Merce Cunningham, Jim Page, Feruccio Coacci, El hijo del Ahuizote, Laurent Tailhade, Gustave Henri Jossot, on this day of recovered history, April 16

Our dead fathers came down to us in the river. Thousands of fathers & grown brothers Bobbing in the Euphrates... The two generals rode their horses Over the hill Like happy widows on strong donkeys. — Norman Dubie, excerpt, "The Desert Deportation of 1915," from The Mercy Seat

APRIL 16

MERCE CUNNINGHAM
American dance visionary, anarchist choreographer.

LIBERATING THE RAINBOW LOST IN WHITE LIGHT FESTIVAL.

1291 -- Rudolph Hapsburg purchases the rights to govern Lucerne, Switzerland.


1550 -- Spain: In a Royal Order of Charles V of Spain, the question "What is an Indian?" was posed; exploration of America was suspended until the matter was settled.


1640 -- Aphra Behn, novelist, spy, playwright, lives, England. Wrote Oroonoko. The first Englishwoman to live by her pen.

---

Aphra Behn, the first Englishwoman to earn her living as a writer, is baptized at St. Michael's Church in Harbledown, near Canterbury, Kent. When she becomes a spy for Charles II's government, payment is so slow that she is put in debtor's prison, where she writes many of her earthy social comedies.

http://www.sappho.com/poetry/

---

1681 -- New Old World: Province of New Jersey is sold for $25,000. Hasn't increased in value since...fetch 'bout two-bits if'n we're lucky.


1689 -- Aphra Behn, novelist, spy, playwright, dies, London, England, age 48. Wrote Oroonoko. The first Englishwoman to live by her pen.


1746 -- England: Defeat of the Roman Catholic pretender to the British throne, "Bonnie Prince Charlie" also ends publication of Henry Fielding's anti-papist weekly The True Patriot.


1746 -- Scotland: Massacre of Scots by English army, Culloden.


1797 -- England: Sailors mutiny at Spithead, off Portsmouth .
'Calendar Riots'


1818 -- US: Senate ratifies Rush-Bagot amendment (unarmed US-Canada border).


1825 -- Henry Fuseli, Romantic painter dies.
http://www.tate.org.uk/search/default.jsp


1828 -- Spanish painter Francisco Goya dies.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/goya/


1844 -- French novelist/urbane critic Anatole France lives (1844-1924), Paris. Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, & to steal bread."

His skepticism appears in his early works, & later hostility toward bourgeois values led him to support French Communist Party (His father was a bookseller — which explains much.) In the 1920s his writings were put on the Index of Forbidden Books of the Roman Catholic Church, which, of course, ensures they will be read by yet a larger audience. France participated in the Dreyfus case (1896) with other writers, foremost being Émile Zola with his famous article J'Accuse.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/afrance.htm
http://robysavia.chez.com/france.html

1854 -- US: "Army of the poor" leader Jacob Coxey lives, Masillon, Ohio.
Daily Bleed Saint 2003, JACOB COXEY
Leader of "Coxey's Army" of hobos, who marched on Washington in Protest in 1894. Arrested for strolling on the White House lawn.

Coxey's Army, 1894.

Jacob S. Coxey of Masillon, Ohio, a well-to-do businessman who was a Populist & quite untypical of his class in other ways, proposed a plan of federal work relief on public roads to be financed by an issue of Treasury notes — thus ending the depression of 1893 by means of monetary inflation & work relief for the unemployed.

When Congress refused to pass this bill, Coxey stated,

"We will send a petition to Washington with boots on."

Thus Coxey's Army marched peacefully from Ohio to Washington, DC where they were cheered by crowds, but Coxey & his lieutenants were arrested by police & about 50 people were beaten or trampled.

1854 -- Laurent Tailhade lives (1854-1919), Tarbes. French poet, writer, anarchiste polemist, opium addict (La noire idole), translator (Satyricon de Pétrone).
[Details / context]

La Luminosa Torre
Texto de André Breton (1896-1963), en LE LIBERTAIRE del 11-1-1952

Fue en el negro espejo del anarquismo que el surrealismo se reconocio por primera vez, mucho antes de definirse a si mismo y cuando apenas era asociacion libre entre individuos, despreciando espontaneamente y en bloque las opresiones sociales y morales de su tiempo.

... show details

Entre las fuentes de inspiracion donde abrevamos, en esa posguerra de 1914, y cuya fuerza de convergencia era a toda prueba, figuraba el final de la Balada de Solness, de Laurent Tailhade:

Golpea nuestros corazones
en desbandada, en harapos
¡Anarquia! ¡Oh, portadora de luz!
¡Expulsa la noche! ¡Aniquila los gusanos!
Y levanta al cielo, aunque sea
con nuestros tumulos
¡La luminosa torre que sobre el mar domine!

http://www.fortunecity.co.uk/library/manuscript/160/surreal.htm

1862 -- US: Slavery abolished in District of Columbus.



