THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1897-1960
1915-1920
1915
Woodrow Wilson uses falsities and exaggerated claims to bring the US into World War I
- Woodrow Wilson's administration gives wildly exaggerated estimates of Germany's ability to invade the United States,
World War I
asserting that Germany could land nearly 400,000 troops on the shores of New Jersey in sixteen days. He subsequently thwarts all of Germany's efforts to negotiate a possible peace treaty with the US and European nations friendly to the US, and uses the May 7 sinking of the RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat to feed his push for war. The American press augments Wilson's attempts to foment a war fever in the isolationist US by spreading wild tales of Belgian nuns roasted over open fires by German troops. Opponents of the upcoming war in Europe are castigated as "poltroons" and "mollycoddles" by Wilson's supporters. Many historians believe that Wilson's push for war with Germany was largely fueled by his desire to be seen as a "great statesman," but needed a war as a backdrop for his desires. Lapham writes that "[i]f the setting-up of Wilson's photo-op required the deaths of one hundred thousand American soldiers in the mud of France, the sacrifice could be written off to America's privilege 'to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth.' Wilson will lead America into World War I in April 1917 against the wishes of over 90% of the American people. Historian Walter Karp savages Wilson thusly: "The decisive trait of Wilson's political character was vainglory: a hunger for glory so exclusively self-regarding, so indifferent to the concerns of others, that it would lead him to betray in turn the national movement of reform, the great body of the American people, the fundamental liberties of the American Republic, and in the end the hopes of a war-torn world." Italy's Benito Mussolini, the fascist who would lead his country into an alliance with Hitler's Germany a generation later, found in Wilson's successful attempts to hoodwink his country into war a justification for Mussolini's abandoning of the principles of socialism and his subsequent embrace of fascism: he wrote in September 1917, "In matters pertaining to the war, Wilson applies systems of such anti-liberalism that in Italy they would never occur even to the most ferocious reactionaries." (Lewis Lapham)
1916
Sykes-Picot agreement divvies up the Middle East by British and French dictates
- In anticipation of the end of World War I, and in breach of an agreement with Arab leaders that if they fought against Ottoman and German forces that their peoples would be given independence,
Sykes-Picot division of Middle East
the British and French draw up the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, which divides up the Ottoman Empire among the various allied countries, and creates national borders of numerous Middle Eastern countries,to be divided between Britain and France and the other allied countries. Mesopotamia, including Baghdad, is to be administered by Britain, along with Arabia and Palestine; Lebanon and Syria to be under French control. Russia takes control of the Bosporus and Anatolia. The division was made with control of the region's oil fields in the forefront of consideration. Britain insists that Palestine is not part of the agreement, and will be administered separately. The Russian Revolution takes Russia out of the picture, leaving Britain and France to divide the oil fields of the Middle East between themselves. A year later, Britain invades and seizes control of Mesopotamia; the Russian Bolsheviks discover the Sykes-Picot agreement and tell the world of the secret dealings. US business interests become involved, selling arms and materials to all sides. Germany begins sinking US cargo ships with its submarine fleet, prompting the US to enter the war against the German-Ottoman alliance. (A Timeline of Oil and Violence, Kevin Phillips, Dawoud el-Alami) - US
US actions in Latin America
Marines occupy the Dominican Republic through 1924. (ZMag) - Women's rights activist Margaret Sanger opens a birth control clinic in Brooklyn.
Minority rights
It is forcibly closed ten days later, and Sanger is arrested. Sanger eventually wins support through the courts and opens another clinic in New York City in 1923. Sanger will go on to found the American Birth Control League, which will evolve into Planned Parenthood. (InfoPlease)
1917
- US
US actions in Latin America
military forces occupy Cuba through 1933, ensuring the island is essentially an economic protectorate of the United States. (ZMag) - February: The "February Revolution" in Russia results in the abdication from power of Tsar Nicholas II in favor of a slightly more democratic provisional government eventually led by Alexander Kerensky.
