June 28, Rick Halperin, director of the SMD Dallas Human Rights Program, for a piece recalling a brief period 50 years ago when the U.S. was without the death penalty. Published in History News Network under the heading 50 Years Ago, a SCOTUS Decision Placed a Moratorium on Executions. It’s Time to Revive it, Permanently: https://bit.ly/3OOlj4A
Fifty years ago in 1972, as spring faded and summer arrived in late June, America (and the world) was a vastly different place.
The United States was still entangled in the quagmire of the Vietnam War, and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of individuals still marched on city streets and on university campuses demanding an end to the bloodshed that would ultimately claim the lives of over 58,000 American soldiers and 3 million Vietnamese.
On May 15, Alabama Governor and presidential candidate George Wallace was shot (and paralyzed) by Arthur Bremer in a parking lot in Laurel, Maryland. Within 2 weeks, there would be two failed break-ins at the Watergate complex in Virginia, a crime that led to the downfall and resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.