March 25 · This Day in America
After five days and fifty-four miles of asphalt, rain, and Alabama National Guard rifles, the marchers come over the last rise into Montgomery. There were a few hundred at the start. Now there are twenty-five thousand, flowing toward the white dome of the state capitol where the Confederacy was once sworn in. On those steps Martin Luther King Jr. faces the crowd and the country. He names the cost of the road behind them and the road ahead, and asks the question every weary marcher is thinking: how long? Not long, he answers, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Five months later, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 becomes law. The feet that walked from Selma had helped write it.
Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu
Also on this day · 1911
On a Saturday afternoon near Washington Square, fire races through the top floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. The exit doors are locked. One hundred forty-six workers die, most of them young immigrant women and girls, many by leaping from ninth-story windows as crowds watched, helpless. The grief turned into law: fire codes, factory inspections, the right to a door that opens. America rebuilt its workplaces over their graves.
Source: trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu
“How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”Martin Luther King Jr., Montgomery, 1965