Russian revolution
Nicholas is a weak leader, World War I is highly unpopular, and the Marxist revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky have gained considerable influence within the populace. Eventually, Alexander Kerensky forms a government that only lasts a few months. On July 17, 1918, Nicholas and his family, no longer protected by the now-overthrown Kerensky government, will be shot to death and hidden away. Controversy and conspiracy theories swirl around the disappearance of several members of the royal family, particularly the youngest daughter, Anastasia, but in 1991, all of the royal family's remains will be discovered and properly buried. (Note: the bodies of the youngest children, Anastasia and Alexei, were never discovered, and the DNA tests that determined the identities of the family members has been disputed, so the controversy still continues in some quarters.) (Wikipedia, Wikipedia) - April 6: The US enters World War I, fighting on the side of Britain and other European countries against the coalition of nations led by Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany.
World War I
Wilson immediately issues a dozen regulations for the treatment of so-called "alien enemies" (see the April 17 item). Anyone deemed an alien enemy cannot own such goods as firearms, aircraft, or wireless apparatus. They cannot publish an "attack" upon any branch of the government. They cannot reside in an area designated as "prohibited" by the president. They can be removed to a location designated by the president. Alien enemies cannot depart the United States without permission and are required to register with the government to receive a registration card. On November 16, 1917, 8 more regulations are added to the original 12, restricting how closely and under what circumstances enemy aliens can approach facilities such as docks, railroads, and warehouses -- thus, de facto restricting their employment. Aliens are banned from air travel and from the District of Columbia. The restriction embodied in Section 20 provides the foundation for the later internment of aliens; it reads, in part: "The Attorney General is hereby authorized to make and declare, from time to time, such regulations concerning the movements of alien enemies as he may deem necessary in the premises and for the public safety, and to provide in such regulations for monthly, weekly, or other periodical report by alien enemies to federal, state or local authorities; and all alien enemies shall report at the times and places and to the authorities specified in such regulations." One motivation behind the regulations is clearly to establish control over radical groups who disagree with government policies, including policies on the war. - The war is also used to justify a massive centralization of American industries, including the prime means of transport around the country, railroads. The War Labor Board, the War Industries Board, and a slate of other government agencies will centralize commerce in the name of supporting the war effort. Fuel rationing, the draft, price controls, and many other measures thrust the federal government deeply into the economic lives of the average American. (ZMag, Independent Institute)
- April 17: All US males older than 14 and still "natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects" of the German Empire become alien enemies under US law.
World War I
In 1918, an act of Congress expands the law to include women aged 14 and older. In time, however, the term "alien enemy" comes to apply to virtually any foreign resident the government deems undesirable. It becomes an effective weapon the government will wield against individuals and organizations which were pacifist, critical of the war, or otherwise objectionable politically. - Civil liberties are drastically curtailed for American citizens, particularly the right to dissent about the war. The radical labor movement becomes a prime target for government suppression. The radical labor movement had successfully helped spread labor unrest across much of the country and sparked effective strikes against corporations; the unions were largely anti-war, with prominent Communist and Socialist leaders who believed the war was fought merely for capitalistic gain and against the foreign workers for whom they felt a sense of comradeship. Socialism in particular had become a political threat to the status quo, with American Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Debs, a prominent labor leader, winning almost a million votes in 1912. Too, labor unions were heavy with immigrant membership. By World War I, government authorities and labor unions had a history of violent conflict, with the 1886 Haymarket strikes in Chicago being a notorious example; that conflict ended with 7 policemen and over 20 strikers dead. Eight radicals were "tried" for crimes associated with the strikes, with the focus of the proceedings being more on the unions' ideology than any actual evidence of wrongdoing. The prosecuting attorney told the jury, "Law is on trial. Anarchy is on trial. These men [the defendants] have been selected...because they are leaders.... Convict these men...save our institutions, our society." Although they were demonstrably innocent, four of the defendants were executed, with one escaping his fate through suicide. By the time war is declared, the federal government wasn't bothering to differentiate between the issues of radical labor, socialism, opposition to the war, and alien enemies; they all are viewed as menaces to order.
