September 05 Archives - PopHistory.org

AIDS activists unfurl a giant condom over Senator Jesse Helms’ home

On the sunny morning of September 5, 1991, in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Arlington, Virginia, a group of activists arrive at the home of North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Using ladders, several of them climb to the roof of the house, and from there they unfurl a giant piece of fabric, which is then inflated by their comrades on the front lawn. Soon, the senator’s home is surrounded by a giant, yellow condom reading “A CONDOM TO STOP UNSAFE POLITICS: HELMS IS DEADLIER THAN A VIRUS,” a decidedly unsubtle response to Helms’ vehement opposition to gay rights and to funding AIDS research and treatment.

Then in his third term in the Senate, Helms had established himself as “Senator No,” the most bombastic opponent of civil rights legislation, abortion and HIV research in an already-hostile Republican caucus. He considered homosexuals “weak” and “morally sick,” and believed that any legislation aimed at learning more about HIV/AIDS or developing treatments for the disease was tantamount to enabling the “homosexual lifestyle.” In the face of irrefutable scientific consensus, he maintained that “There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy,” and he refused to speak with the mother of Ryan White, a teenager who died of AIDS after receiving a transfusion of HIV-positive blood, even when she cornered him in a Capitol Hill elevator.

In response to politicians like Helms, and to the American government’s general unwillingness to treat HIV/AIDS as the public health crisis it was, a group of LGBT organizers formed ACT UP, a grassroots group dedicated to forcing government action on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, in 1987. Peter Staley, an ACT UP founder, formed the affiliate Treatment Action Group, or TAG, in 1991. A short time later, he conceived of the giant condom.

After requisitioning the condom from a novelty company in California and practicing its unfurling on a TAG member’s lawn in New Paltz, New York, a group of activists headed to Northern Virginia and draped Helms’ home with the prophylactic on September 5. Participants expected to be arrested, particularly after being confronted by angry neighbors, but they were allowed to go free after the police arrived and demanded they remove the condom. Helms was not home at the time, but the incident succeeded in garnering media attention across the country and in bewildering Helms’ maid, who spent the morning trapped in the home, unable to leave until the condom was deflated.

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Sioux military leader Crazy Horse is killed

Year: 1877

Month Day: September 05

Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted by a U.S. soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year earlier, Crazy Horse was among the Sioux leaders who defeated George Armstrong Custer’s Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of Little Bighorn in Montana Territory. The battle, in which 265 members of the Seventh Cavalry, including Custer, were killed, was the worst defeat of the U.S. Army in its long history of warfare with the Native Americans.

After the victory at Little Bighorn, U.S. Army forces led by Colonel Nelson Miles pursued Crazy Horse and his followers. His tribe suffered from cold and starvation, and on May 6, 1877, Crazy Horse surrendered to General George Crook at the Red Cloud Indian Agency in Nebraska. He was sent to Fort Robinson, where he was killed in a scuffle with soldiers who were trying to imprison him in a cell.

READ MORE: Crazy Horse: His Life and Legacy

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Sam Houston elected as president of Texas

Year: 1836

Month Day: September 05

On September 5, 1836, Sam Houston is elected as president of the Republic of Texas, which earned its independence from Mexico in a successful military rebellion.

Born in Virginia in 1793, Houston moved with his family to rural Tennessee after his father’s death; as a teenager, he ran away and lived for several years with the Cherokee tribe. Houston served in the War of 1812 and was later appointed by the U.S. government to manage the removal of the Cherokee from Tennessee to a reservation in Arkansas Territory. He practiced law in Nashville and from 1823 to1827 served as a U.S. congressman before being elected governor of Tennessee in 1827.

A brief, failed marriage led Houston to resign from office and live again with the Cherokee. Officially adopted by the tribe, he traveled to Washington to protest governmental treatment of Native Americans. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson sent him to Texas (then a Mexican province) to negotiate treaties with local Native Americans for protection of border traders. Houston arrived in Texas during a time of rising tensions between U.S. settlers and Mexican authorities, and soon emerged as a leader among the settlers. In 1835, Texans formed a provisional government, which issued a declaration of independence from Mexico the following year. At that time, Houston was appointed military commander of the Texas army.

