Sorry for the long wait. Here's January through July, 1961:
January 1961 onwards—The wave of immigration that began under the Dewey Administration continues unabated, with Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Co-Prosperity Sphere providing the largest number of new citizens. The immigrant wave from East Asia will last until the outbreak of the Fourth Pacific War later in the decade.
The Custer carrier group is finally completed, operating out of Pearl Harbor, in the Sandwich Isles. The last part of the naval expansion and modernization program undertaken by Dewey and Truman, the U.S.S. George Armstrong Custer will begin regular patrols in March of 1961. In response, the Japanese will increase their carrier patrols on their side of the maritime frontier that separates the two powers.
February 29, 1961—In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Humphrey focuses most of his attention on domestic issues. He makes the case eloquently for a universal healthcare system, and also talks extensively on the need for new legislation to protect America’s remaining wilderness areas.
Humphrey’s focus on the environment surprises some contemporary observers, even though a nascent movement has emerged over the last decade (with some of the more notable protests emerging in Cleveland, Ohio over the severely polluted Cuyahoga River in 1955, and a 1958 series of demonstrations against a consortium that planned to build a theme park almost on top of the site of Second Mexican War’s Battle of Louisville).
On foreign policy, Humphrey issues what is widely viewed as a warning against the Japanese Empire against attempting to procure a superbomb, and also levels veiled criticism against the Russian Empire and the Republic of South Africa over their human rights violations.
March 8, 1961 onwards—In the first of a series of nine articles, the Boston Herald’s Theodore Schanberg, in a devastating expose, brings the American public’s attention to the atrocities committed by the German Empire in the Congo. As bad (if not worse) than King Leopold’s brutal actions in his Congo Free State, the articles go into details about massacres, forced deportations, and the extremely cruel conditions that exist in the colony’s mining camps and plantations.
President Humphrey expresses his outrage, when asked about the story at a press conference soon afterwards; a Congressional Committee drawn up in May to investigate Schanberg’s charges will confirm them all by the end of the year. Domestically, the news reports about the Congo Affair will lead to a greater deal of attention leveled at the crimes of the Southron Holocaust; for many young people, the failure of the prewar government to help stop the persecution of African-Confederates is often compared to the lack of attention that the government has given to the Congo (a sin shared by every government dating back to the Sinclair Administration, as Schanberg is careful to note).
The Congo Affair, as this scandal will be known, will cause the first serious disruption in U.S.-German relations since the end of the Second Great War (with normalcy not being restored until the end of the decade). The international fallout is immediate, with the Ottoman/Brazilian-led Independence Movement angrily denouncing Berlin’s conduct in the Congo, as well as demanding immediate freedom for the colony.
For the Germans, the lurid reports now cascading out of the Congo causes a huge political scandal, resulting in the resignation of the Chancellor, and, after an investigation on the part of the now Social Democratic Party-controlled Reichstag, the dismantling of Germany’s colonial administration in the Congo, with Berlin taking an increasing level of control over the colony. A number of former colonial administrators, agents, and corporate executives stand trial for their accused crimes; with many being given lengthy prison sentences. There’s a popular uproar on the part of the German public over these revelations: for many citizens, the idea of their nation being compared to Featherston’s Confederacy doesn’t go over well at all.
July 15, 1961—An anti-Apartheid protest march in the Aliwal North township ends in a massacre committed against the marchers by the police. A report relayed to the U.S. embassy in Pretoria informs of at least two wanted former Freedom Party Guards who took part in what will be known as the “AN Massacre,” by historians.
The U.S. government condemns this atrocity, causing Pretoria to recall its Ambassador to Philadelphia. America’s envoy in return, is also recalled. Legislation is immediately introduced (by Congresswoman Flora Blackford, in her last written bill before her retirement) for sanctions to be placed upon South Africa. They will be signed into law by President Humphrey in September, 1961.
In the meantime, Cassius Madison, who has founded his own Freedom Party fugitive catching Remembrance Center by this time (based in New York City), begins to plan an expansion of activities into South Africa. There are still a lot of war criminals who haven’t faced justice after all. His biggest triumph will come in 1962…
~~~~~
Comments?