- One of the first targets of wartime government repression is the International Workers of the World, or "Wobblies." The IWW was founded in Chicago in 1905 to compete with the more conservative American Federation of Labor, then the most powerful labor group in the US. The IWW embraced socialism, and enforced far less restrictive membership policies than the AFL, recruiting migrant workers, blacks, and immigrants, and in return receiving enthusiastic support from these lowest members of society. IWW leaders such as William "Big Bill" Haywood thought all workers should organize into a single industrial union to avoid the possibility of individual trade unions' being pitted against each other. The IWW employed a grassroots approach: the executive was purposefully weak; membership was open to everyone; local strikes were encouraged. Thus, under American-born leaders, the IWW became the most prominent voice of immigrant workers, who were often snubbed by other labor organizations. Between the IWW's ideology, its embrace of the lower economic and social classes, and its willingness to use violence in conflicts with authority and with strike-breakers, a showdown between the IWW and government forces was inevitable. The underlying, unresolvable conflict was ideological: to the IWW, the government was a tool of capitalist exploitation; to the authorities, the IWW was a revolutionary organization that sought to overthrow the existing government.
- Shortly after the US enters the war, 165 IWW labor leaders are arrested and charged with a number of felonies, including treason. Congress uses the newly enacted Espionage Act of June 1917 to justify huge raids on IWW meeting halls around the country, with over 160 more IWW officers, members, and sympathizers arrested. In April 1918, 101 defendants, including Haywood, are tried. All are found guilty; Haywood and 14 others are sentenced to 20 years or more in prison, and the defendents are fined, collectively, over $2,500,000. The IWW will effectively be destroyed. The shattering of the IWW causes little public protest, as most people associated it with un-Americanism -- a charge fueled by the large number of minorities and foreigners in its membership. Even the language of the IWW is deemed unpatriotic because its impassioned rhetoric too closely mirrored that of socialists in other lands.
- Perhaps the most egregrious violation of IWW members' rights, and the best illustration of the public's hatred of the IWW and foreigners in general, comes as part of the infamous "Bisbee Deportation. In the mining town of Bisbee, Arizona, the IWW had recruited members among Mexican and European workers who routinely labored at lower-paying jobs than native-born Americans. In June 1917, the IWW presents a list of demands to Bisbee's mining companies, including an end to discrimination against minority and foreign workers. When the companies turned down every demand, a strike was called. Rumors begin circulating that the IWW leadership have been infiltrated by German sympathizers. In the middle of the night, armed vigilantes round up 1,200 workers, force them into 24 cattle cars of a train, ship them to New Mexico, and abandon them in a desolate area of the desert where they are forced to remain for weeks without shelter. The survivors are then rounded up by US troops, who incarcerate them in camps for months without charge. The authorities in Bisbee guard all roads into town to prevent the men, or any other undesirables, from entering. Other local workers are put on trial and deported if found guilty of disloyalty to the mining companies. A federal commission will investigate the deportations but finds that no federal laws had been violated. The matter will be referred to the state of Arizona, which took no action against the mining companies.
- Far from provoking a public outcry among the media, the forced marches and incarcerations receive support from the media, illustrated by a July 15, 1917 report by the Los Angeles Times: "On our own soil is an enemy...preaching revolution and invoking anarchy...the IWW's. From Butte to Bisbee, from Seattle to Leadville, that international organization, filled with foreigners, officered by convicts, and attempting vaguely to guise its sabotage behind the specious title of 'Industrial Workers of the World,' is in open warfare against our government." Many of the workers are detained and harassed, not by local, state, or federal law enforcement officials, but private vigilantes, some working with the mining companies and some volunteering their services. The American public shows a willingness to tolerate and even to participate in the rounding up, harassment, and forced "deportation" of native-born Americans. The forced deportation of foreign-born radicals from US territory soon follows.
