Esperanza De La Torriente (Rionda) Crawley (1890 - 1960)

Refresh this page to see various historical events that occurred during Esperanza's lifetime.

In 1890, in the year that Esperanza De La Torriente (Rionda) Crawley was born, on December 29th, the Wounded Knee Massacre occurred in South Dakota on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation . The U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment said that they rode into the Lakota camp "trying to disarm" the inhabitants. One person, Black Coyote - who was deaf - held onto his rifle, saying that he paid a lot of money for it. Shots rang out and by the end at least 153 Lakota Sioux - some estimates say 300 - and 25 troops had died. The site of the massacre is a National Historic Landmark.

In 1907, Esperanza was 17 years old when the second Hague peace conference was called by Russia in the Netherlands. While nothing was settled regarding the matter of peace among nations, many resolutions were passed (and accepted by many nations) about the conventions of war - especially the protection of noncombatants.

In 1921, Esperanza was 31 years old when hugely popular Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, silent film star, was arrested for rape and manslaughter after an actress died following a party at his house. He was acquitted after three trials and the jury wrote a formal letter apologizing for the charges, but his career never recovered. His films were at first banned - the ban was lifted after a year - and he was mostly ostracized by the community. He died at 46..

In 1938, at the age of 48 years old, Esperanza was alive when on June 25th (a Saturday) the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed into law by President Roosevelt (along with 120 other bills). The Act banned oppressive child labor, set the minimum hourly wage at 25 cents, and established the maximum workweek at 44 hours. It faced a lot of opposition and in fighting for it, Roosevelt said "Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, ...tell you...that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry."

In 1960, in the year of Esperanza De La Torriente (Rionda) Crawley's passing, on September 26th, the first televised debate for a Presidential campaign in the United States - Kennedy vs Nixon - was held. Seventy million people watched the debate on TV. The debate pre-empted the very popular Andy Griffith Show.