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MY'STORY

The MOVE Fire

This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985 Philadelphia police fired thousands of rounds at the MOVE house, city officials approved dropping an explosive device on the roof, the resulting fire was allowed to burn, 11 people—including five children—died, and 61 homes were destroyed. Philadelphia City Council later called it a “brutal attack carried out by the City of Philadelphia on its own citizens” and acknowledged that no individual faced criminal consequences for the bombing. One timeline correction worth preserving for the BHP record: the major previous MOVE-police confrontation was August 8, 1978, about seven years before the bombing, not a year or two earlier. Officer James Ramp was killed, other police and firefighters were wounded, nine MOVE members were later convicted, and television cameras recorded police beating Delbert Africa during his arrest. The 1985 MOVE Commission later specifically criticized city planners for failing to adequately use lessons from that 1978 confrontation. And that actually strengthens the point you’re making: 1985 did not happen without precedent or institutional memory. There had already been a deadly confrontation with MOVE, years of conflict, negotiations and police involvement before Osage Avenue.

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BLACK FACTS
The Truths They Never Taught You...

The Violence That Helped Spark the NAACP

In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.

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BHP gathered finds from its connected research sources. Showing the 4 strongest Black History matches.
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Wikipedia

Economy Act of March 20, 1933

The Economy Act of 1933, officially titled the Act of March 20, 1933 (ch. 3, Pub. L. 73–2, 48 Stat. 8, enacted March 20, 1933, is an Act of Congress that cut the salaries of federal workers and reduced benefit payments to veterans, moves intended to reduce the federal deficit in the United States.[1]

The Economy Act of 1933 is sometimes confused with the Economy Act of 1932, which was signed in the final days of the Hoover administration in February 1933.[2] This Hoover-sponsored bill established the purchasing authority of the federal government.[3] Title VI of this earlier act authorized heads of executive departments, establishments, bureaus, and offices to place orders with any other such Federal agency unless the requisitioned goods or services could be acquired as conveniently or more cheaply from the private sector. Though amended several times, this provision—commonly referred to simply as the Economy Act—remains in force as of 2019 (31 U.S.C. § 1535).

Enactment

[edit]

As Governor of New York, Franklin D. Roosevelt had campaigned for the Presidency, in part, on a pledge to balance the federal budget.[4][5] On March 10, 1933, six days after his inauguration, Roosevelt submitted legislation to Congress which would cut $500 million ($8.181 billion in 2009 dollars) from the $3.6 billion federal budget by eliminating government agencies, reducing the pay of civilian and military federal workers (including members of Congress), and slashing veterans' benefits by 50 percent.[6][7] Veterans benefits constituted a quarter of the federal budget at the time.[6] The Act was written primarily by Lewis Douglas, Roosevelt's Director of the Budget, and Grenville Clark, a private attorney.[8][9]

The Act faced stiff opposition in the Congress. On June 17, 1932, the Bonus Army (about 17,000 World War I veterans and 26,000 of their family members and affiliated groups) had established a Hooverville shanty town on the Anacostia Flats area of Washington, D.C.[10] On July 28, the U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment commanded by General Douglas MacArthur and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment (supported by six tanks) commanded by Major George S. Patton attacked and set afire the Bonus Army's encampment, injuring hundreds and killing several veterans and civilians.[4][6][10]

Congress was forced to flee the city for several days after outraged veterans ringed the United States Capitol.[10] The political backlash caused by the attack on the Bonus Army led to the defeat of several members of Congress that fall.[4][6][10] Many in Congress, remembering the incident, did not want to support the Economy Act.[6] The House Democratic Caucus even refused to support the bill.[8] Heavily opposed by liberal Democrats (92 of whom voted against it), the bill passed the House of Representatives only with heavy support of Republicans and conservative Democrats.[6]

The bill easily passed the Senate only because the Senate Democratic Caucus had scheduled a vote on the popular Cullen-Harrison Act (to amend the Volstead Act to allow the manufacture and sale of beer and light wines) immediately after the vote on the Economy Act—allowing Senators to cast vote for one very unpopular bill and one very popular bill in quick succession.[6]

The President signed the Economy Act into law on March 20, 1933.[1]

