June 28, 1916
A one-day strike by 50,000 German workers was organized to free Socialist anti-war leader Karl Liebknecht, charged with sedition for his criticism of the government and the war later known as World War I. He was the first ever to be expelled from the Reichstag—the German parliament—voted out for his opposition to Germany’s role in the war.
June 28, 1917
W.E.B. DuBois and others organized a silent parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City against the lynching of Negroes and segregationist Jim Crow laws. There had been nearly 3,000 documented cases of hangings and other mob violence against Black Americans since the Reconstruction period following the Civil War.
