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History of Peacemaking & Nonviolence

600-520 BCEAs a teenager, Jeremiah is called to be a prophet, and with Isaiah and Micah he criticizes the social injustice of the day and encourages the children of Israel to justice and righteousness.
566 - 485 BCEShakyamuni Buddha
33Jesus Christ
40-80Paul and the apostles preach the Christian gospel of justice, nonviolence and reconciliation.
50-200Christian pacifism is typical among early Christian communities, which many recorded instances of Christians encouraged to make a vow of nonviolence.
316Martin of Tours, a Roman army officer, renounces violence when he becomes a "soldier of Christ."
570 – 632Muhammad ibn 'Abdullah
1181St. Francis of Assisi turns his back on wealth and lives a life of nonviolence and care for others.
1200Thousands of women join the Beguines, develop creative community, religious and economic forms.
1312Mansa Abu Bakr of Mali, travels from Senegambian region of Africa to coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
1537The historic peace churches are founded, which oppose war for conscience sake: Mennonites (1537); Society of Friends (1652) and Bretheren (1708).
1644Eleven African-American servants in new Amsterdam file a petition for freedom, the first recorded legal protest in what Europeans called "The New World."
1681William Penn's Letter to the Delaware Indians leads to treaties that keep peace for two generations.
1765-75American colonists mount three nonviolent resistance campaigns against British rule.
1780Quakers start the first anti-slavery society.
1840sThe Underground Railroad helps slaves escape to the northern United States or Canada led by conductors such as Harriet Tubman, who led 19 groups to safety.
1841Frederick Douglas b.1817 becomes prominent African American leader and abolitionist spokesperson against slavery.
1846Henry David Thoreau is jailed for refusing to pay taxes to support the Mexican-American War; he writes a powerful essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, that influences Tolstoy and Gandhi.
1848Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organize the first women's rights convention.
1867 - 2000Chinese railroad workers stage a week-long strike protesting inhumane and racist conditions.
1871 - 1000Women in Paris block cannons and stand between Prussian and Parisian troops.
1873Women celebrate Mother's Day, a peace holiday proposed by Julia Ward Howe.
1891Ida B. Wells starts her lifelong anti-lynching campaign by establishing her own newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech, to draw attention to the brutal lynch mob murders of African-Americans.
1898-1902Thousands protest the brutal Spanish-American War. Leaders include Mark Twain, author of A War Prayer and other works on the folly of war.
1900sThe U.S. labor movement, largely nonviolent, uses strikes to secure economic justice, dignity, democratic means of resolving problems and improved working conditions.
1901 -1905Finns nonviolently resist Russian oppression and force them to repeal laws imposing a military draft.
1905Mohandas Gandhi begins his first major nonviolent resistance campaign in Johannesburg, South Africa.
1909The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, is formed to fight prejudice and discrimination. W.E.B.DuBois, Ida B. Wells and Mary Terrell are founding members.
1913Noble Drew Ali establishes the ‘Moorish Science Temple’ one the first Muslim organizations in America in the City of Newark, NJ
1914The Fellowship of Reconciliation is founded as World War I begins, pledging to "keep the bonds of Christian love unbroken across the frontier."
1914-1918Conscientious objectors in World War I number more than 4,000.
1919-1947Gandhi leads the struggle for Indian independence through nonviolent means. The 1930 salt march ended at the ocean where Gandhi and others protested British economic subjugation by gathering salt in violation of British law.
1920The US Women's suffrage movement achieves a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote, culminating a 75-year struggle.
192320,000 women silk workers in Shanghai, China, go on strike demanding a 10-hour day.
1927The Filipino Federation of Labor, League of Latin American Citizens (1928) and the Japanese American Citizens League (1930) are organized in the face of rising discrimination.
1930W.D. Fard & Elijah Muhammad establish ‘The Lost Found Nation of Islam in the Wilderness of North America in the City of Detroit, Michigan.
1933The Catholic Worker is founded by Dorothy Day, a newspaper reporter, and Peter Maurin, a self-taught French peasant, emphasizing pacifism, hospitality to the poor and voluntary poverty.
1940Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is enthroned at Lhasa.
1940-45Finland saves all but six of its Jewish citizens from death camps through nonmilitary means. 6.500 of 7,000 Danish Jews escape to Sweden and most of the rest are hidden, aided by the people. A rail worker strike in Holland almost shuts down traffic from November 1944 until liberation in May, 1945.
