1929 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

A Mississippi lynch mob of 2,000 burns an accused black rapist alive, a coroner's jury returns a verdict of death "due to unknown causes," and Mississippi governor Theodore G. Bilbo says the state has "neither the time nor the money" to pursue the matter. But total U.S. lynchings for the year number 10, down from 23 in 1926, 97 in 1909.

The U.S. Supreme Court rules 6 to 3 against Rosika Schwimmer's application for citizenship May 27 because she has refused to swear that she will bear arms to defend her adopted country (see politics, 1926). Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dissents, saying that Mme. Schwimmer "seems to be a woman of superior character and intelligence, obviously more than ordinarily desirable as a citizen of the United States," and adds, "If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."

Germany's Frankfurt city council sets up what it calls officially a "concentration camp for Gypsies" (see 1911). Camp inhabitants are fenced in, but they are free to come and go at will and there is no permanent guard (but see 1938).

The Japanese Diet comes close to passing a women's civil rights bill, but Prime Minister Tomomasa Tanaka declares that it is still too early to extend civil rights to women. The minister of the interior says women should stay at home and wash diapers (see 1930).

Pioneer British suffragist Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett dies at London August 5 at age 82. She was present in the House of Commons when John Stuart Mill introduced the first woman suffrage bill in 1868.