March 3 · This Day in America
The day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, more than five thousand women march down Pennsylvania Avenue demanding a constitutional amendment for the right to vote. At the front, Inez Milholland rides a white horse in a flowing cape. Alice Paul has choreographed the whole spectacle — bands, floats, banners, women organized by state and profession — to make the country see what it had refused to. The crowd, a quarter-million strong, does not stay polite. Men press in, jeer, grab, and spit; the police mostly watch. Cavalry from a nearby fort is finally called to clear the avenue. The marchers walk through it anyway. The violence backfires on the men who caused it: newspapers run the story everywhere, and a stalled movement roars back to life. The Nineteenth Amendment is seven years away. It started on a hostile street, with women who would not turn back.
Source: guides.loc.gov
Also on this day · 1931
Congress passes the bill making "The Star-Spangled Banner" the official national anthem of the United States, and President Hoover signs it. The words were 117 years old by then — written by Francis Scott Key as he watched a flag survive a night of British bombardment over Baltimore in 1814. The country had been singing it for generations. On this day, it finally became official.
Source: hoover.blogs.archives.gov
“We march today to give evidence to the world of our determination that this simple act of justice shall be done.”Official program, Woman Suffrage Procession, 1913