Though the rebellion suffered a crushing blow at the Alamo in early 1836, Houston was soon able to turn his army’s fortunes around. On April 21, he led some 800 Texans in a surprise defeat of 1,500 Mexican soldiers under General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at the San Jacinto River. Santa Anna was captured and brought to Houston, where he was forced to sign an armistice that would grant Texas its freedom. After receiving medical treatment for his war wounds in New Orleans, Houston returned to win election as president of the Republic of Texas on September 5. In victory, Houston declared that “Texas will again lift its head and stand among the nations….It ought to do so, for no country upon the globe can compare with it in natural advantages.”

Houston served as the republic’s president until 1838, then again from 1841 to 1844. Despite plans for retirement, Houston helped Texas win admission to the United States in 1845 and was elected as one of the state’s first two senators. He served three terms in the Senate and ran successfully for Texas’ governorship in 1859. As the Civil War loomed, Houston argued unsuccessfully against secession, and was deposed from office in March 1861 after refusing to swear allegiance to the Confederacy. He died of pneumonia in 1863.

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First Continental Congress convenes

Year: 1774

Month Day: September 05

In response to the British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental Congress convenes at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia. Fifty-six delegates from all the colonies except Georgia drafted a declaration of rights and grievances and elected Virginian Peyton Randolph as the first president of Congress. Patrick Henry, George Washington, John Adams and John Jay were among the delegates.

The first major American opposition to British policy came in 1765 after Parliament passed the Stamp Act, a taxation measure designed to raise revenues for a standing British army in America. Under the argument of “no taxation without representation,” colonists convened the Stamp Act Congress in October 1765 to vocalize their opposition to the tax. With its enactment in November, most colonists called for a boycott of British goods, and some organized attacks on the customhouses and homes of tax collectors. After months of protest in the colonies, Parliament voted to repeal the Stamp Act in March 1766.

Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until Parliament’s enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the “Boston Tea Party,” which saw British tea valued at some Ý18,000 dumped into Boston harbor.

Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops. The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and establishing militias to resist the increasing British military presence across the colony. In April 1775, Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.

More than a year later, on July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence. Five years later, in October 1781, British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia, bringing to an end the last major battle of the Revolution. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain in 1783, the United States formally became a free and independent nation.

READ MORE: What Was the Continental Congress?

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French general gives order to attack at the Marne

Year: 1914

Month Day: September 05

On the evening of September 5, 1914, General Joseph Joffre, commander in chief of the French army during World War I, readies his troops for a renewed offensive against the advancing Germans at the Marne River in northeastern France, set to begin the following morning.

With the French 6th Army poised to begin an attack from its position against the right flank of the German 1st Army to the northeast of Paris, Joffre was under pressure from Paris’ military governor, General Joseph-Simon Gallieni, to launch a general offensive in support of the attack. On September 3, Joffre made the difficult decision to replace the commander of the 5th Army, General Charles Lanrezac, punishing him for his caution in ordering a retreat at the Battle of Charleroi on August 22-24—which had in fact saved the French left wing from envelopment by the Germans—and replacing him with the more aggressive General Louis Franchet d’Esperey.

The French planned for the 5th Army, having crossed the Marne River east of Paris with the Germans in hot pursuit, to launch a coordinated attack with the 6th Army on the two advancing German armies: the 1st, under General Alexander von Kluck, and the 2nd, led by General Karl von Bulow. To ensure the attack’s success, however, the French wanted the support of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), under the command of Field Marshal Sir John French, who was still coordinating his army’s retreat after its defeat in the Battle of Mons, also on August 24.

At ten o’clock on the night of September 4, Joffre signed the order authorizing the 6th Army’s attack. By the next morning, however, he was still uncertain about the commitment of the British troops. At a meeting later that afternoon, in French’s headquarters, Joffre pleaded with his British counterpart to authorize his troops to join in the attack, promising that the BEF would be supported on either side by the French 5th and 6th Armies. The “supreme moment” had arrived, Joffre insisted, and “the future of Europe” was on the line. “I cannot believe the British Army will refuse to do its share in this supreme crisis….The honor of England is at stake!” After struggling to answer in French, a visibly emotional British commander in chief gave up, reportedly exclaiming to one of his officers: “Damn it, I can’t explain. Tell him that all that men can do, our fellows will do.”

