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NHL star Maurice Richard suspended; riot ensues

On March 16, 1955, NHL president Clarence Campbell suspends Montreal Canadiens star Maurice “Rocket” Richard for the remainder of the regular season and playoffs after he attacks an opponent with his stick and slugs a referee in the head. Riots erupt the following day at the Red Wings-Canadiens game in Montreal, causing the game to be cut short after items are thrown at Campbell and a tear gas bomb goes off in the arena.

Three days earlier, Richard—who was leading the NHL with 74 points—was struck by a high stick from Boston Bruins defensemen Hal Laycoe. Laycoe was penalized, but Richard attacked him with his stick and punched referee Cliff Thompson “with two hard blows to the face” when he attempted to intervene, according to The Ottawa Citizen.

“Whether this type of conduct is the product of temperamental instability or willful defiance of authority in the games does not matter,” Campbell said of the suspension. “It is the type of conduct which cannot be tolerated by any player—star or otherwise.”

Despite warnings that his attendance at the Red Wings-Canadiens game on March 17, 1955, could be problematic, Campbell stood in defiance in the stands at the game. From the drop of the puck, fans threw everything from shoes to food at the president. One fan even eluded security long enough to shake Campbell’s hand, then slap him in the face.

A tear gas bomb was set off in one of the exits, causing fans to hurriedly leave. A riot in the streets ensued—an incident that would become known as the “Richard Riot.” Sixteen people were arrested for rioting (each fined $25), 33 people were injured (including eight policemen) and property damage totaled roughly $100,000. The next day, Richard appeared on television to encourage fans to behave.

“I will take my punishment and come back next year to help the club and the younger players to win the [Stanley] Cup,” he said. Montreal won the Stanley Cup the next season.

Richard, who died in 2000, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1965.

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James Wong Howe becomes first Asian American to win an Academy Award

Noted for his innovative use of wide-angle shots, low-key lighting and deep focus, cinematographer James Wong Howe becomes the first Asian American to win an Academy Award on March 30, 1955.

Receiving the Oscar for Best Cinematography for The Rose Tattoo, starring Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster, Howe had a knack for making “old stars young, plump stars thin, ordinary faces beautiful,” as he once said, according to Smithsonian.

Born in China in 1899 and immigrating to America at age 5, Howe got his Hollywood start as an assistant to Cecil B. DeMille. Considered one of the most influential cinematographers of all time, over his six-decade career he was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, winning twice. He also took home the Best Cinematography award for Hud in 1963.

Married in 1937 to writer Sanora Babb, who was white, the couple’s interracial marriage wasn’t recognized until the 1949 end of California’s anti-miscegenation law, according to Variety. “Even then, Wong Howe and Babb couldn’t go public, since mixed-race marriage violated the studios’ morals clause,” the publication writes. Post-World War II, Howe was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee and was “gray-listed.”

Although the gray-listing caused him to lose out on work in the 1940s and early 1950s, he still earned credits on more than 130 films, including The Thin Man, Picnic, Funny Lady and Yankee Doodle Dandy, working with legendary stars such as Ronald Reagan, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman and Barbra Streisand, among others.

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Marian Anderson becomes first African American to perform at the Met Opera

Publish date:: Sep 18, 2019

Year: 1955

Month Day: January 07

On the evening of January 7, 1955, the curtain at the Metropolitan Opera in New York rises to reveal Marian Anderson, the first African American to perform with the Met.

By then, Anderson was in the twilight of a career that was equal parts acclaimed and hamstrung by racism. First noticed by an aunt, who convinced her to join a church choir and helped her put on her first professional shows, Anderson spent her early career in the eastern United States. She was successful but consistently thwarted from mainstream stardom by racism and segregation, and she eventually decided to continue her career in Europe. She became a sensation there, particularly in Scandinavia, and major figures such as composer Jean Sibelius and conductor Arturo Toscanini praised her as a singular vocal talent.

Upon returning to the United States, Anderson performed regularly, but continued to be denied bookings, hotel rooms, and other basic opportunities that were afforded to whites. In 1939 the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her perform at Constitution Hall on account of her race. A group of supporters that included President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, who resigned from the DAR in protest, helped her instead put on a concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Attended by 75,000 people, including prominent members of Roosevelt’s cabinet, and broadcast across the nation, the concert not only bolstered her fame but also thrust Anderson into the nascent struggle for civil rights.

Rudolf Bing became director of the Met in 1950 and was intent on signing Anderson to perform there from the outset. Though she had been courted by companies foreign and domestic, Anderson had shied away from opera in the past, feeling her voice was not right for it and deterred by the lack of roles for black singers. When Bing finally convinced her to sign with him, he did not tell the board of the Met until after the fact. He cast Anderson as Ulrica in Verdi’s Un ballo en maschera. The role, a witch-like figure often portrayed by white women wearing dark makeup, was not the lead, and it was freighted with racial stereotypes connecting primitive and “backwards” traditions with people of color. Nonetheless, her debut at the Met was a major moment in the history of integration of the arts, and the New York Times reported that Anderson’s performance left many audience members in tears.

