March Events - Today in Civil Liberties History

March

Mar 1

1919

National Civil Liberties Bureau Issues Comprehensive Report on WW I Rights Violations

1921

Railroad Unions Seek Retention of WW I-Era Labor Agreements; Fear Return to Workers’ “Slavery”

1954

Earl Warren Finally Confirmed as Chief Justice

1966

President Johnson Endorses Federal Aid for Family Planning

1984

Long Island School Drops Mandatory 30 Second Meditation or Prayer Period

Mar 2

1907

Expatriation Act Strips Citizenship From Women Who Marry Foreigners

1939

Massachusetts Ratifies Bill of Rights – 148 Years Late

1955

Nine Months Before Rosa Parks: Four African-American Women Challenge Discrimination on Montgomery, Alabama, Bus

1955

Screen Actors Guild to Expel Members Who Refuse to Testify About Political Associations

1964

“Fish-In” Challenges Limits on Native-American Fishing Rights

1971

Daniel Ellsberg Meets with NY Times, Discusses Giving Them The Pentagon Papers

1973

George Carlin Records Famous “Seven Dirty Words” Monologue

1982

Wisconsin First State to Ban Sexual Orientation Discrimination

2013

Montgomery, Alabama, Police Chief Apologizes to John Lewis for 1961 Beating, Gives Lewis His Badge

Mar 3

1873

Comstock Act Passed – Era of Censorship Begins

1903

Anarchists Stay Out! : Restrictive Immigration Law Becomes A Model for Future Laws

1913

Suffragists March to Greet President Wilson

1915

Protests Greet “Birth of a Nation” Opening in New York City

1917

National Woman’s Party Formed

1919

Supreme Court Creates “Clear and Present Danger” Test; Does Not Protect Dissent

1930

Mary Ware Dennett, Birth Control, Sex Education Advocate, Is Vindicated

1991

L.A. Police Beat Rodney King; Video Tape Provokes National Outrage

1992

Former Manzanar Relocation Center Becomes National Historic Site

Mar 4

1789

U.S. Constitution Takes Effect; America’s Great Experiment in Democracy Begins

1917

Jeannette Rankin Takes Seat as the First Woman in the U.S. Congress; Votes Against U.S. Entry in Both World Wars

1917

Suffragists Picket President Wilson’s Second Inauguration

1929

Rep. Oscar De Priest Takes His Seat in the House; First African-American in the 20th Century

1933

Frances Perkins: First Female Cabinet Member

1964

Frank Wilkinson Assassination Plot: FBI Stands By, Does Nothing

2015

DOJ Issues Blistering Report on Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department

2015

President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing Releases Interim Report

Mar 5

1919

A. Mitchell Palmer Becomes Attorney General, Leads Notorious Palmer Raids

1921

Will Hays Becomes Postmaster General; Ends Some, But Not All, Post Office Censorship

1942

American Birth Control Federation Changes Name to Planned Parenthood

1962

Native-American Tribes Plan Rights Campaign

1965

National Wildlife Federation Opposes Native-American Fishing Rights

1977

President Carter Names Patricia Derian Coordinator for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs

2014

The Same Old Song: NSA Head Claims Snowden Leaks Harm National Security

Mar 6

1857

“A Constitutional Evil:” The Dred Scott Decision

1917

With War Imminent, Columbia University to Investigate “Loyalty” of Faculty

1918

Military Burglarizes Civil Liberties Bureau Office

1961

President Kennedy Issues Equal Employment Opportunity Order

1962

FBI Alert: Marilyn Monroe Visits Mexico!

1975

Leonard Matlovich Comes Out; Is Dismissed from the Air Force For Being Gay

Mar 7

1927

Texas White Primary Held Unconstitutional (For a While, Anyway)

1942

First Class of Tuskegee Airmen Graduates

1953

Lewd Pictures, Movies, and Books Burned in Newark, NJ

1953

“No Freud in Cleveland!” Purity Crusade Removes Books by Famed Psychologist

1961

Sit-In Victory: Atlanta Stores Desegregate Lunch Counters

1965

“Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama: John Lewis, Other Marchers Beaten and Tear Gassed

1966

Supreme Court Upholds Constitutionality of 1965 Voting Rights Act

Mar 8

1950

Senator Joe McCarthy Names First Alleged “Communist” – She Wasn’t One

1956

Notorious FBI COINTELPRO Program Approved

1965

LBJ Affirms Rights of Criminal Suspects

1965

Supreme Court Expands the Right of Conscientious Objection to War

1971

Activists Raid FBI Office in Media, PA; Steal Documents, Expose Notorious COINTELPRO Program

