House Minority Leader Sam Singh (D-East Lansing) and Rep. Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit) have introduced a bill and resolution that would commemorate the efforts of former Detroit resident Fred Korematsu.
During World War II, as many as 120,000 Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps. Korematsu, seeing this policy directly violated the constitution, refused to relocate and brought his fight against Japanese internment camps to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Singh’s HB 4110 would establish Fred Korematsu Day in Michigan to be commemorated each year on Jan. 30, Korematsu’s birthday.
Chang’s HR 11 calls for Jan. 30, 2017, to be declared Fred Korematsu Day in Michigan. Singh and Chang made similar efforts last year (See “Asian Pacific Caucus Wants Permanent Recognition For Japanese-American,” MIRS, 1/27/16).
At a time when many Americans don’t feel safe on the basis of their race, country of origin, or religion, the legacy of Fred Korematsu is more important than ever. In 2014, the United States Commission on Civil Rights urged the President and Congress to establish national holidays honoring Cesar Chavez and Fred Korematsu, but to date nothing has been establish. Hawaii, Virginia, and Florida have established Fred Korematsu Day in perpetuity. It is time to establish it on a national level. Let’s send a message that Americans values civil liberties and our constitution by making a national Fred Korematsu Day.
More about Fred Korematsu.
On Jan. 30, 1919, former Detroit resident Fred Korematsu was born in Oakland, Calif., the third of four sons of Japanese immigrant parents who ran a floral nursery business. Korematsu is known for challenging in court his detainment in the U.S.-based internment camps during World War II for those of Japanese ancestry.
After his release, he moved to Detroit, where his younger brother lived. There, he met his soon-to-be wife, Kathryn, a student at Wayne State University who was originally from South Carolina. They moved back to San Francisco in 1949.
While losing originally in the courts, Korematsu’s conviction was overturned by a federal court judge in 1983, and he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998.
Source : MIRS, January 26 and 30, 2017.
Fred Korematsu Day update.
For more information see Of civil wrongs and rights : the Fred Korematsu Story / a film by Eric Paul Fornier. MSU Digital/Multimedia Center KF7224.5 .O4 2000 VideoDVD
Classes will be suspended starting at 8 a.m. Wednesday at all MSU locations, the university said in a post on its website.
“While online instruction may continue, faculty will not penalize students who do not participate during a university-declared suspension of classes.”
It took MSU 110 years to call its first snow day on Jan. 27, 1967, following 26 inches of snowfall.
They have only canceled class a handful of times since.
For just the third time in the past 40 years, the University of Michigan will cancel classes on its Ann Arbor campus.
UM announced it will cancel classes for Wednesday, Jan. 30, and Thursday, Jan. 31, due to pending inclement weather and expected below-freezing temperatures. The university confirmed an emergency reduction of operations was in effect from midnight Wednesday through 7 a.m. Friday.
In a Tuesday afternoon email message sent to students, faculty and staff on the Ann Arbor campus, university leaders said the reduction in operations includes the cancellation of all classroom and laboratory instruction and also extends to all non-critical services and operations.
The university last canceled classes during a snowstorm on Feb. 2, 2015, amid significant snowfall and high wind speeds.
Prior to that, UM officials canceled classes on Jan. 28, 2014, after temperatures dropped to a record-setting 11 degrees below zero with wind chills approaching minus 30 degrees. Before that, UM had not closed its campus due to severe weather during a snowstorm in January 1978.
Following the 2014 snowstorm, UM made changes to its weather policy as it pertains to staffing during severe weather situations. The policy was revised based on recommendations given by the Committee on Emergency Closure Procedures Specific to Severe Weather.
Source: “University of Michigan cancels classes for 2 days with -45 wind chill expected“, MLive, January 29, 2018.