That night, Joffre signed the order proclaiming the attack at the Marne, to be read to his troops the next morning: “At the moment when the battle upon which hangs the fate of France is about to begin, all must remember that the time for looking back is past; every effort must be concentrated on attacking and throwing the enemy back….Under present conditions no weakness can be tolerated.” The decisive four-day-long Battle of the Marne would end in an Allied victory, halting the month-long German advance and sparking a growing recognition on both sides that the war would go on longer than either had anticipated.

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U.S. forces launch last major American operation of the war

Year: 1970

Month Day: September 05

The 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile), in coordination with the South Vietnamese (ARVN) 1st Infantry Division, initiates Operation Jefferson Glenn in Thua Thien Province west of Hue. This operation lasted until October 1971, and was one of the last major large-scale military operations in which U.S. ground forces would take part.

President Nixon had begun his Vietnamization program in the summer of 1969; the objective was to increase the combat capability of the South Vietnamese forces so that they could assume responsibility for the war against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces as U.S. combat units were withdrawn and sent home. Shortly after the completion of Jefferson Glenn, the 101st Airborne began preparations to depart South Vietnam and subsequently began redeployment to the United States in March 1972.

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Lt. William Calley charged for My Lai massacre

Year: 1969

Month Day: September 05

Lt. William Calley is charged with six specifications of premeditated murder in the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in March 1968. Calley, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade (Light) of the 23rd (Americal) Division had led his men in a massacre of Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets that made up Son My village in Son Tinh District in Quang Ngai Province in the coastal lowlands of I Corps Tactical Zone on March 16, 1968. The company had been conducting a search and destroy mission as part of the yearlong Operation Wheeler/Wallowa (November 1967 through November 1968).

In search of the 48th Viet Cong (VC) Local Force Battalion, the unit entered Son My village but found only women, children, and old men. Frustrated by unanswered losses due to snipers and mines, the soldiers took out their anger on the villagers, indiscriminately shooting people as they ran from their huts and systematically rounding up the survivors, allegedly leading them to nearby ditch where they were executed.

Reportedly, the killing was only stopped when Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, an aero-scout helicopter pilot landed his helicopter between the Americans and the fleeing South Vietnamese, confronting the soldiers and blocking them from further action against the villagers. The incident was subsequently covered up, but eventually came to light a year later.

An Army board of inquiry, headed by Lt. Gen. William Peers, investigated the massacre and produced a list of 30 persons who knew of the atrocity, but only 14, including Calley and his company commander, Captain Ernest Medina, were charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley, whose platoon allegedly killed 200 innocents. He was found guilty of personally murdering 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. Proclaimed by much of the public as a “scapegoat,” Calley was paroled by President Richard Nixon in 1974 after having served about a third of his 10-year sentence.

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Massacre begins at Munich Olympics

Year: 1972

Month Day: September 05

During the 1972 Summer Olympics at Munich, in the early morning of September 5, a group of Palestinian terrorists storms the Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes, killing two and taking nine others hostage. The terrorists were part of a group known as Black September, in return for the release of the hostages, they demanded that Israel release over 230 Arab prisoners being held in Israeli jails and two German terrorists. In an ensuing shootout at the Munich airport, the nine Israeli hostages were killed along with five terrorists and one West German policeman. Olympic competition was suspended for 24 hours to hold memorial services for the slain athletes.

The Munich Olympics opened on August 26, 1972, with 195 events and 7,173 athletes representing 121 countries. On the morning of September 5, Palestinian terrorists in ski masks ambushed the Israeli team. After negotiations to free the nine Israelis broke down, the terrorists took the hostages to the Munich airport. Once there, German police opened fire from rooftops and killed three of the terrorists. A gun battle erupted and left the hostages, two more Palestinians and a policeman dead.

After a memorial service was held for the athletes at the main Olympic stadium, International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage ordered that the games continue, to show that the terrorists hadn’t won. Although the tragedy deeply marred the games, there were numerous moments of spectacular athletic achievement, including American swimmer Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals and teenage Russian gymnast Olga Korbut’s two dramatic gold-medal victories.

