28 | Jul | 2015 | Adejokeiyabadan's Blog

July 28, 1868

Passed in the wake of the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing due process, equal protection of the law, and full citizenship to all males over 21, including former slaves, went into effect.

July 28, 1917
W.E.B. DuBois and others organized a silent parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City against the lynching of negroes and segregationist Jim Crow laws. There had been nearly 3,000 documented cases of hangings and other mob violence against black Americans since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.

July 28, 1965
President Lyndon Johnson ordered 50,000 troops to Vietnam to join the 75,000 already there. By the end of the year 180,000 U.S. troops will have been sent to Vietnam; in 1966 the figure doubled. In addition to countless Vietnamese deaths, close to 1900 Americans were killed in 1965; the following year the number more than tripled.

Lyndon Johnson told the nation: Have no fear of escalation, I am trying everyone to please Though it isn’t really war

We’re sending fifty thousand more

To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese
President Johnson explained: “We intend to convince the communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power.”

July 28, 1982
San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban the sale and possession of handguns. The law was struck down by state courts, which ruled the local law to be in violation of the California constitution which gives the state the sole power to regulate firearms.

H/T Carl Bunin of PeaceButtons

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