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John Autry
@JohnAutry@mindly.social
mastodon 4.5.18Retired member of the North Carolina House of Representatives, D-100, Charlotte.
Being a grandparent is the one thing in life that isn't overrated.
255 Followers
186 Following
50 Posts
Joined December 07, 2022
In Hamlet, North Carolina, on this day in 1926, John Coltrane was born.
#JohnColtrane
September 15, 1963 - During Sunday School, 15 sticks of dynamite blew apart the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four children in the basement changing room, and injuring 23 others. Prime suspects were the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and Nacirema (both white supremacist organizations; Nacirema is "American" spelled backwards).
A week before the bombing Governor George C. Wallace had told The New York Times that to stop integration, Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals."
This event set off racial rioting and other violence in which two African-American boys were shot to death, and became a turning point in generating broad American sympathy for the civil rights movement.
A member of the church, studying on a scholarship in Paris at the time, was Birmingham High School student Angela Davis.
#16thStreetBaptistBombing #4LittleGirls #AddieMaeCollins #CynthiaWesley #CaroleRobertson #DeniseMcNair
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July 5, 1934 - On “Bloody Thursday,” police armed with machine guns opened fire against striking longshoremen and their supporters, killing two, wounding 32 more by gunfire, and injuring 75 others at Rincon Hill in San Francisco.
#BloodyThursday
July 14, 1789 - Bastille Day in France: Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a former royal fortress converted to a state prison, that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchy. This dramatic action was proof that power no longer resided in the King as God's representative, but in the people, and signaled the beginning of the French Revolution and the First Republic.
#BastilleDay
#MikeLuckovich 7/23/2026
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June 12, 1967 - The U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia struck down state miscegenation laws, those that prohibited interracial marriage, as violations of a person’s right to equal protection under the law, as guaranteed under the 14th amendment.
In June of 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, a white man and an African-American woman, had married in Washington, D.C. Upon return to their home state of Virginia, the couple was arrested, convicted of a felony, and sentenced to a year in prison. The appeal of their conviction led to the decision.
"The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” From Chief Justice Earl Warren’s majority opinion in Loving v. Virginia
#LovingVsVirginia
I don't believe this story is getting enough attention.
"Pfendler, who launched from Monterey, California, in May, set out to become the first American woman, youngest woman and fastest woman to make the more than 2,400-mile journey solo, according to her website."
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/05/us/american-solo-rowing-hawaii
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June 18, 1941 - Less than two weeks before a scheduled march on Washington, its chief organizer, (Asa) A. Philip Randolph, was invited to the White House by President Franklin Roosevelt. Randolph was the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful black trade union. He, along with activist and singer Bayard Rustin, had issued a “Call to Negro America to March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense on July 1, 1941.”
Roosevelt was wary of the prospect of such a demonstration and desirous of developing support for a war effort. Randolph told Roosevelt he would abandon the march plans only if the president would stop job discrimination in both the defense industry and the government. Before the end of the month, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which barred government contractors from discriminating in hiring on the basis of race, color, creed or national origin.
The order, sometimes called a second emancipation proclamation, was the federal government's most significant action on behalf of the rights of African Americans since post-Civil War reconstruction of the 1870s.
#APhilipRandolph
Born this day in 1936, this guy, the last of the original blues men, Buddy Guy.
#BuddyGuy
"Kimono My House" by Sparks released in July of 1974.
#Sparks #KimonoMyHouse #VintageVinyl
"Science itself is not partisan, and research is supposed to inform policymaking. Yet science funding in the U.S. has long been a political pinball."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-is-under-pressure-again-heres-what-that-means-for-young-researchers/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TIS_073026&utm_term=reports%20Pulitzer%20Prize-winning%20science%20journalist%20Deborah%20Blum&_kx=4oMxG7i_jQDv2AAzbrFAHqJ4H4cw6nu3EV6ldR9hwBk.WEer5A
Some may need a reminder. Science, it's like magic except it's real.
#Science
"What the ongoing show trial of Fauci — which motivated this post — has really driven home, however, is that what Trump and his supporters hate most of all is reality."
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/reality-is-a-communist-plot?r=4bnvs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
#KevinSiers 6/27/2022
"Given the nature of Trump-speak, Waltz’s statement is in effect an admission that the U.S. military is now in deep trouble."
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/the-putinization-of-the-american?r=4bnvs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
July 27, 1954 - The democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, after receiving 65% of the vote, was overthrown by CIA-paid and -trained mercenaries. There followed a series of military dictatorships that waged a genocidal war against the indigenous Mayan Indians and against political opponents into the '90s. Nearly 200,000 citizens died over the nearly four decades of civil war.
