August 26, 1920 The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution became law when Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified its ratification. The Amendment provides: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
August 28, 1963 – 250,000 people participated in The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful demonstration to promote civil rights and economic equality for African Americans.. The march was organized by a coalition of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations. A. Phillip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and vice president of the AFL-CIO initiated the March. Bayard Rustin led the team of activists and organizers and administered all of the logistic details of the massive march in the nation’s capital. Civil Rights leaders including James Farmer (president of the Congress of Racial Equality), John Lewis (chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Martin Luther King, Jr. (president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference), Roy Wilkins (president of the NAACP), and Whitney Young (president of the National Urban League) urged their members to travel to Washington for the March. Participants walked down Constitution and Independence avenues, then gathered before the Lincoln Monument for speeches, songs, and prayer. Televised live to an audience of millions, Dr. King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
http://www.core-online.org/History/washington_march.htm. Martin Luther King’s speech:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
August 30, 1967: Thurgood Marshall became the first African American to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice by the U.S. Senate. Marshall was confirmed by a vote of 69 to 11, with 20 senators, mostly Southern Democrats, abstaining. Two days later, in a private ceremony with Justice Hugo Black, Marshall was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, officially becoming the 96th man and first African-American to hold the position. Marshall successfully argued against school segregation in the landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and was considered the nation’s preeminent Civil Rights lawyer. Marshall was the US Solicitor General when President Johnson nominated him as Associate Justice. Marshall served on the Supreme Court for 24 years before retiring in 1991 for health reasons.
September 1, 2009. Same Sex marriage becomes legal in Vermont. Vermont was the first state in the US to legislate same sex marriage without being required to do so by a court decision. In March 2009 a bill legalizing same sex marriage was passed unanimously through the Senate Judiciary Committee. It then passed in the House and Senate, but was vetoed by Governor Jim Douglas. The House and Senate overrode the governor’s veto, and authorized lesbian and gay marriages in Vermont.