The Met made Anderson a permanent member, although Un ballo en maschera was her only appearance with the company. She would go on to perform at the inaugurations of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. In 1965, she retired following a farewell tour that began at Constitution Hall, where she had once been barred from performing, and ended at Carnegie Hall. She died in 1993.

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“The Guinness Book of Records” debuts

Year: 1955

Month Day: August 27

On August 27, 1955, the first edition of “The Guinness Book of Records” is published in Great Britain; it quickly proves to be a hit. Now known as the “Guinness World Records” book, the annual publication features a wide range of feats related to humans and animals.

The inspiration for the record book can be traced to November 1951, when Sir Hugh Beaver, managing director of the Guinness Brewery (founded in Dublin in 1759), was on a hunting trip in Ireland. After failing to shoot a golden plover, Beaver and the members of his hunting party debated whether the creature was Europe’s fastest game bird but were unable to locate a book with the answer.

Thinking that patrons of Britain’s pubs would enjoy a record book which could be used to settle friendly disagreements, Beaver decided to have one produced. He hired twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter, the founders of a London-based agency that provided facts and statistics to newspapers and advertisers. The book was intended to be given away for free in pubs to promote the Guinness brand; however, it turned out to be so popular the company started selling it that fall and it became a best-seller. An American edition debuted in 1956 and was soon followed by editions in a number of other countries. The McWhirters traveled the globe to research and verify records. Ross McWhirter was involved in compiling the book until his death in 1975 at the hands of Irish Republican Army gunmen; his brother Norris continued to serve as the book’s editor until 1986.

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Winston Churchill retires as prime minister

Year: 1955

Month Day: April 05

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, retires as prime minister of Great Britain.

Born at Blenheim Palace in 1874, Churchill joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father’s death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an illustrious military career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and distinguishing himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his commission to concentrate on his literary and political career and in 1900 was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the Liberals, serving a number of important posts before being appointed Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, where he worked to bring the British navy to a readiness for the war he foresaw.

In 1915, in the second year of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns and was thus excluded from the war coalition government. However, in 1917, he returned to politics as a cabinet member in the Liberal government of Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921, he was secretary of state for war and in 1924 returned to the Conservative Party, where two years later he played a leading role in the defeat of the General Strike of 1926. Out of office from 1929 to 1939, Churchill issued unheeded warnings of the threat of Nazi and Japanese aggression.

After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill returned to his post as First Lord of the Admiralty and eight months later replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of a new coalition government. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that Britain would “never surrender.” He rallied the British people to a resolute resistance and expertly orchestrated Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin into an alliance that eventually crushed the Axis.

After a postwar Labor Party victory in 1945, he became leader of the opposition and in 1951 was again elected prime minister. In 1953, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. After his retirement as prime minister, he remained in Parliament until 1964, the year before his death.

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Black music gets whitewashed, as Georgia Gibbs hits the pop charts with “The Wallflower (Dance With Me, Henry)”

Year: 1955

Month Day: March 26

For its time, the mid-1950s, the lyrical phrase “You got to roll with me, Henry” was considered risqué just as the very label “rock and roll” was understood to have a sexual connotation. The line comes from an Etta James record originally called “Roll With Me Henry” and later renamed “The Wallflower.” Already a smash hit on the Billboard Rhythm and Blues chart, it went on to become a pop hit in the spring of 1955, but not for Etta James. Re-recorded with “toned-down” lyrics by the white pop singer Georgia Gibbs, “Dance With Me Henry (Wallflower)” entered the pop charts on March 26, 1955, setting off a dubious trend known as “whitewashing.”

In addition to replacing “Roll” with “Dance,” the lyrics of the Georgia Gibbs version omitted lines like “If you want romancin‘/You better learn some dancin,’” but its most important change was more subtle. Even in an era when radio audiences rarely saw the faces of the singers they listened to, the rhythmic and vocal style of the Georgia Gibbs record made it as obviously white as the Etta James record was black. And while many Americans might have preferred the Etta James version to the Georgia Gibbs cover had they heard the two in succession, they would rarely have the opportunity to do so. Pop radio was almost exclusively white radio in 1955 America, and middle-of-the-road artists like Nat “King” Cole and the Ink Spots were rare exceptions to this rule.

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Emmett Till is murdered

Year: 1955

Month Day: August 28

While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.

His assailants—the white woman’s husband and her brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.

Who Was Emmett Till?

