This Date in History

[nycfan]

 

[donbosco]

In 1976 President Gerald Ford (R) was challenged in the GOP primary by California Governor Ronald Reagan. Federal Equal Time in broadcasting rules would have prohibited Reagan’s old B-movies from airing had Ford not, #OTD (4/20) in 1976, waived that legal protection. Ford defeated Reagan and went on to lose to Jimmy Carter in November. Ford may have been the last decent Republican. He was among them. All mainly wrong-headed mind you but here I’m talking at least by some measure decent.

And yet, had Ford seen to it that Nixon pay for his crimes and violations of the Constitution, perhaps the nation and the world would have never fallen into the grip of the current cackle of grifters and miscreants (2025). But then had Ford not shown the inclination to pardon Nixon he’s likely never been appointed Vice President when Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace, fraud hanging all about his career.

On November 4, 1979 hostages were taken as the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was captured by armed student supporters of the Iranian Revolution — a movement that deposed the corrupt Shah and installed the extremist Theocrat, the Ayatollah Khomeini. This tragedy colored the final year of Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

The 2023 confession of Ben Barnes confirms (link at conclusion) that he and John Connelly toured Middle Eastern capitals in October, 1980 — the weeks before the U.S. election with the simple message: “Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.”

When Reagan defeated Carter and took the presidency in 1980 the party began its slide into the modern morass of Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Ryans, McConnells, Gowdys, and Tillises, landing today in the sordid pit where dwell the trumps, Cawthorns, Greenes, McCarthys, Cottons, Grahams, Millers, and Cruzes.

Ford’s gesture toward Reagan and his B-Movie career in film now seems so innocent — magnanimous and in the spirit of Fair Play even. Was it the last ethical act, admittedly smallish, of The Right?

You can view the letter better at the link: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/30806019

Here’s the Reagan sabotage confession link: A Four-Decade Secret: One Man’s Story of Sabotaging Carter’s Re-election (Published 2023)

 

[donbosco]

In 1952 (April 19) the Guatemalteco Doroteo Guamach won the Boston Marathon -- the Boston Press misinterpreted his name and dubbed him Mateo Flores, which became his internationally known moniker. He was a textile worker who earned .25 an hour. He ran the race in formal street shoes. The national stadium in Guatemala City is named for him.

In 1952 Guatemala was eight years into by far the most democratic republican period of government it had to that time - or since - experienced. Arts of all types were flourishing, scholarship was beginning to pick up speed, and a depth and breadth of thinking and doing that was impossible under the corrupt dictatorial regimes preceding 1944 was afoot. Guatemala was a place of hope. To be sure the country had never been quite hope-less but that was due to the spirit of its citizenry and existed in spite of the civil and human rights denied the people by despots, oligarchs, and foreign investors.

In 1944 a popular uprising of fed-up sectors of society had tossed out dictator, and US darling, Jorge Ubicó. Enough of a puppet to make the Boston-based United Fruit Company happy from 1931 until 1944, Ubicó was a fascist at heart but he also knew in whose so-called backyard he resided - that realization tamped down any praise of what he saw Mussolini and Hitler doing across the Atlantic - but it did little to deter him from building an oppressive regime that denied civil and human rights to the Maya population while ‘selecting’ what others would be granted to all but the most elite in the country.

Interestingly, the global anti-Fascist battle that took place — i.e., World War II — resulted in a huge outpouring of pro-democracy sentiments. That War was, after all ‘A Fight to Save Democracy.’ Drafted into service, thousands and thousands of true believers in constitutional democratic republicanism, fanned out to fight the forces of anti-democratic authoritarianism. Perhaps the little Hitlers and Mussolinis of the world like Ubicó should have read the writing on the wall - maybe, cornered rats that they were, they did and didn’t know where to run.

But by 1944 Guatemaltecos were believers - they believed that as the fascists in Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo fell so too should like-governments fall around the world. The Guatemalan military helped - as they had heard the same egalitarian advertisements from the US and Allied Forces as had the people. Indeed, their liaisons during the war with the overwhelmingly volunteer Anti-Fascist Army of the United States convinced them that the way forward was decidedly NOT with characters like Ubico.

So after the army, the shopkeepers, the working class, and students and their teachers chased Ubicó from the country in 1944 elections were held and the Guatemalan people elected a Professor of Education and Philosophy as their first legitimate head-of-state. With Dr. Juan José Arévalo at the helm democratization and wealth redistribution began in earnest. Elites in the USA watched and their frowns grew as the fortunes, of their client-friends - primarily the aforementioned United Fruit Company - made gigantic over years of plunder facilitated by Ubicó and Co. - were called into the service of Guatemaltecos by fair and just laws and regulations.