- The last months of the war sees so-called "patriotic" fervor on the rise. In May 1918, the Sedition Act imposes "a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both" upon anyone disposed to "utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States." Congress passes the Alien Act in October 1918, by which "any alien who, at any time after entering the United States, is found to have been at the time of entry, or to have become thereafter, a member of any anarchist organization" could be deported. Some libertarians, including Albert Jay Nock, H.L. Mencken, Randolph Bourne, and Oswald Garrison protest the draconian curtailing of civil liberties, but most remain silent.
- Meanwhile, the remnants of America's left wing is destroyed. The various acts of 1917 and 1918 were used to destroy what was left of the left wing in America. Victor Berger, the first socialist elected to Congress, is sentenced to 20 years in prison for hindering the war effort (while Berger was free on appeal, his constituency returned him to Congress). The socialist labor leader Eugene Debs is sentenced to 10 years in prison for making an anti-war speech. Even after the war ends in November 1918, political panic and subsequent repression grips the country. Violent labor strikes in 1919 work to cripple some segments of industry. Race riots erupt in cities around the country, including Chicago, where rioting during the "Red Summer" of 1919 leave 38 people dead and a thousand homeless. Mail bombs are delivered in May 1919 to a number of prominent figures, including Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer; this is the beginning of the "Red Scare." The surviving Palmer blamed communists, who he believes are overwhelmingly immigrants. In his essay "The Case against the 'Reds'," Palmer writes: "My information showed that communism in this country was an organization of thousands of aliens who were direct allies of [Leon] Trotzky. Aliens of the same misshapen caste of mind and indecencies of character, and it showed that they were making the same glittering promises of lawlessness, of criminal autocracy to Americans, that they had made to the Russian peasants." Palmer and his assistant, J. Edgar Hoover, launch a crusade against the radical left known as the "Palmer Raids." Beginning in the fall of 1919, between 5,000 and 10,000 suspected alien residents are arrested without warrants. No evidence of a proposed revolution is ever uncovered; many of those arrested are found to be American citizens affiliated with a union or the "wrong" political party. The vast majority of arrestees will eventually be released but hundreds of "enemy aliens," including anarchist Emma Goldman, a naturalized citizen who is "denaturalized," are eventually deported to the Soviet Union.
- The Supreme Court refuses to uphold the constitutional rights of the American citizens arrested under the acts. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. justifies the repression in a famous decision in which he states that when the exercise of free speech constituted a "clear and present danger" to America -- "danger" as defined by the government -- the authorities could legitimately suspend the First Amendment. The Palmer Raids continue into 1920. As anti-war scientists and protesters, union members, and socialist leaders continue to be brutally arrested without warrants and held without trial, however, public approval begins to fall away. Opposition begins to organize. In 1920 the American Civil Liberties Union forms to protest the violation of constitutional rights such as arrest without warrant, unreasonable search and seizure, the denial of due process, and police brutality. Its first director, Roger Baldwin, is a pacifist and a former member of the IWW. Palmer, embarrassed by his baseless predictions of a massive Communist uprising on May 1, 1920 that fails to materialize, but causes widespread panic, is regarded with less and less confidence. Americans begin to demand the reclamation of their abandoned civil rights.
- Historian Wendy McElroy writes, "By 1921, the Red Scare was effectively over. It stands as a reminder of how national-security interests can be used by government to suppress dissenting political ideas even beyond the period of warfare. This is especially true when those expressing the ideas can be vilified as 'foreign.' Indeed, any segregated group that threatened the political status quo came under suspicion. For example, blacks. Race became tangled with labor interests and political intolerance. When black laborers migrated northward en masse to the industrial cities, race riots were sparked. The lynching of blacks increased dramatically and black Americans became victims of the Red Scare, as well. The Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey -- one of the most powerful black voices in America -- was targeted by the FBI for deportation and an organization he founded, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, was infiltrated and discredited by federal agents." Mencken, a journalist himself spied on for his German descent and his avowed love of German culture, writes of the folly of trading fundamental liberties for security and of Holmes's "clear and present danger" opinion: "One finds a clear statement of the doctrine that, in war time, the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment cease to have any substance, and may be set aside by any jury that has been sufficiently inflamed by a district attorney itching for higher office. ...I find it hard to reconcile such notions with any plausible concept of liberalism." (Independent Institute)
- June: Congress passes the Espionage Act, which defines as criminal any word or action that can be defined as contrary to the interests of "the national defense."
