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Dictionary.com | Meanings & Definitions of English Words

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The world's leading online dictionary: English definitions, synonyms, word origins, example sentences, word games, and more. A trusted authority for 25+ years!

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A boycott is a call to stop buying from or using a certain company because they've done something that's considered unethical or otherwise unacceptable; some are successful, some aren't, and some made history. They cover all different types of business and industries. Here are 10 of the most famous, starting with the one that gave us the word:

See also: Walmart Faces Backlash after Employee Uploads Offensive Halloween Costume Description

1. The Captain Boycott Boycott, 1880

Captain Boycott retired from the army to become a land agent in Ireland. Troubles in the country led to his employer telling him to lower the tenants' rent; when the tenants decided it hadn't been lowered enough and refused to pay, he was told to start evicting people.

The tenants didn't like that very much. His employees stopped working, local businesses wouldn't take his money, and even the postman wouldn't deliver his mail. Attempts to continue with a limited workforce and import labour and produce proved too expensive to maintain, and eventually he and his family were forced to move away.

Was it successful? He moved away and the word "boycott" was introduced in 1888, so yes.

Fun fact: It would have been "boycatt" if his parents hadn't changed the spelling of their name.

2. Britain 1764-1766

During the French-Indian war, Britain decided that the way to recover its losses was to impose taxes on the colonies with the Stamp Act. The colonies didn't like that idea, and were especially offended by their lack of representation during the decision making, leading to the slogan "no taxation without representation." They fought back by boycotting British goods and rebels started terrorizing British stamp agents into resigning. This desire for autonomy led to further revolts, and eventually the American Revolution.

Was it successful? The act was repealed by George III in 1766, and America got its independence, so yes.

3. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956

The story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat for a white passenger goes beyond that ride.

First, Jo Ann Robinson, a civil rights activist, made African Americans aware that they represented 75% of the Montgomery bus company's clientele and organized the Monday Boycott whereby all African Americans refused to ride the buses.

It was so successful that the boycott continued for another year, encouraged by Martin Luther King Jr: carpools were created, African American taxi drivers charged African American passengers only a dime, and white employers even took to driving their African American servants to work.

Was it successful? On December 20, 1956, laws requiring segregated buses were declared unconstitutional in Montgomery and across the US, so yes.

4. The Delano Grape Strike, 1965-1969

Led by Cesar Chavez and his National Farmworkers Association (now the United Farm Workers of America), this boycott began when Filipino farm workers in California walked away from their jobs in protest of being the lowest-paid workers in the US; they were receiving less than the federal minimum other workers were given. Upon hearing the news of the strike, millions of Americans boycotted the company by refusing to buy grapes.

Was it successful? At the height of the strike, over 14 million Americans were refusing to buy grapes until historic contracts were finally signed in 1970, so yes.

5. Nestle, 1977-1984

Nestle came under fire when they began a marketing campaign to sell breast milk substitutes to developing countries; they were accused of contributing to health problems and to the rise of infant mortality. The boycott pointed out that formula is less healthy than breast milk, that these mothers lacked clean water which was needed to prepare the formula safely, and that it was too expensive for them to buy once they'd finished the free samples.

Was it successful? The original US boycott ended in 1984 after satisfactory codes and policies were put in place, so yes, but the UK restarted it in 1988 and it's still in effect.

6. The Summer Olympics, 1980

In 1980 US President Jimmy Carter called for the United States to boycott the Olympics unless Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan. 60 other nations joined in the boycott, with many telling their athletes they weren't allowed to compete.

16 of the nations who supported the boycott also supported their athletes' right to choose; they allowed them to go if they wanted to, as long as they marched under their National Olympic Committee (NOC) flag and had the Olympic anthem played at their award ceremonies. As a result, there was one ceremony where three NOC flags were raised.

Was it successful? The USSR didn't withdraw their troops for another eight years and thirteen Soviet allies then boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in retaliation, so no.

The real losers: the athletes who weren't allowed to compete, the athletes who did compete but didn't properly represent their country and American broadcaster NBC who lost millions they had put into buying the television rights.

7. International Buy Nothing Day, 1992

Intended as the opposite to Black Friday and a boycott on consumerism, the idea is that people will stop and think about their overconsumption rather than go out and get swept up in the crazy sales. Given that people are still getting injured and arrested in the craziness, it doesn't seem to have worked.

When is it? Every year, on Black Friday (US) or the following Saturday (rest of the world), which is when people would usually begin their Christmas shopping.

Was it successful? It hasn't stopped Black Friday or had any effect on consumption in general, so not really. It is still around though, so it did raise some awareness.

What do people do instead?

A zombie walk

Whirl Mart. Take nine of your friends to WalMart, grab a trolley and walk around in a conga line buying nothing.

Credit card cut up. Presumably after cutting your own card, go and stand in a shopping mall and offer to help others by cutting their cards.

8. The Sudanese Civil War Sex Boycott, 2002

Professor Samira Ahmed found a unique way to end the second Sudanese Civil War: she called for wives to abandon sexual relations with their husbands. The earliest record of this idea is actually attributed to Greek playwright Aristophanes and his play Lysistrata, where this tactic is used to end the Peloponnesian War of 404 AC.

Was it successful? The war ended three years later. This might not be why, but three years is a lot shorter than the 19 years it had been going on before they did it.

9. Caterpillar, 2003

Israel realized that these destructive bulldozers would make great "Armored Construction Equipment" and approached Caterpillar, who agreed to arm the Israeli military with bulldozers that were then used to destroy Palestinian homes, farmland and infrastructure as well as any people who got in the way.

The boycott began when student activist Rachel Corrie was killed while trying to peacefully prevent the destruction of a home in Gaza. There are two ongoing actons; a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to encourage investors to stop investing, and a public boycott on Caterpillar's boots, caps, clothes and other products.

Was it successful? Not entirely, as court cases continue to fail to have the Corrie death ruled a murder and the consumer boycott has been mostly ignored, but there have been some victories: in 2012, Caterpillar was removed from the World Socially Responsible Index, which cost them millions in investment. Progress continues to be made.

10. The Abercrombie & Fitch Girlcott, 2005

This began when a new line of girls' T-shirts was introduced with slogans that were considered to be offensive and harmful to body image, such as "Who needs brains when you have these?" and "The Freshman 15" with a list of names under it.

Was it successful? Maybe. Five days of protests got the girls behind the boycott a meeting at the corporate headquarters, and a month later the shirts were gone. Whether it was because they listened or because they run out of stock is debatable, as it wasn't the first or last time they offended people.

See also: How to Lead Change

Have you ever been involved in a boycott? Do you know of any that we missed? Let us know in the comments section below.

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A boycott is a call to stop buying from or using a certain company because they've done something that's considered unethical or otherwise unacceptable; some are successful, some aren't, and some made history. They cover all different types of business and industries.

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School strike for climate

Fridays for Future
Part of the climate movement

Maximum number of school strikers per country:

Date

Since August 2018, mostly on Fridays, sometimes on Thursdays, Saturdays or Sundays

Location

Caused by

Political inaction against global warming

Goals
Climate change mitigation

Methods
Student strike

Status

Active

Parties to the civil conflict

Lead figures

Greta Thunberg ( de facto)

Number

1.4 millions (for 15 March 2019),[1]
4 million (for 20 September 2019)[2]
2 million (for 27 September 2019)[3]

Official website:
fridaysforfuture.org

The school strike for climate ( Swedish: Skolstrejk för klimatet), also known variously as Fridays for Future ( FFF), Youth for Climate, Climate Strike or Youth Strike for Climate, is an international movement of school students who take time off from class on Fridays to participate in demonstrations to demand action from political leaders to take action to prevent climate change and for the fossil fuel industry to transition to renewable energy.

Publicity and widespread organising began after Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg staged a protest in August 2018 outside the Swedish Riksdag (parliament), holding a sign that read " Skolstrejk för klimatet" ("School strike for climate").

A global strike on 15 March 2019 gathered more than one million strikers. Around 2200 strikes were organised in 125 countries. On 24 May 2019, the second global strike took place, in which 1600 events across 150 countries drew hundreds of thousands of protesters. The events were timed to coincide with the 2019 European Parliament election.

The 2019 Global Week for Future was a series of 4500 strikes across over 150 countries, focused around Friday 20 September and Friday 27 September. Likely the largest climate strikes in world history, 20 September strikes gathered roughly 4 million protesters, many of them schoolchildren, including 1.4 million people on strike in Germany. On 27 September, an estimated 2 million people participated in demonstrations worldwide, including over 1 million protesters in Italy and several hundred thousand protesters in Canada.

Earlier school climate strikes

In November 2006 the Australian Youth Climate Coalition was formed to organise climate change actions involving youth and school children. In 2010 in England there were school walkouts over climate change, linked to a Climate Camp. In late-November 2015, an independent group of students invited other students around the world to skip school on the first day of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. On 30 November, the first day of the conference, a "Climate strike" was organised in over 100 countries; over people participated. The movement focused on three demands: 100% clean energy; keeping fossil fuels in the ground, and helping climate refugees.

Greta Thunberg, 2018

On 20 August 2018, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, then in the ninth grade, decided to not attend school until the 2018 Sweden general election on 9 September after heat waves and wildfires in Sweden. She has said she was inspired by the teen activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who had organised the March for Our Lives. Thunberg protested by sitting outside the Riksdag every day during school hours with a sign that read " Skolstrejk för klimatet" ("school strike for climate"). Among her demands were that the Swedish government reduce carbon emissions per the Paris Agreement. On 7 September, just before the general elections, she announced that she would continue to strike every Friday until Sweden aligns with the Paris Agreement. She coined the slogan FridaysForFuture, which gained worldwide attention. She inspired school students across the globe to take part in student strikes.

Thunberg travelled to New York City on a two-week journey by sailboat to continue calling attention to the work needed to address the climate crisis. She participated in school strikes being planned in the U.S on 20 September, and soon after she spoke at the UN Climate Summit on 23 September 2019, in New York City.

