha was and is a Midwestern city and had a large black minority that had been drawn to the location due to the manual labor opportunities it afforded. Racial tension in the city was high in the town and would remain so for many years.
Indeed, while we don't association him with the city, it's worth noting that Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was born and grew up in Omaha. His father was an outspoken black Baptist minister and there's always been some suspicion that the streetcar accident he died in was actually a murder.
In other events, on this day a special session of Utah's legislature the state's Senate voted in favor of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution granting women the franchise. The House would do the same the following day.
A J. C. Leyendecker illustration was on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post this day in 1919, with a veteran recounting his service to two youngsters.
It's a bit odd to see an illustration of this type now, although they were common in the World War One and World War Two time frame. The celebration of military service still occurs, but it tends to occur in movie form much more now, as opposed to illustrations, which was very common then.
Service went on, of course, for troops on occupation duty in Germany.
Germany itself declared a national week of mourning over the terms of the proposed treaty to officially end World War One. The Germans were shocked by the terms. Even some of the press in the United States was a bit shocked for that matter, and acknowledged the terms as severe.
In Charleston, South Carolina, a horrible race riot occurred when sailors from the Charleston Navy Yard went on a rampage directed against blacks in the town. The initial cause was that five sailors felt that they'd been cheated by a single black man, which developed to an all out assault by sailors, and then some white residents, of the town against blacks. The Navy was forced to send in Marines and blue jacket Sailors to put down the riot, which involved over 1,000 sailors and some white civilians. While there were some criminal charges that were filed shortly after the event, they came to nothing as the event had so overwhelmed the police that they were unable to treat the event as a conventional criminal one in their effort to address it.
The Charleston riot was the first of a series of race riots across the United States that year, contributing to the summer of 1919 being called the Red Summer. The country was slipping into a recession which was in turn causing racial tension to rise.
1. On this day in 1968, African American Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the infamous Black Power Salute in their medal ceremony. They were later stripped of their medals.
Their action at the Mexico City Olympics remain extremely controversial, making the entire "taking the knee" drama in football appear quite minor in comparison. An act in support of civil rights for black Americans, it also came at a time during which the United States was at war in Vietnam and the clenched fist was associated with the extreme left. It also came in a location, Mexico City, which had only recently seen violence committed by the government against students.
2. Czech Prime Minister Oldrich Cernik, against his real wishes, signed a treaty with the USSR recognizing the Soviets right of occupation of his country.
A large protest by the Irish Women's Workers Union occurred this day in Dublin, Ireland. The protest, besides the crowds associated it with it, featured a pledge, which read:
A Solemn Pledge from the Women of Ireland.
Because
the enforcement of conscription on any people without their consent is
tyranny, we are resolved to resist the conscription of Irishmen. We will
not fill the places of men deprived of their work through refusing
enforced military service. We will do all in our power to help the
families of men who suffer through refusing enforced military service.
The union itself came about as labor unions in Ireland were closed to women. Perhaps ironically the first head of the union was male. At any rate, this protest provided another example of how things were really not going that well for the Allies at this time. Indeed, they were close to loosing the war.
Consider, in this early June day in 1918, the Germans had launched their fourth major attack in their Spring Offensive and only the intervention of American troops had prevented the last one from succeeding. They appeared to be capable of resuming such activity again and again. Russia was now out of the war. Conscription in Canada had met with such opposition that the opposition was effectively preventing it from contributing any conscripted men to the war effort at all and the same thing was occurring in Ireland.
Today In Wyoming's History: May 16: 1918 The Sedition Act of 1918 passed by the U.S. Congress making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense of 20 years or fined $20,000. Attribution: Western History Center.
New York Herald's pro Sedition Act cartoon. Included in the treasonous pack was the IWW and Sein Fein.
It provided, amongst other things:
SECTION 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both....
Not one of the U.S. prouder moments in World War One. Of note, Theodore Roosevelt had editorialized against it. It would in fact be abused as during wartime its easy to imagine a traitor behind every negative statement.
