In 1898 the Supreme Court had ruled in Plessy v Ferguson that keeping blacks and whites separate on railroad cars was constitutional, as “separate but equal” didn’t violate the 14th Amendment.
This was eventually perverted to most all public facilities being segregated.
In the 1954 Decision of Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, the Supreme Court Ruled that 3rd grader Linda Brown could attend a white school, and that segregation was illegal.
Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall led the team that won this case.
Happy Birthday to one of my favorite sources! On this date the Library of Congress was established. Congress allocated $5,000 for the initial purchase of books from London. The Library was charged with providing source material for Congress and for the American people. President John Adams signed off on the creating legislation. His successor, Thomas Jefferson, supported the Library also. Adams and Jefferson, once friends, became estranged after Jefferson defeated Adams for the Presidency.
But they both remained true to the Library of Congress. After the British invaded DC and burned the Library in the War of 1812, Jefferson sold his own vast library to the government to seed the recreation of the Library. In the late 19th century the charge of the Library was expanded to not only books, but photos and items of importance. The LOC now has over 135 million items for the Congress and the public to utilize…all books, pamphlets, maps, prints, photographs, and pieces of music registered for copyright have two copied registered in the library. Today, the Library is utilizing the latest technology to place as many of those items as possible online…so that it will truly be a source for all Americans.
By the way…those fast friends, Adams and Jefferson, who helped create America together in 1776, then became enemies, never speaking to each other in person after that fateful election? They exchanged somewhat conciliatory letters in their old age….but the old rivalry never expired. On July 4, 1826, the Nation’s 50th birthday, Adams died. His last words reportedly were, “Thomas Jefferson lives…”. But it was not so. Jefferson died a few hours before Adams on the same date.
The Maryland assembly passes the Maryland Toleration Act, which set a standard for religious freedom regarding Trinitarian Christians.
Maryland had been established as a haven for English Catholics in a majority Anglican world. The law would be repealed and reinstated as the colony went from Catholic to Protestant control.
This law establishing some rights to religion is considered the inspiration for the First Amendment.
It wasn’t entirely tolerant, however. If someone voiced that they did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, they could be put to death.
The Texas City Disaster, the worst industrial disaster in US History.
A French ship, the SS Grandcamp, loaded with 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in the port city of Texas City, across from Galveston, in the channel leading to Houston, explodes, devastating the city.
All but one of the town’s fire department were killed, and several other fires were ignited on other ships and in the oil town in the following days. Most of the city was destroyed, and at least 581 people were killed.
“To the Allies. To the army of General Patton. This is the Buchenwald concentration camp.
SOS.
We request help. They want to evacuate us. The SS wants to destroy us.”
The Allies were driving across Europe, and as a result, the German War Machine was in panic. When the Russians overtook concentration camps on their front, the Germans “evacuated” thousands of Jews, Gypsies and prisoners of war to their second largest concentration camp, Buchenwald, Germany.
Buchenwald had housed slave labor, and murdered thousands, since 1937. EIGHT interminable years of forced labor, torture, rape, experiments on human beings.
Now when the Americans approached Buchenwald, the SS planned to “evacuate” the prisoners there, and destroy the camp to destroy the evidence.
The hundreds of thousands of prisoners were…evidence.
The prisoners had managed to construct a makeshift transmitter and sent the above message in several different languages in desperation.
After years of no hope, of unimaginable horrors….they received a reply, “KZ Bu. Hold out. RUSHING TO YOUR AID. Staff of Third Army.” The prisoner who had risked his life to send the plea for assistance…fainted.
Emboldened, several prisoners who were able, charged the machine gun towers surrounding them and took control of the main camp (there were several satellite camps).
On April 11 elements of the US 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, U.S. 6th Armored Division, US Third Army (Patton’s Army) entered Buchenwald and liberated it.
US Army commanders ordered the Mayor and citizens of the nearby towns to provide food for the starving prisoners until US supplies could arrive.
Reportedly Patton ordered that the citizens of nearby towns, who had known of the atrocities but remained silent, to tour the camps that included stack after stack after stack of bone thin bodies. A lesson?
Each generation thinks that they have “progressed” beyond such inhumanity. It is a delusion. As long as man exists, evil will exist. It must be recognized and guarded against.
Philanthropist Henry Bergh begins the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York City.
While a diplomat in Russia, Bergh had been horrified by the mistreatment of horses by their Russian owners.
On his way back home, he spent time in London, and learned of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Inspired, he lobbied for the creation of a similar group at home.
New York gave the ASPCA authority to investigate and arrest for cruelty to animals, including horses and dog and rat fighting.
Eight years later Bergh and others would create the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
By 1888 thirty-seven of thirty-eight states had created versions of the ASPCA.
A Kamikaze in….London. In the 1930’s most nations were attempting to set aircraft range records…for the sake of doing so and for military purposes.
The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun sponsored the flight of the “Kamikaze-Go”, a long range reconnaissance aircraft from Tokyo to London in honor of the coronation of King George VI.
Arriving at it’s destination in a little over 51 hours, the aircraft was greeted in London by cheering crowds. It’s pilot, Masaaki Iinuma, became a Japanese national hero, hailed as the Japanese Lindbergh.
He and his navigator, Kenji Tsukagoshi would both be killed during WWII, the aircraft would crash, be recovered, and placed in a museum which would be destroyed by bombing in WWII. The aircraft type would be used as a long range recon plane during the war. The whole thing began as the Japanese designed aircraft that could reach their far-ranging territories.
NASA announces the identities of “The Mercury Seven”, America’s first astronauts.
Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton, 3 from the USAF, 3 from the USN, and one Marine.
The seven, all test pilots, had been selected from over 500 applicants after arduous testing. The astronauts had to have at least a bachelor’s degree and among other specs, could not be over 5’11” tall so they could fit into the space capsules.
They would take flight in all of the space missions through the space shuttle program. 36 years later, Senator John Glenn would become the oldest astronaut to fly a mission (so far) at age 77.
President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress for a Declaration of War.
“It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.
The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation.
We must put excited feeling away. Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.”
“Check your ego at the door.” This was the sign that Quincy Jones placed on the door to the studio in Los Angeles on January 28, 1985 as a warning to the 46 celebrity vocalists who arrived to record “We are the World.” The single was produced to benefit starving people experiencing famine in Africa.
The album was a run away success, and on April 5, 1985, approximately 6,000 radio stations around the world coordinated to play the single at the same time, 11:50 A.M.
President Reagan, who had not heard the song prior, had it piped through Air Force One and was duly impressed.
I know we aren’t to April 5 yet, but I felt we could use this right now.
I noticed in 1985 they were not afraid to invoke God’s name. May he bless us in the coming times.
Mark Loves History! 