1958 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission swears in six members January 3 and begins operations (see 1957).

Veteran Harlem civil rights leader Ella Josephine Baker, 54, moves to Atlanta in January to coordinate the Crusade for Citizenship, a voter rights campaign started by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and backed by the charisma of SCLC president Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (see 1957). Baker favors decision-making at a local, grass-roots level, saying that "strong people don't need strong leaders," and her egalitarian, non-clerical position will bring her into conflict with SCLC leadership (see 1960).

An employee of the Bethel Baptist Church at Birmingham, Ala., finds a dynamite bomb beside the church June 29 and moves it to an open area, where it explodes without injuring anyone. Pastor Fred L. Shuttlesworth is a civil rights leader, and authorities will arrest a Ku Klux Klan leader, now 34, in 1977 on charges of trying to blow up the black church.

The U.S. Supreme Court meets in special term and rules unanimously September 29 that schools at Little Rock, Ark., must integrate according to schedule (see 1957). The Court's decision in Cooper v. Aaron implements its ruling in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education.

A pre-dawn dynamite blast tears out a side wall of Atlanta's Hebrew Benevolent Congregation temple October 12 and an anonymous caller to the United Press International office vows that this is "the last empty building in Atlanta that we will bomb." Police immediately arrest five white Protestant supremacists (one is an FBI informer), but they will twice be acquitted of all charges.

Venezuelan women protest government restrictions January 17 and Caracas police attack them with machetes, but the military junta of Gen. Marcos Perez Jiminez is overthrown 6 days later after nearly 10 years in power.

Moroccan women gain the right to choose their own husbands. Rabat restricts polygamy.

Tokyo's Yoshiwara prostitute district closes April 1 after 341 years of operation (see 1956). The U.S. occupation authorities who left in 1953 were unable to close it, but feminist Fusaye Ichikawa was elected to the Diet in 1952 and has waged a campaign to end legalized prostitution.

South African police arrest social worker Winnie Nomzano, 24, of the Baragwanath General Hospital for taking part in a women's demonstration against the nation's apartheid pass laws. She marries lawyer Nelson Mandela, now 40 and an executive in the African National Congress (see 1944; 1962).

Britain's First Offenders Act prohibits magistrates from imprisoning any adult first offender if there is a more appropriate way of dealing with the offense. Youth crimes have increased sharply since 1955.