Growing movement, 2019

Strikes began to be organised around the world, inspired by Thunberg, starting in November 2018. In Australia, thousands of students began to strike on Fridays, ignoring Prime Minister Scott Morrison's call for "more learning in schools and less activism". Galvanised by the COP24 Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, strikes continued at least in 270 cities in December in countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In 2019, strikes were organised again in the countries listed above and in other countries, among them Colombia, New Zealand, and Uganda. Mass strikes took place on 17 and 18 January 2019, when at least students protested in Switzerland and Germany alone, against insufficient policies on global warming. In several countries, including Germany and the UK, pupils demanded the change of laws to reduce the voting age to 16 so they could influence public elections in favour of the youth.

In Germany, regional groups were organised, communicating autonomously within WhatsApp groups and spreading their messages using flyers and social media. By February 2019, more than 155 local groups were counted by the movement. In United States, organizers coordinated on a state-by-state level and communicated autonomously within Slack groups and spreading their messages using flyers and social media. By February 2019, more than 134 groups were counted by the movement. The organizations Sunrise Movement, 350.org, OneMillionOfUs, Earth Uprising, Future Coalition, Earth Guardians, Zero Hour, and Extinction Rebellion helped to coordinate.

The Belgian environment minister for Flanders, Joke Schauvliege, resigned on 5 February 2019 after falsely claiming the state security agency had evidence that the school strikes in Belgium were a "set‑up".

In the United Kingdom, on 13 February 2019, following open letters in support of the socio-political movement Extinction Rebellion in 2018, 224 academics signed an open letter giving their "full support to the students" attending the School Strike for Climate action. On Friday 15 February, more than 60 actions in towns and cities within the United Kingdom took place, with an estimated strikers taking part.

Climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, addressed a Fridays for Future climate strike in Potsdam, Germany that same day. On 21 February 2019, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, stated his intent to spend hundreds of billions of euros on climate-change mitigation, amounting to a fourth of the EU budget. He announced this in a speech next to Greta Thunberg, and media credited the school-strike movement with provoking the announcement.

On 5 March 2019, 700 German-speaking researchers signed a statement in support of the school strikes in that country. Other researchers were invited to support the statement and it has been signed by over scientists from mainly Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

On 9 May 2019, during a European Union summit in Sibiu, representatives of the movement from all over Europe met with several national leaders of European countries and handed them an open letter, which was signed by over European climate strikers and their sympathisants.

On 15 March 2019, a series of school strikes urging adults to take responsibility and stop the climate change took place. More than a million people demonstrated in about 2200 events worldwide across 125 countries.

On 1 March 2019, 150 students from the global coordination group of the youth-led climate strike (of 15 March), including Thunberg, issued an open letter in The Guardian, saying:

We, the young, are deeply concerned about our future. [...] We are the voiceless future of humanity. We will no longer accept this injustice. [...] We finally need to treat the climate crisis as a crisis. It is the biggest threat in human history and we will not accept the world's decision-makers' inaction that threatens our entire civilisation. [...] Climate change is already happening. People did die, are dying and will die because of it, but we can and will stop this madness. [...] United we will rise until we see climate justice. We demand the world's decision-makers take responsibility and solve this crisis. You have failed us in the past. If you continue failing us in the future, we, the young people, will make change happen by ourselves. The youth of this world has started to move and we will not rest again.

In Scotland, city councils of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Highland and Fife gave permission for children to attend the strikes. In Finland parental consent letters were sent to schools and in the Finnish city of Turku the school board proclaimed that children had a constitutional right to take part in the strikes.

On the morning of 15 March in a Guardian guest editorial, titled "Think we should be at school? Today's climate strike is the biggest lesson of all", school-climate-strikers Thunberg, Anna Taylor, Luisa Neubauer, Kyra Gantois, Anuna De Wever, Adélaïde Charlier, Holly Gillibrand and Alexandria Villaseñor, reiterated their reasons for striking.

In Germany, more than pupils demonstrated in 230 cities with more than in Berlin alone. In Italy more than students demonstrated ( in Milan according to the organisers). In Montreal more than attended; Stockholm to , Melbourne , Brussels , and Munich 8000. Other cities included Paris, London, Washington, Reykjavík, Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen and Tokyo. In Antarctica, at least seven scientists held a supportive rally at the Neumayer-Station III of Alfred Wegener Institute.

In Christchurch, New Zealand, the strike was abandoned for safety reasons, after a gunman opened fire on two nearby mosques and killed 51 people.

A second wave of global climate strikes began with actions in New Zealand and Australia on 24 May 2019. Hundreds of thousands of school students around the world struck in more than 1600 towns in at least 125 countries. Thunberg, one of the organizers, said that the strike took place on the second day of the four-day 2019 European Parliament election in order to affect it. Polls conducted at the time show that climate change was an important issue for voters in the election-the most important issue for German voters.

Fridays for Future Deutschland called for a major climate strike under the motto "Climate justice without borders - United for a future" also inviting people from 17 countries to come to Aachen on 21 June 2019. Protesters gathered at several points all over the city (including at Aachen main station, Westpark, RWTH CARL and Vaals) representing different chapters of the movement. Accompanied by several musical groups, they then walked or drove with bicycles through the streets to the main event at the Tivoli, thereby blocking larger parts of the traffic infrastructure for hours. Some protesters occupied a house, a bridge and several poles to raise large posters. A number of to people was anticipated. According to the organizers, with eventually protesters this peaceful event turned out to be the largest single FFF climate strike in a German city that far. The police acknowledged the originally anticipated numbers. Among the many speakers were Cyril Dion (France), Karen Raymond (India), Tetet Nera-Lauron (Philippines) and Jesse (Netherlands), Milan Schwarze and Sina Chom (Ende Gelände), as well as activists from the Hambach Forest, Pacific Climate Warriors, Alle Dörfer bleiben! (English: All villages stay!) and All In for Climate Action. Artists participating in the event included Brass Riot, Culcha Candela, Bodo Wartke, Moop Mama, Ruslana Lyzhychko, KingzCorner, Leo Holldack and Davide Martello. Among the protesters were Rezo and Anton Hofreiter.

In parallel to this event, a group of Ende Gelände 2019 activists started protests at the nearby Garzweiler II open-pit lignite mine, blocking various mining infrastructure over the weekend. FFFD had recently declared its solidarity with this movement, stating that under the circumstances civil disobedience would be a legitimate form of protest to save the future, but, organizing another demonstration on 22 June 2019 in Hochneukirch/ Jüchen in the direct neighborhood of the open-pit mine, that Fridays for Future would remain on the legal side.

On 19 June 2019, shortly before the events, the city of Aachen had followed several other German cities and declared a " climate emergency" state.

International conference in Lausanne on 5-9 August 2019

From 5 to 9 August 2019, the University of Lausanne hosted 450 young Europeans from the climate strike movement for the "SMILE for Future" conference ("Summer Meeting in Lausanne Europe"). On 9 August 2019, the conference ended with a demonstration and the publication of the Lausanne Climate Declaration stating the values, objectives and measures proposed by the movements' participants in Lausanne.

Advocated by the grassroots movement Earth Strike, the Global Week for Future was a series of strikes and events from 20-27 September 2019, primarily focused on the two Fridays 20 and 27 September. Timed to occur around the UN Climate Action Summit on 23 September, the protests were planned in 4500 locations across 150 countries.

Organizers of 20 September protests reported that over 4 million people participated in strikes worldwide, including 1.4 million participants in Germany and protesters in Australia. 27 September protests had a turnout of over 2 million people worldwide, including 1 million people in Italy and several hundred thousand people in Canada.

On 29 November 2019, three days before the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid, demonstrations took place in 2,400 cities across 157 countries to protest government inaction on the climate crisis. The organizers estimated the number of participants at 2 million, including about people in Germany.

The climate strike online movement, sometimes referred to as "digital strike", was started by two Asian-American climate activists from the United States in April of 2019. This branch of climate striking was created in order to make climate activism accessible to those unable to strike physically. In March 2020, following the COVID-19 pandemic, Greta Thunberg encouraged the movement to instead of gathering at the streets and town squares, sit at home with a sign and post the image on the Internet. The movement has since amassed notable popularity due to restrictions passed regarding large gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, receiving attention from organizations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International.

Since its formation, the Fridays for Future Digital movement has engaged in a series of campaigns aimed at raising awareness to various climate justice issues. These include efforts to teach climate change education in schools and protect indigenous climate activists from harmful government policies.

It is accepted by the vast majority of scientists that the greenhouse effect which warms Earth is much increased by emission of vast amounts of carbon dioxide and some other gases by human activities. In the historical past the greenhouse effect, driven by volcanic and microbial carbon dioxide emission, prevented the earth from being permanently encased in ice, but since humanity industrialised, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased and is causing ever more harmful global warming and climate change. The only processes that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere (once takeup by acidifying the oceans is saturated) are geological-locking up of carbon by weathering and formation of rocks as carbonates and other compounds, on a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years-and botanical, uptake of carbon by vegetation, locking it up unless the vegetation burns or rots without being replaced, on a timescale of, at best, centuries.

Adults in positions of authority, in the form of fossil fuel corporations and global governments, are seen as being responsible for large carbon dioxide emissions, and doing far too little to reduce them. A 2019 statement by over 12,000 scientists says that "Young people's concerns are justified and supported by the best available science".

On 31 January 2019, more than 3400 Belgian scientists and academics signed an open letter in support of the school strikes. The letter reads "On the basis of the facts supplied by climate science, the campaigners are right. That is why we, as scientists, support them." This was followed by an open letter in support of the school strikes in the Netherlands, signed by 340 scientists, and by 1200 researchers in Finland signing a letter, on 11 March 2019, supporting the strikes. An article published in Nature in March 2019 listed many other expressions of support, and no criticisms, from scientists, with comments such as "The idea of a climate strike is innovative. It's provocative, and I think it's the right form of non-violent civil disobedience".