Attack on civil liberties
The Justice Department deputizes private citizens to question and hold for arrest any of their neighbors who might oppose or even question the war effort. In July, 1200 mine workers in Bisbee, Arizona declare a strike under the auspices of the left-leaning International Workers of the World; their actions are determined as contrary to the war effort, and a posse of armed vigilantes round up the striking mine workers, force them into railroad cars, ship them to New Mexico, and abandon them in the desert (see above). In August, Attorney General Thomas boasts that he has several hundred thousand people working for him as spies. (Lewis Lapham)
Balfour Declaration establishes Britain's intent to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine
- November: Britain issues the Balfour Declaration, announcing its support of the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Creation of Jewish nation
The Declaration is a tremendous shock to Arabs in the region, who feel that the British have no business making decisions about their lands and their people. By year's end, the British drive Turkish troops out of Jerusalem, enabling Jews to settle in the southern portion of Palestine in great numbers. Palestinian and other Arab fighters launch frequent attacks on Jewish settlements, sparking British reprisals. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Dawoud el-Alami)
Russian Revolution begins
- November 5: Bolshevik revolutionaries, inspired by Marxist leaders Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, overthrow the Russian provisional government led by Alexander Kerensky.
Russian revolution
By November, Bolshevik forces have occupied Moscow. Workers angry with low wages and harsh working conditions, and the defeats suffered at the hands of the Germans, are some of the factors leading to the overthrow. Within days the uprising, nearly bloodless in spite of later propaganda films showing mobs storming buildings, uproots the shaky Kerensky government, leaving the Bolsheviks in power. The more centrist Mensheviks, formerly revolutionary colleagues of Lenin's followers, refuse to take part in the new government, as do other more rightist allies; most of them are later driven into exile or executed. Some areas of Russia, particularly those dominated by non-Russian ethnic groups, are not easily taken into the new government; for a brief time, independent republics in Ukraine and Estonia, among others, spring into being. The Bolshevik Revolution heralds Russia's transformation from a monarchy, through a liberal democratic government, into a fully-blown socialist/communist regime. The Bolshevik regime survives the occupation of parts of the country by Germany, as well as a bloody civil war, in 1918; the civil war is mostly between the "Reds," consisting of radical comminusts and revolutionaries, and the "Whites," made up of Mensheviks, monarchists, conservatives, liberals, and social moderates who oppose the drastic social restructuring and land reforms espoused by the Bolsheviks. Although the Whites have backing from the US, France, Great Britain, and Japan, the Bolsheviks win out. Some historians believe that it is this war that led the Bolsheviks to turn to more repressive, autocratic governance. The new country will be called the Soviet Union; the US does not recognize the new regime until 1933, but many European countries recognize the new government in the 1920s and begin doing business with Lenin's government. (David Barnsdale, Wikipedia)
1918
- On
Russian revolution
five separate occasions, the US Navy and ground forces combat Bolsheviks in Russia. (ZMag) - From
US actions in Latin America
1918 through 1920, US troops patrol Panama to quell civil unrest after elections. (ZMag)
1919
- In
US intervention in Balkans
Yugoslavia, US Marines fight for Italy against Serbs in Dalmatia. (ZMag) - Britain's Winston Churchill says of British plans to use poison gas against the Kurds in the newly formed Iraq,
British use chemical weapons against Kurds
"I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes to spread a lively terror...against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment." The Royal Air Force carries out what is perhaps the first air assault against ground targets, killing over 9,000 Kurds with 97 tons of bombs. (Greg Palast)
Treaty of Versailles
- June 28: The Treaty of Versailles is signed by Germany and the victorious Allies, notably Britain, France, and the United States, ending World War I.