 Similar resistance in Norway undermines Nazi plans; for example, teachers refuse to teach Nazi propaganda. Romania at first persecutes Jews, then refuses to give up one Jew to the death camps.
 Thousands of Bulgarians march in demonstrations, hide Jews and send countless letters protesting anti-Jewish measures. Bishop Kiril threatens to lead civil disobedience and lie down on the tracks in front of trains. All Bulgarian Jews are saved from Nazi death camps.
1941-44Tibet remains neutral during the Second World War and refuses permission for the Americans or the Chinese nationalists to transport military supplies through Tibetan territory.
1942German students from the White Rose resistance movement against the Nazi regime distribute thousands of leaflets exposing the nature of the Nazis and its treatment of Jews. They urge "obstruction of the war machine by passive resistance, including sabotage." Several of its leaders are killed in 1943.
1945Claude Eatherly pilots one of the planes that drops atomic bombs on Japan. He later comes to regret his involvement and speaks widely about the horrors of modern weapons.
1945The United Nations is founded to resolve disputed before they result in war. Since then, the UN has developed agencies and programs on arms control, human rights, the environment, hunger, peacekeeping, development, indigenous peoples, refugees, children and women, to name but a few.
1949In China the People's Liberation Army overcome the Nationalists (KMT) and on 1st October proclaimed the People's Republic of China. The PLA announces its intention to "liberate Tibet from foreign imperialists".
1955500,000 women in Indonesia demonstrate for women's rights on International Women's Day.
1955Rosa Parks is arrested after refusing to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus. The black community launches the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After a year of hardship the boycott succeeds.
1957Despite threats to their lives, Daisy Bates, Elizabeth Eckford and seven other students become the first African-Americans to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
195910th March; national uprising against the Chinese. Thousands of Tibetans take to the streets in Lhasa and fight the Chinese troops. When the Chinese start to shell his residence in Lhasa the Dalai Lama flees to India; 100,000 other Tibetans escape with him.
1959The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ella Baker and other black leaders. Educator Septima Clark sets up Freedom Schools all over the country.
1960Four black students sit-in at a whites-only Woolworth lunch counter; this nonviolent tactic spreads in campaigns to desegregate restrooms, movie theaters, restaurants and libraries.
1961Young Freedom Riders protest discrimination on buses. A bus is burned in Alabama, riders are attacked in Birmingham, and riders spend 40-60 days in jail in Jackson, Mississippi. Six months later the Interstate Commerce Commission bans segregation on buses and trains.
1961Amnesty International is founded to document and protest torture and capital punishment and gains more than a million members within 20 years.
1963March on Washington is the largest demonstration to date, bringing more than 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gives his "I have a Dream" speech.
1963Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is signed after six years of demonstrations and public pressure.
1964-1973Draft card burnings mark growing resistance to the U.S. War in Vietnam; millions join in demonstrations, draft counseling, tax resistance, civil disobedience or other forms of protest.
1964Freedom Summer recruits 700 young people to register voters in Mississippi; three volunteers - Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney - disappear in early summer and are later found murdered.
1965United Farm Workers union launches a grape boycott, led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
1965Because of the enthusiasm and activism of many African-Americans, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed by Congress.
1968Philip and Daniel Berrigan and seven other catholic priests and lay people destroy 378 draft files in the Catonsville, Maryland draft board. The protest sparks dozens of similar acts of civil disobedience.
1969Greenpeace adopts nonviolent direct action to protect the environment and dramatize its cause.
1970Killing of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio sparks strikes and protests at thousands of colleges; more than a million people join Vietnam protests for the first time.
1971At the age of 90, Jeanette Rankin leads an 8,000 women march on the Pentagon against the Vietnam war. 1,000 veterans protest the war, followed by the largest demonstration ever against the war.
1972Trail of Broken Treaties march occupies Bureau of Indian Affairs offices to dramatize Native American needs.
1975Imam W. Deen Mohammed becomes leader of largest organization of Muslims in America, ‘The Lost Found Nation of Islam’ and transitions group to universal principles of Islam
1977Mothers of the Plaza buy a newspaper ad in Argentina to publish the names of mothers and pictures of 230 "disappeared," people kidnapped, tortured and/or killed by the military.