In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland a group of scientists founded Scientists for Future (S4F) in support of the factual correctness of the claims formulated by the movement. The statement was signed by over German-language scientists and scholars.

On 14 March 2019, the Club of Rome issued an official statement in support of Thunberg and the strikes, urging governments across the world to respond to this call for action and cut global carbon emissions.

In early April 2019, a letter titled "Concerns of young protesters are justified" was published in . The letter declared that the climate strikers' concerns are "justified and supported by the best available science" and was signed by over 3000 scientists worldwide.

In June 2019, 1000 healthcare professionals in the UK and elsewhere, including professors, eminent public health figures, and former presidents of royal colleges, called for widespread non-violent civil disobedience in response to "woefully inadequate" government policies on the unfolding ecological emergency. They called on politicians and the news media to face the facts of the unfolding ecological emergency and take action. They supported the school strike movement and Extinction Rebellion.

Reactions by schools, politicians, and parents

The strikes have been both praised and criticised by adults in positions of authority. In the European Union, the movement enjoyed significant support by the pan-European party Volt Europa which, according to a report by Parents for Future before the European Elections 2019, shared all demands published by Fridays For Future in April 2019.

Conservative politicians in the United Kingdom and Australia have described the strikes as truancy; some children have been punished or arrested for striking or demonstrating. UK Prime Minister Theresa May criticised the strikes as wasting lesson and teaching time. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition, voiced his support for the strikes, as did leaders of other UK parties. UK energy minister Claire Perry said that she would have joined the strikes in her younger days. David Reed, director of charity Generation Change, pointed out that "the school leaders seem to have missed the point of efforts over the past decade to raise education standards. For what does excellence in education look like if it's not pupils being engaged enough on issues such as climate change to do something about them?"

Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison called for "more learning and less activism" following the strikes. Australia's Education Minister Dan Tehan said that if school students think that issues are important, they should take action after school or on weekends.

In New Zealand, there was mixed response from politicians, community leaders, and schools. Students were threatened to be marked as truant by some principals for attending the strike without their parents' or school's permission. Judith Collins, and several other Members of Parliament were dismissive of the impact of the strike, while Climate Change Minister James Shaw expressed support noting that little attention would be paid to marchers protesting on the weekend.

On 15 March 2019 the UN General Secretary António Guterres embraced the strikers, admitting that "My generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change. This is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry." Guterres invited world leaders to a UN summit in September 2019 with "concrete realistic plans to enhance their nationally determined contributions by 2020".

Many parents, including public figures, have supported the children's climate strikes. A spokesperson for the "Our Kids' Climate" organization says that "an adult's presence can help keep strikers safe," and "suggests bringing a sign that will resonate with other parents, for example a sign that says "I'm a concerned mom." The Moms Clean Air Force recommends contacting school officials, providing snacks for the children, and standing with signs in solidarity.

The Elders Climate Action organization has created T-shirts which feature a grandparent hand in hand with a child, and seeks to mobilize "grandparents, great aunts and great uncles ... while there is still time to protect the well-being of our grandchildren.

Showing a trend of new environment-related dictionary terms, "climate strike" was named Collins Dictionary 's 2019 word of the year. Collins lexicographers had noticed a hundredfold increase in the use of the term in 2019, the largest of any word on their list.

In July 2020, the website of the Indian collective of Fridays for Future groups was blocked by the Government of India. The groups were leading a campaign against a controversial new EIA Draft proposed by the government.

On 7 June 2019, Fridays for Future and Greta Thunberg were honoured with Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience award. Secretary General Kumi Naidoo said:

"We are humbled and inspired by the determination with which youth activists across the world are challenging us all to confront the realities of the climate crisis. Every young person taking part in Fridays for Future embodies what it means to act on your conscience. They remind us that we are more powerful than we know and that we all have a role to play in protecting human rights against climate catastrophe."

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School strike for climate Fridays for FuturePart of the climate movement Maximum number of school strikers per country: Date Since August 2018, mostly on Fridays, sometimes on Thursdays, Saturdays or Sundays Location Caused by Political inaction against global warming Goals Climate change mitigation Methods Student strike Status Active Parties to

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Guantanamo Bay detention camp - Wikipedia

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Montgomery bus boycott

Part of the Civil Rights Movement

Date

December 5, 1955 - December 20, 1956

Location

Caused by

Resulted in

City Commission

W. A. Gayle, President of the Commission (mayor)

Frank Parks, Commissioner

Clyde Sellers, Police Commissioner

National City Lines

Kenneth E. Totten, vice president

Montgomery City Lines

J.H. Bagley, manager

Jack Crenshaw, attorney

James F. Blake, bus driver

The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955-the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for her refusal to surrender her seat to a white person-to December 20, 1956, when the federal ruling Browder v. Gayle took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional.

Before the bus boycott, Jim Crow laws mandated the racial segregation of the Montgomery Bus Line. As a result of this segregation, African Americans were not hired as drivers, were forced to ride in the back of the bus, and were frequently ordered to surrender their seats to white people even though black passengers made up 75% of the bus system's riders. Many bus drivers treated their black passengers poorly beyond the law: African-Americans were assaulted, shortchanged , and left stranded after paying their fares.

The year before the bus boycott began, the Supreme Court decided unanimously, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. The reaction by the white population of the Deep South was "noisy and stubborn". Many white bus drivers joined the White Citizens' Council as a result of the decision.

Although it is often framed as the start of the civil rights movement, the boycott occurred at the end of many black communities' struggles in the South to protect black women, such as Recy Taylor, from racial violence. The boycott also took place within a larger statewide and national movement for civil rights, including court cases such as Morgan v. Virginia, the earlier Baton Rouge bus boycott, and the arrest of Claudette Colvin, among others, for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus.

In 1841 Frederick Douglass and his friend James N. Buffum entered a train car reserved for white passengers in Lynn, Massachusetts, when the conductor ordered them to leave the car, they refused. Following the action, widespread organizing led Congress to approve the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which grant equal rights to Black citizens in public accommodations. In 1883 the Supreme Court overturned this victory declaring it unconstitutional.

On September 3, 1944, Recy Taylor, a black woman, was raped by six white men in Abbeville, Alabama. After investigating her case, Rosa Parks-along with E. D. Nixon, Rufus A. Lewis, and E. G. Jackson-organized a defense for Taylor in Montgomery. They mobilized nationwide support from labor unions, African-American organizations, and women's groups to form the Alabama Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor. Although they did not succeed in obtaining justice in court for Taylor, the mobilization of the black community in Alabama set up social and political networks that enabled the success of the Montgomery bus boycott a decade later.

Morgan v. Virginia decision

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had accepted and litigated other cases, including that of Irene Morgan in 1946, which resulted in a victory in the Supreme Court on the grounds that segregated interstate bus lines violated the Commerce Clause. That victory, however, overturned state segregation laws only insofar as they applied to travel in interstate commerce, such as interstate bus travel, and Southern bus companies immediately circumvented the Morgan ruling by instituting their own Jim Crow regulations. Further incidents continued to take place in Montgomery, including the arrest of Lillie Mae Bradford for disorderly conduct in May 1951 for allegedly refusing to leave the white passengers' section until the bus driver amended an incorrect charge on her transfer ticket.

On February 25, 1953, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, city-parish council passed Ordinance 222 after the city saw protesting from African Americans when the council raised the city's bus fares. The ordinance abolished race-based reserved seating requirements and allowed the admission of African Americans in the front sections of city buses if there were no white passengers present, but it still required African Americans to enter from the rear rather than the front of the buses. However, the ordinance was largely unenforced by the city bus drivers. The drivers later went on strike after city authorities refused to arrest Rev. T. J. Jemison for sitting in a front row. Four days after the strike began, Louisiana Attorney General and former Baton Rouge mayor Fred S. LeBlanc declared the ordinance unconstitutional under Louisiana state law. This led Rev. Jemison to organize what historians believe to be the first bus boycott of the civil rights movement. The boycott ended after eight days when an agreement was reached to only retain the first two front and back rows as racially reserved seating.

Black activists had begun to build a case to challenge state bus segregation laws around the arrest of 15-year-old Claudette Colvin, a student at Booker T. Washington High School in Montgomery. On March 2, 1955, Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, and forcibly removed from a public bus when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. At the time, Colvin was an active member in the NAACP Youth Council, where Rosa Parks was an advisor. Colvin's legal case formed the core of Browder v. Gayle, which ended the Montgomery bus boycott when the Supreme Court ruled on it in December 1956.

Murder of Emmett Till; trial and acquittal of the accused

In August 1955, four months before Parks's refusal to give up a seat on the bus that led to the Montgomery bus boycott, a 14-year-old African American from Chicago named Emmett Till was murdered by two white men, John W. Milam and Roy Bryant. The picture of his brutally beaten body in the open-casket funeral that his mother requested was widely publicized, specifically by the weekly newspaper Jet, which circulated in much of the black community in the North. His accused killers were acquitted the following month. There was massive outrage at this verdict both domestically and internationally. In an interview on January 24, 1956, published in Look magazine, the two men admitted to murdering Till.

Keys v. Carolina Coach Co. decision

In November 1955, three weeks before Parks's defiance of Jim Crow laws in Montgomery, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), in response to a complaint filed by Women's Army Corps Private Sarah Keys, closed the legal loophole left by the Morgan ruling in a landmark case known as Keys v. Carolina Coach Co.. The ICC prohibited individual carriers from imposing their own segregation rules on interstate travelers, declaring that to do so was a violation of the anti-discrimination provision of the Interstate Commerce Act. However, neither the Supreme Court's Morgan ruling nor the ICC's Keys ruling addressed the matter of Jim Crow travel within the individual states.

Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, the ten front seats were reserved for white people at all times. The ten back seats were supposed to be reserved for black people at all times. The middle section of the bus consisted of sixteen unreserved seats for white and black people on a segregated basis. White people filled the middle seats from the front to back, and black people filled seats from the back to front until the bus was full. If other black people boarded the bus, they were required to stand. If another white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black row nearest the front had to get up and stand so that a new row for white people could be created; it was illegal for white and black people to sit next to each other. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white person, she was sitting in the first row of the middle section.

