Telegram Requesting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Testimony before the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee on the Proposed Voting Rights Act, March 18, 1965
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a driving force behind the march that began in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965 to protest the violent denial of African Americans’ right to vote. On March 15, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation in support of the Selma marchers. Three days later, Congressman Emmanuel Celler sent this telegram requesting that Dr. King come to Washington, DC, to testify in support of the Voting Rights bill before Congress. Instead, King stayed with the marchers and gave a stirring speech at the Alabama state capitol. In large part due to the efforts of Dr. King and other civil rights activists, President Lyndon Johnson submitted the Voting Rights Act to Congress. He signed it into law on August 6, 1965.
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An Act of June 23, 1972, Public Law 92-318, 86 STAT 235, to Amend the Higher Education Act of 1965, the Vocational Educational Act of 1963, the General Education Provisions Act (Creating a National Foundation for Postsecondary Education and a National Institute of Education), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Public Law 874, Eighty-First Congress, and Related Acts, ...
On March 10, 1778, Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin became the first U.S. soldier court-martialed for “attempting to commit sodomy” with another soldier. His sentence was to be literally drummed out of the Continental Army by its regiments’ fifes and drums. Enslin was told “never to return.”
More than 230 years after Enslin’s court martial, gay men, lesbians, ...
Susan B. Anthony devoted more than fifty years of her life to the cause of woman suffrage. After casting her ballot in the 1872 Presidential election in her hometown of Rochester, New York, she was arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted for voting illegally.
At her two-day trial in June 1873, which she later described as "the greatest judicial outrage ...
Friday, September 13, 2024 - Wednesday, October 2, 2024East Rotunda Gallery
Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez moved to Orange County, California, with their children Sylvia, Gonzalo Jr., and Jerome in 1944. When they tried to enroll in the majority-white school near their home, they were instead sent to a segregated school for Hispanic students. The Mendez family filed a ...
Thursday, August 1, 2024 - Thursday, September 12, 2024East Rotunda Gallery
“I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President, I must put the interest of America first.” –Richard M. Nixon, August 8, 1974
During the night of June 17, 1972, five ...