Saturday, April 22, 1967: Birth of the Big Mac

The Big Mac -- advertised as a hamburger "made with 2 freshly ground patties, tangy melted cheese, crisp lettuce, pickle and our own Special Sauce" -- is added to the menu at the McDonald's in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, thanks to Jim Delligatti (the franchise owner who created it) and Esther Glickstein (the corporate secretary who named it). Following the Big Mac's success locally, the parent company would make it available nationwide starting in 1968. (The famous "twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun" ad campaign would follow in early 1975.)

-- Above: advertisement in The Morning Herald, Uniontown, April 21, 1967

-- Below: advertisement in The Morning Herald, September 28

* "A Meal Disguised as a Sandwich: The Big Mac" (Pennsylvania Center for the Book, 2009): @

* "McDonald's: Behind the Arches" (John F. Love, 1995): @

* "Golden Arch Angel" (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1993): @

* "Michael James Delligatti, Creator of the Big Mac, Dies at 98" (New York Times, 2016): @

* "Woman Who Named Big Mac Finally Recognized" (Associated Press, 1985): @

* Big Mac Museum (North Huntingdon, Pennsylvania): @ (website) and @ (RoadsideAmerica.com) 

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Saturday, April 15, 1967: Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam

Tens of thousands of people march in anti-war rallies in New York and San Francisco. The rallies themselves were evidence of Americans' ever-increasing disenchantment with the Vietnam War, while an instance of flag burning in New York's Central Park (pictured above) was a pivotal event in leading to a 1968 flag desecration law. 

     -- Photo by New York Daily News

Vietnam protests

* Summary (www.vietnamwar.net): @

* Summary ("The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War," edited by Spencer C. Tucker, 2011): @

* San Francisco summary, photos (Harvey Richards Media Archive): @

* Pamphlet (NYU Archives Collection): @

* Various documents (The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change): @

Flag burning

* "Flag-burning overview" (First Amendment Center): @
* "State flag-protection laws" (First Amendment Center): @

* "Timeline of Flag Desecration Issues" (www.ushistory.org): @
* "The Flag Bulletin; Two Centuries of Burning Flags, A Few Years of Blowing Smoke" (New York Times, 1995): @

* Text of flag desecration law (July 5, 1968): @

* "Congress Passes Flag Protection Act" (Today in Civil Liberties History): @

* "Flag Burning: Moral Panic and the Criminalization of Protest" (Michael Welch, 2000): @

* "Flag Burning and Free Speech: The case of Texas v. Johnson" (Robert Justin Goldstein, 2000): @
* "Flag Protection: A Brief History of Recent Supreme Court Decisions and Proposed Constitutional Amendment" (Congressional Research Service, 2001): @
* "Inside the Supreme Court's flag burning decision" (National Constitution Center): @ 

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Tuesday, April 11, 1967: Robert Kennedy's tour of the Mississippi Delta

CLEVELAND, Mississippi -- Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., trekking through poverty pockets in rural Mississippi, said Tuesday the United States spends $3 billion annually caring for its dogs and "we could do more for children." Standing at the rear of a weather-beaten, wooden frame house near this community in the cotton-growing Delta, the senator said: "We spend about $3 billion each year on dogs. You'd think we could do more for children. I think that it is our responsibility as American citizens." Negroes in this area are increasingly being idled by the replacement of hand labor with mechanized farm equipment. ... Sen. Joseph Clark, D-Pa, said the money spent to fight poverty was inadequate but more money in itself won't solve the problem. It will take more skills and community interest to help poor people, he said. His subcommittee has been looking into War on Poverty programs for two days in Mississippi.

CLARKSDALE, Mississippi -- A Senate subcommittee, carrying volumes of testimony and memories of hungry children, returned to Washington today (April 12) after a look at poverty conditions among Negroes in the Mississippi Delta. "We need a reawakening of the social conscience of America," said Sen. Joseph S. Clark, D-Pa., chairman of the subcommittee on employment, manpower and poverty. Both Clark and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., spent a long day driving through the low-lying cotton country with stops at several ramshackle Negro homes and anti-poverty centers, interviewing dozens of Negro families. The tour, which ended here late Tuesday, came on the heels of a hearing in Jackson at which several witnesses told of widespread hunger and unemployment among Negro farm workers displaced by mechanization and reduced cotton acreage.

