Category: History

Pres. Kennedy Advises U.S. to Start Digging

On October 6, 1961, in a letter to the members of the Committee on Civil Defense of the Governors’ Conference, President John F. Kennedy addressed fears of a thermo-nuclear war.  He called for a “national understanding” of the need for government and private bomb shelters. “In simple terms,” he urged, “this goal is to reach for fallout protection for every American as rapidly as possible.”

Bert the Turtle In the letter, President Kennedy recounted that the federal government was moving forward to make fallout shelter space available.  But he also urged states and individuals to act. He noted, “The people of this country will be urged, by me, by the Governors and by other leaders to do what is within their means.”

Additionally, Kennedy predicted, “Protection against this threat is within reach of an informed America willing to face the facts and act.” A year later in October 1962, the Cuban missile crisis made fallout shelters seem even more necessary.

Atomic and Nuclear War Fears

Anyone who grew up between the late 1940s through the next several decades will remember these fears of atomic or nuclear war that peaked at various times.  While such fears have changed over time, one may look back on those times through popular culture.

My seventh grade teacher gave our class a major assignment where we each had to design a fallout shelter.  Each of our shelters had to be planned to protect and house our class indefinitely in the wake of a nuclear war. It was an interesting assignment, and I remember carefully calculating food supplies and the size of the shelter. I suspect today there would be complaints if a teacher gave the assignment to students due to the accompanying nightmares.

The fears of annihilation by the new powerful bombs did not begin and end with President Kennedy. The 1959 movie On the Beach with Gregory Peck was a story about survivors of World War III. In 1964, Henry Fonda played a president contemplating the possibility of nuclear war in Fail Safe.  The same year director Stanley Kubrick addressed the insanity of nuclear bombs in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Decades later, the 1983 TV mini-series The Day After terrified a new generation.

Ladybug Ladybug

Many years ago, I was flipping around the TV channels very late at night and ran across a black and white movie about schoolchildren walking home from school after an alarm warning of a nuclear attack. The film, Ladybug Ladybug (1963), warned about the dark side of our fears. Watching the haunting movie at such a late hour led to me not getting much sleep that night, and the movie has stayed with me.

For full effect, watch Ladybug Ladybug late at night and contemplate the time period where they did not have the Internet or cell phones. The movie was directed by Frank Perry and starred Jane Connell and William Daniels.

Unfortunately, the whole movie is no longer available on YouTube.  But here is a scene from Ladybug Ladybug.

Duck and Cover

One of the most famous “films” about these world-ending fears was the short film made by the U.S. Government’s civil defense branch in 1951 and first shown in 1952 during the Korean War. “Duck and Cover” was aimed at kids, and it begins with an animated Bert the Turtle.

Schoolchildren for many years would learn from Bert the Turtle how to protect themselves by ducking and covering themselves. The advice is ridiculous for someone near the bomb’s target area.  But supposedly the suggestion is not so ridiculous for those further away seeking to protect themselves.

Still, like my teacher’s bomb shelter exercise, in retrospect it seems an odd thing to be teaching children.  Check it out.

Modern Fears

Fortunately, through the hard work of many decent leaders, kids today do not have the same immediate fear of a nuclear war with another country. Unfortunately, human ignorance and brutality have not gone away and have survived in other forms.  Today, we cannot even pretend that fallout shelters will protect us from the threats and fears of modern society.

Thus, we can no longer pretend that we are protected by a president’s idea of digging in the ground or a cartoon turtle’s suggestion to “duck and cover.” But at least we are still around.

What do you remember about the Cold War? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    The Tragic Civil Rights Hero Clyde Kennard

    On September 25, 1960, Clyde Kennard was arrested in Mississippi and charged with stealing $25 worth of chicken feed. An all-white jury then convicted the black man of the crime.  And he was sentenced to seven years of hard labor at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, otherwise known as “Parchman Farm.”

    Kennard eventually would be released from prison after he was diagnosed with cancer and was near death, and he died on July 4, 1963. What makes the story especially tragic, though, is that Kennard had been framed with the theft only because he had tried to go to a white college.