Till grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, and though he had attended a segregated elementary school, he was not prepared for the level of segregation he encountered in Mississippi. His mother warned him to take care because of his race, but Emmett enjoyed pulling pranks.

On August 24, while standing with his cousins and some friends outside a country store in Money, Emmett bragged that his girlfriend back home was white. Emmett’s African American companions, disbelieving him, dared Emmett to ask the white woman sitting behind the store counter for a date.

He went in, bought some candy, and on the way out was heard saying, “Bye, baby” to the woman. There were no witnesses in the store, but Carolyn Bryant—the woman behind the counter—later claimed that he grabbed her, made lewd advances and wolf-whistled at her as he sauntered out.

Emmett Till Murder

Roy Bryant, the proprietor of the store and the woman’s husband, returned from a business trip a few days later and heard how Emmett had allegedly spoken to his wife. Enraged, he went to the home of Till’s great uncle, Mose Wright, with his half-brother J.W. Milam in the early morning hours of August 28.

The pair demanded to see the boy. Despite pleas from Wright, they forced Emmett into their car. After driving around in the night, and perhaps beating Till in a toolhouse behind Milam’s residence, they drove him down to the Tallahatchie River.

Three days later, his corpse was recovered but was so disfigured that Mose Wright could only identify it by an initialed ring. Authorities wanted to bury the body quickly, but Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley, requested it be sent back to Chicago.

Open-Casket Funeral

After seeing the mutilated remains, she decided to have an open-casket funeral so that all the world could see what racist murderers had done to her only son. Jet, an African American weekly magazine, published a photo of Emmett’s corpse, and soon the mainstream media picked up on the story.

Less than two weeks after Emmett’s body was buried, Milam and Bryant went on trial in a segregated courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. There were few witnesses besides Mose Wright, who positively identified the defendants as Emmett’s killers.

On September 23, the all-white jury deliberated for less than an hour before issuing a verdict of “not guilty,” explaining that they believed the state had failed to prove the identity of the body. Many people around the country were outraged by the decision and also by the state’s decision not to indict Milam and Bryant on the separate charge of kidnapping.

Carolyn Bryant Confesses

The Emmett Till murder trial brought to light the brutality of Jim Crow segregation in the South and was an early impetus of the civil rights movement.

In 2017, Tim Tyson, author of the book The Blood of Emmett Till, revealed that Carolyn Bryant recanted her testimony, admitting that Till had never touched, threatened or harassed her. “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she said.

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Rosa Parks ignites bus boycott

In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city’s racial segregation laws. The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., followed Park’s historic act of civil disobedience.

“The mother of the civil rights movement,” as Rosa Parks is known, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1913. She worked as a seamstress and in 1943 joined the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

According to a Montgomery city ordinance in 1955, African Americans were required to sit at the back of public buses and were also obligated to give up those seats to white riders if the front of the bus filled up. Parks was in the first row of the Black section when the white driver demanded that she give up her seat to a white man. Parks’ refusal was spontaneous but was not merely brought on by her tired feet, as is the popular legend. In fact, local civil rights leaders had been planning a challenge to Montgomery’s racist bus laws for several months, and Parks had been privy to this discussion.

Learning of Parks’ arrest, the NAACP and other African American activists immediately called for a bus boycott to be held by Black citizens on Monday, December 5. Word was spread by fliers, and activists formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize the protest. The first day of the bus boycott was a great success, and that night the 26-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., told a large crowd gathered at a church, “The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.” King emerged as the leader of the bus boycott and received numerous death threats from opponents of integration. At one point, his home was bombed, but he and his family escaped bodily harm.

The boycott stretched on for more than a year, and participants carpooled or walked miles to work and school when no other means were possible. As African Americans previously constituted 70 percent of the Montgomery bus ridership, the municipal transit system suffered gravely during the boycott. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama state and Montgomery city bus segregation laws as being in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On December 20, King issued the following statement: “The year old protest against city buses is officially called off, and the Negro citizens of Montgomery are urged to return to the buses tomorrow morning on a non-segregated basis.” The boycott ended the next day. Rosa Parks was among the first to ride the newly desegregated buses.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and his nonviolent civil rights movement had won its first great victory. There would be many more to come.

Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005. Three days later the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to honor Parks by allowing her body to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.

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Perón deposed in Argentina

Year: 1955

Month Day: September 19

After a decade of rule, Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón is deposed in a military coup. Perón, a demagogue who came to power in 1946 with the backing of the working classes, became increasingly authoritarian as Argentina’s economy declined in the early 1950s. His greatest political resource was his charismatic wife, Eva “Evita” Perón, but she died in 1952, signaling the collapse of the national coalition that had backed him. Having antagonized the church, students, and others, he was forced into exile by the military in September 1955. He settled in Spain, where he served as leader-in-exile to the “Peronists”—a powerful faction of Argentines who remained loyal to him and his system.