1866 -- US: Nitroglycerine at the Wells Fargo & Co. office explodes.

1866 --

Gustave Henri Jossot lives (1866-1951), Dijon. French painter, illustrator & caricaturist who targeted the mainstream institutions of family, army, justice, churches, schools, etc. Jossot, deeply libertarian, refused to be labeled an anarchiste. Depressed for years, he gave up caricatures in 1907, moved to Tunisia in 1911, converted to Islam in 1913 for a short period before denouncing religion & agitating again, for the rights of Moslem women, etc. Jossot confined his artistic endeavors to painting landscapes & Tunisian everyday life. http://www.ephemanar.net/avril16.html#jossot

1867 -- Wilbur Wright, of aeroplane fame, lives.


1871 -- John Millington Synge, Irish dramatist lives, near Dublin.
http://drew.chaosfugue.org/syngeweb/cover.html


1871 -- Ivan Turgenev arrested & jailed for publishing an obituary banned by the St. Petersburg censorship committee.



1871 -- England: Demonstration in Hyde Park in London, in support of the Paris Commune.
[Background Details, click here]


1874 -- US: Democracy in Action? 200 men led by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Elijah Baxter, the elected Governor of Arkansas, surround the State House, seized 24 hours earlier by defeated candidate Joseph Brooks & his supporters. Two weeks later, a pitched battle between the two camps kills or wounds 25.


1880 -- Australia: Compulsory state schooling for 6 to 14 year old children is introduced in New South Wales.


1889 -- Charlie Chaplin, commie tramp, lives (1889-1977) .

"In the end, everything is a gag."

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~pringle/silent/chaplin/filmography.html

1896 -- Tristan Tzara, French poet/essayist known mainly as the founder of Dada, lives, Moinesti, Romania.

Daily Bleed Saint, 2008
Founder of Dada, inventor of cut-up poetry;
later disappointed Surrealist & Communist Party member.

http://members.peak.org/~dadaist/English/Graphics/tzara.html European Dada Archive
—, 1963 http://www.mital-u.ch/Dada/index.html dada zurich, chronicle by Tristan Tzara
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/ International Dada Archive, U. Of Iowa
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rmutt/dictionary/

1902 -- Philippines: Surrender of the last resistance to US intervention. Apparently the benevolent US occupying forces left a few resisters alive despite a policy of genocide, with orders to kill every man, woman, & child above the age of 10.

Look out Iraq! Look out World!



1903 -- México: The buildings of the anarquista newspaper "El hijo del Ahuizote" are seized by the police for the second time. The staff, Ricardo & Enrique Flores Magón & Librado Rivera are arrested for having "ridiculed public authorities."

http://www.ephemanar.net/avril16.html
http://struggle.ws/mexico/history.html

1904 -- Samuel Smiles dies in London. Best known for the didactic Self-Help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Smiles


1910 -- US: Emma Goldman lectures in San Francisco, mid-April, & debates a socialist on "whether collective regulation or free love will guarantee a healthy race."



1917 -- The 296th Regiment are the first to refuse to advance on the German Hindenburg Line in a mutiny that will embrace more than half a million conscript soldiers of the French Army.
'Calendar Riots'


1918 -- US: Prince Hopkins arrested, indicted by federal grand jury in Los Angeles for violating the Espionage Act; released on $25,000 bail. On August 30, he pleads guilty & is fined $27,000.

Emma Goldman's last act before entering prison for her draft resistance work is organizing & funding the Political Prisoners' Amnesty League. During the war, thousands of dissenters were sentenced to long prison terms.

At Angel Island, a concentration camp for dissidents, many are systematically tortured. At the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, prisoners are hung by their wrists for weeks at a time.

Involved, among others, in the formation of the Political Prisoners' Amnesty League were Leonard D. Abbott, Dr. C. Andrews, Prince Hopkins, Lillian Brown, Lucy & Bob Robbins. Prince Hopkins was chosen permanent chairman, with Leonard as treasurer.

1919 -- US: Anarchist choreographer Merce Cunningham lives, Centralia, Washington.

http://www.merce.org/
http://www.nytimes.com/...merce-cunningham-explorer-and-anarchist.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merce_Cunningham

1920 -- US: Italian-American anarchist Feruccio Coacci is arrested in Bridgewater, Ma. for his activities supporting "Cronaca Sovversiva" & deported on the 18th.