Often when boarding the buses, black people were required to pay at the front, get off, and reenter the bus through a separate door at the back. Occasionally, bus drivers would drive away before black passengers were able to reboard. National City Lines owned the Montgomery Bus Line at the time of the Montgomery bus boycott. Under the leadership of Walter Reuther, the United Auto Workers donated almost $5,000 (equivalent to $55,000 in 2022) to the boycott's organizing committee.

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after her arrest for boycotting public transportation

Rosa Parks (February 4, 1913 - October 24, 2005) was a seamstress by profession; she was also the secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. Twelve years before her history-making arrest, Parks was stopped from boarding a city bus by driver James F. Blake, who ordered her to board at the rear door and then drove off without her. Parks vowed never again to ride a bus driven by Blake. As a member of the NAACP, Parks was an investigator assigned to cases of sexual assault. In 1945, she was sent to Abbeville, Alabama, to investigate the gang rape of Recy Taylor. The protest that arose around the Taylor case was the first instance of a nationwide civil rights protest, and it laid the groundwork for the Montgomery bus boycott.

A diagram showing where Rosa Parks sat in the unreserved section at the time of her arrest

In 1955, Parks completed a course in "Race Relations" at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where nonviolent civil disobedience had been discussed as a tactic. On December 1, 1955, Parks was sitting in the foremost row in which black people could sit (in the middle section). When a white man boarded the bus, the bus driver told everyone in her row to move back. At that moment, Parks realized that she was again on a bus driven by Blake. While all of the other black people in her row complied, Parks refused, and she was arrested for failing to obey the driver's seat assignments, as city ordinances did not explicitly mandate segregation but did give the bus driver authority to assign seats. Found guilty on December 5, Parks was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4 (combined total equivalent to $153 in 2022), and she appealed. This movement also sparked riots leading up to the 1956 Sugar Bowl.

Some action against segregation had been in the works for some time before Parks' arrest, under the leadership of E. D. Nixon, president of the local NAACP chapter and a member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Nixon intended that her arrest be a test case to allow Montgomery's black citizens to challenge segregation on the city's public buses. With this goal, community leaders had been waiting for the right person to be arrested, a person who would anger the black community into action, who would agree to test the segregation laws in court, and who, most importantly, was "above reproach". When Colvin was arrested in March 1955, Nixon thought he had found the perfect person, but the teenager turned out to be pregnant. Nixon later explained, "I had to be sure that I had somebody I could win with." Parks was a good candidate because of her employment and marital status, along with her good standing in the community.

Between Parks' arrest and trial, Nixon organized a meeting of local ministers at Martin Luther King Jr.'s church. Though Nixon could not attend the meeting because of his work schedule, he arranged that no election of a leader for the proposed boycott would take place until his return. When he returned, he caucused with Ralph Abernathy and Rev. E.N. French to name the association to lead the boycott to the city (they selected the " Montgomery Improvement Association", "MIA"), and they selected King (Nixon's choice) to lead the boycott. Nixon wanted King to lead the boycott because the young minister was new to Montgomery and the city fathers had not had time to intimidate him. At a subsequent, larger meeting of ministers, Nixon's agenda was threatened by the clergymen's reluctance to support the campaign. Nixon was indignant, pointing out that their poor congregations worked to put money into the collection plates so these ministers could live well, and when those congregations needed the clergy to stand up for them, those comfortable ministers refused to do so. Nixon threatened to reveal the ministers' cowardice to the black community, and King spoke up, denying he was afraid to support the boycott. King agreed to lead the MIA, and Nixon was elected its treasurer.

The National City Lines bus, No. 2857, on which Rosa Parks rode before she was arrested (a GM "old-look" transit bus, serial number 1132), is now on exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum.

On the night of Parks' arrest, the Women's Political Council, led by Jo Ann Robinson, printed and circulated a flyer throughout Montgomery's black community that read as follows:

Another woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus for a white person to sit down. It is the second time since the Claudette Colvin case that a Negro woman has been arrested for the same thing. This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negro, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother. This woman's case will come up on Monday. We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial. Don't ride the buses to work, to town, to school, or anywhere on Monday. You can afford to stay out of school for one day if you have no other way to go except by bus. You can also afford to stay out of town for one day. If you work, take a cab, or walk. But please, children and grown-ups, don't ride the bus at all on Monday. Please stay off all buses Monday.

The next morning there was a meeting led by the new Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) head, King, where a group of 16 to 18 people gathered at the Mt. Zion Church to discuss boycott strategies. At that time Rosa Parks was introduced but not asked to speak, despite a standing ovation and calls from the crowd for her to speak; she asked someone if she should say something, but they replied, "Why, you've said enough." A citywide boycott of public transit was proposed, with three demands: 1) courteous treatment by bus operators, 2) passengers seated on a first-come, first-served basis, with black people seated in the back half and white people seated in the front half, and 3) black people would be employed as bus operators on routes predominately taken by black people.

This demand was a compromise for the leaders of the boycott, who believed that the city of Montgomery would be more likely to accept it rather than a demand for full integration of the buses. In this respect, the MIA leaders followed the pattern of 1950s boycott campaigns in the Deep South, including the successful boycott a few years earlier of service stations in Mississippi for refusing to provide restrooms for Black people. The organizer of that campaign, T. R. M. Howard of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, had spoken on the lynching of Emmett Till as King's guest at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church only four days before Parks's arrest. Parks was in the audience and later said that Emmett Till was on her mind when she refused to give up her seat.

The MIA's demand for a fixed dividing line was to be supplemented by a requirement that all bus passengers receive courteous treatment by bus operators, be seated on a first-come, first-served basis, and that Black people be employed as bus drivers. The proposal was passed, and the boycott was to commence the following Monday. To publicize the impending boycott it was advertised at black churches throughout Montgomery the following Sunday.

On Saturday, December 3, it was evident that the black community would support the boycott, and very few Black people rode the buses that day. On December 5, a mass meeting was held at the Holt Street Baptist Church to determine if the protest would continue. Given twenty minutes notice, King gave a speech asking for a bus boycott and attendees enthusiastically agreed. Starting December 7, J Edgar Hoover's FBI noted the "agitation among negroes" and tried to find "derogatory information" about King.

The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress. Martin Luther King later wrote, "[a] miracle had taken place." Instead of riding buses, boycotters organized a system of carpools, with car owners volunteering their vehicles or themselves driving people to various destinations. Some white housewives also drove their black domestic servants to work. When the city pressured local insurance companies to stop insuring cars used in the carpools, the boycott leaders arranged policies at Lloyd's of London.

Black taxi drivers charged ten cents per ride, a fare equal to the cost to ride the bus, in support of the boycott. When word of this reached city officials on December 8, the order went out to fine any cab driver who charged a rider less than 45 cents. In addition to using private motor vehicles, some people used non-motorized means to get around, such as cycling, walking, or even riding mules or driving horse-drawn buggies. Some people also hitchhiked. During rush hours, sidewalks were often crowded. As the buses received few, if any, passengers, their officials asked the City Commission to allow stopping service to black communities. Across the nation, black churches raised money to support the boycott and collected new and slightly used shoes to replace the tattered footwear of Montgomery's black citizens, many of whom walked everywhere rather than ride the buses and submit to Jim Crow laws.[citation needed ]

In response, opposing whites swelled the ranks of the White Citizens' Council, the membership of which doubled during the course of the boycott. The councils sometimes resorted to violence: King's and Abernathy's houses were firebombed, as were four black Baptist churches. Boycotters were often physically attacked. After the attack at King's house, he gave a speech to the 300 angry African Americans who had gathered outside. He said:

If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence. Remember the words of Jesus: "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword". We must love our white brothers, no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: "Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you". This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love. Remember, if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance.

King and 88 other boycott leaders and carpool drivers were indicted for conspiring to interfere with a business under a 1921 ordinance. Rather than wait to be arrested, they turned themselves in as an act of defiance.

King was ordered to pay a $500 fine or serve 386 days in jail. He ended up spending two weeks in jail. The move backfired by bringing national attention to the protest. King commented on the arrest by saying: "I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joining my people in a nonviolent protest against injustice."

Also important during the bus boycott were grassroots activist groups that helped to catalyze both fund-raising and morale. Groups such as the Club from Nowhere helped to sustain the boycott by finding new ways of raising money and offering support to boycott participants. Many members of these organizations were women and their contributions to the effort have been described by some as essential to the success of the bus boycott.

Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition[56] "381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott" at the Washington State History Museum

Pressure increased across the country. The related civil suit was heard in federal district court and, on June 5, 1956, the court ruled in Browder v. Gayle (1956) that Alabama's racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. As the state appealed the decision, the boycott continued. The case moved on to the United States Supreme Court. On November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the district court's ruling.

The bus boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956, after 382 days. The Montgomery bus boycott resounded far beyond the desegregation of public buses. It stimulated activism and participation from the South in the national Civil Rights Movement and gave King national attention as a rising leader.

White backlash against the court victory was quick, brutal, and, in the short term, effective. Two days after the inauguration of desegregated seating, someone fired a shotgun through the front door of Martin Luther King's home. A day later, on Christmas Eve, white men attacked a black teenager as she exited a bus. Four days after that, two buses were fired upon by snipers. In one sniper incident, a pregnant woman was shot in both legs. On January 10, 1957, bombs destroyed five black churches and the home of Reverend Robert S. Graetz, one of the few white Montgomerians who had publicly sided with the MIA.

The City suspended bus service for several weeks on account of the violence. According to legal historian Randall Kennedy, "When the violence subsided and service was restored, many black Montgomerians enjoyed their newly recognized right only abstractly ... In practically every other setting, Montgomery remained overwhelmingly segregated ..." On January 23, a group of Klansmen (who would later be charged for the bombings) lynched a black man, Willie Edwards, on the pretext that he was dating a white woman.