-- News accounts from Associated Press

-- Top photo from Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights; other photos by Jim Lucas: @ 

* "Clark and Kennedy Visit the Poor in Mississippi" (New York Times, April 12, 1967): @

* Excerpt from "Robert Kennedy and His Times" (Arthur Schlesinger, 1978): @

* "Bobby Kennedy in Mississippi" (Photos, The Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, Mississippi, 2016): @

* "Robert Kennedy's Transformation Ran Through Mississippi" (Clarion-Ledger, 2016): @
* "Bobby Kennedy chose to see problems first hand" (Bill Minor, 2008): @

* "Mississippi docs helped fight 'war on poverty' " (Minor, 2016): @
* "With RFK in the Delta," (John Carr, 2002): @

* "Delta Ephipany: RFK in Mississippi" (Ellen Meacham, 2017): @

* Interview with Marian Wright Edelman (1988): @

* Interview with Peter Edelman (1974): @

* "Poverty" entry from Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights: @

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Friday, April 7, 1967: KMPX

Tom Donahue takes over the 8 p.m.-to-midnight shift at FM radio station KMPX in San Francisco, extending the station's embrace of what came to be known variously as underground radio, progressive radio or free-form radio -- in other words, music beyond the bounds of top 40. (In February, Larry Miller had brought the anything-goes format to KMPX with his midnight-to-6 a.m. program.)

     -- Tom Donahue, left, at KMPX in 1967; photo by Michael Ochs

* "A Brief History of 106.9 FM in San Francisco" (Bay Area Radio Museum): @

* "FM 107 KMPX, San Francisco: Tom Donahue" (includes sound clip from May 1967; Bay Area Radio Museum): @

* Larry Miller handbill (Bay Area Radio Museum): @
* KMPX staff, 1968 (photo by Baron Wolman): @

* Donahue biography ("Encyclopedia of Radio," edited by Christopher H. Sterling, 2004): @
* Donahue biography (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame): @

* "One More Page in the Book of Love: Tom Donahue, 1928-1975" (Greil Marcus, 1975): @

* "Birth of Community Rock Radio: A Brief History of KMPX and KSAN-FM" (FoundSF): @

* KMPX entry from www.jive95.com (site devoted to KSAN; includes sound clips): @

* "KMPX San Francisco Radio Workers Strike 1968" (Global Nonviolent Action Database): @

* "Free-Form Revolutionaries of Top 40 Radio / How Donahue, Syracuse Rocked the Bay Area Airwaves" (www.sfgate.com, 1998): @

* "Rock Stations Giving Albums the Air Play" (Billboard, July 22, 1967): @
* "KMPX's Tom Donahue Programs Music with a Wide Open View" (Billboard, December 30, 1967): @
* "The Underground Radio Turn-On" (Look magazine, June 24, 1969; from New York Radio Archive; scroll down for page images): @

* "FM Underground Radio: Love for Sale" (Rolling Stone, April 1970): @

* "Hip Capitalism" (Susan Krieger, 1979): @ 
* "The Republic of Rock" (Michael J. Kramer, 2013): @

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Tuesday, April 4, 1967: 'Beyond Vietnam'

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. makes his most public and comprehensive statement against the Vietnam War. Addressing a crowd of 3,000 people in New York City’s Riverside Church, King delivers a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam.” King points out that the war effort is “taking the young black men who have been crippled by our society and sending them 13,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.” Although some activists and newspapers supported King’s statement, most responded with criticism. King’s civil rights colleagues began to disassociate themselves from his radical stance, and the NAACP issued a statement against merging the civil rights movement and peace movement. 

     -- From "A Time To Break Silence: The Essential Works of Martin Luther King Jr. for Students" (The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University): @

* Text and audio (American Rhetoric): @

* Text and audio (King Research and Education Institute): @

* Summary (King Research and Education Institute): @

* "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (et al.) speak on the war in Vietnam" (booklet, 1967): @

* "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" (King speech, April 30, 1967; typed speech from The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia): @

* "King's FBI File -- Riverside Church Speech on Vietnam" (American RadioWorks): @ 
* "When Martin Luther King Came Out Against Vietnam" (The New York Times, 2017): @

* "Martin Luther King's Searing Antiwar Speech, Fifty Years Later" (The New Yorker, 2017): @

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