December 5 · This Day in America
At 5:32 in the afternoon, a convention in Utah casts the deciding vote, and for the only time in American history the Constitution repeals one of its own amendments. The thirteen-year experiment of national Prohibition — meant to perfect the country by drying it out — is over. It had not perfected anything. It had instead built bootleg empires, corrupted police forces, and taught a generation that the law could be a thing to wink at. The repeal is sent not to legislatures but to the people, voting in special conventions, because the framers of the Twenty-first Amendment wanted the citizens themselves to undo it. They did. America had tried to legislate virtue into being, watched it fail, and then had the rare grace to admit the mistake and take it back. A country that can repeal its own certainty is a country still arguing in good faith.
Source: constitutioncenter.org
Also on this day · 1955
Four days after Rosa Parks's arrest, Montgomery's Black residents stay off the buses to a man and woman, and that evening they pack a church to decide whether to continue. They elect a 26-year-old minister new to town, Martin Luther King Jr., to lead them. "There comes a time when people get tired," he tells the overflowing crowd. The boycott will last more than a year. A movement, and a voice, have just found each other.
Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu