What a great day for an atrocity!
1205: Constantinople
In 1205, the Fourth Crusade, which never quite made it to the
Holy Land, instead captured and sacked Constantinople (now
Istanbul) to pay the Doge of Venice for their transportation to
Egypt. The crusaders spared no one in their savagery: they
murdered old and young, they raped women and girls - even
nuns - in their frenzy. They also desecrated churches and
plundered treasuries, and much of the city was put to the torch.
In celebration of the victory, a prostitute from the crusader army climbed
onto the altar of Hagia Sophia and gyrated to obscene songs: barbarism
cloaked in the mantle of religious warfare had swept aside one of the great
civilizations of history.
1873: Colfax
On this day in 1873, 12 years after the end of the Civil War, The Colfax massacre
(or Colfax Riot, as the events are termed on the official state historic marker)
occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana during Reconstruction.
In the wake of a contested election for governor of Louisiana and local offices, a white
militia, armed with rifles and a small cannon, overpowered freedmen and state
militia trying to control the parish courthouse in Colfax, Louisiana. Most of the
freedmen were killed after they surrendered, and nearly 50 were killed later
that night after being held as prisoners for several hours. Estimates of the
number of dead varied. Two U.S. Marshals who visited the site on April 15,
1873 reported 62 fatalities. A military report to Congress in 1875 identified
81 black men who had been killed by name, and also estimated that 15-20
bodies were thrown into the Red River and another 18 secretly buried — for
a grand total of "at least 105."
Surviving blacks told investigators that blacks dug a trench around the courthouse
to protect it from what they saw as an attempt by white Democrats to steal an
election. They were attacked by whites armed with rifles, revolvers and a small
cannon. When blacks refused to leave, the courthouse was burned, and the black
defenders were shot down. While the whites accused blacks of violating a flag of
truce and rioting, black Republicans said that none of this was true. They accused
whites of marching captured prisoners away in pairs and shooting them in the back
of the head.
The massacre in Colfax gained headlines from national newspapers from Boston to
Chicago. Various government forces spent weeks trying to round up members of the
white militias. A total of 97 men were indicted. In the end, only nine men were
brought to trial for violations of the US Enforcement Act of 1870. It had been
designed to provide Federal protection for civil rights of freedmen under the
14th Amendment against actions by terrorist groups such as the KKK.
The men were charged with one murder, and charges related to conspiracy
against the rights of freedmen. There were two succeeding trials in 1874;
in the first, one man was acquitted, while a mistrial was declared in the
cases of the other eight. In the next trial, three men were found guilty
of conspiracy against the freedmen's right of assembly and 15 other
charges. Justice Joseph Bradley, an associate justice of the US Supreme
Court happened to attend the trial. After the verdict was in, he ruled
that the Enforcement Act was unconstitutional and ordered all the
men set free.
When the Federal government appealed the case, it was heard by the US
Supreme Court as United States v. Cruikshank (1875). The Supreme Court
ruled that the Enforcement Act of 1870 (which was based on the Bill of
Rights and 14th Amendment) applied only to actions committed by the
state, and that it did not apply to actions committed by individuals or
private conspiracies. This meant that the Federal government could not
prosecute cases such as the Colfax killings. The court said plaintiffs who
believed their rights abridged had to seek protection from the state.
Louisiana did not prosecute any of the perpetrators of the Colfax
massacre, and most southern states would not prosecute any white
man for attacks against freedmen.
A monument erected on the site soon
after the event commemorated the
three white casualties of the "riot",
which is what the white community
termed the massacre. The monument
hails them as "heroes" who fell "fighting
for white supremacy".
An official state historical marker, erected in 1950, celebrates the event as
"the end of carpetbag misrule in the South" .
1919: Amritsar
On this day in 1919 British troops in India massacred at least 379 (perhaps
as many as 1000) unarmed demonstrators in the Amritsar massacre.
The day happened to be Baisakh, one of
Punjab's largest religious festivals, and
a crowd of 20,000 had gathered to celebrate.
Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer feared an
uprising, and ordered troops to begin
shooting without warning or any order
to disperse, and to direct shooting towards
the densest sections of the crowd. He
continued the shooting, approximately
1,650 rounds in all, until his ammunition
was almost exhausted.