French labor unions called a general strike in support of the students of the Sorbonne. Of course, French labor unions will call a strike on about any occasion, but this was a serious matter. . . even if it did have the effect of making the weekend a three day one.
It wasn't a day off for diplomats. The peace talks between North and South Vietnam, and the United States, commenced in Paris.
On this day in 1968 the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France, France's largest student union and the union of university teachers marched against police actions at the Sorbonne in numbers that were around 20,000 strong. At the Sorbonne the French police charged with batons. Some protestersbarricadedthemselves in defense at that point, and the police made use of tear gas. There were numerous arrests. But what was it all about?
On this day in 1918 the Irish Anti Conscription Committee urged the following to be posted for enrollment on every Catholic Church door in Ireland:
Denying the right of the British government to enforce compulsory
service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to
resist conscription by the most effective means at our disposal.
On this day in 1968 the Black Panthers staged a twelve man nighttime raid on the Oakland Police. The raid was in ostensible retaliation for the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who of course would not have approved of the same. The raid turned into a siege and after about 90 minutes the besieged Panthers, led by Eldridge Cleaver, surrendered.
What happened from there isn't clear. Cleaver claimed that the police shot Hutton during the surrender. The police claimed that 17 year old Hutton attempted to escape and was shot as a result of that.
Cleaver, for his part, went on to have a very unlikely biography before dying at age 62 of pneumonia. Fleeing for a time to Algeria due his activities and a pending murder charge, he later became a born again Christian and attempted to revive the codpiece in the form of his "virility pants" he called "the Cleavers". He'd ultimately come back to the United States, go through a series of religious conversions before converting to Mormonism, and politically becoming a conservative Republican.
From a poor and highly troubled background Ray had fallen into increasingly racist views in the years prior to the assassination. Following his murderous act he fled to Canada and then to Europe, using false names, before being arrested in the United Kingdom in June. He admitted guilt for the crime.
Dr. King's assassination in some ways punctuated the increasingly violent nature of the times, with his emphasis on non violence then being challenged by more radical individuals. A central figure in the Civil Rights Movement, his death left it in some ways without a central figure to complete the process of desegregation that had commenced in the second half of the 1940s. His speech of the prior day in some eerie way almost seems to have predicted what followed on this day in 1968.
Okay, what about that whole line. You know, the one Justice Stevens brought up. Assuming that the US military isn't going to attempt a coup, as after all it hasn't for over 200 years, and assuming that the government isn't going to misuse the military in a dictatorial way, which it hasn't ever done, can't we assume at this point that the government. . .well it'd have to be governments given the incorporation of the Second Amendment by the Fourteenth, can protect everyone well enough that we don't really need a right to keep and bear arms anymore?
Police in a SWAT team, in this case actually Air Force APs in a SWAT team. Ironically, these USAF APs are donning less in the way of combat gear and apparel than a lot of modern police forces do. This police force is militarized by default, but do we really want a country with a huge amount of police, and militarized police at that?
In other words, was John Paul Stevens correct, historically? Basically what he was saying, was, well sure, when there was a legitimate fear that Congress would do away with state militias and co-opt 100% of the armed forces in the United States there was a real risk that there'd be a dictatorship that would come in, but that's not a risk now. The military isn't going to be used by the government to depose state sovereignty and the military itself isn't going to engage in a coup. There isn't going to be a Seven Days In May, Dr. Strangelove, Manchurian Candidate or Fail Safe event, in other words*
Well, starting with those assumptions and Stevens statement, let's assume something else. If there was no Second Amendment, state and Federal governments would in fact restrict the right to keep and bear arms.
No, they likely wouldn't take all the firearms away. Even nations with heavy restrictions don't do that. Contrary to the purveyor of Facebook memes, for example, people can and do own guns in Japan. You can own military style semi automatics in quite a few countries (most notably those with strong democratic habits). You can own handguns in quite a few more. So it wouldn't be the case that everything would be taken away.**
But there would certainly be a lot more restrictions than there currently are, no doubt. And a lot of those restrictive provisions would be drafted by people who are completely clueless about firearms at that.