This is during a period of a second series of "Palmer raids" which swept 33 cities throughout the US in January to suppress radicals, labor agitators, & in this case, is related also to the South Braintree hold-ups & the crime for which Sacco & Vanzetti were ultimately executed for.

[Details / context]

1922 -- Kingsley Amis lives (1922-1995), London. Novelist, poet, critic, & teacher, father of writer Martin Amis, generally grouped among the "angry young men" in the 1950s, though he rejected the affiliation.

A man of outrageous wit & genius, with a reputation as "supreme clubman, boozer & blimp." A radical as a young man, later a conservative critic of contemporary life. Amis wrote over 40 books, including some 20 novels, many volumes of poetry, & several collections of essays. His first novel, Lucky Jim (1954) was a huge success.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/amis.htm

1922 -- US: Where's the Beef? First sermon preached from an airplane. Ranks up there with dropping cows from an airplane but not so exciting.


1922 -- US: Annie Oakley shoots 100 clay targets in a row, setting a women's record.


1924 -- Argentina: Durante o mandato de Silvetti caracterizouse pola súa actitude unitaria cara á (FORA) anarquista. Iniciou unha grande campaña en defensa dos presos por cuestións políticas. Durante a súa xestión á frente da central sindical aconteceron os tráxicos sucesos da Patagonia que acabaron con 1.500 fusilados.

Do 16 ó 22 de abril de 1924 realizouse o Primeiro Congreso Ordinario da Union Sindical Argentina (USA) sendo reelixido por un mandato. Ao remate do mesmo volveu ao taller, foi electo dúas veces máis membro do Comité Central da USA. Organizou o Sindicato de Obreiros da Industria do Calzado.

anarchismo, anarchici, anarquista, sindicalistas, syndicalist / Brasil

http://enciclopediadaemigraciongalega.com/biografias/fandi%F1o_manuel.htm
http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/world/la/

1925 -- US: During this month Boni & Liveright publishes Alexander Berkman's The Bolshevik Myth, critical of the Bolshevik counterrevolution in Russia.

  In an attempt to refute the report of the British trade union delegation, Emma Goldman & her comrades — as the British Committee for the Defence of Political Prisoners in Russia — publish a pamphlet, "Russia & the British Labour Delegation's Report: A Reply."

Emma continues speaking on conditions in the Soviet Union with a lecture at South Place Institute today, "An Exposure of the Trade Union Delegation's Report on Russia"; she also delivers a second lecture in London on April 27.

1930 -- Perú: José Carlos Mariátegui, political leader/essayist & first Perúvian intellectual to apply the Marxist model of historical materialism to Perúvian problems, dies in Lima.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mariateg/biography/index.htm


1932 -- Norway: Emma Goldman visits Oslo, her first visit to Norway, where she has "three wonderful meetings." One lecture is canceled by the Communist-controlled student association, which objects to her criticism of the Soviet Union.



1934 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader LA County Supervisor Roger W. Jessup calls for deporting some 7,000 indigent Filipinos on the welfare rolls.
[Details / context]


1935 -- Canada: Emma Goldman speaks on birth control at Hygeia Hall, after meeting with the head of a Toronto birth control clinic.




1937 -- Spain: Andreu Capdevila Puig (1894-1987) fou conseller d'Economia de la Generalitat de Catalunya (16 d'abril - 5 de maig de 1937) i després president del Consell d'Economia. Dirigent del Sindicat Tèxtil de la CNT, actuà especialment a Sant Andreu de Palomar (Barcelona). El 1939 s'exilià a Perpinyà. Continuà militant a la CNT, i col.laborà regularment en els periòdics sindicalistes "Le Combat" de París i "L'Espoir" de Tolosa de Llenguadoc.

At the Santa Andreu Artillery depot where 30,000 rifles were stored:

... show details

"They started taking whatever arms they could lay their hands on. More & more began to arrive from all over the city, in cars, lorries, any form of transport. Everyone was mad to get arms..." (Page 71) July 19th CNT textile worker Andreu Capdevila

"There was total disorder. We formed a commission & thereafter all arms were handed only to revolutionary organisations." (Page 72) "10,000 rifles, I calculate as well as some machine guns, were taken. That was the moment when the people of Barcelona were armed; that was the moment, in consequence, when power fell into the masses hands. We of the CNT hadn't set out to make the revolution but to defend ourselves, to defend the working class. To make the social revolution, which needed to have the whole of the Spanish proletariat behind it, would take another ten years....but it wasn't we who chose the moment; it was forced on us by the military who were making the revolution, who wanted to finish off the CNT once & for all."

quoted in Blood of Spain

http://militants-anarchistes.info/spip.php?article631
http://struggle.ws/spain/quote_blood.html
http://www.veuobrera.org/01biogra/1biogr-c.htm