World War I
The treaty is relatively harsh towards the defeated Germans, though not as ruthless as some of its writers wished it to be; Britain's Lloyd George in particular wanted Germany to rebuild and serve as a barrier to the spread of Soviet Communism. France's Georges Clemenceau wanted Germany virtually reduced to rubble so that it could never again start a war. The US's Woodrow Wilson steered a middle course between the two viewpoints. Much of Germany's outlying territories were taken away and given to neighboring countries, including the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia that are given to the USSR and the region of Alsace-Lorraine, given to France. Some of the areas are vital industrial territories that Germany would need to rebuild its economy. In addition, strict restrictions are placed on its military. Germany is also forced to admit to unilateral guilt in starting the war, and is mandated to pay heavy reparations (well beyond its ability to pay). German ally Austria-Hungary is split into two nations, and Turkey, also a German ally during the war, loses a great deal of territory, mostly in the Middle East (including Iraq, Syria, Transjordan, and Palestine). The most far-reaching clause of the treaty is the establishment of the League of Nations, the predecessor to the United Nations. Most Germans hate and despise the terms of the treaty, one of the root causes of the rise of Hitler in 1933, who will rise to power on a wave of nationalist fervor and anti-Versailles sentiment. (History Learning Site) - During the years between World Wars I and II,
US foreign policy
Japan is increasingly seen as the United State's most likely opponent in the next war, but opinion is sharply divided over the role of the British Empire. Would it be a partner with the Americans or a potentially deadly rival? In the 1930s, many American generals are most afraid of "six million British troops rolling over the border from Canada," destroying America's economic engine in its Midwest as Japan holds the US at bay in Asia. (Derek Leebaert)
1919 - 1920
Palmer purge of US Communists
- US Attorney General Mitchell Palmer leads a movement to purge America of Communists.
Attack on civil liberties
He writes a popular essay which describes "tongues of revolutionary heat licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corner of American homes, seeking to replace marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society." At that time, America had around 70,000 Communists among its populace, representing 0.067% of the population, but that number means little to Palmer and his deputy, J. Edgar Hoover, who has already compiled dossiers on over 2 million Americans suspected of left-leaning ties to the Communists or other organizations such as the IWW. Palmer's Justice Department arrests without warrants over 10,000 alien residents such as Emma Goldman under the suspicion of saying something critical of the US, and deports them; Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writes the majority opinion of the court supporting the deportations, saying that the government may suspend the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech when it perceives "a clear and present danger" from such statements. The ruling supports the sentencing of a Montana rancher to twenty years in jail for refusing to kiss the American flag, and a Connecticut haberdasher to six months in jail for saying that Lenin was smart. (Lewis Lapham)
1920
- General Billy Mitchell warns about the harm
Military-industrial complex
of placing US defense in the hands of the "merchants" -- the "people with something to sell." (Derek Leebaert) - US
US actions in Latin America
troops battle unionists in Guatamala. (ZMag) - Adolf Hitler becomes the leader of the German Workers' Party and changes its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party, nicknamed the Nazis.
Rise of Nazi Germany
Hitler's street-corner oratory, attacking Jews, socialists and liberals, capitalists and Communists, begins attracting adherents, including Rudolf Hess, Hermann Göring, and Ernst Röhm, head of the Nazis' paramilitary organisation, the SA. Another admirer is wartime General Erich Ludendorff, whom Hitler will use as a front for his 1924 attempt to seize power in Munich, a failed attempt known as the "Beer Hall Putsch." (Wikipedia)
"First they came for the communists, but I was not a communist, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the socialists and the trade unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." -- Martin Niemuller, Protestant pastor in Nazi Germany
- Spring:
Creation of Jewish nation
Angered at their failure to achieve any sort of self-determination in the negotiations between the great powers to divide the Middle East among themselves, Palestinians in Jerusalem demonstrate against both British and Jewish occupiers. (Dawoud el-Alami)
Western oil companies exert their control over the Middle East; Iraq created
- April 25: Iraq is officially created out of the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Mosul, and Baghdad, which comprise three of the richest oil fields in the Middle East.
