History Articles

Article / Updated 05-04-2022

This case has become the litmus test for confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court bench. No judge who comes out openly against Roe v. Wade is likely to be confirmed. In Roe, the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that women have the right to an abortion, at least during the first trimester of pregnancy. The court characterized abortion as a “fundamental” constitutional right, which means that any law aiming to restrict it is subject to the standard of strict scrutiny. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1982), the high court modified Roe by giving the state the right to regulate an abortion, even in the first trimester, as long as that regulation doesn’t pose an “undue burden” on the woman’s fundamental right to an abortion. One such “undue burden” identified in Casey was any requirement for the woman to notify her husband. A Texas law that placed certain restrictions on abortion clinics in the state was struck down by the Supreme Court, in a 5–3 vote, as placing an “undue burden” on abortion rights in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016). In Stormans Inc. v. Wiesman (2016), a five-justice majority on the court refused to hear a challenge to a Washington state law making it illegal for pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptive drugs. In a dissent, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote: “This case is an ominous sign … If this is a sign of how religious liberty claims will be treated in the years ahead, those who value religious freedom have cause for great concern.” Roe v. Wade continues to be as controversial as it is important.

Article / Updated 05-04-2022

Roe versus Wade, better known as Roe v. Wade, is the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion within the first two months of pregnancy. Up until then, individual state laws regulated abortions, thereby forcing women to illegal clinics or untrained practitioners. The lack of proper medical supervision in these situations was dangerous for the women. The roots of this case lie in Dallas, Texas, in 1969. At the time, obtaining or attempting an abortion was illegal in Texas, except in cases where the woman could die. Twenty-one-year-old Norma McCorvey was single and pregnant. Thinking that abortions were legal in cases of rape and incest, she tried to get an abortion by falsely claiming she was raped. But because there was no police report to prove it, she sought the alternative, an illegal abortion. Once again, her efforts failed — police had shut down the illegal clinic. Norma's next step was to find a lawyer to sue for the right to get an abortion. Two young attorneys named Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, dedicated to women's advocacy, took Norma's case and dubbed their plaintiff "Jane Roe" to protect her identity. On March 3, 1970, Coffee filed a complaint, Roe v. Wade (later amended to a class-action suit), at the Dallas federal district courthouse, suing the State of Texas over the constitutionality over its abortion laws. Henry Wade was the defending district attorney. Roe won the case when the district court decided that the Texas laws were vague and infringed on the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Ninth Amendment protects citizens' rights not listed in other parts of the Constitution, including the right to privacy. Norma's attorneys argued that this extended to a woman's right to decide to bear children or not. The Fourteenth Amendment ensures that no state can abridge a citizen's fundamental rights without due process. The case was appealed and landed in the U.S. Supreme Court. On January 22, 1973, the Court handed down its decision in favor of Roe, declaring: [The] right to privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy."[ The Supreme Court ruling didn't come in time for Norma McCorvey to have an abortion. She delivered a child even before the district court ruled in her favor in 1970; that child was immediately adopted. Roe v. Wade remains as polarizing as ever. Right-to-privacy proponents, anti-abortionists, religious groups, and women's rights advocates are just some of the organizations involved in this heated socio-political issue.

Article / Updated 05-04-2022

Father's Day, celebrated in the United States on the third Sunday of June, got a jump start from the formation of Mother's Day. Credit for beginning Father's Day celebrations is given to Sonora Smart Dodd from Spokane, Washington. At the turn of the century, Mother's Day observances were growing across the United States. The federal government had yet to recognize the holiday, but many states had adopted the third Sunday in May as a special celebration day honoring mothers. It was during a Mother's Day church service on June 20, 1909, that Sonora Smart Dodd was struck with the idea of creating a special holiday to honor fathers, too. When Sonora was 16, her mother died while giving birth to her sixth child, the last of five sons. Back then, like today, single parenthood was no easy task. By Sonoma's account, though, Mr. Smart did a wonderful job. Because of this love and esteem, Sonoma Smart Dodd believed that her father deserved a special time of honor just like that given to mothers on Mother's Day. In 1909, Sonoma Smart Dodd approached the Spokane YMCA and the Spokane Ministerial Alliance and suggested that her father's birthday — June 5 — become a celebration day for Father's Day. Because they wanted more time to prepare, the Ministerial Alliance chose June 19 instead. The first Father's Day was thus observed in the State of Washington on June 19, 1910. The idea of officially celebrating fatherhood spread quickly across the United States, as more and more states adopted the holiday. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge recognized Father's Day as the third Sunday in June of that year and encouraged states to do the same. Congress officially recognized Father's Day in 1956 with the passage of a joint resolution. Ten years later, in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson issued a proclamation calling for the third Sunday in June to be recognized as Father's Day. In 1972, President Richard Nixon permanently established the observance of the third Sunday in June as Father's Day in the United States. Sonora Smart Dodd lived to see her idea come to fruition. She died in 1978 at the ripe old age of 96.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-26-2022

