This Week in Social Justice History September 23 – September 29
Little Rock, 1957 Victor Jara
September 24, 1996. Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. President Clinton and the representatives of 71 nations signed a treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons.
September 25, 1957. Nine Black students enter Little Rock High School. Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black students enter all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Three weeks earlier, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had surrounded the school with National Guard troops to prevent its federal court-ordered racial integration. After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 army paratroopers to Little Rock to enforce the court order. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/central-high-school-integrated
September 28, 1932 Victor Jara born. Jara was a popular Chilean folk singer/songwriter, educator, theatre director, poet, and political activist who became symbol of struggle against military oppression and injustice across Latin America. In the 1960s he wrote songs of protest against the ruling elite of his country. He was one of the founding fathers of Chile’s ‘New Song’ movement which in 1970 helped elect the democratic popular unity government of Salvador Allende. As a result Chile’s right wing targeted him. On the morning of September 12 1973, days after the military coup of President Allende’s government, Jara was detained along with thousands of Chileans and held prisoner at the Estadio Chile (renamed Estadio Victor Jara in September 2003). Jara’s final poem was written in the boxing stadium where he was tortured and murdered. The scraps of paper it was written on were smuggled out by those who survived. The poem was never named, but is commonly known as Estadio Chile. For more information see http://cultrun.de/en/blog/2012/08/18/victor-jara-80-geburtstag/and vimeo.com/43475186