The city's elite moved to strengthen segregation in other areas, and in March 1957 passed an ordinance making it "unlawful for white and colored persons to play together, or, in company with each other ... in any game of cards, dice, dominoes, checkers, pool, billiards, softball, basketball, baseball, football, golf, track, and at swimming pools, beaches, lakes or ponds or any other game or games or athletic contests, either indoors or outdoors."

Later in the year, Montgomery police charged seven Klansmen with the bombings, but all of the defendants were acquitted. About the same time, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled against Martin Luther King's appeal of his "illegal boycott" conviction. Rosa Parks left Montgomery due to death threats and employment blacklisting. According to Charles Silberman, "by 1963, most Negroes in Montgomery had returned to the old custom of riding in the back of the bus."

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice contains, among other things, a sculpture "dedicated to the women who sustained the Montgomery Bus Boycott", by Dana King, to help illustrate the civil rights period. The memorial opened in downtown Montgomery, Alabama on April 26, 2018.

Berg, Allison, "Trauma and Testimony in Black Women's Civil Rights Memoirs: The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, Warriors Don't Cry, and From the Mississippi Delta', Journal of Women's History, 21 (Fall 2009), 84-107.

Freedman, Russell, "Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott"

Parks, Rosa (1992). My Story. New York: Dial Books.

Thornton III, J. Mills. "Challenge and Response in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956." Alabama Review 67.1 (2014): 40-112.

Thornton III, J. Mills. Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (2002) excerpt

Walsh, Frank, Landmark Events in American History: The Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Alabama Civil Rights Collection - Jack Rabin Collection on Alabama Civil Rights and Southern Activists, at Pennsylvania State University, includes oral history interviews and materials concerning Montgomery Bus Boycott

Montgomery Bus Boycott article, Encyclopedia of Alabama

Montgomery Bus Boycott - Story of Montgomery Bus Boycott

Encyclopedia entry on the Montgomery Bus Boycott - Includes cross-referenced text, historical documents and streaming audio, presented by the King Research Institute at Stanford University

The Montgomery Bus Boycott - African-American History

Montgomery Bus Boycott - Civil Rights Movement Archive

Learning From Rosa Parks, The Indypendent

Montgomery Bus Boycott - Presented by the Montgomery Advertiser Archived December 13, 2012, at the Wayback Machine

Civil Rights Era Mug Shots, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, Alabama Department of Archives & History

Martin Luther King and the "Montgomery Story" Comic Book - 1956

Montgomery Bus Boycott Documents Online collection of original boycott documents and articles by participants - Civil Rights Movement Archive.

Montgomery Bus Boycott, Civil Rights Digital Library.

The Boycott, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks.

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Montgomery bus boycott Part of the Civil Rights Movement Date December 5, 1955 - December 20, 1956 Location Caused by Resulted in City Commission W. A. Gayle, President of the Commission (mayor) Frank Parks, Commissioner Clyde Sellers, Police Commissioner National City Lines Kenneth E. Totten, vice president Montgomery City Lines J.H.

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The year of lockdowns was simultaneously a year of protest and citizen action. Throughout 2020 numerous hashtags on social media demanded our attention towards protest movements, accompanied by sometimes inspiring and sometimes horrifying images. #EndSARS, #BlackLivesMatter, #ShutItAllDown, #zwartepietisracism, #NotMyPresident, the list goes on; all demonstrating to us the commitment and fearlessness of ordinary citizens across the world asking for equal treatment and concern.

In Sudan, protest movements brought about direct change in government last year. People who were actively protesting on the streets are now part of that government.

Ahmed Soliman, Research Fellow, Africa Programme

For the Common Futures Conversations community, where young people from Africa and Europe discuss key international issues, the impact of protests and citizen action also became a central focus; not least as young people were frequently found at the heart of these movements.

Many of the protest movements we have seen this year were catalysed by single events: moments which ignited long-held grievances and concerns. The most internationally recognizable is the murder of George Floyd in the United States, but there are many more examples of deaths or serious abuses that created a spark. While such sparks instigate sudden and intense swells of support, it can sometimes also mean that the resulting protests are disorganized, repeat previous mistakes and communicate their demands poorly.

Protesters are often painted as disruptors, terrorists and a nuisance, yet across the world demonstrations and direct action have been a vital form of political engagement: providing women the right to vote, people of colour the right to citizenship and people everywhere the right to stand up against populism.

Civic engagement must become an expected part of democracy; it is not a threat to democratic governments.

Dr Leena Koni Hoffmann, Associate Fellow, Africa Programme

In the face of crisis, panic and retrenchment in 2020, many protests found their voices demanding the change needed for marginalized groups to survive. Beyond the call for us to find our humanity, these examples demonstrate that protests are still and perhaps increasingly a method of crucial political participation.

This also means that society must become better at protesting. We must learn from previous protest movements' successes and failures, from their tactics and methods and from their determination to be inclusive.

Protest should always be seen as a legitimate avenue towards policy change and influence, and one that must therefore professionalize to make politics more reflective of societies' wants, needs and demands. To this end, ten members of the Common Futures Conversations community discuss impactful protest below.

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The year of lockdowns was simultaneously a year of protest and citizen action. Throughout 2020 numerous hashtags on social media demanded our attention towards protest movements, accompanied by sometimes inspiring and sometimes horrifying images. #EndSARS, #BlackLivesMatter, #ShutItAllDown, #zwartepietisracism, #NotMyPresident, the list goes on; all demonstrating to us the commitment and fearlessness of ordinary citizens across the world asking for equal treatment and concern.

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Women's March, demonstrations held throughout the world on January 21, 2017, to support gender equality, civil rights, and other issues that were expected to face challenges under newly inaugurated U.S. Pres. Donald Trump. The march was initially scheduled to be held only in Washington, D.C., but "sister marches" arose throughout the United States and numerous other countries. According to some estimates, as many as 4.6 million people attended the various events in the United States, and it was widely believed to be the largest single-day demonstration in that country's history.

The idea for the Women's March arose after Republican Trump defeated his Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 presidential election; in addition, Republicans gained control of Congress on election day. During the campaign, Trump attracted much attention for his conservative political views as well as for his inflammatory remarks, a number of which were about women. Notably, a hot-mic video from 2005 surfaced in which he told an entertainment reporter that "when you're a star...you can do anything," including grabbing women by the genitals. The day after Trump's election win on November 8, 2016, Teresa Shook, a grandmother living in Hawaii, went on Facebook to propose a march on Washington, D.C. The suggestion quickly gained traction as thousands voiced support for the endeavour. In addition, marches were soon scheduled for other cities. While widely seen as an anti-Trump protest, organizers framed the events as a call for social change. Their mission statement expressed support for gender and pay equality, LGBTQ and civil rights, affordable health care, environmental awareness, and reproductive freedom, among other issues that were seen as having a lack of support within the incoming administration.

The demonstrations were held on January 21, 2017, the day after Trump's inauguration. The turnout far exceeded expectations. According to organizers, more than 670 events were held on seven continents. Although estimates varied, it was believed that between 3.3 million and 4.6 million people attended the marches in the United States, while total worldwide participation was reported to be about 5 million. The central demonstration in Washington, D.C., swelled to approximately 500,000 people, which was thought to be double the attendance of the presidential inaugural celebration. Other large marches included those in New York City (about 400,000 people), Boston (175,000), Chicago (250,000), Seattle (120,000-175,000), and Los Angeles (500,000-750,000). Many of the demonstrators, regardless of gender, donned knitted pink "pussyhats," a reference to Trump's comment about groping women.

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Women's March | Definition, Attendance, & Facts

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Women's March, demonstrations held throughout the world on January 21, 2017, that supported gender and racial equality, among other issues. According to estimates, as many as 4.6 million people attended the various events in the U.S., and it was widely believed to be the largest single-day demonstration in that country's history.

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Earth Day

Significance

Support for environmental protection

Begins

1970

Date
April 22

Next time

22 April 2022

Frequency

Annual

Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org (formerly Earth Day Network) including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.

In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day". Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More than 20 million people poured out on the streets, and the first Earth Day remains the largest single day protest in human history. Key non-environmentally focused partners played major roles. Under the leadership of labor leader Walter Reuther, for example, the United Auto Workers (UAW) was the most instrumental outside financial and operational supporter of the first Earth Day. According to Hayes, "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!" Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom award in recognition of his work.

On Earth Day 2016, the landmark Paris Agreement was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and 120 other countries. This signing satisfied a key requirement for the entry into force of the historic draft climate protection treaty adopted by consensus of the 195 nations present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.

Numerous communities engaged in Earth Day Week actions, an entire week of activities focused on the environmental issues that the world faces. On Earth Day 2020, over 100 million people around the world observed the 50th anniversary in what is being referred to as the largest online mass mobilization in history.

1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill

On January 28, 1969, a well drilled by Union Oil Platform A off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, blew out. More than three million gallons of oil spewed, killing more than 10,000 seabirds, dolphins, seals, and sea lions. As a reaction to this disaster, activists were mobilized to create environmental regulation, environmental education, and Earth Day. Among the proponents of Earth Day were the people in the front lines of fighting this disaster, Selma Rubin, Marc McGinnes, and Bud Bottoms, founder of Get Oil Out. Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day said that Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin was inspired to create Earth Day upon seeing Santa Barbara Channel 800 square-mile oil slick from an airplane.

