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The four girls killed in the bombing (Clockwis... — The four girls killed in the bombing (Clockwise from top left, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On this day in 1963, a bomb explodes during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls.

With its large African-American congregation, the 16th Street Baptist Church served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., who once called Birmingham a “symbol of hardcore resistance to integration.” Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, made preserving racial segregation one of the central goals of his administration, and Birmingham had one of the most violent and lawless chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.

The church bombing was the third in Birmingham in 11 days after a federal order came down to integrate Alabama’s school system. Fifteen sticks of dynamite were planted in the church basement, underneath what turned out to be the girls’ restroom. The bomb detonated at 10:19 a.m., killing Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins–all 14 years old–and 11-year-old Denise McNair. Immediately after the blast, church members wandered dazed and bloodied, covered with white powder and broken stained glass, before starting to dig in the rubble to search for survivors. More than 20 other members of the congregation were injured in the blast.

When thousands of angry black protesters assembled at the crime scene, Wallace sent hundreds of police and state troopers to the area to break up the crowd. Two young black men were killed that night, one by police and another by racist thugs. Meanwhile, public outrage over the bombing continued to grow, drawing international attention to Birmingham. At a funeral for three of the girls (one’s family preferred a separate, private service), King addressed more than 8,000 mourners.

A well-known Klan member, Robert Chambliss, was charged with murder and with buying 122 sticks of dynamite. In October 1963, Chambliss was cleared of the murder charge and received a six-month jail sentence and a $100 fine for the dynamite. Although a subsequent FBI investigation identified three other men–Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Cash and Thomas E. Blanton, Jr.–as having helped Chambliss commit the crime, it was later revealed that FBI chairman J. Edgar Hoover blocked their prosecution and shut down the investigation without filing charges in 1968. After Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley reopened the case, Chambliss was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison.

Efforts to prosecute the other three men believed responsible for the bombing continued for decades. Though Cash died in 1994, Cherry and Blanton were arrested and charged with four counts of murder in 2000. Blanton was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Cherry’s trial was delayed after judges ruled he was mentally incompetent to stand trial. This decision was later reversed. On May 22, 2002, Cherry was convicted and sentenced to life, bringing a long-awaited victory to the friends and families of the four young victims.

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~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

44 Women Who Have Run for President

03/13/2024 Nativegrl77

Women Presidential Candidates

Women Who Ran for President

By Jone Johnson Lewis

Women’s History Expert

Who were the early women candidates for president? Hillary Clinton in her 2008 run for the Democratic nomination for US President came the closest so far that any woman has come to winning the nomination of a major political party in the United States. But Clinton is not the first woman to run for United States President, and not even the first to run for a major party’s nomination. Here’s a list of the female presidential candidates, arranged chronologically by each woman’s first campaign for the office. The list is current through the 2012 election; women running in 2016 will be added after that election’s over.

Who was the first woman to run for president?

What woman ran for US president first? And which women have run since?

73208640.jpg - Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images — American feminist politician and radical Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin attempt to assert their right to vote in New York and are denied, circa 1875. Kean Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Victoria Woodhull

Equal Rights Party: 1872
Humanitarian Party: 1892

Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president in the United States. Frederick Douglass was nominated as Vice President, but there’s no record that he accepted. Woodhull was also known for her radicalism as a woman suffrage activist and her role in a sex scandal involving noted preacher of the time, Henry Ward Beecher. More »

Belva Lockwood

National Equal Rights Party: 1884, 1888Belva Lockwood, an activist for voting rights for women and for African Americans, was also one of the earliest women lawyers in the United States. Her campaign for president in 1884 was the first full-scale national campaign of a woman running for president. More »

Laura Clay

Democratic Party, 1920Laura Clay, a Southern women’s rights advocate who supported state suffrage amendments so that the Southern states could limit suffrage to white women, had her name placed in nomination at the 1920 Democratic National Convention, to which she was a delegate. More »

Grace Allen

Surprise Party: 1940Comedian and actress, partner with husband George Burns on the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, Grace Allen ran for president in 1940 as a publicity stunt. She was not on the ballot — it was, after all, a stunt — but she did get write-in votes.