“They have used the pretext of anti-communism. The truth is very different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of the fruit company [United Fruit, which controlled more land than any other individual or group in the country. It also owned the railway, the electric utilities, telegraph, and the country's only port at Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic coast.] and the other U.S. monopolies which have invested great amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala would be followed by other Latin countries . . . I took over the presidency with great faith in the democratic system, in liberty and the possibility of achieving economic independence for Guatemala.”
#Guatemala #CIA #Coupdétat #USImperialism
The FITWH said on Thursday he may '“temporarily” pull the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as attorney general, but would keep him in the role in an acting capacity until two Republican senators objecting to his confirmation leave office next year – an extraordinary escalation of an intra-party fight over an agreement to create a $1.8bn slush fund and give the president tax immunity.'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/30/todd-blanche-attorney-general-doj-nomination-trump
July 28, 1932 - Federal troops, under command of General Douglas MacArthur, forcibly dispersed the so-called “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” or Bonus Army. They were World War I veterans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., to demand money they had been promised but weren't scheduled to receive until 1945. Most of the marchers were unemployed veterans in desperate financial straits during the Great Depression.
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 the formerly enslaved, went into effect.
Neil Armstrong becomes first man to walk on the Moon at 02:56 UTC (10:56PM EDT) July 21, 1969.
#Apollo11
On this day in 1971 Jim Morrison died from heart failure. Co-founder of the Doors in '65 became another member of the "27" club in Paris on this day 52 years ago.
#JimMorrison #TheLizardKing
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"Back in the High Life" by Steve Winwood released this day in 1986.
#SteveWinwood #BackInTheHighLife #VintageVinyl
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June 9, 1954 - Special Counsel for the U.S. Army Joseph N. Welch confronted Senator Joseph P. McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) during hearings into alleged communist infiltration of the Army Signal Corps.
McCarthy had attacked a member of Welch's law firm, Frederick G. Fischer, among many others, as a communist. This was alleged due to Fischer’s prior membership in the National Lawyers Guild. The Guild was the nation’s first racially integrated bar association.
Welch was outraged by the attempt to destroy the reputation and career of someone of whose integrity he had no doubt:
“Until this moment, senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness . . . . Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
The entire hearings and this encounter were seen live on television, the first congressional committee hearings ever to be broadcast. McCarthy’s ability to make such accusations was soon greatly diminished.
#JosephNWelch #HUAC
Hard to believe I got away with that hair while on Active Duty in the Navy. Anaheim 1973.
Bob Marley died on this day in 1981.
#BobMarley
"Toulouse Street" by The Doobie Brothers was released in July 1972.
#TheDoobieBrothers #ToulouseStreet #VintageVinyl
Replying to
The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory!
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!
Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessings of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."
~ Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
2/2
John Woo's "The Killer", starring Chow Yun-fat, Danny Lee, and Sally Yeh, premiered on this day in 1989.
#JohnWoo #TheKiller
July 29, 1972 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment by a 5-4 vote. The Court called the wide discretion in application of capital punishment, including the appearance of racial bias against black defendants, “arbitrary and capricious” and thus in violation of due process guarantees in the 14th Amendment.
#CapitalPunishment #DeathPenalty
"Lights Out" by Peter Wolf was released in July 1984.
#PeterWolf #LightsOut #VintageVinyl
"Rag Doll" by The 4 Seasons released in July 1964.
#The4Seasons #RagDoll #VintageVinyl
Gillian Welch's "Hell Among the Yearlings" released this day in 1998.
#GillianWelch #HellAmongTheYearlings
July 29, 1970 - After a five-year strike, the United Farm Workers (UFW) signed a contract with the table grape growers in California, ending the first grape boycott.
#UnitedFarmWorkers
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'As Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, warned Monday, “entitlement programs” like Social Security “have to be adjusted and fixed.” He said Republicans will introduce a plan to do that. Brace yourselves.
I used to be a Social Security trustee, and I call bullsh*t.'
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/they-dont-want-you-to-know-the-real?r=4bnvs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
"From the Pages of My Mind" by Ray Charles released in July 1986.
#RayCharles #FromThePagesOfMyMind #VintageVinyl
#MikeLuckovich 7/29/2026
"And you money-lovin' Christians, you refuse to pay your share
You must unload"
"The Prodigal Son" by Ry Cooder released this day in 2018.
#RyCooder #TheProdigalSon
"The decision to leave rates on hold has spooked investors who are worried about the US economy’s ability to absorb a rise inflation, triggered by Donald Trump’s war in Iran."
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/30/us-borrowing-costs-19-year-high-fed-holds-interest-rates?CMP=share_btn_url