Wayback Machine
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1992
April 4: Former California Governor Jerry Brown said yesterday that televising the impending execution of Robert Alton Harris might have a “salutary” effect of increasing opposition to the death penalty. “We ought to be responsible for what’s being done in our name,” Brown said. With Harris, a convicted killer, scheduled to die in the gas chamber April 21, the comments by the Democratic presidential hopeful came as he was asked about statements he made at the time of California’s last execution. Brown, then 29, joined a demonstration against capital punishment outside San Quentin prison when murderer Aaron Mitchell was put to death in 1967.
“I really think this grisly spectacle should be on television, so that we could all see it,” he said at that time. “It’s our killing, it’s our murder. I think Governor Ronald Reagan ought to be here to drop the pellets himself because he represents all of us. All except Mr. Mitchell,” Brown added 25 years ago. In the 1992 presidential race Brown has sharply criticized rival Bill Clinton who recently returned to Arkansas to oversee the execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a brain-damaged killer.
1967
April 6: The Gray Line added a new attraction to its tours of San Francisco — the Haight-Ashbury district, hippie capital of America. They billed it as “the only foreign tour within the continental United States,” and the new scene drew more stares than the Mint, Mission Dolores and Twin Peaks combined. When word spread about the “safari through psychedelphia,” as driver-guide Dee Briggs put it, interest in San Francisco’s other wonders seemed suddenly desultory. Most of the bus passengers had never before seen a live hippie. “Free lovejust living together?” inquired Mrs. James Costanzo of Chicago, aghast. ‘Their parents send money for LSD? Great God!” “Now, now,” said her husband, a plant superintendent. “Would you want our son to be a hippie?” “A hippie?! Better he be dead!”
And then, at the fringe of hippieville, the bus stopped and a hush fell over the sightseers as a television crew came aboard with a live hippie — Stan Miklose, in his mid 20s with shoulder length hair, turtleneck black sweater, dark car coat, jeans, western boots. In a wellmodulated voice Miklose compared hippies with the college youths who turn Easter week at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., into a nightmare. “The very worst the hippies do is to sit down on the street — not in protest, because that is negative, but in a positive statement of purpose. I could try all day to explain this, but unless you were a hippie you wouldn’t understand. Miklose was later asked if hippies didn’t resent being sightseen like zoo animals. “It was bound to happen. When someone creates a thing of beauty — an Eiffel Tower, a great painting — the public comes to it. We hippies have created something beautiful.”
1942
April 7: Six hundred and sixty Japanese said goodbye to San Francisco for the duration yesterday in the Army’s first forceful evacuation affecting Northern California. These were houseboys and doctors, fisher folk and gardeners, lawyers and laundrymen — and their families. Today they will begin a temporary stay at Santa Anita racetrack, where white-painted stables are being transformed into family apartments. Later they will be sent inland to till the soil and raise crops to feed armies pitted against their own countrymen. Many were American citizens with brothers and sons in the United States Army, and their removal was carried out with every consideration for their personal welfare and comfort. Most of the older ones displayed no emotion at the parting. They waited in silence at control stations of the Wartime Civil Control Administration at 2020 and 1701 Van Ness Avenue until Gray Line buses arrived to take them to a special train at Third and Townsend. They had arrived by streetcar, taxi and in automobiles and jalopies of friends. Some bowed curt farewell to friends and averted their faces as they entered between side-armed soldiers who lined the sidewalk. Small children romped and played. Another 4000 San Francisco Japanese remain to be evacuated.
1917
April 5: No detention camps for the confinement of German subjects, as alien enemies within the United States, are planned at present by the Federal Government. Only those aliens who are known to have taken part in plots will be apprehended; and they will be treated under the penal statutes and, if held, sent to regular penal institutions. This information transpired yesterday from instructions received by Federal officials, who, it had previously announced, were making plans for a detention camp on Angel Island. This attitude of the Government toward the Germans within the United States was strongly expressed by president Wilson in his war message when he said: “They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the few who may be of a different mind or purpose.”