    Kennard Sought an Education
    Kennard Civil Rights
    Kennard with his sister after being paroled in 1963

    Clyde Kennard had been born in 1927 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.  After serving for seven years in the military, he completed three years of college at the University of Chicago.

    After three years into his political science major, though, his father died.  So, Kennard returned home to Mississippi to help his mother run the family farm.

    Back in Mississippi, Kennard wanted to complete his degree but he needed to go to a school near to the farm so he could help his mother. The only nearby college was the the all-white, Mississippi Southern College.  And state officials did not want a black man challenging the status quo.  Officials realized they might lose any challenge due to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

    Applications to Mississippi Southern College

    Kennard first applied to Mississippi Southern College in 1955.  But he was rejected on technical grounds because he did not have letters of support from prior graduates.

    Kennard applied to the school again in 1958.  This second time he withdrew his application after civil rights leaders persuaded him to withdraw.  They had concluded it was not the right time to try to integrate the school.

    Then, Kennard tried again to apply to the school in September 1959. The school president again rejected him on a technicality.

    Kennard’s Arrests and Prosecution

    After this attempt to get admitted to Mississippi Southern College, as Kennard was leaving a meeting at the school, he was arrested.  The alleged charges were speeding and possessing alcohol, even though Kennard did not drink.

    Kennard did not give up.  He wrote letters to a newspaper, stating that he would go to federal court if necessary to get in the school. Then, in September 1960 he was framed for a chicken-feed theft and sent to prison.  At the prison, he endured horrible treatment and had to work in the fields picking cotton.

    Cancer Diagnosis and Death

    When Kennard was diagnosed with cancer, state officials first refused to release him from prison. But pressure from civil rights leaders like Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. led state officials to fear having a martyr die in their prison system.

    So in February 1963, officials released the very sick Kennard.  He died several months later on July 4, 1963.

    Kennard’s Innocence

    Decades later, a reporter would get the “witness” to the chicken-feed theft to recant the story.  The “witness” explained that the charges had to do with Kennard’s attempts to go to school.

    Newly discovered documents support Kennard’s innocence too.  And in 2006 the Circuit Court of Forrest County, Mississippi exonerated Kennard. Thus, it became clear what everyone knew at the time: Kennard had committed no crime. He was just a man who wanted to go to school.

    “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder”

    The tragic story of Clyde Kennard reminds me of one of the great African-American spirituals, “We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” Like many spirituals, the song connects the struggles of American slaves to the plight of the Jewish people in ancient Egypt.  “Jacob’s Ladder” uses the Biblical image of the ladder climbing to heaven that Jacob dreamed about.

    One of my favorite versions of the song is by Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded the wonderful a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973 before retiring from the group in 2004. You may recognize this version of “Jacob’s Ladder” from Ken Burns’s series The Civil War.

    Clyde Kennard knew it is a long ladder that he helped climb. In response to the song’s question, “Children do you want your freedom?,” Kennard responded with a resounding “yes.” And for that and for his sacrifice, we should remember him.

    In one of the final newspaper letters Kennard wrote before he was sentenced to prison, he explained, “If there is one quality of Americans which would set them apart from almost any other peoples, it is the history of their struggle for liberty and justice under the law.”

    Every rung goes higher, higher;
    Every rung goes higher, higher;
    Every rung goes higher, higher;
    Soldiers of the cross.

    Photo via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Where Woody Guthrie Wrote “This Land Is Your Land”

    Where Guthrie wrote This Land

    Reading My Name is New York: Ramblin’ Around Woody Guthrie’s Town by Nora Guthrie and the Woody Guthrie Archives, I was surprised to discover that I often walk past where Woody Guthrie wrote “This Land is Your Land.” The picture above shows the corner of 43rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan where he wrote the song, although the building where he lived is no longer there.

    On February 22, 1940, Guthrie moved into Hanover House at 101 W. 43rd Street when he was 27 years old. The boarding house where he stayed for about a month sat above a pawn shop. The day after he moved in, Guthrie began writing down the words to the song that would eventually become “This Land is Your Land.”

    Even then, the New York City street corner was busy, and the “New York Island” must have brought inspiration. But Guthrie also had been developing the song since he had hitchhiked to New York across the country from Los Angeles.