Provisions and impact

[edit]

The Economy Act cut federal spending by $243 million, not the $500 million requested by the President.[6][8] This aspect of the Act proved deflationary as the government purchased fewer goods and services, and some argue that this led to a worsening of the Great Depression.[11][12] The act also halved Supreme Court pensions and two of the four anti-New Deal Supreme Court justices, Willis Van Devanter and George Sutherland, refused to retire, remained on the bench, and struck down some of Roosevelt's recovery acts;[13] Supreme Court pensions were originally halved in 1932[14] but had been temporarily restored by Congress to full pay in February 1933.[14] These two justices would likely have retired from the Supreme Court early into Roosevelt's first term if their pensions had not been halved.[13]

The Economy Act also gave the President limited authority to reorganize executive branch agencies to achieve efficiency, but this power was not utilized much before the Act expired in 1935.[1] By March 3, 1935, Roosevelt had issued 27 reorganization orders, most of them minor in nature.[15] Roosevelt did not engage in extensive reorganization efforts until the passage of the Reorganization Act of 1939 gave him that authority.[16]

Its most important provisions, however, repealed all federal laws regarding veterans' benefits.[17][18]

Section 17 of the Act declared: "All public laws granting medical or hospital treatment, domiciliary care, compensation, and other allowances, pension, disability allowance, or retirement pay to veterans and the dependents of veterans of ... the World War ... are hereby repealed, and all laws granting or pertaining to yearly renewable term insurance are hereby repealed."[19] However, the Act allowed the president to re-establish these benefits for two years via executive order at levels the President deemed appropriate.[20]

Benefits for non-disabled veterans fell more than 40%, creating deep resentment among former soldiers and officers and leading to the establishment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a major force in American politics.[17][21] The Economy Act caused a second Bonus Army to form, but Roosevelt handled this protest much more carefully than Hoover had: His administration set up an encampment for the protesters (albeit too far from the Capitol to make their protest effective), prohibited loitering in the District of Columbia (forcing the marchers to stay outside the city), sent Eleanor Roosevelt to deliver food and medicine to the marchers and hear their grievances, and encouraged the ex-servicemen to seek work with the Civilian Conservation Corps (which many did).[22]

Veterans nonetheless sued to have their benefits restored. In Lynch v. United States, 292 U.S. 571 (1934) and United States v. Jackson, 302 U.S. 628 (1938), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that Congress had violated federal law in eliminating certain insurance guarantees formerly offered to veterans by the War Risk Insurance Act (as amended December 24, 1919; Chapter 16, Section 12, 41 Stat. 371), and those benefits were restored.[23]