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
(See related items above.) Britain holds a ruling mandate over Iraq, Kuwait (separated from Iraq to deny Iraq access to the Persian Gulf), Palestine, and Transjordan, while France has the mandate over Syria and Lebanon plus 25% of profits from Iraqi oil. Various oil companies from the United States and Europe (including the "Seven Sisters," Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, Gulf, British Petroleum, and Royal Dutch Shell, though some of their names were different in 1920) will wield tremendous influence over Middle Eastern governments as well as their home countries' foreign policies towards the Middle East from this point on. Britain's Winston Churchill is later accused of being ignorant of the disparate and traditionally clashing ethnicities of the cobbled-together country, but as a student of history, Churchill likely knew exactly what he was doing, figuring that the new country's Kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'ite populations would spend more time warring with one another than working together to challenge colonial authority. British liason to the region T.E. Lawrence warns of upcoming disaster for Britain after the British government first promises the Iraqis their freedom, then reneges on the promise and keeps the new country as an oil colony. - Investigative news producer and author Barry Lando says in February 2007 that the British "were warned [by Lawrence and others] that it was a very unstable country that they were trying to create, and that in putting the Kurds and the Shi'ites and the Sunnis into one country, chaos would likely follow. And there were almost immediate uprisings. The British were forced to go in there with airplanes. The RAF bombed and strafed the villages where the insurgents were located. Winston Churchill, who was then a major minister in the government, said this is costing us much too much -- we ought to clear out of here. He suggested abandoning plans for Iraq as one unity, and instead setting up essentially separate units for the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. All these themes continue to this day." (MidEast Web, Global Policy Forum, BBC, A Timeline of Oil and Violence, Buzzflash, Greg Palast)
American women win the right to vote
- August 18: The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, granting women the right to vote (suffrage),
Minority rights
is ratified by Tennessee, the 36th state to do so, ensuring that the amendment becomes law. The amendment narrowly passed the House in January 1918, and again in May 1919; the Senate refused to even debate the issue until after the 1918 elections, which saw a raft of pro-suffrage senators elected to office. On June 4, 1919, the Senate passed the amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. - Individuals such as Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose campaigned for women's right to vote as early as 1826, but it was not until after the Civil War that the women's suffrage movement began in earnest. The first women's suffrage meeting took place in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, called by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony founded the National Women's Suffrage Movement.
- In 1869 the territory of Wyoming granted women the right to vote, and joined the Union in 1890 with women voting. Colorado and Utah became the second and third states to allow women the vote. In 1900 the National American Women's Suffrage Movement, led by Carrie Chapman Catt with the blessing of Anthony, became the umbrella organization for the two main women's suffrage movements; headquartered in New York, it worked tirelessly for a constitutional amendment. Others, such as Alice Paul and black rights activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, were instrumental in keeping the issue on the front burner. The movement began to fracture, with Catt's NAWSA denouncing, and eventually expelling, the more militant "suffragettes" of Paul's National Women's Party. (Paul, a Quaker, focused more strongly on gaining a Constitutional amendment that Catt, and advocated more confrontational tactics than the more cautious Catt. Paul, who will die in 1977, will continue to be active in politics after the suffrage movement, including working with various peace movements and advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment. Catt, who also remains active until her death in 1947, will go on to found the League of Women Voters.) It was NWP members who made up the "silent Sentinels," a small group of protesters who silently held banners outside the White House every day for 18 months quoting President Woodrow Wilson's own words in support of democracy as their way of holding the recalcitrant Wilson's feet to the fire. This was most likely the first non-violent civil disobedience campaign in American history. On March 13, 1913, a large group of protesters were attacked during a peaceful march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, ending up with 100 women hospitalized and tremendous publicity outraging the public. The movement decided that public protests were the most effective way of bringing about change. One by one, Western states, eventually joined by New York, began granting their women citizens the right to vote. Violence against women's suffrage marches and protests continued to escalate, with Paul and many of her NWP colleagues being forcibly incarcerated, abused, and beaten in prison.