    In a previous post, Chimesfreedom explained the background of the song and how it was originally called “God Blessed America” before Guthrie edited the song. It would be about a decade from Guthrie’s time in the cheap boarding house until “This Land is Your Land” became popular. It’s popularity was boosted by a 1950 songbook used by school teachers and after Pete Seeger began performing it every where he went.

    In the video below, Seeger performs the song with others in front of the Lincoln Memorial at the “We Are One” Presidential Inaugural Concert on January 19, 2009.

    Guthrie wrote other songs at Hanover House, including another one of my favorites, “Jesus Christ.” Using the music from the folk ballad “Jesse James,” Guthrie imagined Christ as a rebel who spoke on behalf of the poor. And, looking out from the boarding house, he included a line about where he wrote the song as he imagined how Jesus Christ would be treated were he to return today.

    This song was written in New York City
    Of rich man, preacher, and slave
    If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
    They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.

    In the video below, you may hear U2’s version of Guthrie’s “Jesus Christ.”

    Speaking of Woody Guthrie in New York, a recent three-CD audio book set compiles stories about Guthrie in New York along with songs Guthrie wrote about New York City, My Name Is New York (2014). The title track from the set, “My Name Is New York,” was never released in Guthrie’s lifetime.

    Guthrie’s daughter Nora Guthrie recently explained that after she found the tape of the song “My Name Is New York” and heard the lyrics, she knew she had to release it. Below, you may hear the song.

    Regarding the corner where Guthrie wrote “This Land Is Your Land,” Bob Egan has some photos of the above street corner around the time that Guthrie lived there on PopSpots.

    Guthrie only spent a short time living on this corner in Manhattan before he would go on to live in other places in the city. But the corner of 43rd Street and 6th Avenue will always be able to claim a connection to some great American songs, including what may be the country’s best.

    Photo by Chimesfreedom. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    4 Little Girls on a “Birmingham Sunday”

    4 Little Girls On September 15, 1963, racists exploded a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, injuring several people and killing four little girls aged 11-14: Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley. The incident is largely seen as a turning point that helped inspire the Civil Rights Movement.

    In Spike Lee’s excellent documentary about the incident, 4 Little Girls (1997), many of the people who knew or were related to the girls give moving stories about the events surrounding the bombing.

    It would be decades before some of those involved in the bombing would be brought to justice.  The movie interviews former Alabama Attorney General William Baxley, who reopened an investigation into the bombing in the early 1970s, resulting in the conviction one of the men involved in the bombing in 1977.

    Baxley had long been interested in pursuing justice in the case even before he was attorney general. In the movie, he explains how he used to listen to Joan Baez’s song “Birmingham Sunday” every day.

    “Birmingham Sunday,” which was written by Richard Fariña, appeared on Baez’s album, Joan Baez/5 (1964).  It was released in the year after the bombing.

    The way the song helped inspire Baxley through the years to help bring some justice to the tragedy helps show the power of song. Spike Lee’s movie 4 Little Girls also shows the power of film.


    Photo of church window at 16th Street Baptist Church, donated by the people of Wales after the bombing, via public domain.

    Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    The Heroic Death of Folksinger Victor Jara

    Chilean singer-songwriter and activist Victor Jara left a fascinating legacy beyond his heroic death, inspiring many around the world, including Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen.

    Victor Jara's Death

    On September 16, 1973, Chilean singer-songwriter and political activist Victor Jara was killed. According to one source, the killing took place in a stadium before a large crowd of prisoners being held by the military after a coup.

    Before his brutal death, Jara had one final act of courage and heroism.

    The 1973 Coup and Taking of Prisoners

    Jara had supported Salvador Allende, who had been elected president of Chile in 1970. But the Chilean right wing used the military to stage a coup d’état against the popularly elected Marxist on September 11, 1973.

    Allende allegedly killed himself rather than surrender (although some argue he was murdered).  But many of Allende’s supporters were taken prisoner, including Jara.  You may see Jara below performing a few months earlier in a July 1973 TV show.

    Jara’s Defiant Death

    After the arrest, Jara and about 6,000 others were taken to the Santiago boxing stadium, according to Chilean journalist Miguel Cabezas. Jara tried to help the other prisoners who were kept in the stands.  But when the prison camp commander recognized the singer, he had Jara taken to a table in the center of the arena for everyone to see.