Santa Barbara's Environmental Rights Day 1970

On the first anniversary of the oil blowout, January 28, 1970, Environmental Rights Day was created and the Declaration of Environmental Rights was read. It had been written by Rod Nash during a boat trip across the Santa Barbara Channel while carrying a copy of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. The organizers of Environmental Rights Day, led by Marc McGinnes, had been working closely over a period of several months with Congressman Pete McCloskey (R-CA) to consult on the creation of the National Environmental Policy Act, the first of many new environmental protection laws sparked by the national outcry about the blowout/oil spill and on the Declaration of Environmental Rights. Both McCloskey (Earth Day co-chair with Senator Gaylord Nelson) and Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, along with Senator Alan Cranston, Paul Ehrlich, David Brower and other prominent leaders, endorsed the Declaration and spoke about it at the Environmental Rights Day conference. According to Francis Sarguis, "the conference was sort of like the baptism for the movement." According to Hayes, this was the first giant crowd he spoke to that "felt passionately, I mean really passionately, about environmental issues." Hayes also thought the conference might be the beginning of a real movement. Nash, Garrett Hardin, McGinnes and others went on to develop the first undergraduate Environmental Studies program of its kind at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Earth Day 1970

The seeds that grew into the first Earth Day were planted by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. An ardent conservationist and former two-term governor of Wisconsin, Nelson had long sought ways to increase the potency of the environment as a political issue. The extraordinary attention garnered by Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring, the famous 1968 Earthrise NASA photograph of the earth from the moon, the saturation news coverage given to the Santa Barbara oil spill and the Cuyahoga River catching fire in early 1969 led Nelson to think the time was ripe for an environmental initiative. As a result of interactions with his staff and with Fred Dutton, a prominent Democratic operative who had been Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign manager, Nelson became convinced that environmental teach-ins on college campuses could serve as such a vehicle.

Teach-Ins had been held on hundreds of college campuses to debate the war in Vietnam. They generally reflected the divide between those who thought of Vietnam as a bulwark to stop additional countries falling to communism like dominos, versus those who believed that the war was the latest stage of a nationalist, anti-colonialist campaign by Vietnamese who had fought against China, then France, Japan, France again, and now the United States. These debates elevated arguments over the war in the public consciousness and enlisted a generation of student activists.

On September 20, 1969, Senator Nelson first announced his plans for an "environmental teach-In" in a little publicized talk at the University of Washington. "I am convinced that the same concern the youth of this nation took in changing this nation's priorities on the war in Vietnam and on civil rights can be shown for the problem of the environment. That is why I plan to see to it that a national teach-in is held."

Senator Nelson went on to encourage teach-ins at many more speeches. A November talk at Airlie House had a New York Times reporter in the audience. The resulting front-page article was a turning point. Letters of inquiry from across the country began to pour into Nelson's Senate office. The article piqued the interest of Denis Hayes, then a graduate student at Harvard. Hayes traveled to Washington DC, and arranged a 10-minute visit with Senator Nelson (which stretched into two hours). Hayes returned to Harvard with the charter to organize Boston. After a few days of reference checks, he was asked to drop out of Harvard to become executive director of the national campaign.

As the talented regional coordinators fanned out across the country, however, they immediately encountered two problems. First, by 1970, the concept of "teach-ins" had become passé. Moreover, teach-ins generally involved debates, and no one was pro-pollution. Second, and more troubling, leading activists on college campuses were deeply involved in the anti-war and civil rights movements. They tended to view the environment as a distraction.

The "Earth Day" name

The solution to the first problem came from an unexpected direction. Shortly after the turn of the year, a quiet man named Julien Koenig stopped by the national offices and volunteered to help. Koenig was a Madison Avenue giant. His campaign for Volkswagen, "Think Small," was later cited by Advertising Age as the "greatest advertising campaign of the 20th century."

Over coffee, Hayes confided that the "teach-in" moniker was not working and asked whether Koenig had any ideas. Koenig asked for a few days. A week later, he returned with an assortment of mock-ups for ads, laid out around the announcement of "Ecology Day," "Environment Day," "Earth Day," and "E Day." Koenig said that his personal favorite was Earth Day - in part, because April 22 happened to be his birthday, and "birthday" rhymes with "Earth Day." Hayes immediately agreed. Koenig offered to prepare a fully refined ad. Hayes insisted that it include a small coupon soliciting funds for the threadbare operation. Koenig ad was visually arresting, and perfectly summed up the issues and values, the feisty-but-welcoming tone that the campaign had adopted. Hayes loved it and decided to bet the farm. He committed about half of all the money in the campaign's bank account to buy a full-page in the Sunday New York Times opinion section.

The ad was a huge success. Overnight, "Earth Day" became the almost-universally-used name for the upcoming event. The ad generated more than enough revenue to repay its cost, and thousands of potential organizers sent in their names and addresses along with their checks. In future months, magazines and alternative newspapers ran the ad for free, generating still more names and more financial support. The national office started using Environmental Action, rather than Environmental Teach-in, on its letterhead and publications to promote Earth Day.

At this point, Hayes made a far-reaching decision. In those early days, it would have been easy to obtain trademark protection for Earth Day and force compliance with a set of standards by anyone using it. Hayes decided, however, that he wanted the name to be broadly used by anyone who planned to focus on environmental issues that spring.

Walt Kelly created an anti-pollution poster featuring his comic strip character Pogo with the quotation " We have met the enemy and he is us" to promote the 1970 Earth Day. Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action to change human behavior and provoke policy changes.

The Dirty Dozen

The staff of Environmental Teach-In resigned immediately after Earth Day and most moved directly to a new organization, Environmental Action, with a tax status that permitted lobbying and a more activist stance. EA immediately confronted a problem that had been looming in the background throughout the campaign. Some of the staff had been drawn to the movement through science and culture and felt that politics was inherently dirty and government was irredeemably compromised. This group believed that by living lives of voluntary simplicity, employing tools like those that filled the resolutely-nonpolitical Whole Earth Catalog, they could force the world to adapt to them. Their theory of change was modeled loosely on the southern African Americans who sat at segregated lunch counters, drank from segregated lunch counters, and sat in the front of the bus, it ignored the role of strategic litigation federal legislation, and electoral politics in cementing lasting change.

In order to square the circle, Hayes proposed that the group not endorse any candidates but that it try to defeat 12 of the worst. If having a terrible environmental record became a political liability, it would inevitably lead to better environmental legislation. Haft was selected to coordinate the Dirty Dozen campaign. With just $50,000 to defeat 12 incumbent members of the House, the odds were long.

To improve the odds, the group selected candidates who not only had lousy environmental records-which were plentiful-but who also had won their most recent race by a narrow margin; who were on the wrong side of an important environmental issue in their districts; and who lived in areas where talented Earth Day organizers resided. In the end, seven of the original Dirty Dozen were defeated-five Republicans and two Democrats. And the first to fall was George Fallon, chairman of the hugely powerful House Public Works Committee.

Representative Pete McCloskey, Earth Day co-chair, credits the Dirty Dozen's defeat of key Congressional leaders with the unstoppable wave of environmental legislation that immediately followed: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and others.

The University of Michigan Teach-in

The Focus on Pollution

Regional coordinators focused heavily on finding and enlisting the best local leadership in major metropolitan areas. For instance, Hayes flew to Chicago to help organize a subtle coup, replacing a pro-business Earth Day organization with a Saul Alinsky affiliated group called Campaign Against Pollution. CAP abruptly shifted the focus away from recycling to focus on two issues: opposition to a massive proposed freeway program, the Crosstown Expressway, and protesting the uncontrolled air pollution Commonwealth Edison was pouring into Chicago's air-more sulfur pollution than all other companies combined. Although mailings went out to thousands of communities of all sizes, the campaign focused especially hard on large cities.

New York City

In the winter of 1969-1970, a group of students met at Columbia University to hear Denis Hayes talk about his plans for Earth Day. Among the group were Fred Kent, Pete Grannis, and Kristin and William Hubbard. This group agreed to head up the New York City activities within the national movement. Fred Kent took the lead in renting an office and recruiting volunteers. The liberal Republican mayor of New York, John Lindsay, saw the environment as an issue that could help unite his then-troubled city. Moreover, he viewed the environment as a progressive wedge issue that would position him as clearly distinct from President Nixon's ultra-conservative "Southern Strategy," in a struggle for the soul of the Republican Party. He became fully engaged in supporting the event, and he delegated many of the talented young staff who had been drawn to his administration to help as well.

"The big break came when Mayor Lindsay agreed to shut down Fifth Avenue for the event. A giant cheer went up in the office on that day," according to Kristin Hubbard (now Kristin Alexandre). "From that time on we used Mayor Lindsay's offices and even his staff. I was Speaker Coordinator but had tremendous help from Lindsay staffer Judith Crichton." Mayor Lindsay completely closed down Fifth Avenue to traffic from E. 14th Street to West 59th Street (Central Park)-more than 2 miles-and 14th Street between 3rd and 7th Avenues. An estimated one million participants took part-right in the nerve center of the nation's communications complex.

In addition to shutting down Fifth Avenue, Mayor John Lindsay made Central Park available for Earth Day. In Union Square, the New York Times estimated crowds of up to 20,000 people at any given time and, perhaps, more than 100,000 over the course of the day. Since Manhattan was also the home of NBC, CBS, ABC, The New York Times, , and , it provided the best possible anchor for national coverage from their reporters throughout the country.

Philadelphia

U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie was the keynote speaker on Earth Day in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. Other notable attendees included consumer protection activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, landscape architect Ian McHarg, Nobel prize-winning Harvard biochemist George Wald, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, and poet Allen Ginsberg.

Earth Day 1980

The 1970s were a period of substantial environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Superfund, Toxics Substances Control Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. It had seen the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the banning of DDT and of lead in gasoline. Jimmy Carter was president.

The 1980 Earth Day effort was led by Mike McCabe and Byron Kennard, and the general mood was festive and celebratory. The principal Washington, DC event was a festival held in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House.

Earth Day 1990 to 1999

Mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting the status of environmental issues onto the world stage, Earth Day activities in 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Unlike the first Earth Day in 1970, this 20th Anniversary was waged with stronger marketing tools, greater access to television and radio, and multimillion-dollar budgets.