And with history being our guide, we can presume that once the restrictions starts they just keep rolling. The UK didn't have any meaningful firearms restrictions until after World War One and they were very mild until after World War Two. Now their restrictions are severe and have gone far beyond any rational relationship to any threat of violence the nation's citizens actually faced. That's the typical pattern. As regulations are drafted by those who seek to restrict, rather than those who seek to use, that's the natural trend line. That's why no racing fan, for example, would want me to draft up regulations for stock car racing and why no football fan would turn over football regulation to me.
But setting aside the points I raised in my other posts of John Paul Steven's comments, what about the underlying point he raised. The whole worry is now past us and so we no longer need a Second Amendment.
Well, to do that, we need to grasp why we had one in the first place, and Stevens got part of that right. The states were worried about a coup and by preventing the Federal disbandment of their militias, their concern was partially alleviated.
That fear isn't quite correctly expressed, as that dimension of it was only partial. The framers didn't want a standing army as standing armies were a threat to democracy. A militia isn't a standing army, so the defense establishment of the United States was originally based on militias. Indeed, to a significant degree it remains so, in the form of the National Guard, which is a type of militia.*-* No standing army, was the thought, no threat of a coup.
But the thought was actually much more than that. No standing army meant that a future Congress or President couldn't wipe out the sovereignty of the states. No standing army, no ability to occupy Connecticut. You get the point.***
But even broader than that, a militia based defense based on armed citizens let people take care of their own immediate security problems.
That had been the nation's history up until then, and it would be for quite some time after, and in recent years with the draw down of the Cold War military, it's become very much the case again. We'll address if it still is below. But colonial militias had been 99% of the people's protection against any threat, internal, external, native, etc., from Plymouth Colony on. Not just in the case of big wars, mind you, but also in the case of small local matters of importance. Local wars, local violence, all manners of things that required an armed defense.
And a lot of times that armed defense was exceedingly local. One Indian band that rose up. . . or one band of highwaymen that terrorized a route. Things of that type.*-*-*
But that's all gone now, right? Because you can depend on the government to handle all of this. Right?
Well. . . not so much.
Imperial Chinese walled city. In modern times, quite a few wealthier communities in the US have begun to take on this visage.
A really comfortable aspect of this argument, for people who make it, is
that's what the police are for and the police can protect you. It's
highly ironic that this argument comes in an era in which every
substantial city I've been to in recent years has walled in communities
and some have private security. People in Steven's class make this
argument but then (and I don't know about him personally) they drive
through security gates and go into what are little walled compounds,
much like Medieval cities. Most of the rest of everyone lives outside
the walls, where presumably the barbarians are.
This alone would suggest that if the police can really handle everything then the same class of people who so frequently argue that must be paranoid. No threat, no need for walls.
Or maybe there is.
Assuming that you are like most people, and you have no need of "new walls", or of your own private samurai, you might at least have something to consider.
Let's stop and talk about Samurai for a second?
Really?
Yes, really. The analogy might be more useful than it might at first appear.
In Medieval Japan, samurai were basically self employed. That is, they attached themselves to an employer, and were fiercely loyal to that employer.
They were also the only class that was allowed to own military arms.
Now, that should be disturbing.
In Steven's future United States I'm quite confident that the folks who guard gated communities would fit into some exception where they'd get to carry arms. Private security, I'm sure, would get a pass, employed by the rich as they would be. The rich and industry for that matter.
Are you disturbed yet? Well if not, you are a trusting soul indeed.
Shades of 1688 there.
Indeed, not only did that not work well in Japan, it didn't work well in the United States, and we have plenty of evidence of that.
Some of that evidence is from my very own backyard. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association, in the late 19th Century, employed range detectives who were indeed armed. Of course everyone was armed, but they, even as privately employed men, were given the power of arrest, which was perfectly legal (railroad detectives, also privately employed, retain that right today). And it is pretty clear that right was abused in Wyoming.