1981

Groups Organize to Combat Reagan Administration Attacks on Civil Liberties

Mar 9

1942

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Founded

1942

“Fighting Words” Doctrine Established by Supreme Court

1944

Harry Weinberger, Major Civil Liberties Lawyer in WW I, Dies

1953

Supreme Court Creates “State Secrets” Doctrine

1954

Edward R. Murrow Exposes Sen. Joe McCarthy

1956

J. Edgar Hoover Tells President Eisenhower “Brown” Decision to Blame for “Rising Tensions”

1964

“Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open:” The Meaning of the First Amendment

1966

Other Side of the Wall: Speakers Defy North Carolina Speaker Ban

1971

Want Government Secrets? Read The New York Times, Say Ex-National Security Expert

1979

“The Secret That Exploded” — The Progressive Magazine Enjoined from Publishing Article on Making an H-Bomb

Mar 10

1919

Debs Conviction For Anti-War Speech Upheld by Supreme Court

1949

New York Comics Censorship Bill Denounced

1952

“Kill the Lawyers:” Smith Act Trial Attorneys Contempt Convictions Upheld

1969

Civil Rights Demonstrations Upheld: “Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham”

1973

Stewardesses for Women’s Rights Hold 2-Day Conference

1976

Attorney General Levi Issues FBI Domestic Security Investigation Guidelines

1987

ACT UP, HIV/AIDS Advocacy Group, Founded

1993

Dr. David Gunn, Abortion Provider, Murdered

2004

Attorney General Ashcroft Upholds the Rule of Law in Famous Hospital Confrontation

Mar 11

1956

Author Graham Greene Skewers CIA Mentality – U.S. Reviewers Denounce His Novel

1965

Boston Minister James Reeb Beating to Death by White Racists in Selma

1993

Janet Reno Confirmed as First Female Attorney General

2014

Senator Feinstein Accuses CIA of Breaking the Law, Violating the Constitution

2014

West Virginia Officials Back Off From Attempt to Censor Poem on Mine Disaster

Mar 12

1947

Cold War Begins: Truman Doctrine Announced

1956

“Southern Manifesto:” Southern Congress Members Pledge to Defend Racial Segregation

1964

15,000 White Parents March in NYC to Protest Busing of Students to Achieve Racial Balance

1990

Famous “Capitol Crawl:” Disabled People Lobby for Passage of Americans with Disabilities Act

2003

California Libraries Warn of Government Snooping

2013

Director of National Intelligence Lies to Senate About NSA Spying

2014

Shoot All Left-Wing Professors, Says Right-Wing Catholic Leader

Mar 13

1904

The First Victim of 1903 Anti-Anarchist Immigration Act

1927

NYC Mayor Jimmy Walker Promises “No Censorship” of Theaters

1938

“Attorney for the Damned,” Clarence Darrow, Dies

1959

Advocates for the Blind Demand New Federal Rules

1962

Joint Chiefs Recommend Outrageous Anti-Castro Terrorist Acts

1963

Ernesto Miranda Arrested

2002

Denver Police Maintain Files on 3,200 People; ACLU Challenges the Practice

2014

Facebook Founder Zuckerberg Calls President Obama, Condemns NSA Spying

Mar 14

1927

Jazz on Sunday Night Radio Labelled “Degrading”

1940

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt Endorses Civil Liberties

1950

Actress Ingrid Bergman’s Affair Provokes Scandal and a Civil Liberties Crisis

1954

“Salt of the Earth” Film Released, Widely Banned for Left-Wing Perspective

1956

Liberal Senators Denounce “Southern Manifesto”

1962

Bridgeport, CT, Police Chief Bans Novel, “The Carpetbaggers” – Connecticut ACLU to Sue

2018

One Million Students Protest to Demand Gun Control

Mar 15

1922

Anti-KKK Group Formed in Oklahoma

1926

ACLU Sees Threats to Civil Liberties in Six Bills Before Congress

1960

Julian Bond Leads Atlanta’s First Sit-In

1965

“We . . . Shall . . . Overcome:” LBJ Gives Historic Voting Rights Speech

1969

The Real Beginning of the Watergate Scandal: President Nixon Receives OK for Secret Bombing of Cambodia

1978

NYC Schools Frisk, Strip-Search Students; NYCLU to Sue

1998

Groups Oppose Public School Uniforms

Mar 16

1716

Happy Birthday James Madison!