Two separate groups formed to sponsor Earth Day events in 1990: The Earth Day 20 Foundation, assembled by Edward Furia (Project Director of Earth Week in 1970), and Earth Day 1990, assembled by Denis Hayes (National Coordinator for Earth Day 1970). Senator Gaylord Nelson, the original founder of Earth Day, was honorary chairman for both groups. The two did not combine forces over disagreements about leadership of combined organization and incompatible structures and strategies. Among the disagreements, key Earth Day 20 Foundation organizers were critical of Earth Day 1990 for including on their board Hewlett-Packard, a company that at the time was the second-biggest emitter of chlorofluorocarbons in Silicon Valley and refused to switch to alternative solvents. In terms of marketing, Earth Day 20 had a grassroots approach to organizing and relied largely on locally based groups like the National Toxics Campaign, a Boston-based coalition of 1,000 local groups concerned with industrial pollution. Earth Day 1990 employed strategies including focus group testing, direct mail fund raising, and email marketing.

The Earth Day 20 Foundation highlighted its April 22 activities in George, Washington, near the Columbia River with a live satellite phone call with members of the historic Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb who called from their base camp on Mount Everest to pledge their support for world peace and attention to environmental issues. The Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb was led by Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mt. Everest (many years earlier), and marked the first time in history that mountaineers from the United States, Soviet Union, and China had roped together to climb a mountain, let alone Mt. Everest. The group also collected more than two tons of trash (transported down the mountain by support groups along the way) that was left behind on Mount Everest from previous climbing expeditions. The master of ceremonies for the Columbia Gorge event was the TV star, John Ratzenberger, from , and the headlining musician was the "Father of Rock and Roll", Chuck Berry.

Warner Bros. Records released an Earth Day-themed single in 1990 entitled "Tomorrow's World", written by Kix Brooks (who would later become one-half of Brooks & Dunn) and Pam Tillis. The song featured vocals from Lynn Anderson, Butch Baker, Shane Barmby, Billy Hill, Suzy Bogguss, Kix Brooks, T. Graham Brown, The Burch Sisters, Holly Dunn, Foster & Lloyd, Vince Gill, William Lee Golden, Highway 101, Shelby Lynne, Johnny Rodriguez, Dan Seals, Les Taylor, Pam Tillis, Mac Wiseman, and Kevin Welch. It charted at number 74 on the Hot Country Songs chart dated May 5, 1990.

Earth Day 2000-2019

Earth Day 2000

As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focusing on global warming and pushing for clean energy. The April 22 Earth Day in 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. For 2000, Earth Day had the internet to help link activists around the world. By the time April 22 came around, 5,000 environmental groups around the world were on board reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries. Events varied: A talking drum chain traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa, for example, while hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., USA.

Earth Day 2001

Google's first Earth Day doodle was in 2001.

Earth Day 2003

The theme for Earth Day 2003 was the Water for Life Campaign. This year, Earth Day Network developed a water quality project called "What's in Your Water?" Water-related events were held on every continent, including water workshops, exhibitions, concerts, and more in Togo, Egypt, the Cook Islands, Jordan, Palestine, Japan, Venezuela, Slovenia, Nigeria, and Canada. Educational curricula, teacher's guides, water testing kits, and posters focused on water.

Earth Day 2004

In the U.S. in 2004, Earth Day Network and its partners focused on voter registration for Earth Day, registering hundreds of thousands of voters. Major tree planting events also took place. Other prominent U.S. Earth Day events included an annual cleanup in Dayton, Ohio and the 3rd Annual Community Based Solutions to Environmental Health & Justice Conference in Seattle, Washington.

Earth Day 2005

The theme for Earth Day 2005 was Healthy Environments for Children.

Earth Day 2006

Earth Day 2006 focused on science and faith. Earth Day expanded into Europe for Earth Day 2006 and events and speeches were held in most of the EU countries. Key events included the "Festival on Climate Change" in Utrecht, the Netherlands, which was focused on "How to break away from the oil dependence," and included Earth Day founder Denis Hayes and members of the Dutch and E.U. parliament, NGOs, local authorities, and media representatives. In the first of two years of Earth Day events in Ukraine, Denis Hayes also attended and spoke at the "Chernobyl 20 Remembrance for the Future" conference in Kiev, Ukraine. 2006 also saw events in China organized between Earth Day Network and Global Village Beijing educating communities about energy savings, the first ever coordinated Earth Day events in Moscow, Russia, a scientific panel and a religious response panel on climate change throughout the U.S., and a "Conserve Your Energy" event in Philadelphia.

Earth Day 2007

Thousands of Earth Day projects were held across the globe that ranged from energy efficiency events, protests, letter writing campaigns, civic and environmental k-12 education trainings, urban and rural cleanups, and water projects with a particular focus on building a broader and more diverse environmental movement. Major events took place in Kyiv, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; Tuvalu; Philippines; Togo; and Madrid, Spain.

In the US, civil rights, religious, and social justice leaders joined Earth Day Network the week of April 16 through April 20 to demand Congress on behalf of their communities and their constituencies that there be no "grandfathering" of pollution permits, that an immediate reduction in carbon emissions be imposed through legislation and that all revenues generated from a carbon tax or a government auction of carbon permits be used for public benefit. Earth Day Network partnered with Green Apple Music & Arts Festival to mark Earth Day with weekend-long events featuring music and entertainment in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. More than 200,000 people attended the events and millions of people were reached through the media.

The Global Warming in the Pulpit Pledge campaign which mobilized priests, ministers, rabbis, and other faith leaders across the U.S. and Canada to make a commitment to preach on global climate change as a moral issue was launched. Later in 2007, Live Earth, a global music event, was held across the world.

Earth Day 2008

Earth Day 2009

The 2009 National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions reached college campuses, civic organizations, and faith groups across the U.S. As part of this event, members of Congress addressed college and high school campuses in their districts via video conference.

Earth Day 2010 (40th anniversary)

An estimated one billion people around the world took action for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. An estimated 20,000 partners took action on climate change and other environmental issues through climate rallies, Billion Acts of Green™, and by engaging civil leaders in plans to build a green economy, connected through the online action center at EARTHDAY.ORG. Through the Global Day of Conversation, more than 200 elected officials in more than 39 countries took part in active dialogues with their constituents about their efforts to create sustainable green economies and reduce their carbon footprints. Students around the world participated in school greenings, featuring community clean ups, solar energy systems, school gardens, and environmental curriculum. Earth Day Network announced a partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment's Avatar Home Tree Initiative to plant one million trees in 15 countries by the end of 2010.

As part of a nationwide commemoration of the 40th anniversary in Morocco, the government announced a unique National Charter for the Environment and Sustainable Development, the first commitment of its kind in Africa and the Arab world, which will inform new environmental laws for the country. The Kingdom of Morocco also pledged to plant one million trees.

Earth Day 2011

Earth Day 2012

A Billion Acts of Green® were achieved on Earth Day 2012, with Earth Day Network announcing the accomplishment at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio. A Billion Acts of Green® is billed as the world's largest environmental service campaign, inspiring and rewarding both simple individual acts and larger organizational initiatives that further the goal of measurably reducing carbon emissions and supporting sustainability. The Campaign for Communities engaged elected officials in finding solutions to local environmental challenges. Faith programs saw Catholic parishes and churches across the U.S. take action on Earth Day through sermons and other activities, including four events at the National Cathedral and a conference at the St. Sophia Cathedral and National Religious Coalition on Creation Care (NRCC). Mobilize the Earth™ events throughout all of India's states and geographic regions, coordinated by Earth Day Network India, included rallies, concerts, competitions, seminars, art shows, plantation drives, signature campaigns, and workshops.

Earth Day 2013

In Washington, D.C., EDN presented Earth Month at Union Station, a four-week series of events that featured an environmental film festival, renewable energy demonstrations, farmers markets, NASA educational exhibits, and public talks by scientists and astronauts. In partnership with Washington, D.C. Public Schools, EDN also presented a STEM Fair at Union Station.

Earth Day 2014

Earth Day 2015

To recognize the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, the 2015 global theme was termed "It's Our Turn to Lead."

EDN designed and executed four campaigns for its major constituencies: Green Cities, MobilizeU, Climate Education Week, and Faith Mobilization, all of which concentrated on the organization's theme: "It's Our Turn to Lead". In addition, EDN hosted Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day, in partnership with Global Poverty Project (GPP) on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This venue allowed EDN and GPP to inspire and activate a new generation of global activists. The event worked to establish the intersection between eradicating global poverty and stopping climate change. Earth Day Network worked directly with major partners to garner large-scale commitments to stop climate change.

Earth Day 2016

Signing of the Paris Agreement at the UN

It was no accident that the United Nations selected Earth Day to sign the most significant climate accord in the history of the climate movement. On Earth Day 2016, world leaders from 175 nations broke a record by doing exactly that.

Earth Day 2017

For Earth Day 2017, Earth Day Network launched the goal of global environmental and climate literacy by 2020. EDN envisioned a world that is fluent in the concepts of climate change and aware of its unprecedented threat to our planet. Environmental and climate literacy is the engine not only for creating green voters and advancing environmental and climate laws and policies, but also for accelerating green technologies and jobs.

To that end, the 2017 Earth Day theme is environmental and climate education. EDN knows that education is the foundation for progress. Before we can solve the dire environmental threats facing us in the 21st century, we must build a global citizenry knowledgeable in environmental science and fluent in local and global ecological issues. A world with a more educated populace internalizes values - such as environmental protection - and is empowered to act in defense of these values.

To support this Earth Day theme, EDN promoted teach-ins as an activity to educate communities on global environmental issues and how global environmental issues impact local communities. EDN teach-ins strove to empower attendees with real, tangible actions they could take for the environment.

EDN developed an extensive global outreach strategy to promote Earth Day and assist organizations with producing a variety of actions, including teach-ins, in their own communities. Staff sent thousands of emails and made hundreds of phone calls, and revamped the organization's social media. Additionally, EDN created five teach-in toolkits, with accompanying translations in four languages, to help constituencies organize and mobilize their communities.

Finally, EDN hosted the flagship March for Science march, rally, and teach-ins on Earth Day on the Washington Monument Grounds in Washington D.C. This event rallied and empowered attendees to support science and evidence-based policy. Approximately 100,000 people attended.