Indeed the Stock Growers Association came so comfortable with the use of force it used it on a massive scale, the Johnson County War, which was halted by private citizens somewhat under the leadership of the Johnson County Sheriff's Office. Armed on their own, they intervened to stop a private army.
And this isn't the only example of this in the United States. If you don't like 19th Century examples, take 20th Century ones. The armed police of coal companies back in Pennsylvania. . . the armed police of mining entities in Ludlow Colorado (augmented by the Colorado National Guard, as luck would have it). . . the armed employees of mining companies in New Mexico that expelled IWW strikers. . . examples aren't hard to find. And you can find them at least up until the mid 20th Century.
Not so much since then, to be sure, but since then we haven't exactly had an industry and private monopoly on force and we've had a really open and quick press. Do you trust the rich, well connected and powerful so much that you figure that era is truly past us if there's a monopoly on force.
Tom Horn. . . an armed industry assassin of the 20th Century.
But let's go the next step, having explored that, how much of a danger in everyday life, leaving aside a nightmarish private police force future, in the current real life world of today?
This is where I'll be frankly I've tended to dismiss many on the most extreme pro gun part of this argument. Indeed, I've done it just recently where I argued that Americans shouldn't really go around pretending that the Battle of Stalingrad is going to break out in their neighborhoods. And they shouldn't. But that doesn't mean that all Americans lead a threat free life by any means. And it also doesn't mean that the police can really protect everyone either.
German lieutenants in Stalingrad. . . these guys probably aren't coming to your neighborhood.
So let's be frank about the police. The long time motto, often unofficial, of police forces in the US used to be "To protect and serve". And while I've criticized the police here a lot, that's what they try to do. But to really believe that the police can protect 100% of all people all the time is frankly just flat out absurd. Plain resort to the news will show that as often police's role starts after a crime is committed.
Now, crime is going down in the US, dramatically, particularly violent crime, and I've already addressed that more than once. But is that because we have a lot more policemen in the country than we used to?
I don't think so.
It's probably simply going down for demographic reasons. Gun advocates will say that the reduction of gun control has played a role in that, and there's at least some evidence that is in fact true. What clearly isn't the case is that more gun control reduces crime nor does anyone ever seem to think that if they pass gun control laws they need to dramatically increase the number of police.
And dramatically increasing the number of policemen in the country would be what would really be necessary to make any kind of impact in this area. The increase would have to be enormous. It'd have to reach the point where every public building had an armed police force and every building generally open to the public. Can we imagine a country in which there's be two or three policemen at every popular bar and restaurant? I doubt it.
And we wouldn't want that because at some point that very sort of police protection becomes part of the very thing that the framers were in fact worried about. You'd have a police state by default, and with that, there'd be a definite decrease in liberty and even simply a decrease in the quality of life. So that's really a non starter.
None of which means that some increase in police presence in some areas isn't warranted. It clearly is.
But by the same token some increase in private security may be warranted too, and that's actually what the denizens of those walled compounds have done, which leaves them with little room to argue. If you live in a walled development and it has private security that's armed, you in fact are living with a type of private militia, like it or not. And if you argue for significantly removing privately held firearms, you are really arguing those guys ought to go and ought to be replaced by city police. But the city isn't going to do that for you.
For the rest of us, we have to judge our exposure to risk, ourselves. Most people are never going to carry a gun and most feel they have no need to.
But is that a universal?
Now I often see what I'd regard as amusing and over dramatic, indeed paranoid, references to people who talk as if they're under constant threat. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there are no threats in the world at all. There are.
The advertisement of handguns for personal protection isn't a new phenomenon, but it did take a big break in the mid 20th Century before returning in the late 20 Century
Indeed, in my own life I've experienced things in which I needed some element of protection directly at least five times, and I don't lead a really dangerous life. Two of those times I was in fact coincidentally armed and that may have made a real difference. And this doesn't count the odd occasions in which I took up some protection for myself due to threats that related to one of my occupations, even though nothing developed.
