[In 1966, Willie Frye Jr., a Quaker pastor in Goldsboro, North Carolina, had not been active in the civil rights struggles that were convulsing much of the South in those years. But his situation was about to change.]
Willie’s wife Agnes had begun working with the new HeadStart preschool program. As it was federally-funded, HeadStart was integrated, both staff and kids. There she was approached by a Black colleague, who asked if Willie could conduct her wedding.Weddings being a pastor’s specialty, Willie was agreeable. But also cautious: He first offered to do it in their parsonage, informally. But soon the woman reported that RSVPs were piling up, more than would fit in the parsonage; could it be moved to the meetinghouse?
Willie new such events were outside the limits of established Jim Crow segregation. So he took that request to Goldsboro’s business meeting, which approved.Willie presided at the nuptials in the meetinghouse, and they were carried out in what Quakers call “good order.”Well, some Quakers called it good order. Continue reading Part Two: Why September Should Be “Willie Frye” Month (For Quakers & Justice Seekers)→
April 15, 1989 – Hu Yaobang, a former Communist Party leader, dies. Hu had worked to move China toward a more open political system and had become a symbol of democratic reform.
April 18, 1989 – Thousands of mourning students march through the capital to Tiananmen Square, calling for a more democratic government. In the weeks that follow, thousands of people join the students in the square to protest against China’s Communist rulers.
May 13, 1989 – More than 100 students begin a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. The number increases to several thousand over the next few days.
May 19, 1989 – A rally at Tiananmen Square draws an estimated 1.2 million people. General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang, appears at the rally and pleads for an end to the demonstrations.
May 19, 1989 – Premier Li Peng imposes martial law.
June 1, 1989 – China halts live American news telecasts in Beijing, including CNN. Reporters are prohibited from photographing or videotaping any of the demonstrations or Chinese troops.
June 2, 1989 – A reported 100,000 people attend a concert in Tiananmen Square by singer Hou Dejian, in support of the demonstrators.
June 4, 1989– At about 1 a.m., Chinese troops reach Tiananmen Square. Throughout the day, Chinese troops fire on civilians and students, ending the demonstrations. An official death toll has never been released.
June 5, 1989 – An unidentified man stands alone in the street, blocking a column of Chinese tanks. He remains there for several minutes before being pulled away by onlookers.
While the events of 1989 now dominate global coverage of Tiananmen Square, the site has long been an important crossroads within the city of Beijing. It was named for the nearby Tiananmen, or “Gate of Heavenly Peace,” and marks the entrance to the so-called Forbidden City. The location took on added significance as China shifted from an emperor-led political culture to one that was governed by the Communist Party. . . .
On the 20th anniversary of the massacre [June 2009], the Chinese government prohibited journalists from entering Tiananmen Square and blocked access to foreign news sites and social media.
Still, thousands attended a memorial vigil in honor of the anniversary in Hong Kong. Ahead of the 30th anniversary of the event, in 2019, New York-based Human Rights Watch published a report detailing reported arrests in China of those associated with the protests.
The 1989 events at Tiananmen Square have also been highly censored on China’s tightly-controlled internet. According to a survey released in 2019 by the University of Toronto and the University of Hong Kong, more than 3,200 words referencing the massacre had been censored.
Tiananmen Square Censorship
It wasn’t until 2006 that Yu Dongyue, a journalist arrested for throwing paint at a portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square during the protests, was released from prison.
On the 20th anniversary of the massacre [2009], the Chinese government prohibited journalists from entering Tiananmen Square and blocked access to foreign news sites and social media.
A famous statue at the University of Hong Kong marking the Tiananmen Square massacre was removed late on Wednesday [December 22, 2021].
The statue showed piled-up corpses to commemorate the hundreds – possibly thousands – of pro-democracy protesters killed by Chinese authorities in 1989.
The “Pillar of Shame” Tiananmen Memorial at Hong Kong University – officials removed it in December 2021
It was one of the few remaining public memorials in Hong Kong commemorating the incident.
Its removal comes as Beijing has increasingly been cracking down on political dissent in Hong Kong.
The city used to be one of few places in China that allowed public commemoration of the Tiananmen Square protests – a highly sensitive topic in the country. . . .
“The dissident Fang Lizhi, holed up at the United States Embassy in Beijing, in 1990, to avoid arrest after the Tiananmen crackdown, composed an essay titled “The Chinese Amnesia.”
“About once each decade, the true face of history is thoroughly erased from the memory of Chinese society,” he wrote . . . .
“This is the objective of the Chinese Communist policy of Forgetting History. In an effort to coerce all of society into a continuing forgetfulness, the policy requires that any detail of history that is not in the interests of the Chinese Communists cannot be expressed in any speech, book, document, or other medium.”
Father’s Day this year, two heavyset men were loitering near a Sikh temple in British Columbia. Then the president of the temple, a Canadian citizen and an activist named Hardeep Singh Nijjar, stepped out and climbed into his pickup truck to drive home for dinner with his family.
The two waiting men, wearing masks, fired through Nijjar’s window about a dozen times. Temple members bravely ran after the gunmen, who escaped in a getaway car driven by a third man.
50 Years of Republican history in a convincing, chilling thumbnail
Why have only a few elected Republican officials rejected Trump? Columnist Jamelle Bouie highlights scholarly views that “strong loyalty to an institution like a political party might lead a dissenting or disapproving individual to hold on to his or her membership even more tightly, for fear that exit might open the door to even worse outcomes.”
was federally-funded, HeadStart was integrated, both staff and kids. There she was approached by a Black colleague, who asked if Willie could conduct her wedding.Weddings being a pastor’s specialty, Willie was agreeable. But also cautious: He first offered to do it in their parsonage, informally. But soon the woman reported that RSVPs were piling up, more than would fit in the parsonage; could it be moved to the meetinghouse?
Why have only a few elected Republican