June 2 · This Day in America
On June 2, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act, declaring every Native American born in the United States a citizen of it. The phrasing is almost casual for what it carries: a country formally recognizing, in law, the people who had been here first — and who, until that morning, were strangers in the only land they had ever known. It is owed in part to the thousands who fought for that country in the Great War while not being counted as part of it. The promise is real, and it is incomplete: some states would keep Native voters from the ballot box for another generation. But the principle is now written down. Belonging, once granted in law, becomes something a people can insist upon.
Source: constitutioncenter.org
Also on this day · 1886
On June 2, 1886, Grover Cleveland marries Frances Folsom in the Blue Room of the White House — the only sitting president ever wed inside it. He was 49, she was 21, and the Marine Band played under the baton of John Philip Sousa. A few dozen guests, the engagement secret until days before. For one evening the executive mansion was simply a house where two people stood up and made promises.
Source: www.loc.gov