Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The city’s preachers were not prepared to let go of the “Spokane Diggin’s” striptease scandal.

Here’s what one minister said to a packed auditorium at an Interchurch Council:

“Two thousand and twelve years ago, the Savior was crucified on Friday. I think that the hardest blow that the Savior has had in the last 2,012 years was on Black Friday, November 29, 1912.”

By my calculation, his historical timeline was off by 100 years, but his meaning was clear. Nov. 29 was the day that a striptease artist went a little too far during a public entertainment, much to the amusement of the all-male crowd but to the horror of the city’s more upright citizens. The ministers – along with various women’s groups and civic groups – called the event “disgraceful,” “unsavory” and “abhorrent.”

Another minister said to the Interchurch Council, “No city council, no commissioner of public safety and no body of commercial men can close these lips of mine when vice is to be assailed. I’ll rehearse it and fling it in their faces until we get a clean community.”

The council passed a resolution calling for the “prosecution of the offenders against the laws of the national, state and public decency.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1958: The anti-communist John Birch Society was formed in Indianapolis.