Margaret Chase Smith

Republican Party: 1964She was the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for president at a major political party’s convention. She was also the first woman elected to serve in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. More »

Charlene Mitchell

Communist Party: 1968Nominated by the (tiny) Communist Party in 1968, Charlene Mitchell was the first African American woman nominated for president in the United States. She was on the ballot in two states in the general election, and received less than 1,100 votes nationally.

Shirley Chisholm

Democratic Party: 1972A civil rights and women’s rights advocate, Shirley Chisholm ran for the Democratic nomination in 1972 with the slogan, “Unbought and Unbossed.” Her name was placed in nomination at the 1972 convention, and she won 152 delegates. More »

Patsy Takemoto Mink

Democratic Party: 1972She was the first Asian American to seek nomination as president by a major political party. She was on the Oregon primary ballot in 1972. She was at that time a member of the U.S. Congress, elected from Hawaii.

Bella Abzug

Democratic Party: 1972One of three women to seek the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1972, Abzug was at the time a member of Congress from the West Side of Manhattan. More »

Linda Osteen Jenness

Socialist Workers Party: 1972Underage for the Constitution’s requirements for the presidency, Linda Jenness ran against Nixon in 1972 and was on the ballot in 25 states. In three states where Jenness was not accepted for the ballot because of her age, Evelyn Reed was in the presidential slot. Their vote total was less than 70,000 nationally.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

1994 – The Church of England ordained its first women Priests and a Bishop(s)

03/12/2024 Nativegrl77

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

on this day … 3/12

03/12/2024 Nativegrl77

1496 – Jews were expelled from Syria.

1609 – The Bermuda Islands became an English colony.

1664 – New Jersey became a British colony. King Charles II granted land in the New World to his brother James (The Duke of York).

1755 – In North Arlington, NJ, the steam engine was used for the first time.

1789 – The U.S. Post Office was established.

1809 – Britain signed a treaty with Persia forcing the French to leave the country.

1857 – “Simon Boccanegra” by Verdi debuted in Venice.

1884 – The State of Mississippi authorized the first state-supported college for women. It was called the Mississippi Industrial Institute and College.

1863 – President Jefferson Davis delivered his State of the Confederacy address.

1889 – Almon B. Stowger applied for a patent for his automatic telephone system.

1894 – Coca-Cola was sold in bottles for the first time.

1903 – The Czar of Russia issued a decree providing for nominal freedom of religion throughout his territory.

1905 – In Rome, Premier Giovanni Giolliwas forced out of office by continued civil strife.

1906 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations must yield incriminating evidence in anti-trust suits.

1909 – The British Parliament increased naval appropriations for Britain.

1909 – Three U.S. warships were ordered to Nicaragua to stem the conflict with El Salvador.

1911 – Dr. Fletcher of Rockefeller Institute discovered the cause of infantile paralysis.

1912 – The Girl Scout organization was founded. The original name was Girl Guides.

1923 – Dr. Lee DeForest demonstrated phonofilm. It was his technique for putting sound on motion picture film.

1930 – Ghandi began his 200-mile march to the sea that symbolized his defiance of British rule over India.

1933 – President Paul von Hindenburg dropped the flag of the German Republic and ordered that the swastika and empire banner be flown side by side.

1933 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt presented his first presidential address to the nation. It was the first of the “Fireside Chats.”

1935 – Parimutuel betting became legal in the State of Nebraska.

1938 – The “Anschluss” took place as German troops entered Austria.

1940 – Finland surrendered to Russia ending the Russo-Finnish War.

1944 – Britain barred all travel to Ireland.

1947 – U.S. President Truman established the “Truman Doctrine” to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.