- A turning point for women's suffrage came in 1914, when newly enfranchised Illinois women went to the polls in droves. Catt wrote, "The effect of this victory upon the nation was astounding. When the first Illinois election took place in April, the press carried the headlines that 250,000 women had voted in Chicago. Illinois, with its large electoral vote of 29, proved the turning point beyond which politicians at last got a clear view of the fact that women were gaining genuine political power."
- On January 9, 1918, Wilson made a powerful speech endorsing the right of women to vote. The next day, a sharply divided House of Representatives passed the legislation for the 19th Amendment; the Senate waited over a year to join the House in passing the amendment, with Wilson and many lawmakers agitating for the amendment to pass before the 1920 elections. American women will first exercise their right to vote in the 1920 elections, and help to elect Warren G. Harding as the country's new president. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia, About, About, Wikipedia, Wikipedia)
- November: Republican Warren G. Harding wins the US presidency.
Harding administration
Harding, a dark horse candidate, wins the Republican nomination after the convention deadlocks over choosing a candidate. He has a long but undistinguished career as a lieutenant governor of Ohio and a US senator. Harding wins the election on his campaign promise to "Return to Normalcy," a repudiation of the progressive policies of the Woodrow Wilson administration in favor of a return to the laissez-faire, business-favoring policies of the McKinley presidency. Harding's "Front Porch campaign," featuring endorsements by Hollywood celebrities and business magnates, as well as his support for women's sufferage, win him huge support among women, who vote for the first time in a presidential election. His presidency is undistinguished, but his Alabama speech advocating rights for American blacks is of historical note. Harding dies under mysterious circumstances in August 1923, perhaps of food poisoning or a heart attack; after his wife refuses to allow an autopsy, theories of foul play abound, but are never proven. A popular theory that his wife poisoned him is never proven, and the author of a book propounding this theory is exposed as a fraud. - Harding's administration is probably best remembered for the Teapot Dome scandal, which involves Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall covertly leasing public oil fields to business associates in exchange for personal loans. Fall will be imprisoned in 1931. Thomas Miller, head of the Office of Alien Property, will be convicted of accepting bribes. Jess Smith, personal aide to the Attorney General, destroyed papers and then committed suicide. Charles Forbes, Director of the Veterans Bureau, skims profits, earns fat kickbacks, and runs alcohol and drugs. He will be convicted of fraud and bribery and imprisoned for two years. Charles Cramer, an aide to Forbes, will also commit suicide. No evidence to date suggests that Harding personally profited from these crimes, but he was apparently unable to stop them. "My God, this is a hell of a job!" Harding says at one point. "I have no trouble with my enemies, but my damn friends, they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights." Harding is also tarred by the revelation that he has carried on at least one extramarital affair and possibly others; his mistress, Mrs. Carrie Fulton Phillips, threatened to make their affair public while he was a US senator if he voted to go to war with Germany; Harding defied her and cast his vote anyway. Unsubstantiated tales of at least one more affair will dog Harding for decades after his death. (Wikipedia)
- December: The General Federation of Jewish Labor, or Histadrut, is formed, with David Ben-Gurion as its leader.
Oppression of Jews
The founding conference of Histadrut decides that a defense organization is needed to defend Jewish settlements against Arab attacks; in March 1921, a secret defense organization, the Haganah, is formed without the knowledge of Great Britain, training Jews and purchasing arms and materiel. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok)
