Milestones: May 3, 2024

May 3, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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KEENLY UNDERSTOOD WORLDLY WAYS — ITALIAN PHILOSOPHER AND WRITER NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI was born in Florence on May 3, 1469. He was a staunch proponent of a unified Italy A lifelong patriot and a diehard proponent of a unified Italy, which at the time had five major city-states. He was a shrewd politician and official, distinguishing himself as a defense secretary who strengthened his hometown politically. He also gained influence with King Louis XII of France, the Popee, the Holy Roman Emperor and a Papal States prince named Cesare Borgia (in reality the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI (who by birth was Rodrigo de Borgia, powerful in both Spain and Italy). It was the shrewd and worldly Cesare Borgia who was the inspiration for Machiavelli’s famous political essay, The Prince, (originally published in 1513 as a pamphlet) which described Machiavelli’s vision of an ideal leader: an amoral, calculating tyrant for whom the end justifies the means.

However, The Prince was also written to curry favor back into the powerful Medici family’s circle after a falling-out. He was unsuccessful in this regard and worse, lost the respect and love of his fellow Florentines.

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MOVIE THEATER MONOPOLY — THE U.S. SUPREME COURT ON MAY 3, 1948 HANDED DOWN ITS DECISION in the government’s protracted anti-trust lawsuit against eight Hollywood movie studios, of which Paramount Pictures was a primary defendant. The Federal Trade Commission, had, two decades earlier, sued Paramount’s predecessor, Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and nine other major studios, accusing them of having violated the Sherman Antitrust Act (established 1890). Though found guilty, the studios were able to continue operating in the interests of the nation’s economic recovery from the Great Depression, as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act. However, by 1938, the government acted against Paramount, Universal, MGM, Twentieth Century-Fox, Warner Bros., Columbia and RKO. Lower courts ruled that the studios’ system of block booking, which required theater owners in their contracts to show a certain number of their films, constituted a monopoly. The Supreme Court upheld that decision and ordered the studios to end block booking, and divest from their own heater chains.

This ruling enabled independent filmmakers to thrive and compete with the major studios.

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LANDMARK 14TH AMENDMENT CASE — MAY 3 WAS THE DAY OF ANOTHER MAJOR THE U.S. SUPREME COURT DECISION IN 1954, codifying the American legal system’s approach to handling charges of discrimination. The case, Hernandez v. Texas, involved the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and an Hispanic laborer named Hernandez who was convicted of murder. The League of United Latin American Citizens, appealed, finding that in the thousands of jurors interviewed to sit for the case, not one was Hispanic. During the appeal, lawyers for Texas claimed that anti-discrimination laws applied only to Black people, not Hispanics. However, the Supreme Court, with Earl Warren as Chief Justice, ruled that Hernandez had not been tried by a jury of his peers.

Writing on behalf of himself and the other eight justices, Chief Justice Earl Warren dismissed this notion, saying, “The Fourteenth Amendment is not directed solely against discrimination due to a ‘two-class theory’ — that is, based upon differences between ‘white’ and Negro.”

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JAPAN’S WAR TRIBUNAL — THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNALS FOR THE FAR EAST BEGAN on May 3, 1946, hearing the case against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II. Eighteen months later, 25 of them were found guilty, and one was found insane. Two others had already died. The war crimes tribunal also sentenced to death General Hideki Tojo, who served as Japanese premier during the war. They were executed on Dec. 23, 1948.

The Tokyo war crimes trial differed from the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals in that, with Japan only one chief prosecutor tried the defendants. He was American Joseph B. Keenan, a former assistant to the U.S. attorney general.

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MACARTHUR HELPS REBUILD JAPAN — A YEAR AFTER THE WAR TRIALS BEGAN IN JAPAN, the country’s postwar constitution took effect. A progressive constitution, it granted universal suffrage abolished peerage stripped Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power (which was left in place to gain his necessary support) and most importantly, it outlawed Japan’s right to wage war. The constitution was largely the administrative fruit of Supreme Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur and his occupation staff. An excellent administrator, MacArthur gained the respect of the Japanese people.

Article 9 of the constitution forbade the Japanese ever to wage war again.

See previous milestones, here.