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (her English name) or Bamewawagezhikaquay (her Ojibwe name), Woman of the Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky, was born in 1800 in Sault Ste. Marie in what is now the state of Michigan. By the time she died in 1842, she had produced a large body of literary and other writings. Eclipsed from the historical record by her famous husband, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), Jane Johnston Schoolcraft was nevertheless among the first American Indian writers. She was also the first known American Indian literary writer, the first known Indian woman writer, the first known Indian poet, the first known poet to write poems in a Native American language, and the first known American Indian to write out traditional Indian stories (as opposed to transcribing and translating from someone else’s oral delivery, which she did also). Her stories became a key source for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s sensational bestseller The Song of Hiawatha.
The sound the stars make rushing through the sky : the writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft / edited by Robert Dale Parker. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2007.
For more information, see Introduction to Jane Johnston Schoolcraft
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Voices from the Gaps.
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft / Robert Dale Parker. An annotated bibliography, part of the American Literature module of Oxford Bibliographies Online.
On January 31, 1849, the new fort constructed in Detroit was named Fort Wayne, in honor of the late General “Mad” Anthony Wayne, whose victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 eliminated the threat of an alliance of Indian tribes in the Northwest Territory.
On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, eradicating slavery in America for good.
There were six respresentatives from Michigan that day and all voted for the amendment:
MI 1st: Fernando Beaman (R)
MI 2nd: Charles Upson (R)
MI 3rd: John Longyear (R)
MI 4th: Francis Kellogg (R)
MI 5th: Augustus Baldwin (D)
MI 6th: John Driggs (R)
For more about each Congressman, see
Scott Bragg, “Here are the Representatives from Michigan who voted for the Thirteenth Amendment”, Night Train, January 31, 2015.
The Green Hornet is one of those “super-heroes” that isn’t really super…you know, like Batman. The character of The Green Hornet was created in Michigan for Detroit radio WXYZ by Fran Striker (and possibly radio owner George W. Trendle), who also created ‘The Lone Ranger’.
The Green Hornet radio program debuted on WXYZ Radio in Detroit on January 31, 1936, the same station that aired “The Lone Ranger” and another creation of Striker’s, “Sgt. Preston Of The Yukon”. The show proved to be very popular with Michigan audiences and on April 12, 1938, the show went national and aired for twelve years, ending in 1950. The show had a great opening intro: “He hunts the biggest game! Public enemies that even the G-men cannot reach!” However, the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover got angry over that statement. He complained that Green Hornet’s radio intro was demeaning to his own stable of G-Men (government agents). He complained so loudly that WXYZ was forced to change the intro to say “Public enemies who try to destroy our America!”
Sources :
John Robinson, “ The ‘Green Hornet’ Was Created in Michigan, 1936 “, | 99.1 WFMK Blog, June 23, 2021.
On January 31, 1945, Pvt. Eddie Slovik of Hamtramck was executed for desertion in France during WWII. He was the first and only American soldier to be executed for desertion since the Civil War.
Sources :
Historical Society of Michigan
Michigan Historical Calendar, courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University
World War II: Eddie Slovik Court Martial and Execution Documents
The Execution of Private Slovik wikipedia entry
Chris Walch, “The Execution of Private Slovik, 40 Years Later“, Los Angeles Review of Books, April 14, 2014
Increased salaries for teachers with a pupil-teacher ratio of 18 to 1 were advocated by Gov. G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams in an address Sunday afternoon before the mid-winter graduating class of Western Michigan college. …
America can retain its present world leadership, he concluded, only if it adopts a broad social program. That program he asserted, must contain provisions for “greater aid for the aged, full employment, adequate housing, slum clearance, youth recreational programs, elimination of waste in the development of our natural resources, and the removal of racial discrimination.”
Source : Lansing State Journal, January 31, 1950
Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed a bill which will name a section of I-75 in Taylor, MI the “SPC Holly McGeogh Memorial Highway”. On Jan. 31, 2004 at age 19, Holly became the first, and we believe the only female from Michigan to be killed in action in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It’s important to know that Holly loved serving in the Army and in Iraq. Rather than goodies for herself, she asked her mother to send candy in care packages that she could give to the Iraqi children.
Honor the Fallen : Army Pfc. Holly J. McGeogh; Died January 31, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom, Military Times.