March 2 · This Day in America
President Thomas Jefferson signs an act prohibiting the importation of enslaved people into the United States, the law to take effect on January 1, 1808 — the earliest moment the Constitution allowed. It was the first day that date had been waited for, written into the founding bargain twenty years earlier as a clock that someone, someday, would have to let run out. Many in Congress believed the law would slowly strangle slavery. They were wrong. The Atlantic trade closed, but the domestic trade only grew crueler and more profitable, breaking families across the South for another half-century. The day still matters — a nation that had written human bondage into its commerce took one halting step against it — but it is a day told straight. The promise of 1776 was still mostly a promise. The reckoning had barely begun.
Source: docsteach.org
Also on this day · 1962
In a half-empty arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Warriors' Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points against the New York Knicks — a number no professional basketball player had ever reached, and none has reached since. There is no video. Only a box score, a grainy photo of Chamberlain holding a hand-lettered sign reading "100," and the radio call. Some records feel less like statistics than like tall tales that happen to be true.
Source: www.nba.com