In the aftermath of the murders at the ’72 Olympics, the Israeli government, headed by Golda Meir, hired a group of Mossad agents to track down and kill the Black September assassins. The 2005 Stephen Spielberg movie Munich was based on these events.

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Gerald Ford survives first assassination attempt

Year: 1975

Month Day: September 05

September 5, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford survives an attempt on his life in Sacramento, California.

The assailant, a petite, red haired, freckle-faced young woman named Lynette Fromme, approached the president while he was walking near the California Capitol and raised a .45 caliber handgun toward him. Before she was able to fire off a shot, Secret Service agents tackled her and wrestled her to the ground. Seventeen days later, another woman, Sara Jane Moore, a mentally unstable accountant, tried to assassinate Ford while he was in San Francisco. Her attempt was thwarted by a bystander who instinctively grabbed Moore’s arm when she raised the gun. Although she fired one shot, it did not find its target. The bystander, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran named Oliver Sipple, was publicly thanked by Ford three days later.

Lynette Fromme, nicknamed “Squeaky,” was a member of the notorious Charles Manson family, a group of drug-addled groupies who followed cult leader Manson. Manson and other members of his “family” were convicted and sentenced to prison for murdering former actress Sharon Tate and others in 1969. Subsequently, Fromme and other female members of the cult started an order of “nuns” within a new group called the International People’s Court of Retribution. This group terrorized corporate executives who headed environmentally destructive businesses. Fromme herself was still so enamored of Manson that she devised the plot to kill President Ford in order to win Manson’s approval.

Fromme was convicted of attempted murder and was sentenced to life in prison in West Virginia. She escaped in 1979, but was caught within 25 miles of the prison. Strangely, Ford’s second would-be assassin, Moore, was imprisoned in the same facility and escaped in 1989. She turned herself in two days later and, like Fromme, was transferred to a higher-security penitentiary. Moore was released on parole in 2007; Fromme was released in 2009.

After Fromme’s assassination attempt, Ford stoically continued on to the Capitol to speak before the California legislature. The main topic of his speech was crime.

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Outlaw Jesse James is born in Missouri

Year: 1847

Month Day: September 05

Seen by some as a vicious murderer and by others as a gallant Robin Hood, the famous outlaw Jesse Woodson James is born on September 5, 1847, in Clay County, Missouri.

Jesse and his older brother Franklin lost their father in 1849, when the Reverend Robert James abandoned his young family and disappeared forever into the California gold fields. Their mother, Zerelda, quickly remarried, but rumor had it that their new stepfather treated Jesse and Frank poorly, and a third husband soon followed. Perhaps it was a violent and unstable family life that led the young Jesse and Frank into lives of crime. Regardless, it is certain that the brothers first learned to kill during the Civil War. As Confederate sympathizers, both Jesse and Frank joined William Quantrill’s vicious Missouri guerilla force, and Jesse participated in the cold-blooded murder of 25 unarmed Union soldiers in August 1863.

When the war ended, neither man felt any enthusiasm for the drab life of a Missouri farmer-earning a living with their guns seemed easier and more exciting. Joining a motley band of ex-soldiers and common thieves, Jesse and Frank staged the first daylight bank robbery in U.S. history on Valentine’s Day in 1866, making off with $57,000 of the hard-earned cash of the citizens of Liberty, Missouri. For the next decade the James Gang would steal many thousands more from banks, stores, stagecoaches, and trains.

The boldness of their crimes and the growing resentment among westerners of big railroads and robber barons led some to romanticize Jesse and Frank, a process that was encouraged by the authors of popular dime novels who created largely fictional versions of the James brothers as modern-day Robin Hoods who stole from the rich to give to the poor. In reality, the James brothers’ crimes preyed as much on the common folks as on the very rich, and they did little to spare the lives of innocents caught in the crossfire. The Robin Hood myth conveniently ignores the little girl shot in the leg during a botched robbery at the Kansas City Fair, the train engineer killed when the James Gang derailed his locomotive, or the dozens of other innocent bystanders murdered or maimed by Jesse, Frank, or their gang. Nonetheless, the myth that Jesse James was a good-hearted hero of the common folk remains popular to this day. Robert Ford shot James in the back of the head, killing him on April 3, 1882.

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