The Economy Act had little effect on either the federal deficit or the economy. Spending in other areas rose so substantially that it dwarfed the cuts imposed by the Economy Act.[1][6][8][11] The benefit cuts also did not last. In June 1933, Roosevelt restored $50 million in pension payments, and Congress added another $46 million.[24] In January 1934, Roosevelt added another $21 million for veterans whose disabilities were service-connected but not service-caused.[24] In March 1934, Congress overrode Roosevelt's veto and added another $90 million in veterans benefits and $120 million to federal workers' salaries.[8][24] In October 1934, Roosevelt restored $60 million in federal salary cuts, and restored cuts to veterans who had served in the Spanish–American War, Philippine–American War, and Boxer Rebellion.[24]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d Olson, James Stuart. Historical Dictionary of the Great Depression, 1929-1940. Santa Barbara, calif.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001. ISBN 0-313-30618-4
  2. ^ Lee, Mordecai. Institutionalizing Congress and the Presidency: The U.S. Bureau of Efficiency, 1916-1933. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2006. ISBN 1-58544-548-7
  3. ^ Tomanelli, Steven N. Appropriations Law: Principles and Practice. Vienna, Va.: Management Concepts, 2003. ISBN 1-56726-121-3
  4. ^ a b c Schlesinger, Arthur M. The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933. Paperback ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1957. ISBN 0-618-34085-8
  5. ^ Botti, Timothy J. Envy of the World: A History of the U.S. Economy and Big Business. New York: Algora Publishing, 2006. ISBN 0-87586-432-5
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Kennedy, David M. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-19-503834-7
  7. ^ Zelizer, Julian E. "The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal: Fiscal Conservatism and the Roosevelt Administration, 1933-1938." Presidential Studies Quarterly. 30:2 (June 2000); Ippolito, Dennis S. Why Budgets Matter: Budget Policy and American Politics. State Collete, Penn.: Penn State Press, 2004. ISBN 0-271-02260-4
  8. ^ a b c d e Northrup, Cynthia Clark. The American Economy: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003. ISBN 1-57607-866-3
  9. ^ Stott, Kelly McMichael. "FDR, Lewis Douglas, and the Raw Deal." The Historian. 63:1 (September 2000).
  10. ^ a b c d Dickson, Paul and Allen, Thomas B. The Bonus Army: An American Epic. New York: Walker and Company, 2004. ISBN 0-8027-1440-4
  11. ^ a b Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. 2: The Coming of the New Deal. Paperback ed. New York: Mariner Books, 2003. (Originally published 1958.) ISBN 0-618-34086-6
  12. ^ Gould, Lewis L. The Most Exclusive Club: A History of the Modern United States Senate. New York: Basic Books, 2006. ISBN 0-465-02779-2; Phillips, Ronnie J. The Chicago Plan and New Deal Banking Reform. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1995. ISBN 1-56324-469-1. Balancing the budget was, at the time, considered by most economists to be inflationary, and the effects of the Economy Act were unexpected. See: Chafe, William Henry. The Achievement of American Liberalism: The New Deal and Its Legacies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-231-11212-2
  13. ^ a b McKenna, Marian Cecilia. Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Constitutional War: The Court-Packing Crisis of 1937. New York: Fordham University, 2002, p. 35–36, 335–336.
  14. ^ a b Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self, G. Edward White pg. 469
  15. ^ Calabresi, Steven G. and Yoo, Christopher S. The Unitary Executive: Presidential Power from Washington to Bush. New haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. ISBN 0-300-12126-1
  16. ^ Karl, Barry Dean. Executive Reorganization and Reform in the New Deal: The Genesis of Administrative Management, 1900–1939. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963.
  17. ^ a b Keene, Jennifer D. Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8018-7446-7
  18. ^ United States v. Jackson, 302 U.S. 628 (1938); "History of Presumptions of Service Connection." Archived 2006-09-04 at the Wayback Machine Institute of Medicine. No date. Accessed 2009-04-18.
  19. ^ Economy Act of March 20, 1933, Sec. 17.
  20. ^ Weir, Margaret; Orloff, Ann Shola; and Skocpol, Theda. The Politics of Social Policy in the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-691-02841-9
  21. ^ Ortiz, Stephen R. "The New Deal for Veterans: The Economy Act, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Origins of New Deal Dissent." Journal of Military History. 70:2 (April 2006).
  22. ^ Lisio, Donald J. The President and Protest: Hoover, MacArthur, and the Bonus Riot. 2d ed. New York: Fordham University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8232-1572-5
  23. ^ Lynch v. United States, 292 U.S. 571 (1934); United States v. Jackson, 302 U.S. 628 (1938); McKenna, Marian Cecilia. Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Constitutional War: The Court-Packing Crisis of 1937. New York: Fordham University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8232-2154-7
  24. ^ a b c d "Economy's End." Time. August 26, 1935.

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Wikipedia

Economy Act of March 20, 1933

The Economy Act of 1933, officially titled the Act of March 20, 1933 (ch. 3, Pub. L. 73–2, 48 Stat. 8, enacted March 20, 1933, is an Act of Congress that cut the salaries of federal workers and reduced benefit payments to veterans, moves intended to reduce the federal deficit in the United States. The Economy Act of 1933 is sometimes confused with the Economy Act of 1932, which was signed in the final days of the Hoover administration in February 1933. This Hoover-sponsored bill established the purchasing authority of the federal government. Title VI of this earlier act authorized heads of executive departments, establishments, bureaus, and offices to place orders with any other such Federal agency unless the requisitioned goods or services could be acquired as conveniently or more cheaply from the private sector. Though amended several times, this provision—commonly referred to simply as the Economy Act—remains in force as of 2019 (31 U.S.C. § 1535).