1959 – The U.S. House joined the U.S. Senate in approving the statehood of Hawaii.

1966 – Bobby Hull, of the Chicago Blackhawks, became the first National Hockey League (NHL) player to score 51 points in a single season.

1974 – “Wonder Woman” debuted on ABC-TV. The show later went to CBS-TV.

1984 – Lebanese President Gemayel opened the second meeting in five years calling for the end to nine-years of war.

1985 – The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. began arms control talks in Geneva.

1985 – Larry Bird (Boston Celtics) scored a club-record 60 points against the Atlanta Hawks.

1985 – Former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announced that he planned to drop Secret Service protection and hire his own bodyguards in an effort to lower the deficit by $3 million.

1987 – “Les Miserables” opened on Broadway.

1989 – Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi of Sudan formed a new cabinet to end civil war.

1989 – About 2,500 veterans and supporters marched at the Art Institute of Chicago to demand that officials remove an American flag placed on the floor as part of an exhibit.

1992 – Mauritius became a republic but remained a member of the British Commonwealth.

1993 – In the U.S., the Pentagon called for the closure of 31 major military bases.

1993 – Janet Reno was sworn in as the first female U.S. attorney general.

1994 – A photo by Marmaduke Wetherell of the Loch Ness monster was confirmed to be a hoax. The photo was taken of a toy submarine with a head and neck attached.

1994 – The Church of England ordained its first women priests.

1998 – Astronomers cancelled a warning that a mile-wide asteroid might collide with Earth saying that calculations had been off by 600,000 miles.

1999 – Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic became members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). All three countries were members of the former Warsaw Pact.

2002 – U.S. homeland security chief Tom Ridge unveiled a color-coded system for terror warnings.

2002 – Conoco and Phillips Petroleum stockholders approved a proposed merger worth $15.6 billion.

2003 – In Utah, Elizabeth Smart was reunited with her family nine months after she was abducted from her home. She had been taken on June 5, 2002, by a drifter that had previously worked at the Smart home.

2003 – The U.S. Air Force announced that it would resume reconnaissance flights off the coast of North Korea. The flights had stopped on March 2 after an encounter with four armed North Korean jets.

2009 – It was announced that the Sears Tower in Chicago, IL, would be renamed Willis Tower.

2010 – In the U.S., Apple began taking pre-orders for the iPad.

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

– Formal ratification of the Articles of Confederation was announced by Congress – Things to remember

03/12/2024 Nativegrl77

Articles of Confederation

On March 1, 1781, the Articles of Confederation are finally ratified. The Articles were signed by Congress and sent to the individual states for ratification on November 15, 1777, after 16 months of debate. Bickering over land claims between Virginia and Maryland delayed final ratification for almost four more years. Maryland finally approved the Articles on March 1, 1781, affirming the Articles as the outline of the official government of the United States. The nation was guided by the Articles of Confederation until the implementation of the current U.S. Constitution in 1789.
The critical distinction between the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution —the primacy of the states under the Articles—is best understood by comparing the following lines.

The Articles of Confederation begin:
“To all to whom these Present shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States”
By contrast, the Constitution begins:
“We the People of the United Statesdo ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The predominance of the states under the Articles of Confederation is made even more explicit by the claims of Article II:
“Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

Less than five years after the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, enough leading Americans decided that the system was inadequate to the task of governance that they peacefully overthrew their second government in just over 20 years. The difference between a collection of sovereign states forming a confederation and a federal government created by a sovereign people lay at the heart of debate as the new American people decided what form their government would take.

Between 1776 and 1787, Americans went from living under a sovereign king, to living in sovereign states, to becoming a sovereign people. That transformation defined the American Revolution.

Citation Information
Article Title
The Articles of Confederation are ratified after nearly four years
Author
History.com Editors
Website Name
HISTORY
URL
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/articles-of-confederation-are-ratified

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