Arevalo survived and brought much promise during his six years in office. He was followed in a free and fair election by Jacobo Arbenz, who set about continuing the policies of Arevalo. By that time (1951), the Cold War was growing Hot and the vision of the Eisenhower Administration was deeply clouded by the Anti-Communist Presbyterian paranoia of the career diplomats (and brothers) John Foster and Alan Dulles. As Secretary of State and Director of the CIA respectively, the Dulles brothers began to work to ruin the Guatemalan experiment (Nevermind that both had previously worked for the United Fruit Company legal team). In 1954 the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Arbenz and alternating brands of corrupt, but Uber-Pro United States capital governments have been the rule since.

In 1952 however, Doroteo Gumach (Mateo Flores) won the world’s most prestigious marathon - in his street shoes - and for one split second of historical time Guatemaltecos - and the rest of us - experienced what hope born of having crushed fascism and raising up humanity is capable of if given even a sliver of a chance. May Mateo Flores’ Spirit never die nor be forgotten.

 

[donbosco]

Perhaps The First “Voice of America.” (experience it at the link below) I have only heard in retrospectives but I remember him spoken of with reverence by my father who was very pro-democracy and even more anti-authoritarian like so many in his now-forgotten generation—the one that wrestled fascist dictators to the ground and crushed them in Germany and Italy. In our most recent times some brave members of a much maligned profession have followed along Murrow’s path. Far too many go mainly unheralded.

We should be thankful for for journalists and investigators like him and recognize their work in a measure based on the ire they draw from the shysters, seditionists, and nattering anti-democracy nabobs of our time. Edward R. Murrow seems to have been hated by just the right folks.

#OTD (April 25) 1908 Edward R. Murrow was born near Greensboro. He grew up in Washington state. His WW2 CBS radio reports from Europe were historic. On his ‘50s TV program ‘See It Now’ he brought down Red-baiting GOP Senator Joseph McCarthy in ‘54. On that night in March, so very early in our collective television-viewing experience as a nation, Murrow spoke the following; “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men — not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.” He continued…“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”

Murrow’s generation embraced the mantle of defending freedom and then did so by their anti-fascist actions, giving their “blood, sweat, and tears” by journeying around the world and defeating Axis Authoritarianism. Please watch at the link below and hear the “Voice of America” encouraging us to stand for freedom:

Read more here: Edward R. Murrow, Legendary Journalist

Along with the backers of Joseph McCarthy and haters of dissent another great enemy of Murrow was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who despised him and had his agents monitor his activities, a practice which intensified after the McCarthy takedown.

Murrow concludes this influential broadcast with this from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” “Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves…” Act 1, Scene 2, as spoken by Cassius. Our times, like those of Brutus, are complex. Responsibility must be looked at squarely.

 

[donbosco]

Missed it by a day…

Meadowlark Lemon was born in Wilmington on April 25, 1932. Meadow Lemon III was his given name passed down from his grandfather through his father according to his own biographical entry at MeadowlarkLemon.org. He graduated from Williston High School (also known as Williston Industrial School) in 1952. Super athlete and pioneer in desegregation and women’s rights Althea Gibson was a 1949 graduate of the same school. Joseph McNeil, one of the Greensboro Sit-In’s original four was also a graduate of Williston. It was, of course, given the times, an African American only institution. Williston would come into the national mindset in 1968 when its closing as part of the municipal desegregation plan led to intense dissatisfaction in Wilmington from its alumni, students, and the African American community. An offshoot of the protests was the globally known case of The Wilmington Ten.

Meadow Lemon officially took the name of Meadowlark after joining the Harlem Globetrotters in 1955. Before that he had briefly attended Florida A&M and served two years in the U.S. Army. There is no mention that I can find of Meadow Lemon having played basketball at Williston High despite there being records accessible for the years that he attended school neither is there any mention of that elsewhere. Some newspaper coverage of African American High School sports existed in those times. A ‘Charlotte Observer’ blurb reported that he had played at Williston High but offers no attribution. ‘The News and Observer’ reported that he was a star in basketball and baseball at Williston — again with no attribution. During his high school years in Wilmington he may have played under the name James Lemmons as the excerpt from a ‘Winston Salem Sentinel’ article on the African American High School state championship tournament of 1952 (March 21) bears a foreshadowing of sorts.