1931

Rep. Hamilton Fish Denounces ACLU For Defending “All Revolutionary Elements” in the U.S.

1965

LBJ Sends Federal Troops to Guard Selma Voting Rights March

1971

IRS Targets Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Library

1995

Mississippi Ratifies 13th Amendment, 130 Years Late – But It’s Not Official

2005

Annual Sunshine Week: Celebrate Freedom of Information

2015

California Supreme Court Grants Law License to Hong Yen Chang, Denied License in 1890

Mar 17

1912

Bayard Rustin, Civil Rights Activist, is Born

1913

Suffragists Meet With President Wilson in White House

1921

Dr. Marie Stopes Opens First Birth Control Clinic in England

1923

Police Block Reading of Connecticut State Constitution

1947

General MacArthur Invites ACLU Head Roger Baldwin to Occupied Japan to Assist With Civil Liberties

1955

John Marshall Harlan, II Joins Supreme Court

Mar 18

1942

FDR Creates War Relocation Authority For Japanese American Evacuation

1953

Top New York Times Editor: Ban Communists as Teachers

1963

Gideon’s Trumpet: The Right to an Attorney at Trial

1970

Feminists Stage Sit-In at “Ladies Home Journal,” Demand Liberation of Magazine

1972

President Nixon Endorses Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) for Women

1976

Kentucky Finally Ratifies the 14th Amendment

1986

Conservative William Buckley Says Tattoo Gay Men on Their Buttocks

2008

“A More Perfect Union:” Obama’s 2008 Great Speech on Race at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia

Mar 19

1891

Happy Birthday Earl Warren!

1928

Superintendent of NYC Schools Denounces ACLU

1948

French Nobel Prize Winner, Mme. Joliot-Curie, Detained at Ellis Island for 24 Hours

1953

Howard Hughes Explains How to Make the Hollywood Blacklist Really Work

1954

ACLU’s Roger Baldwin Condemns Senator Joe McCarthy

1962

ACLU to Aid Anti-Nuclear Bomb Testing Protesters

1975

Supreme Court Strikes Down Sex Discrimination in Social Security Benefits

Mar 20

1935

NYC Mayor La Guardia Launches Investigation of Police Brutality in Harlem

1963

Joan Baez Boycotts “Hootenanny” Over Blacklist

1973

Roberto Clemente First Latino Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame

1978

Florida Supreme Court Rules Homosexuals Can Practice Law

Mar 21

1925

Tennessee Governor Signs Anti-Evolution Law – Sets Stage for Famous Scopes Case

1934

Rep. Oscar De Priest Challenges Segregation at Capitol Building Restaurant

1942

Congress Enforces Japanese-American Evacuation, Makes it a Crime to Leave a Relocation Center

1947

Guilt by Association: President Truman Launches Federal Loyalty Program

1965

Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March Begins Again

1966

Due Process for Kids: Supreme Court Reins in District of Columbia Juvenile Court

1973

“A Cancer on the Presidency:” John Dean Warns President Nixon of Growing Watergate Scandal

1989

Mandatory Drug Testing for Federal Employees Held Constitutional

1999

Elia Kazan Given Honorary Oscar – Award Protested Because He “Named Names” to HUAC

Mar 22

1948

A. Philip Randolph Confronts Truman Over Segregated Military

1950

University of California Faculty Votes Not to Employ Communists

1972

Unmarried Women Win Right to Contraceptives in Massachusetts

1972

Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Goes to the States for Ratification

1984

Mississippi Finally Ratifies 19th Amendment on Women’s Suffrage

2014

First Lady Michelle Obama, in China, Declares Free Speech and Access to Internet Are Human Rights

Mar 23

1920

Passaic, NJ, Police Disrupt Reading of New Jersey Constitution

1932

Organized Labor Gains First Amendment Rights

1942

Japanese-American Evacuation Begins; NY Times Reports “Pioneers” are “Vastly Impressed” with the “Courteous Treatment”

1970

Eleanor Holmes Norton Named Head of NYC Commission on Human Rights

1971

Frank Kameny First Openly Gay Candidate for Congress

1973

U.S. Orders Beatle John Lennon Out of U.S. Within 60 Days

Mar 24

1912

Dorothy Height, Matriarch of the Civil Rights Movement, is Born

1953

Noted Poet Langston Hughes Grilled by Joe McCarthy, Bends But Does Not Break

1965

First Vietnam War Teach-in at University of Michigan

1966

All Poll Taxes Declared Unconstitutional

1972

White House Operatives Ask CIA for “LSD-Type Drug”

