What Can Happen in One Day

Yesterday was July 20, 2024. It seemed as though I kept seeing different posts about the anniversary of this or that, starting with the 55th anniversary of the moon landing.

It also was the day that the dystopian events of Octavia Butler's novel The Parable of Sower begin. Her book was published in 1993 and when I read it, just after it came out, 2024 seemed a long way away. I remember trying to imagine how wrong things would have to go to be that way.

Yet here we are, well on our way.

Another anniversary on July 20 was from 1934: Minneapolis's Bloody Friday, when cops killed two and injured 67 as truckers struck for better wages and working conditions during the Depression. Later that decade, the city's business leaders created the Minneapolis Aquatennial celebration, held the same week of the month each summer, to defuse angry remembrances of the bloody day in 1934. Now, awareness of its roots is all but lost.

The Equal Justice Initiative also told me that on this day in 2015:

...the North Carolina legislature passed a law requiring legislative approval to change or remove monuments erected to honor “an event, person, or military service that is part of North Carolina’s history." ....written as a response to efforts to remove Confederate flags and memorials in other states after a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black men and women in a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina...

Some other notable occurrences on July 20:

• The 1848 Women's Right Convention concluded in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
• Ford Motor Company shipped its first car (1903)... setting Henry Ford up to spew antisemitism.
• Hitler survived the 1944 assassination attempt by some of his officers.
• People in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater died and were injured in a mass shooting (2012).

It's always worthwhile to read the Wikipedia page for a particular date to see how many events happened in history that you do or don't remember — even from your own lifetime — and which ones seem significant enough to mention.  

__

Bloody Friday photo from the Minnesota Historical Society.