Of course Meadowlark Lemon went on to become one of the most famous people in the world, visiting countless countries, playing over 16,000 games, and combining the all-time greatest hook shot with magical ball-handling skills and worldclass entertainer chops. It ought to be mentioned that he played many of his thousands of games alongside Greensboro’s Ed “Curly” Neal. Topping off his athletic, entertainment, and philanthropical careers, he also became an ordained minister in his later years. He is an inductee in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame :: Meadowlark Lemon

 

[05C40]

Missed it by a day…

Meadowlark Lemon was born in Wilmington on April 25, 1932. Meadow Lemon III was his given name passed down from his grandfather through his father according to his own biographical entry at MeadowlarkLemon.org. He graduated from Williston High School (also known as Williston Industrial School) in 1952. Super athlete and pioneer in desegregation and women’s rights Althea Gibson was a 1949 graduate of the same school. Joseph McNeil, one of the Greensboro Sit-In’s original four was also a graduate of Williston. It was, of course, given the times, an African American only institution. Williston would come into the national mindset in 1968 when its closing as part of the municipal desegregation plan led to intense dissatisfaction in Wilmington from its alumni, students, and the African American community. An offshoot of the protests was the globally known case of The Wilmington Ten.

Meadow Lemon officially took the name of Meadowlark after joining the Harlem Globetrotters in 1955. Before that he had briefly attended Florida A&M and served two years in the U.S. Army. There is no mention that I can find of Meadow Lemon having played basketball at Williston High despite there being records accessible for the years that he attended school neither is there any mention of that elsewhere. Some newspaper coverage of African American High School sports existed in those times. A ‘Charlotte Observer’ blurb reported that he had played at Williston High but offers no attribution. ‘The News and Observer’ reported that he was a star in basketball and baseball at Williston — again with no attribution. During his high school years in Wilmington he may have played under the name James Lemmons as the excerpt from a ‘Winston Salem Sentinel’ article on the African American High School state championship tournament of 1952 (March 21) bears a foreshadowing of sorts.





Of course Meadowlark Lemon went on to become one of the most famous people in the world, visiting countless countries, playing over 16,000 games, and combining the all-time greatest hook shot with magical ball-handling skills and worldclass entertainer chops. It ought to be mentioned that he played many of his thousands of games alongside Greensboro’s Ed “Curly” Neal. Topping off his athletic, entertainment, and philanthropical careers, he also became an ordained minister in his later years. He is an inductee in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame :: Meadowlark Lemon

When I was a kid, my Dad and I were at my grandfather's home (his father) watching the Harlem Globetrotters play on TV. I asked how the Globetrotters would fare against an NBA team. My father assured me it would not be a competitive game. I replied that the Globetrotters could do the same things to an NBA team as they did to the Washington Generals. My Dad gave me a long look and replied, "If anyone playing for the Globetrotters could make it in the NBA, then he would be playing in the NBA." I tried to come up with a counterargument but came up empty and conceded my father was correct.

 

[donbosco]

#OTD IN 1897, Ulysses S. Grant’s tomb on #RiversideDriveNYC was dedicated. It would have been his 75th birthday. He died in 1885. His celebrated burial in this location was controversial as many believed either a military park or Washington D.C. to be more appropriate. Grant himself had nixed those ideas however with his romantic insistence that Julia, his wife, be buried beside him.

Grant (and Julia) also preferred that New York City be their final resting place. They actually lived at No. 3 East Sixty-sixth street beginning in 1881. (Read here: http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/.../the-lost-u-s... ) As many know, the Grants were ruined financially in 1884, the victims of a Ponzi Scheme. The General died of throat cancer just over a year later.

As per their wishes the mausoleum is the final resting place of he and Julia. A design by John Hemingway Duncan was chosen in a competition. Duncan based it on the Temple at Halicarnassus (Persia), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (see below, bottom right-facing, for a sketch of that now long-gone structure). While the dedication #OTD IN 1897 was a huge event the fund-raising efforts were not always smooth and brought forward both regional and class-based enmities.

In fact, the monument has seen rough times during its 127 year ‘life.’ Having fallen into disrepair, The Works Project Administration (WPA) of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal restored and improved the monument between 1935 and 1939 — there are busts of five of Grant's generals...William T. Sherman, Phillip H. Sheridan, George H. Thomas, James B. McPherson, and Edward Ord installed by the Federal Artists Project and many infrastructural additions both cosmetic and fundamental were added.

Despite the monument’s placement in the care of the National Parks Service in 1958, in the 1970s graffiti as well as squatting along the exterior of the structure made it unsightly and even dangerous. Overall New York City itself was in similarly dire straits - #RiversideParkNYC was a rough and mainly off limits area. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the monument, and the area was reclaimed. Today I walk with Prince and Maxie in this area daily (even nightly), and literally circling “Grant’s Tomb” is part of our regimen. I admire the structure for its solid but fluid lines. It has a timeless quality and diagonally across from the towering #RiversideChurch we find ourselves sandwiched by two of the more impressive edifices, though I fear, less recognized, in the city. The dogs only see the squirrels and rats in truth but I do try my best to look up.

The structure itself does remind me, as a born and bred southerner who was treated to the barrage of Lost Cause propaganda from my earliest memory, that the country has an incredibly divisive history and that I am living through a time of deep division as well. When I do raise up my eyes I see on the tomb inscribed Grant’s epitaph: “Let us have peace.” I have to add though...not at the cost of permitting fascism, racism, and regression winning to win the day.