And I'm just a regular guy.
Thinking on it, I can think of at least three other instances in which various folks I know were confronted with situations, out of the blue, in which they had to protect themselves and were armed. At least two of them were extremely severe occasions that arrived without expectation. There's no telling what would have occurred if they hadn't been armed. In two out of the three, they might have been killed on the spot.
In not one of these instances could the police have possibly been any help. The only thing they would have been able to do would have been to investigate a shooting after the fact. Not much protection, just investigation.
Stuff like this happens more than we might imagine, and in more places than we might imagine. Most of it simply goes unreported, everywhere. In none of the instances I'm personally aware of were the police ever called.
So, frankly, even in the 21st Century there are plenty of instances in which an individual resorts to arms and a crisis passes. Most of those go completely unnoticed. They wouldn't if the individual who made resort ended up badly injured or dead, but those statistics don't exist because they don't exist.
And like it or not, these things happen in Canada, Australia, the UK and France. The difference is that there, when they happen, the person who protected themselves just shuts up and moves on so as to not risk any attention at all.
Okay, that's one sort of area where Justice Stevens is probably flat out wrong in his probable assumptions, or he assumes that in a post Second Amendment United States licensure will still let this occur (although I doubt he thinks that). What about the second area? What we've talked about so far is the threat from individual actors. It's pretty clear that the police would have to be enormous to take this on. But what about that more militia like area referenced by the Second Amendment?
Well, that presupposes that what we have talked about wasn't part of the what the militia in earlier times did, which I'd argue is in error. Walled compound denizens, as I already noted, are fielding a type of mercenary militia. But let's go away from that and talk about military type threats. That is, armed bodies or single actors who are acting for an organized cause.
If you are a rancher on the southern border of the US you don't really need to get much further than this, I suspect. It's easy to dismiss this threat but if you are running cattle outside of Eagle Pass, Texas, drug and human cargo smuggling gangs are just as much of an organized armed body threatening you as ISIL ever will be. Indeed, while there's nobody who pretends these groups live an area where its legal to acquire them, they are armed with military weapons. If you are going out to check your cattle in that area, you'd be nuts not to take along a firearm.
Most Americans, of course, will never be confronted by such a threat. But we have have had a host of violence of that type spill over the border (since about 1910 actually) and we have been subject to terrorist attacks on our own soil since the 1993 Twin Towers bombing attempt. We're so disinclined to recognize these things for what they are that we forget some and discount others. They are, however, what they are. We've endured several of them within the last couple years and there's no way to believe that individuals motivated by, for example, Islam, or by sheer greed in another example, are capable of being deterred by the mere existence of a set of laws.
It'd be nice to believe that domestic intelligence sources will catch all them all before they act, but they simply will not. They probably catch more than we know. But they won't catch them all.
Now, no doubt, you are thinking that you really don't need to arm yourself against ISIL. And you likely do not. But on occasion, there are those will probably will need to, and perhaps should have done so, or just accidentally happened to be. Pretending that we can build a police state sufficient to catch every Tamerlane Tsarnaev is really engaging in a fantasy. But imagining that the response by the city of Boston was "brave" is equally fanciful. It wasn't. It was a disarmed response however.
But it was also probably a response you are comfortable with if you live in West Roxbury. If you live in the Southside. . . well not so much.
*Of interest, while such an event seems so extraordinarily far fetched, even in modern times, let's say post World War Two, democracies have been occasionally pronto to such risks or even actual events. Both the Greek and Turkish states have fallen repeatedly to coups, although Greece seems to have gotten past it. Turkey hasn't, in that its' undergoing a massive reversal of its democratic fortunes through its chief executive right now.
Russia has certainly seen its democratic fortunes reversed and is now ruled by a strong man, by way of another example. But even the United Kingdom was subject to some serious thought of a coup attempt in the 1970s, oddly enough, by some members of its establishment. The moment came and went without action, but it did in fact occur.