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Wikipedia

Economy Act (disambiguation)

A number of pieces of legislation are known as the Economy Act. In the United States: the Economy Act of 1932, which established the purchasing authority of the federal government the Economy Act of March 20, 1933, part of Roosevelt's "New Deal". (38 U.S.C. § 701) In the United Kingdom, a common name for either of: the Economy (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1926 (16 & 17 Geo. 5. c. 9), see Representation of the People Act the National Economy Act 1931 (21 & 22 Geo. 5. c. 48), see List of acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1931

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Wikipedia

Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933

The Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933 (German: Geheimtreffen vom 20. Februar 1933) was a secret meeting held by Adolf Hitler and 25 industrialists at the official residence of the President of the Reichstag Hermann Göring in Berlin. Its purpose was to raise funds for the election campaign of the Nazi Party. The German elections were to be held on 5 March 1933. The Nazi Party wanted to achieve two-thirds majority to pass the Enabling Act and desired to raise three million Reichsmark to fund the campaign. According to records, 2,071,000 Reichsmarks (equivalent to €9,600,103 in 2021) were contributed at the meeting, although Goebbels also claimed that a full 3 million were received. Together with the Industrial petition, it is used as evidence to support the idea that big business played a central role in the rise of the Nazi Party.

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Wikipedia

New Deal

The New Deal refers to a series of economic, social, and political reforms in response to the Great Depression in the United States under the first and second administrations of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Following a demand-side economic theory, Roosevelt sought to utilize the authority of the federal government to increase spending and introduce programs to spur growth and combat issues specific to the depression, such as unemployment, labor relations, financial reform, and social welfare. Roosevelt introduced the phrase when accepting the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the 1932 United States presidential election, winning in a landslide over incumbent Herbert Hoover, whose administration was widely viewed as ineffective. Roosevelt attributed the Depression to inherent market instability and inadequate aggregate demand (based on the Keynesian economic model), and argued that stabilizing and rationalizing the economy required massive government intervention. During Roosevelt's first hundred days in office in 1933 until 1935, Roosevelt introduced what historians refer to as the "First New Deal", which focused on the "3 R's": relief for the unemployed and for the poor, recovery of the economy back to normal levels, and reforms of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression. Roosevelt signed the Emergency Banking Act, which authorized the Federal Reserve to insure deposits to restore confidence, and the 1933 Banking Act made this permanent with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Other laws created the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which allowed industries to create "codes of fair competition"; the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which protected investors from abusive stock market practices; and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), which raised rural incomes by controlling production. Public works were undertaken in order to find jobs for the unemployed (25 percent of the workforce when Roosevelt took office): the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enlisted young men for manual labor on government land, and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) promoted electricity generation and other forms of economic development in the drainage basin of the Tennessee River. Although the First New Deal helped many find work and restored confidence in the financial system, by 1935 stock prices were still below pre-Depression levels and unemployment still exceeded 20 percent. From 1935 to 1938, the "Second New Deal" introduced further legislation and additional agencies which focused on job creation and on improving the conditions of the elderly, workers, and the poor. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) supervised the construction of bridges, libraries, parks, and other facilities, while also investing in the arts; the National Labor Relations Act guaranteed employees the right to organize trade unions; and the Social Security Act introduced pensions for senior citizens and benefits for the disabled, mothers with dependent children, and the unemployed. The Fair Labor Standards Act prohibited child labor, and enshrined a 40-hour work week and national minimum wage. In 1938, the Republican Party gained seats in Congress and joined with conservative Democrats to block further New Deal legislation, and some of it was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The New Deal produced a political realignment, reorienting the Democratic Party's base to the New Deal coalition of labor unions, blue-collar workers, big city machines, racial minorities (most importantly African-Americans), white Southerners, and intellectuals. The realignment crystallized into a powerful liberal coalition which dominated presidential elections into the 1960s, as an opposing conservative coalition largely controlled Congress in domestic affairs from 1939 onwards. Historians still debate the effectiveness of the New Deal programs, although most accept that full employment was not achieved until the United States' entry into World War II in 1941.

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TOPIC OF THE DAY

Greenwood / Black Wall Street

Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.

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TRIVIA QUESTION OF THE DAY

Who became the first Black woman to travel into space?

Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.