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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.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Lin Liguo | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
林立果 | |||||||||
 Lin Liguo, right, with his mother Ye Qun | |||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||
| Born | 23 December 1945 | ||||||||
| Died | 13 September 1971 (aged 25) | ||||||||
| Party | Chinese Communist Party | ||||||||
| Relations | Lin Liheng (sister) | ||||||||
| Parent(s) | Lin Biao and Ye Qun | ||||||||
| Education | |||||||||
| Military service | |||||||||
| Allegiance | People's Republic of China | ||||||||
| Branch/service | People's Liberation Army Air Force | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Chinese | 林立果 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Lin Liguo (Chinese: 林立果; 23 December 1945 – 13 September 1971) was the son of Chinese marshal Lin Biao. He was the alleged leader of Project 571, a coup plot against Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong.
Lin was born on 23 December 1945. He graduated from the elite Beijing No. 4 High School and later entered the Faculty of Physics at Peking University. He later became member of the Chinese Communist Party.[citation needed]
Following the start of Cultural Revolution, he dropped out of the university and joined the People's Liberation Army Air Force in 1967. Lin was promoted to the deputy director of the Office of the Air Force Command in 1969, by the commander of PLAAF Wu Faxian. This was an important position, as all crucial documents were required to pass through Lin's hands.[citation needed]
According to Wu Faxian's testimony in the 1980 trial:
"In fact, all the things the Air Force reported since July 6, 1970 were to Liguo. After all the things we had to deal with, was to listen to his orders."[1]
Mao Zedong's government claims that in 1970, under his father Lin Biao's direction, Lin Liguo made a plan known as "Project 571" to assassinate Mao Zedong in Shanghai, but Mao was alerted to it and left Shanghai one day ahead of schedule and changed return route back to Beijing. In February 1971, Lin Liguo took Yu Xinye, the deputy director of the Political Department of the PLAAF to Hangzhou; then he called another deputy director Zhou Yuchi from Beijing to Shanghai, and met them in Shanghai from 20 to 24 March.
The Lin family, including Lin Biao, Ye Qun, and Lin Liguo, attempted to flee after the coup failed. On 13 September 1971, they fled in a PLAAF Hawker Siddeley Trident, from Qinhuangdao Shanhaiguan Airport.
Party documents later released state:
"the plane was making for the Soviet Union but was inadequately fueled for such a trip; it also had on board neither navigator nor radio operator. It crashed in Mongolia on September 13, 1971, burning to death all on board."[1]
However, according to the historian J. D. Spence, "this story is essentially beyond verification, since the photographs later released by the Chinese authorities are of dubious authenticity and details on Lin Biao’s exact plans and on the other plotters are blurred" The government narrative also does not sufficiently explain how and why Lin Biao's plane crashed. Skeptics have claimed that Lin's decision to flee to the Soviet Union was illogical, on the grounds that the United States or Taiwan would have been safer destinations.[1]
Unlike the official narrative of the events leading to the Lin Biao incident, the most widely believed version posits that Lin Liguo, who was aware of the increasing hostility expressed towards his father in Mao's speeches, was the originator of the coup plan.[2]: 35
From November 1980 to January 1981, the trial of the members belonging to the "counter-revolutionary" group of Lin Biao and Gang of Four was held in Beijing. In particular, five high-ranking military personnel, including Wu Faxian, appeared before the court, where they testified that Lin Liguo was actively involved in Project 571. It is also still unclear whether Lin Biao himself planned a coup, or whether Lin Liguo and Ye Qun had such plans and did not inform Lin Biao about them.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Lin Liguo (Chinese: 林立果; 23 December 1945 – 13 September 1971) was the son of Chinese marshal Lin Biao. He was the alleged leader of Project 571, a coup plot against Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong.
The Lin Biao Counter-Revolutionary Clique or the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique was the term used during the Cultural Revolution in China to refer to a "clique organization" following the Lin Biao incident. It was mainly composed of Lin Biao, Chen Boda, Ye Qun, Huang Yongsheng, Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng, Qiu Huizuo, and Lin Liguo. The Chinese Communist Party accused it of colluding with the Jiang Qing Counter-Revolutionary Clique (also known as the Gang of Four) to seize supreme power in China during the Cultural Revolution.
The Princelings (Chinese: 太子党), also translated as the Party's Crown Princes or second generation officials (Chinese: 官二代), are the descendants of prominent and influential senior communist officials in the People's Republic of China. It is an informal, and often derogatory, categorization to signify those believed to be benefiting from nepotism and cronyism, by analogy with the crown prince (Chinese: taizi) in hereditary monarchies. Many of its members have held high-level political and business positions in the upper echelons of power. In contemporary China, "Princelings" are the descendants of senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders and have themselves risen to high-ranking positions within the CCP. If their parents belong to the first generation of CCP revolutionaries, they are also referred to as the "second Red Generation," "Red Heirs," or "the Red Nobility." Princelings also encompass the sons and daughters of later generations of top leaders, including figures like Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, and Hu Jintao. Princelings exerted their influence in the country either by occupying significant roles within the party-state apparatus, which includes the party, government, and military services, or by controlling substantial state-owned enterprises. Opportunities are available to princelings that are not available to common people. Using their powerful connections they have the opportunity to obtain profitable opportunities for themselves and for others. The more aggressive of the princelings have amassed fortunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. However, there is no discernible political cohesion within the group, and as such they should not be compared to other informal groupings such as the Shanghai clique or the Tuanpai ("Youth League clique"), which resemble intra-party factions with some degree of affinity on policy issues. Under the People's Republic, the term initially came into use during the Cultural Revolution to describe Lin Biao's son Lin Liguo as well as his close friends and allies who had been promoted alongside him into elite positions of the People's Liberation Army Air Force who were envisioned as the future "Third Generation" leadership of the CCP. In 1966, the Cultural Revolution led to many Princelings to be sent to rural China. Princelings lived in similar villages, worked together, and received their educations together. After some years, the Princelings started to return to home (commonly areas like Shanghai or Beijing) however this crucial period of time had already led many Princelings to form lifelong friendships/partnerships. Following the death of Lin Liguo in a failed coup and the subsequent purges of this group, the term briefly fell out of use until the 1980s to label the children of the Eight Elders and other First and Second Generation leaders who had been increasingly promoted in the party and were opposed to the efforts of reformers Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang to curb corruption and cronyism. Notable contemporary Princelings include Xi Jinping (son of Xi Zhongxun), China's top leader and Party General Secretary since 2012, and Bo Xilai (son of Bo Yibo), a former Party Committee Secretary of Chongqing who was also a member of the Politburo. The political influence of princelings has weakened significantly during the leadership of Xi Jinping, who has systematically excluded them from the top leadership. During the Xi era, the number of princelings in the Central Committee, the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee fell to record lows.
Ye Qun (simplified Chinese: 叶群; traditional Chinese: 葉群; pinyin: Yè Qún; 2 December 1917 – 13 September 1971) was a Chinese military officer and politician, and the wife of Lin Biao, the Vice Chairman of Chinese Communist Party who controlled China's military power along with Chairman Mao Zedong. She was mostly known for taking care of politics for her husband. Ye was a member of the 9th Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. She died with Lin Biao and their son Lin Liguo in a plane crash over Mongolia on 13 September 1971. They also had a daughter, Lin Liheng (Doudou), who was not on the airplane.
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.
MORE →The Greenwood District.