On this day, March 25 …
1965: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. leads 25,000 people to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery after a five-day march from Selma to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks.
Also on this day:
- 1634: English colonists sent by Lord Baltimore arrive in present-day Maryland.
- 1865: During the Civil War, Confederate forces attack Fort Stedman in Virginia but are forced to withdraw because of counterattacking Union troops.
- 1894: Jacob S. Coxey begins leading an “army” of unemployed from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington D.C., to demand help from the federal government.
- 1915: The U.S. Navy loses its first commissioned submarine as the USS F-4 sinks off Hawaii, claiming the lives of all 21 crew members.
Just after he asked the Governor of Alabama to pardon the nine youths held in the Scottsboro case, Samuel Leibowitz, New York attorney, conferred with seven of the defendants, May 1, 1935, at the Scottsboro jail. Left to right are: Deputy Sheriff Charles McComb, Leibowitz, and the defendants, Roy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Robertson, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems, and Andy Wright. The youths were charged with an attack on two white women on March 25, 1931. (AP Photo)
- 1931: In the so-called “Scottsboro Boys” case, nine young black men are taken off a train in Alabama, accused of raping two white women (After years of convictions, death sentences and imprisonment, the nine eventually would be vindicated.)
- 1947: A coal-dust explosion inside the Centralia Coal Co. Mine No. 5 in Washington County, Ill., claims 111 lives; 31 men survive.
- 1988: In New York City’s so-called “Preppie Killer” case, Robert Chambers Jr. pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin.
- 1991: “Dances with Wolves” wins seven Oscars, including best picture in a category that also includes “Goodfellas,” at the 63rd annual Academy Awards; Kathy Bates wins best actress for “Misery” while Jeremy Irons receives best actor for “Reversal of Fortune.”
- 2006: In Los Angeles, half a million people march to protest federal legislation to make illegal immigration a felony and build more walls along the border.
- 2009: Pirates seize the Panama-registered, Greek-owned Nipayia with 18 Filipino crew members and a Russian captain off the Somali coastline.
- 2014: Following a two-day security summit in The Netherlands, President Obama declares that the gathering took “concrete steps” to prevent nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists even though Russia and China failed to sign an agreement to beef up inspections.
- 2018: In an interview with “60 Minutes,” adult film star Stormy Daniels says she was threatened and warned to keep silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006.
- 2018: Gun manufacturer Remington files for bankruptcy reorganization amid years of slumping sales and legal and financial pressure from the Sandy Hook school massacre in Connecticut.
- 2018: Linda Brown, who as a young girl in Kansas became embroiled in a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case that challenged segregation in public schools, dies at the age of 75.
- 2019: Jeremy Richman, father of Avielle Richman — one of the 20 kids massacred in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012 in Newtown, Conn. – is found dead in an apparent suicide.