**And contrary to what some seem to think, there are some countries in the world with strong "gun cultures" other than the United States. Switzerland being a prime example.
*-*State Guards units are also organized militia forces in some states, but not all. Like the National Guard, they receive Federal funding, but only some.
State Guard units have an interesting history as they were in some ways a protest over the Dick Act, which some states opposed on the basis that they didn't want the state militias so closely aligned with the U.S. Army following that 1903 act. It was also part of a slow boiling New England movement that dated back to the Mexican War in which those states were really unhappy with their militia units being called up for unpopular foreign wars. The Philippine Insurrection may have been the boiling point on that and so by World War One some states were maintaining two militia establishments. Most states only did this during wartime as the National Guard needed to be replaced while mobilized. Its come back into popularity, particularly along the Mexican border, in recent years.
Quite a few states by law regarded every male over sixteen years of age and under some older age, typically sixty, as members of their states militia. The power to mobilize this group of men is exceedingly rarely exercised.
***And they had real experience with just such a thing. The right to keep and bear arms wasn't something that had been simply thought up by Congress. As is sometimes noted, the same right appeared in some state constitutions. More than that, however, it had been a feature of the English Bill of Rights, which the English seem to have now forgotten, as had a provision limiting standing armies. Those provisions provided that the King had violated the rights of Protestant Englishmen (Catholic Englishmen didn't get the same rights) in the following ways:
Standing Army.
By raising and keeping a Standing Army within this Kingdome in time of Peace without Consent of Parlyament and Quartering Soldiers contrary to Law.
Disarming Protestants, &c.
By causing severall good Subjects being Protestants to be disarmed at the same time when Papists were both Armed and Imployed contrary to Law.
So the following was provided:
Standing Army.
That the raising or keeping a standing Army within the Kingdome in time of Peace unlesse it be with Consent of Parlyament is against Law.
Subjects’ Arms.
That the Subjects which are Protestants may have Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.
This was passed in 1688, just a little under a century prior to the American Revolution.
*-*-*In recent years its been really popular for critics of the Second Amendment to point out that in Southern states militias also were used, it's claimed, to chase runaway slaves.
I don't know how often that really happened, not often I suspect, but Southern states did worry about slave rebellions. But that wasn't the only reason they had militias by any means and this point is grossly exaggerated in that context.
Several days of rioting, which would run through April 1, commenced on this day in Quebec City in 1918.
An example of a Canadian recruiting poster directed at the residents of Montreal (with which my family has a connection). Such efforts were not entirely successful. This unit sought to recruit members of the fairly large Irish Canadian community of Quebec.
The underlying cause of the riots was conscription, which was deeply unpopular in Canada in general and hugely unpopular in Quebec, which saw the war as a European affair that they had very little stake or interest in. 404,385 Canadian men became liable for military service under the Military Service Act, which became law on January 1. 385,510 sought exemption and, given the vague nature of the statute, most succeeded.
The immediate cause of the rioting was the arrest of a French Canadian man who failed to present his exemption papers. He was released, but things soon were totally out of control. Soldiers had to be called into the city under the War Measures Act of 1914. The deeply unpopular act and the riots lead to the proposed Francœur Motion under which Quebec was proposed to declare that it would be happy to leave the Canadian union if the rest of the then very English country found Quebec to be "an obstacle to the union, progress and development of Canada". The motion was not introduced in the end out of a fear of what it would lead to.
In some ways the rioting strongly recalls the reaction that the Irish had to conscription which lead to the Easter Rebellion of 1916. England itself had no tradition of conscription for land service (it did for sea service) and conscription was actually more strongly established in the United States which had required militia service by state in all states up until after the Civil War, with there being outright conscription during the Civil War. The English accepted it however. None of the Dominions took well to it and Ireland, part of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, was massively opposed to it. Originally the Irish were exempted from English conscription but when that was repealed in 1916 it lead to the Easter Rebellion and ultimately to the Anglo Irish War and Irish independence. Australia rejected attempts to impose conscription in that Dominion in a national plebiscite, while New Zealand on the other hand adopted it. Canada too adopted it after a prior failed attempt, but as can be seen, it was not a success and it fueled early thoughts of Quebec separation.