Born into a lower middle class family in 1895, Juan Domingo Perón built a career in the army, eventually rising to the rank of colonel. In 1943, he was a leader of a group of military conspirators that overthrew Argentina’s ineffectual civilian government. Requesting for himself the seemingly minor cabinet post of secretary of labor and social welfare, he began building a political empire based in the labor unions. By 1945, he was also vice president and minister of war in the military regime.

In 1945, Perón oversaw the return of political freedoms in the country, but this led to unrest and mass demonstrations by opposition groups. Perón’s enemies in the navy seized the opportunity and had him arrested on October 9. Labor unions organized strikes and rallies in protest of his imprisonment, and Perón’s beautiful paramour, the radio actress Eva Duarte, was highly effective in enlisting the public to the cause. On October 17, Perón was released, and that night he addressed a crowd of some 300,000 people from the balcony of the presidential palace. He vowed to lead the people to victory in the coming presidential election. Four days later, Perón, a widower, married Eva Duarte, or Evita, as she became affectionately known.

In the subsequent presidential campaign, Perón suppressed the liberal opposition, and his Labor Party won a narrow, but complete, election victory. President Perón removed political opponents from their positions in the government, courts, and schools, nationalized public services, and improved wages and working conditions. Although he restricted constitutional liberties, he won overwhelming support from the masses of poor workers, whom Evita Perón called los descamisados, or the “shirtless ones.” Evita served an important role in the government, unofficially leading the Department of Social Welfare and taking over her husband’s role as caretaker of the working classes. She was called the “First Worker of Argentina” and “Lady of Hope,” and was instrumental in securing passage of a woman suffrage law.

In 1950, Argentina’s postwar export boom tapered off, and inflation and corruption grew. After being reelected in 1951, Perón became more conservative and repressive and seized control of the press to control criticism of his regime. In July 1952, Evita died of cancer, and support for President Perón among the working classes became decidedly less pronounced. His attempt to force the separation of church and state was met with considerable controversy. In June 1955, church leaders excommunicated him, encouraging a clique of military officers to plot his overthrow. On September 19, 1955, the army and navy revolted, and Perón was forced to flee to Paraguay. In 1960, he settled in Spain.

Meanwhile, a string of civilian and military governments failed to resolve Argentina’s economic troubles. The memory of Perón’s regime improved with time, and Peronismo became the most powerful political force in the country. In 1971, the military regime of General Alejandro Lanusse announced his intention to restore constitutional democracy in 1973, and Perón was allowed to visit Argentina in 1972. In March 1973, Peronists won control of the government in national elections, and Perón returned in June amid great public excitement and fighting among Peronist factions.

In October 1973, Perón was elected president in a special election. His wife, Isabel Perón, an Argentine dancer he married in 1961, was elected vice president. She was much resented by millions still devoted to the memory of Evita Perón.

Economic troubles continued in Perón’s second presidency and were made worse by the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that devastated Argentina’s beef industry. When Perón died on July 1, 1974, his wife became president of a nation suffering from inflation, political violence, and labor unrest. In March 1976, she was deposed in an air-force-led coup, and a right-wing military junta took power that brutally ruled Argentina until 1982.

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William Cobb demonstrates first solar-powered car

Year: 1955

Month Day: August 31

On August 31, 1955, William G. Cobb of the General Motors Corp. (GM) demonstrates his 15-inch-long “Sunmobile,” the world’s first solar-powered automobile, at the General Motors Powerama auto show held in Chicago, Illinois.

Cobb’s Sunmobile introduced, however briefly, the field of photovoltaics–the process by which the sun’s rays are converted into electricity when exposed to certain surfaces–into the gasoline-drenched automotive industry. When sunlight hit 12 photoelectric cells made of selenium (a nonmetal substance with conducting properties) built into the Sunmobile, an electric current was produced that in turn powered a tiny motor. The motor turned the vehicle’s driveshaft, which was connected to its rear axle by a pulley. Visitors to the month-long, $7 million Powerama marveled at some 250 free exhibits spread over 1 million square feet of space on the shores of Lake Michigan. In addition to Cobb’s futuristic mini-automobile, Powerama visitors were treated to an impressive display of GM’s diesel-fueled empire, from oil wells and cotton gins to submarines and other military equipment.

Today, more than a half-century after Cobb debuted the Sunmobile, a mass-produced solar car has yet to hit the market anywhere in the world. Solar-car competitions are held worldwide, however, in which design teams pit their sun-powered creations (also known as photovoltaic or PV cars) against each other in road races such as the 2008 North American Solar Challenge, a 2,400-mile drive from Dallas, Texas, to Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

READ MORE: The Cars That Made America

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