Above: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in on August 28, 1963. Watch the video --> "I Have a Dream" video on YouTube.
Above: President Elect Barack Obama at Grant Park, Chicago, IL, November 4, 2008. Watch --> here.
he Chronology of Events
1976 -- Jimmy Carter elected President of the United States.
1977 -- General Zia-ul-Haq's overthrew ruling Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Benazir Bhutto's father) in a military coup d'état on July 5th. Bhutto was later executed by Zia following a controversial trial.
1979 -- On January 16, 1979, the Iranian Revolution overthrew the US supported Shah of Iran and installed the Muslim theocracy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
1979 -- Beginning on November 4th, 52 U.S. diplomats were held hostage for 444 days in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran.
1979 -- On Christmas Day, the large scale invasion of Soviet ground and airborne forces begins in Afghanistan.
1979 -1989 -- The Mujahideen (Arabic: مجاهدين, muǧāhidīn, literally "strugglers") battled the occupying Soviet Forces and Afghan regime of Najibullah. The Mujahideen were funded, armed and trained by the US CIA under Carter and Reagan, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran and Zia-ul-Haq's military regime in Pakistan. Hamid Karzai was a member of the Mujahideen and a CIA agent in the movement.
1979 -- Osama bin Laden leaves King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia to join the Mujahideen in the fight against the Soviet Invasion.
1980 -- Ronald Reagan elected President of the United States.
1984 -- Ronald Reagan reelected President of the United States.
1988 -- Rambo III (1988) portrays the Mujahideen as "freedom fighters" in ousting Soviet forces.
1988 -- On August 17th, Zia-ul-Haq was killed along with several of his top generals and the United States Ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Lewis Raphel in a plane crash.
1988 -- George H.W. Bush elected President of the United States.
1988 -- On December 2, Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan.
1988 -- Pan Am Flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie Scotland on December 21st. The U.S. blames Libyan intelligence agents.
1989 -- Soviet Troops pull out of Afghanistan.
1992 -- The Afghan regime of Najibullah falls. The Mujahideen splinter into many groups.
1992 -- Bill Clinton elected President of the United States.
1996 -- With funding from Pakistan (which was itself being funded by the US), the Taliban begin to consolidate power from Mujahideen splinter groups. Osama bin Laden moves back to Afghanistan from Sudan. One of Osama's sons is reported to have married Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's daughter. Benazir Bhutto supports the Taliban in their quest to bring "stability" to Afghanistan.
1996 -- Bill Clinton reelected President of the United States.
1997 - 2001 -- al-Qaeda-trained fighters known as the 055 Brigade were integrated with the Taliban army.
1998 -- Pakistan under the direction of lead scientist A.Q. Khan conducts 5 nuclear tests at the Chagai Hills test site. A.Q. Khan later admits to sharing nuclear technology with Iran, Libya and North Korea.
1998 -- Benazir Bhutto goes into self-imposed exile in Dubai.
1999 -- On October 12, 1999 Pervez Musharraf became de facto Head of Government of Pakistan following a coup d'état.
1999 -- On November 29, 1999, Mohamed Atta (leader of the 9/11 terrorist plot and highjacker of American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles which was the first plane to hit the World Trade Center) flew from Hamburg to Istanbul and on to Karachi, Pakistan. Atta then traveled to his final destination, an al-Qaeda training camp in Tarnak Farms, near Kandahar, Afghanistan.
2000 -- George W. Bush elected President of the United States.
2001 -- On September 9, 2001, al-Qaeda assassinates Northern Alliance leader and Taliban opponent Ahmad Shah Massoud.
2001 -- On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda with the support of the Taliban attack the U.S. in the greatest terrorist attack of modern times. Osama bin Laden cites the U.S. military presence at Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan Air Base as a justification. (Inset: Mohamed Atta entering Portland International Jetport in Maine for a flight bound for Boston).
2001 -- With U.S. military aid, the Northern Alliance ousted the Taliban and formed a new government under Hamid Karzai.
2003 -- Libya offered US$2.7 billion to settle claims by the families of the 270 victims of the Lockerbie bombing. Libya also agreed to give up nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction including technology acquired from Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan.
2003 -- The U.S. begins to remove its large military presence at Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan Air Base.
2004 -- George W. Bush reelected President of the United States.
2007 -- Charlie Wilson's War (2007) portrays the Afghan Mujahideen as "freedom fighters".
2007 -- On December 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
Above: March 1965: Thousands of marchers walk 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery to bring attention to the low numbers of black registered voters in the South. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee workers had been trying to register more voters.
Minutes after the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed on Sept. 15, 1963, Tom Self was on the scene taking pictures.
The photographs, published in The Birmingham News, were among hundreds that appeared in print during the civil rights struggle in Alabama. Self, who retired as chief photographer in 1998, remembers many of those images.
Hundreds of photos from that era were lost, sold, stolen or stored in archives. Some of those pictures appear today for the first time in the newspaper, in an eight-page special section titled "Unseen. Unforgotten."
The section is the result of research by Alexander Cohn, a 30-year-old former photo intern at The News. In November 2004, Cohn went through an equipment closet at the newspaper in search of a lens and saw a cardboard box full of negatives marked, "Keep. Do Not Sell."
Cohn, who grew up in Mountain Brook and is a master's candidate at the University of Missouri, researched the images and discovered that many had never been published.
In all, Cohn said, he found 5,000 images from 1950 to 1965 in the cardboard box. He examined 2,000 and estimated that most had not been published. More...
See all the photos -> <here>.
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