The irony of this is that while this was occurring, Ireland, Australia and Canada all contributed large bodies of men to the war voluntarily. So,in the end, efforts to impose conscription in those localities were at best a waste of time and effort and at worst a cause of net manpower loss.
It's worth noting that conscription remained unpopular in Australia and Canada during World War Two and while both nations imposed it, only late in the war were conscripts required to serve overseas. In Australia's case disgruntled conscripts were a source of poor units that otherwise stand apart from the really notable fighting qualities of the Australian Army. Canadian conscripts seem to have accepted their late war fate and generally have worked out well when they were finally required to go overseas. Ireland was of course independent , although a dominion, by World War Two, and it refused to declare war but once again supplied a large number of troops to the British forces. Surprisingly Australia twice imposed conscription post World War Two, once during the Korean War and again during the Vietnam War. Canada briefly followed the British example of Cold War conscription but phased it out very quickly and has never resumed it.
On this day in 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. lead what was to become his last march in Memphis, Tennessee. The occasion was a sanitation workers strike. The march unfortunately descended into a riot and the police shot sixteen year old Larry Payne.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
While King had no role in the violence and was opposed to violence of any kind, he felt deeply distressed by what had occurred and felt that he had failed in his appearance.
Red Cross repsentatives marching with members of the New York State Guard in 1918. This is, of course, the State Guard, not the United States Guards.
Showing a distinctly different approach to things than would be taken during the Second World War, something that will continue to be the case as we read more about Woodrow Wilson's approach to Federalism during World War One, the United States Guards were authorized on this day in 1917. They were part of the National Army, i.e. that part of the Army raised from civilians for the war, as opposed to those parts made up of the combined National Guard and Regular Army. While they were part of the National Army, they were under the authority of the Militia Bureau (today's National Guard Bureau). Of interest, at the same time the Federal Government was encouraging states to raise units of State Guards.
Some explanation of what these various units are or were is necessary to make much sense out of this story, of course.
The National Guard is well known to Americans, of course, and the nature of the National Guard would be evident to anyone who has been reading this blog over the past two years, as various National Guard units were called up and deployed to the Mexican border to be followed by the mass call up, and then mass conscription for odd legal reasons, of the National Guard in 1917. As has also been seen, and a much different practice from what would occur in later years, states actively recruited for National Guardsmen right up until they were formally inducted into the U.S. Army and even proposed new National Guard units, much like they had done with the formation of state units during the Civil War.
Much different from the Civil War or even the Spanish American War, however, changes to the structure of the American military establishment following the Spanish American War had formalized its status as a reserve of the Army and caused the Militia Bureau to come about to deal with that. The regularization of the National Guard as the state militia country wide created, in all states and in some territories the creation of those units to fill both a local militia role and to be the reserve of the Army in time of war. In a few states this was controversial and they ended up accordingly splitting their state establishments between the National Guard and a State Guard, with the liability of the State Guard in times of war being fairly unclear. The latter would seem to have been so liable as long as the fighting was to occur within the boundaries of the United States. Rhode Island provides us one such example, Maryland another. Most states did no such thing, however.
When the US entered the Great War in 1917 the National Guard, lately back from the Mexican border, was first called up and then conscripted in mass. Indeed, it was expanded and therefore the result was that the states now lacked, for the most part, men for local militia service, should it be needed. That was one perceived problem.