1980Solidarity founded in Poland. Repressed under martial law in 1981, in 1989 it wins every available seat in parliament and now governs the nation. Victory comes without a single violent act.
1980sWitness for Peace sends thousands of Americans to Nicaragua in a "shield of Love" to help stop violence by U.S. backed Contras. 80,000 U.S. citizens sign a "pledge of Resistance" promising civil disobedience if the U.S. invades, helping avert military action.
1981Protests against cruise missiles based in Greenham Common, England, begin. At its peak, 8,000 women live in tents outside the base, demonstrating and committing civil disobedience.
1982750,000 people gather in New York City for the largest disarmament demonstration in U.S. history.
1982Sister Helen Prejean becomes a pen pal to a prisoner on death row; she later writes a powerful memoir of her experience, Dead Man Walking, which is made into an award-winning movie.
1984The Book, I Rigoberta Menchu, details the struggle of Guatemalan women in the face of U.S.-supported military government that killed more than 100,000 people.
1986Nonviolent People Power in the Philippines brings down the oppressive Marcos regime.
1987The Dalai Lama proposes the Five Point Peace Plan during a visit to the US Congress in Washington. More information(friends-of-tibet.org.nz)
19873,000 people gather on Mother's Day at the Nevada test Site to protest preparations for nuclear war.
1989H.H. Dalai Lama awarded Nobel Peace Prize. More information(nobelprize.org)
1989Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and East Germany all win freedom from Soviet control by nonviolent means. Nonviolent independence movements within the Soviet union are launched in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Moldavia and the Ukraine.
1989The Chinese government crushes a nonviolent student protest at Tiananmen Square, but not before images are televised around the world.
1989Romanian secret police attempt to arrest Rev. Laslo Toles. Parishioners jam the streets, light candles and refuse to move. The crowd gathers until 50,000 converge on the city center. Violent suppression by the government sparks the revolution that overthrows the dictator Ceausescu.
1990Disabled demonstrators at the Capitol Building demand passage of a bill guaranteeing their civil rights. Sixty highlight their demands by crawling out of their wheelchairs and up the Capitol steps.
1990-1991Demonstrations in 20 cities protest U.S. buildup to the war against Iraq; polls show that the majority of Americans support the nonviolent resolution of the conflict.
1991The Assembly of Tibetan People's Deputies adopts a new democratic constitution for the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. Known as the Charter of Tibetans in Exile, it draws heavily on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More information(tibetjustice.org)
 CHAPTER I - FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES Article 7 Renunciation of Violence and the Use of Force 135 Renunciation of Violence and the Use of Force - Article 7. The future Tibet shall be a zone of peace and shall strive to disengage itself from the production of all destructive weapons, including Nuclear and Chemical; and, currently, the Tibetans-in-Exile shall refrain from all warfare as a means to achieve the common goal of Tibet, or for any other purpose.
 1992 The Dalai Lama issues "The Guidelines for Future Tibet's Polity and Basic Features of its Constitution". He states that in a future, free Tibet, he will relinquish his powers in favour of a popularly elected government and the Tibetan Government-in-Exile will then be dissolved. More information (tibet.net)
 Renunciation of Violence and Military Force: Tibet will be a zone of peace, based on the principles of nonviolence, compassion and protection of the natural environment. Tibet will remain nonaligned in the international communities and will not resort to war for any reason.
1994Nelson Mandela elected first Black president of South Africa, four years after he is released from jail.
1997The International Campaign to Ban Landmines receives the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to eliminate these weapons that kill and injure.
2007October: H. H. the Dalai Lama was awarded Congressional Gold Medal. President Bush and the leaders of Congress put aside their differences Wednesday to bestow the nation's highest civilian honor upon the Dalai Lama, calling the exiled Tibetan religious leader a "warrior for peace." His Holiness said, reading from his prepared remarks.."It is a great honor for me to receive the Congressional Gold Medal. This ... will bring tremendous joy and encouragement to the Tibetan people, for whom I have a special responsibility,"
2008Hundreds of Tibetans in Lhasa began protesting on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Beijing rule. Police arrested protesters, and violence in the streets escalated in the following days. Personal accounts of protests in Tibet are being censored on the Chinese internet. Global Voices authors and others managed to rescue some first hand accounts of what happened on the frontline. 1452 known Tibetans continue to remain in detention or are serving prison sentences since spring 2008.

From salsa.net with additions from Tibet House US.