    Officials had Jara place his hands on the table. Then, with an ax they cut off the fingers of both of Jara’s hands. The officer beat Jara, screaming, “Now sing, you motherf***er, now sing.”

    Jara rose up from the blows and went to the edge of the bleachers. To the horrified crowd, Jara said, ‘All right comrades, let’s do the senor comandante the favor.’ He lifted his bleeding hands, leading the crowd in singing the anthem of Unidad Popular, the party of Allende.

    Officials opened fire, and Jara’s body fell dead.

    Other versions of the tale recounting Jara’s death tell a slightly different story.  Reportedly, he was tortured in a basement for several days.  From the torture, he had a swollen face.  And his fingers that used to play guitar were fractured by the butt of a rifle.  A low-ranking officer then spun the chamber of a revolver, pulled the trigger, and killed Jara in a round of Russian roulette.

    No matter how Jara died, his life is worth remembering.  And whether or not he actually led others in a rebellious song before his death, the story symbolizes where he stood on the side of history.

    World Leaders and the Coup

    Scholars still debate how much of a role the U.S. played in the Chile coup. President Richard Nixon feared the success of a socialist elected official in South America who was friends with Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Thus, the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Chile that at a minimum contributed to the circumstances of the coup.

    Nixon, however, would be out of office in less than a year in August 1974, resigning in disgrace. In Chile, General Augusto Pinochet would hold power much longer, remaining as president until 1990 and in other official offices for almost a decade after that.

    Pinochet’s last years, though, were spent facing charges related to human rights violations.  He died in 2006 without being convicted for any of his crimes. But legal action continued against others involved in Jara’s murder.

    Update: Several former Chilean military officers have been charged in the murder of Jara.  In June 2016, a Florida jury found a former Chilean army officer liable for the torture and murder Jara.  The jury awarded $28 million in damages to Jara’s widow Joan Jara and their daughters. And in December 2023, that former lieutenant, Pedro Barrientos, was extradited from the U.S. to Chile.  Victor Jara’s widow, though, did not get to see it as she passed away two weeks earlier in November 2023.

    Jara’s Legacy Continues

    As tyrants fall away, history remembers the heroes and the martyrs. The military burned many of Jara’s master recordings, but Jara’s wife Joan Jara took some recordings out of the country.

    American folksinger Phil Ochs, who had met Jara in Chile, was devastated by the killing.  He helped organize a memorial fundraiser called “An Evening With Salvador Allende” in New York in 1974. The same year, a Soviet astronomer named an asteroid after Jara.

    Others paid tribute to Victor Jara, including Pete Seeger. Toronto band Apostle of Hustle recorded a song “Fast Pony For Victor Jara” for their 2007 CD U King. (Thanks to Robert Lawson for telling me about the band.) In 2008, Calexico released the song “Victor Jara’s Hands” on the album Carried to Dust. (Thanks to Rich Wagner for pointing me to the song.)

    Arlo Guthrie also wrote and recorded a tribute to the singer-activist with the song, “Victor Jara,” from the 1976 album Amigo.  Guthrie wrote the music and Adrian Mitchell provided the lyrics with each verse focusing on Jara’s hands that officials would break. (Thanks to Bill Waldron for alerting me to Guthrie’s song.)

    He sang about the copper miners,
    And those who worked the land;
    He sang about the factory workers,
    And they knew he was their man;
    His hands were gentle, his hands were strong.

    Jara also appears in U2’s song “One Tree Hill” from the band’s 1988 album The Joshua Tree.  Bono wrote the song in memory of his friend Greg Carroll but the song also refers to Victor Jara:  “Jara sang, his song a weapon in the hands of love / You know his blood still cries from the ground.”

    More recently, when Bruce Springsteen performed in Santiago, Chile in September 2013, he performed Jara’s song “Manifesto” in Spanish.

    Springsteen introduced the song, saying “If you are a political musician, Victor Jara is still a great inspiration. It’s an honor to be here and I take it with humility. Victor Jara is alive.”

    Here is a link to an interesting interactive timeline of the coup, but if you are reading this post on a mobile device, note that it uses a lot of data. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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