Earth Day 2018

Earth Day 2018's theme, End Plastic Pollution, was dedicated to building a world of educated citizens who understand the environmental, climate, and health consequences of using plastic. Through an online Plastics Pollution Calculator, consumers calculated how much disposable plastic they used in a year and planned how to reduce this amount of waste. A Plastic Pollution Primer and Action Toolkit also educated consumers about actions to reduce their plastic footprint. Events worldwide in The Gambia, Italy, Thailand, Japan, India, the U.S., among others, included plastic cleanups, teach-ins, and festivals in which 10,000 partners participated. In April 2018, the Google search for "Plastic Pollution" saw the highest trends in the previous five years, 5.5 million pages in 17 languages were created on the internet about "Earth Day 2018" and "plastics," and global media outlets with a combined audience of 450+ million people covered the campaign. The phrase "plastic pollution" on social media in the U.S. alone reached more than 155 million people. As a result, over 23,0000+ plastic cleanups were registered on Google, 60 countries introduced single-use plastic bans and legislation, and companies such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks announced steps to eliminate and significantly reduce plastic pollution.

Earth Day 2019

Earth Day 2019's theme was Protect Our Species. For this campaign, events and programs spread information about the causes and consequences of growing species extinctions. Earth Day Network partnered with Keep America Beautiful and National Cleanup Day for the inaugural nationwide Earth Day Clean Up. Cleanups were held in all 50 States, 5 U.S. Territories, 5,300 sites and had more than 500,000 volunteers. Thousands of locations featured ads with vivid photos of important species. Viewers were encouraged to share photos of ads on social media with the tag #ProtectOurSpecies. Earth Day 2019 also encouraged participants to protect threatened species through educational resources, tree plantings, and a climate action guide.

Earth Day 2020-2030

Earth Day 2020

Earth Day Network and the Future Coalition organized Earth Day Live, a three-day livestream event which ran from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET on April 22, 23 and 24. The event featured speakers from all corners of the environmental movement, youth leaders, A-list celebrities, and global voices. Pope Francis, Secretary General of the UN Antonio Guterres, mayors around the world, Sec. John Kerry, Vice President Al Gore, Ministers of the Environment from multiple countries, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Ed Markey, Prince Albert of Monaco - all joined in. Governments, municipalities, and corporations made bold new commitments. The event also saw performances by musicians such as Dave Matthews, Ziggy Marley, Jason Mraz, Angélique Kidjo, Emily Wells, Aimee Mann, Ted Leo, Jack Johnson, Questlove, Talib Kweli, among others.

Earth Day 2020 was a major topic across media platforms, including leading magazines and environmental publications such as Parade Magazine and The Times of India; television stations such as CBS and CNN; and many more. On January 5, 2020, Earth Day's 50th anniversary year began with a full page in the Sunday New York Times, referencing a similar black and white advertisement that appeared in the Times 50 years earlier on the first Sunday in 1970.

" For fifty years, since the very first Earth Day, I have dedicated a large part of my life to championing more balanced sustainable approaches whether in farming, forestry, fisheries, urban planning or corporate social responsibility. But as we look to shape the next fifty years, I very much need your help. To reflect and inspire the world to action, while aiming for a green recovery, I would ask you to join me by sharing your vision for a more sustainable future (socially, environmentally and economically) using the hashtag ReimagineReset.'."

Earth Day 2021

The Biden Administration organized a 2021 Leaders' Climate Summit. This virtual Zoom-like meeting featured 40 world leaders and dozens of speakers, including Pope Francis, Xiye Bastida, Danielle Merfeld, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, GE Renewable Energy, Anna Borg, President and CEO, Vattenfall, and Abdullah Subai, Minister of Municipality and Environment, Qatar.

Earth Day Canada

The first Canadian Earth Day ( French: Jour de la Terre) was held on Thursday, September 11, 1980, and was organized by Paul D. Tinari, then a graduate student in Engineering Physics/Solar Engineering at Queen's University. Flora MacDonald, then MP for Kingston and the Islands and former Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, officially opened Earth Day Week on September 6, 1980, with a ceremonial tree planting and encouraged MPs and MPPs across the country to declare a cross-Canada annual Earth Day. The principal activities taking place on the first Earth Day included educational lectures given by experts in various environmental fields, garbage and litter pick-up by students along city roads and highways as well as tree plantings to replace the trees killed by Dutch elm disease.

History of the Equinox Earth Day (March 20)

The equinoctial Earth Day is celebrated on the March equinox (around March 20) to mark the arrival of astronomical spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and of astronomical autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. An equinox in astronomy is that point in time (not a whole day) when the Sun is directly above the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20 and September 23 each year. In most cultures, the equinoxes and solstices are considered to start or separate the seasons, although weather patterns evolve earlier.

John McConnell first introduced the idea of a global holiday called "Earth Day" at the 1969 UNESCO Conference on the Environment. The first Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto on March 21, 1970. Celebrations were held in various cities, such as San Francisco and in Davis, California with a multi-day street party. UN Secretary-General U Thant supported McConnell's global initiative to celebrate this annual event; and on February 26, 1971, he signed a proclamation to that effect, saying:

May there be only peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life.

United Nations secretary-general Kurt Waldheim observed Earth Day with similar ceremonies on the March equinox in 1972, and the United Nations Earth Day ceremony has continued each year since on the day of the March equinox (the United Nations also works with organizers of the April 22 global event). Margaret Mead added her support for the equinox Earth Day, and in 1978 declared:

Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
Earth Day draws on astronomical phenomena in a new way - which is also the most ancient way - by using the Vernal Equinox, the time when the Sun crosses the equator making the length of night and day equal in all parts of the Earth. To this point in the annual calendar, EARTH DAY attaches no local or divisive set of symbols, no statement of the truth or superiority of one way of life over another. But the selection of the March Equinox makes planetary observance of a shared event possible, and a flag which shows the Earth, as seen from space, appropriate.

At the moment of the equinox, it is traditional to observe Earth Day by ringing the Japanese Peace Bell, which was donated by Japan to the United Nations. Over the years, celebrations have occurred in various places worldwide at the same time as the UN celebration. On March 20, 2008, in addition to the ceremony at the United Nations, ceremonies were held in New Zealand, and bells were sounded in California, Vienna, Paris, Lithuania, Tokyo, and many other locations. The equinox Earth Day at the UN is organized by the Earth Society Foundation.

Earth Day ringing the peace bell is celebrated around the world in many towns, ringing the Peace Bell in Vienna, Berlin, and elsewhere. A memorable event took place at the UN in Geneva, celebrating a Minute for Peace ringing the Japanese Shinagawa Peace Bell with the help of the Geneva Friendship Association and the Global Youth Foundation, directly after in deep mourning about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant catastrophe 10 days before.

Beside the Spring Equinox for the Northern Hemisphere, the observance of the Spring Equinox for the Southern Hemisphere in September is of equal importance. The International Day of Peace is celebrated on September 21, and can thus be considered to accord with the original intentions of John McConnell, U Thant and others.

April 22 observances

Growing eco-activism before Earth Day 1970

In 1968, Morton Hilbert and the U.S. Public Health Service organized the Human Ecology Symposium, an environmental conference for students to hear from scientists about the effects of environmental degradation on human health. This was the beginning of Earth Day. For the next two years, Hilbert and students worked to plan the first Earth Day. In April 1970-along with a federal proclamation from U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson -the first Earth Day was held.

Project Survival, an early environmentalism-awareness education event, was held at Northwestern University on January 23, 1970. This was the first of several events held at university campuses across the United States in the lead-up to the first Earth Day. Also, Ralph Nader began talking about the importance of ecology in 1970.

The 1960s had been a very dynamic period for ecology in the US. Pre-1960 grassroots activism against DDT in Nassau County, New York, and widespread opposition to open-air nuclear weapons tests with their global nuclear fallout, had inspired Rachel Carson to write her influential bestseller, Silent Spring (1962).

Significance of April 22

Nelson chose the date to maximize participation on college campuses for what he conceived as an "environmental teach-in". He determined the week of April 19-25 was the best bet as it did not fall during exams or spring breaks. Moreover, it did not conflict with religious holidays such as Easter or Passover, and was late enough in spring to have decent weather. More students were likely to be in class, and there would be less competition with other mid-week events-so he chose Wednesday, April 22. The day also fell after the anniversary of the birth of noted conservationist John Muir. The National Park Service, John Muir National Historic Site, has a celebration every year on or around Earth Day (April 21, 22 or 23), called Birthday-Earth Day, in recognition of Earth Day and John Muir's contribution to the collective consciousness of environmentalism and conservation.

Unbeknownst to Nelson, April 22, 1970, was coincidentally the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin, when translated to the Gregorian calendar (which the Soviets adopted in 1918). reported that some suspected the date was not a coincidence, but a clue that the event was "a Communist trick", and quoted a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution as saying, "subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them." J. Edgar Hoover, director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, may have found the Lenin connection intriguing; it was alleged the FBI conducted surveillance at the 1970 demonstrations. The idea that the date was chosen to celebrate Lenin's centenary still persists in some quarters, an idea borne out by the similarity with the subbotnik instituted by Lenin in 1920 as days on which people would have to do community service, which typically consisted in removing rubbish from public property and collecting recyclable material. Subbotniks were also imposed on other countries within the compass of Soviet power, including Eastern Europe, and at the height of its power the Soviet Union established a nationwide subbotnik to be celebrated on Lenin's birthday, April 22, which had been proclaimed a national holiday celebrating communism by Nikita Khrushchev in 1955.

Earth Day songs

There are many songs that are performed on Earth Day, that generally fall into two categories: popular songs by contemporary artists not specific to Earth Day that are under copyright or new lyrics adapted to children's songs.

References

Equinoctial Earth Day

External links
earthday.org

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By Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui and Jugal K. Patel

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Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History (Published 2020)

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Recent polls suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the U.S. have participated in recent protests.