About a month ago the dogs and I were passing by and a couple were lingering in front of the tomb. I caught their conversation on the wind and it was one of curiosity about the edifice. I interjected what I knew of the place and its history, mainly what I wrote above but also some things about the "Rolling Bench" that wraps around it ( See here: Mosaic Rolling Bench at General Grant National Memorial — CITYarts ). The couple lived in the southern part of the island and said they did not get "up here" often. They looked at me as curiously as they did the tomb -- I know that my accent threw them off...probably as much as hearing it speaking respectfully about the Union general that laid low The South. The Dunns have been in #WestHarlem now over 4 years and of course we'll never be 'from' there. That said, roots tend to reach down all on their own.

Amen.

The photographs below: Top left-facing is a photograph of the dedication ceremony. Top right-facing, a shot from 1917. Bottom left-facing is a snap by me from Sakura Park. Bottom right-facing is a sketch of The Persian Temple of Halicarnassus.

 

[Zoo_View]

#OTD IN 1897, Ulysses S. Grant’s tomb on #RiversideDriveNYC was dedicated. It would have been his 75th birthday. He died in 1885. His celebrated burial in this location was controversial as many believed either a military park or Washington D.C. to be more appropriate. Grant himself had nixed those ideas however with his romantic insistence that Julia, his wife, be buried beside him.

Grant (and Julia) also preferred that New York City be their final resting place. They actually lived at No. 3 East Sixty-sixth street beginning in 1881. (Read here: http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/.../the-lost-u-s... ) As many know, the Grants were ruined financially in 1884, the victims of a Ponzi Scheme. The General died of throat cancer just over a year later.

As per their wishes the mausoleum is the final resting place of he and Julia. A design by John Hemingway Duncan was chosen in a competition. Duncan based it on the Temple at Halicarnassus (Persia), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (see below, bottom right-facing, for a sketch of that now long-gone structure). While the dedication #OTD IN 1897 was a huge event the fund-raising efforts were not always smooth and brought forward both regional and class-based enmities.

In fact, the monument has seen rough times during its 127 year ‘life.’ Having fallen into disrepair, The Works Project Administration (WPA) of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal restored and improved the monument between 1935 and 1939 — there are busts of five of Grant's generals...William T. Sherman, Phillip H. Sheridan, George H. Thomas, James B. McPherson, and Edward Ord installed by the Federal Artists Project and many infrastructural additions both cosmetic and fundamental were added.

Despite the monument’s placement in the care of the National Parks Service in 1958, in the 1970s graffiti as well as squatting along the exterior of the structure made it unsightly and even dangerous. Overall New York City itself was in similarly dire straits - #RiversideParkNYC was a rough and mainly off limits area. It wasn’t until the 1990s that the monument, and the area was reclaimed. Today I walk with Prince and Maxie in this area daily (even nightly), and literally circling “Grant’s Tomb” is part of our regimen. I admire the structure for its solid but fluid lines. It has a timeless quality and diagonally across from the towering #RiversideChurch we find ourselves sandwiched by two of the more impressive edifices, though I fear, less recognized, in the city. The dogs only see the squirrels and rats in truth but I do try my best to look up.

The structure itself does remind me, as a born and bred southerner who was treated to the barrage of Lost Cause propaganda from my earliest memory, that the country has an incredibly divisive history and that I am living through a time of deep division as well. When I do raise up my eyes I see on the tomb inscribed Grant’s epitaph: “Let us have peace.” I have to add though...not at the cost of permitting fascism, racism, and regression winning to win the day.

About a month ago the dogs and I were passing by and a couple were lingering in front of the tomb. I caught their conversation on the wind and it was one of curiosity about the edifice. I interjected what I knew of the place and its history, mainly what I wrote above but also some things about the "Rolling Bench" that wraps around it ( See here: Mosaic Rolling Bench at General Grant National Memorial — CITYarts ). The couple lived in the southern part of the island and said they did not get "up here" often. They looked at me as curiously as they did the tomb -- I know that my accent threw them off...probably as much as hearing it speaking respectfully about the Union general that laid low The South. The Dunns have been in #WestHarlem now over 4 years and of course we'll never be 'from' there. That said, roots tend to reach down all on their own.

Amen.

The photographs below: Top left-facing is a photograph of the dedication ceremony. Top right-facing, a shot from 1917. Bottom left-facing is a snap by me from Sakura Park. Bottom right-facing is a sketch of The Persian Temple of Halicarnassus.

We lived at 89th and Riverside…..I often ran up to and around Grant’s Tomb……this was the mid-‘90’s and both Riverside Park and Grant’s Tomb were in excellent shape.

 

[donbosco]

As were you I presume?