1987

First AIDS Demonstration by ACT UP

2018

Up to 2 Million People “March for Our Lives” in Nationwide Protest for Gun Control

2019

San Francisco Declares “Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day” on Poet’s 100th Birthday

Mar 25

1931

Scottsboro Case Begins: Nine Young African-Americans Arrested in Alabama

1952

Homophobic Scare: State Department Removes 126 “Perverts”

1957

Stop that Poem! Customs Seizes Copies of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”

1963

Supreme Court Limits Legislative Investigations of Political Beliefs and Associations

1964

LBJ Lectures Southern Ministers on Need for Civil Rights Bill

1965

1965 Voting Rights March Reaches Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery

1965

Civil Rights Volunteer Viola Liuzzo Murdered in Alabama

1975

First Same-Sex Marriage in the U.S.?

2013

Anthony Lewis Dies; Won Two Pulitzers for Civil Liberties Stories

Mar 26

1919

New York Lusk Committee to Investigate Alleged Radicals

1927

Will Hays Asks for Constitutional Amendment to Protect Movies From Censorship

1937

William H. Hastie Appointed First African-American Federal Judge

1948

Philadelphia Police Seize 2,000 Books; Authors Protest

1962

Legislative Apportionment a “Justiciable” Issue

1977

Lesbian and Gay Activists Meet in White House, First Time Ever

1981

TV Producer Norman Lear Warns of New Right Threat to the “Spirit of Liberty”

1983

Bob Dole: “Hear No Evil, See No Evil . . . And Evil (Richard Nixon)”

2015

Indiana Passes Anti-Gay “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” – Backs Off a Week Later

Mar 27

1956

Rev. Billy Graham Advises President Eisenhower to “Stay Out” of the Civil Rights Controversy

1957

And the Oscar Goes to . . . A Blacklisted Screenwriter – Dalton Trumbo

1961

ACLU Opposes Legislative Investigation of Right-Wing John Birch Society

1969

First National Chicano Youth Liberation Conference Held

1973

Marlon Brando Refuses Oscar; Supports Native-American Rights

1985

Supreme Court Limits Police Use of Deadly Force

2014

UN Comittee on Human Rights Blasts US Human Rights Record

Mar 28

1898

Supreme Court Rules That Child Born to Chinese Immigrants is U.S. Citizen

1930

DA Won’t Charge NYC Police Officers for Brutality in Communists’ Rally

1955

“Blackboard Jungle” Banned in Memphis

1961

Senate Committee Examines Rights of the Mentally Ill

2000

Suits Challenging NYC Mayor Giuliani’s Free Speech Violations “Burden” Courts, Says 2nd Circuit Court Judge

Mar 29

1913

Theodore Roosevelt Warns That U.S. Threatened by “European Extremists” — Artists

1937

Supreme Court Reverses Course; OK’s Government Regulation of the Economy: “West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish”

1950

Cartoonist Herblock Labels “McCarthyism”

1950

Lavender Scare: Senator Claims “Thousands” of Homosexuals in Federal Government

1956

Mississippi Creates State Sovereignty Commission to Fight Civil Rights

1960

The Ad That Produced a Landmark First Amendment Case

1961

23rd Amendment Ratified, District of Columbia Residents Get to Vote in Presidential Elections

1967

Court Ends Philadelphia Police Advisory Board

1967

LBJ Bars Secret CIA Funding of Private Groups

Mar 30

1948

A. Philip Randolph Threatens to Advise Young African-American Men Not to Register for a Segregated Draft

1964

Filibuster Against 1964 Civil Rights Bill Begins

1971

Congressional Black Caucus Organized

1997

“Clinton vs. First Amendment,” Writes Top Legal Scholar

2007

UN Signs Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Mar 31

1930

Hollywood Censorship: Early Production Code Adopted

1941

Supreme Court Allows Time, Place and Manner Restrictions on Parades – But No Limits on Content

1950

U.S. Seizes, Burns 3,000 Copies of “Scientific American”

1958

Government Can’t Strip a Person of Citizenship as Punishment

1959

John Birch Society Head Denies Calling President Eisenhower a “Card-Carrying Communist”

1966

Anti-Vietnam War Protesters Burn Draft Cards, Head to Supreme Court

2017

AG Sessions Suspends DOJ “Pattern or Practice” Program – Stalls Federal Police Accountability Effort

Index

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