A second was that, in spite of how we recall it today, the U.S. entry into World War One, while largely popular, was not entirely popular everywhere. We've already had the example of a revolt against conscription and perhaps the war in general in Oklahoma. To compound that, the teens were at the height of the radicalization of the American labor movement and labor was much less willing to go along with the Federal government as part of the war effort than it would be in later years. Those who have read the newspaper entries here have seen the ones about trouble in the vital coal and rail industries, two industries that literally had the ability to completely cripple the nation. Beyond that, the Administration of this era was highly intolerant to radical dissent and tended to see the events in Russia as if reflected in a distant mirror in the United States.
Given all of that, the Federal Government perceived there being a need for internal security forces at a national level. To take up that role, it formed 48 regiments of United States Guards. By the end of 1918, 1,364 officers and 26,796 men were serving in the United States Guards, stationed in the continental United States and the Territory of Alaska.
These men were taken from the many men found unfit for service in the National Army, something which the readers of the newspapers here would also have noted, although the regulations provided that such departures from physical standards had to be "minor". While physical standards for service were far less strict than they are now, frankly American health wasn't what the covers of The Saturday Evening Post and Leslie's might suggest. Plenty of men were too old, infirm or in ill health so as to go to France with the National Army. 18,000 of the men who served in the United States Guards fit the category of men with a "minor" physical defect who had been conscripted but, because of their condition, could not go oversees. They were volunteers from the National Army into the United States Guards. The balance were men whose condition precluded them from being drafted in the first instance, or who were above conscription age as the United States Guards would take able men who were above the service age. After August 1918, when the Selective Service operated to process all incoming servicemen, a crack in the door that had existed for overage men to attempt to volunteer for the National Army was closed but they could still volunteer for the United States Guards. Some of them ended up in the 48 regiments of United States Guards maintained to keep the wolf at bay in the US itself.
Enormous panoramic photograph of Michigan state troops, June 1917. I've never been certain if these cavalrymen are National Guardsmen or State Guardsmen. If they're National Guardsmen, they're irregularly equipped in that they're carrying riot batons and lever action rifles, both of which would be extremely odd for National Guardsmen of this period even taking into account that prior to the Punitive Expedition some units were still privately equipped to some degree. This suggests state equipage, which was common for State Guards.
They didn't do it alone. The various states had to form State Guard units as, even though its rare, State Governors lacked an armed force for internal security in the event of riots or disasters. Substitute militia units were authorized and formed in every state, drawing from the same pool, to some extent, as the United States Guards, but with less connection to the formal National Army. They were also less regularly equipped as well, relying on old or irregular weapons.
For the most part, these units saw no action of any substantial type at all, but there is one notable exception, the Texas State Guard, which remained constantly deployed on real active service on the Mexican border, augmenting the United States Army which carried on in that role all throughout the war. The United States Guards did provide security in Alaska, wild and far duty at that time (the initial unit was made up of men from a waterways unit), and in controlling IWW strikes in Arizona in 1918 and 1919. They also were used to suppress a race riot in North Carolina in 1918.
After the war, the United States Guards were disbanded, with that formally coming in 1920 but with actual demobilization starting on November 11, 1918 and continuing on into 1919. The states largely disbanded the State Guard units, but a few retained them, with states that had such units before the war being in the forefront of that. During World War Two State Guard units were again reestablished everywhere, after the National Guard was federalized in 1940, although this did not have happy results everywhere. No effort was made to re-create the United States Guards and no need to do that was seen. Today, some states still retain State Guard units that augment their National Guard establishments, but most do not.
Photographs, we'd note, of the United States Guards are exceedingly difficult to find, and therefore we've posted none. They were issued obsolete U.S. arms, like the Krag rifle, or non standard arms, like rejected Russian Mosin Nagants. While not equipped with the latest weapons going to France, these arms were more than adequate for the role the units performed. Uniforms were initially going to be made up of blue dress uniforms of a late pattern, which did not vary greatly from field uniforms of the late 19th Century, but this was soon rejected on the basis that it deterred enlistment on the part of the men who did not want to be identified with rejected uniforms for rejected service.
Their service is obscure, but like that provided by State Guardsmen on the Mexican boarder during the war, it was real service. It started on this day in 1917.