Dyer was not charged with any wrong-
doing, but was relieved of command
for "a mistaken notion of duty".
Rudyard Kipling started a fund for
"the man who saved India" (General
Dyer) and contributed 50 pounds
sterling; he raised over 26,000 pounds
and presented it to Dyer on his retirement
and settling in England.
1943: Katyn
On this day in 1943, an odd situation occured when
the normally immune-to-atrocity-shock Nazis made
public the discovery of a mass grave of Polish POWs
executed by Soviet forces in the Katyn Forest
Massacre. Details of the massacre, which had
occured in 1940, were announced in Germany, driving
a wedge between the Western Allies, the Polish
government-in-exile in London, and the Soviet Union.
The Germans assembled and brought in a European
commission consisting of twelve forensic experts
and their staffs from Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark,
Finland, France, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands,
Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, and Hungary. Their
purpose was to prove that the massacre of the
Polish officer corps had been committed by the
Soviets in 1940, and not by the Nazis themselves
in 1941.
A Nazi poropaganda poster, in French,
reads: If the Soviets win - Katyn Everywhere."
"We are now using the discovery of 12,000 Polish officers, murdered by the GPU,
for anti-Bolshevik propaganda on a grand style. We sent neutral journalists and
Polish intellectuals to the spot where they were found. Their reports now reaching
us from ahead are gruesome. The Führer has also given permission for us to hand
out a drastic news item to the German press. I gave instructions to make the widest
possible use of the propaganda material. We shall be able to live on it for a couple
weeks." - Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister
It was not until 1989 that Soviet scholars admitted that Stalin himself had ordered
the massacre. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev admitted the execution had been carried
out by the NKVD and confirmed the existence of two additional burial sites at Mednoye
and Piatykhatky.
1945: Gardelegen
On this day in 1945, German troops massacred more
than 1000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen,
Germany. On Friday, April 13, 1945, 1016 political and military
prisoners were locked inside a barn on the Isenschnibbe estate
and burned to death. Victims who escaped the burning barn
were shot.
About 700 of the bodies were buried in mass graves near the
site. American troops arrived before the evidence was completely
hidden.
Several days after discovering the atrocity, American
troops forced the German residents of the town of
Gardelegen to rebury the dead in individually marked
graves.
Gardelegen is now a national memorial.
1948: Medical Convoy Massacre
On this day in 1948, the Hadassah Medical
Convoy Massacre took place when a convoy
bringing medical and fortification supplies
and personnel to Hadassah Hospital on Mount
Scopus, Jerusalem, was ambushed by Arab forces.
Seventy-nine Jewish residents of the British Mandate
of Palestine, mostly doctors and nurses, were killed
in the attack.
Born This Day:
1570 - Guy Fawkes
1743 - Thomas Jefferson, who said:
"There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and
talents... There is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth,
without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class...
The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision
should be made to prevent its ascendency."
1825 – Thomas D'Arcy McGee
1866 -Butch Cassidy
1906 -Samuel Beckett, who wrote:
Can it be we are not free? It might be worth looking into.
1939 - Seamus Heaney, who wrote:
I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
1944 - Jack Casady
http://youtu.be/mjfhsLuOEWI
1945 - Lowell George
http://youtu.be/SkZsSydzQjM
1946 - the Rev. Al Green
http://youtu.be/hsU6_eSG4k4
1949 - Christopher Hitchings, who said:
Mockery of religion is one of the most essential things... one of the
beginnings of human emancipation is the ability to laugh at authority.
1962 – Hillel Slovak
http://youtu.be/NAGLiHjPBsY
It's also the birthday of Jack Chick,
born this day in 1924, who is
responsible for Chick Tracts,
which are hateful little religious
publications which are generally
found in truck stop rest rooms.
I have a large collection of them.
My favorite is The Death Cookie, the
story of an unkempt man who wishes
to control others.
This man is counseled by a sinister
advisor who encourages him to
invent the doctrine of the Eucharist.
Based on this advice, the man is soon
controlling those around him as
(da da DAAAA) the Pope.