Ireland’s history includes several twists and turns down through the centuries. With invasions, revolutions, emigrations and executions, Irish history boasts a wealth of intense drama.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-15-2022

A number of people and events influenced the course and outcome of World War II. This helpful timeline of World War II (WWII) maps out those key figures and actions in the years surrounding the war.

Article / Updated 04-14-2022

Mother's Day as a national holiday in the United States is almost a century old, but its roots go back before the Civil War to a hard-working Virginian mother and activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis. In total, Anna Reeves Jarvis gave birth to 11 children, though only four of them survived to adulthood. In the late 1850s, seeing the mortal costs of disease and bad sanitation, Jarvis began organizing Mothers' Day Work Clubs, which brought together local mothers to help promote cleanliness and sanitation in the community. During the Civil War, Jarvis (by then a resident of the Union's newly formed state of West Virginia) encouraged these clubs to remain neutral and to nurse wounded soldiers from the Confederacy and Union alike. Throughout Jarvis's work with her family, her church, and her community, she expressed her wish that someday, the importance of a mother's work would be formally recognized by all. One of her surviving children, her daughter Anna, born in 1864, took those wishes to heart. When her mother died on May 9, 1905, the younger Anna hoped to fulfill her mother's wish. She and her friends and supporters began a letter-writing campaign to establish a national holiday in celebration of the importance of motherhood. The campaign was successful as, by degrees, this new holiday came into being. On May 9, 1908, Jarvis's home town of Grafton, West Virginia, was the first to recognize Mother's Day in a church service on the third anniversary of Jarvis's death. At that service, Anna presented each mother in attendance with one of her mother's favorite flowers, the white carnation. Two years later, the state of West Virginia adopted Mother's Day as a state holiday. Anna's letter-writing campaign continued as she pushed for broader recognition. One by one, more states began celebrating Mother's Day in their own ways. It wasn't until May 1914 that President Woodrow Wilson, following a joint resolution of Congress, signed and issued Proclamation 1268, creating a national Mother's Day and setting its observance on the second Sunday of May. Since that time, every president has issued a Mother's Day proclamation that recognizes and honors America's mothers. By then, carnations had already become a traditional symbol of Mother's Day. More specifically, red carnations were used to honor living mothers, and white carnations were placed on the graves of deceased mothers. Ironically, Anna Jarvis, "the mother of Mother's Day," never had any children of her own. After she died in 1948, at the age of 84, she was buried — quite fittingly — next to her mother in Philadelphia.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-08-2022

Ancient Greece is famous for its history, literature, architecture, philosophy… the list goes on! Here you will find a basic introduction to this fascinating civilization, including a map of the empire and a timeline detailing important periods and events that shaped this part of history.

Article / Updated 04-04-2022

Prior to her accession to the throne on her 21st birthday, Elizabeth spoke to the nations of the British Commonwealth via radio broadcast, saying, "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong." This commitment to serve the people of the Commonwealth has characterized her reign from the beginning to present day. Queen Elizabeth’s reign started in 1952 when she was just 25 years old. She has reigned through more than six decades of enormous social change and development within the United Kingdom and around the world. The reign of Queen Elizabeth II Traditionally, the head of the British Commonwealth takes no official stance on public policy and remains neutral on party politics. Being the traditionalist, Queen Elizabeth's views on political issues are largely unknown. It is considered "bad form" to repeat anything that the Queen says in private and British newspapers have a long-standing policy of not publishing the Queen’s private utterances. As a result, the Queen's public actions and words influence the culture of her nation in ways that no elected official can. For example, in 2011, Queen Elizabeth made the first trip to the Irish Republic by a British monarch in over a century. The visit, in and of itself, carried significance, but to make sure the point was not missed, Queen Elizabeth arrived wearing an emerald green suit, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting also wearing shades of green. She publicly encouraged both sides of the English-Irish conflict "to bow to the past but not be bound by it." She visited the Garden of Remembrance, the sacred ground for Irish patriots who died battling for independence, where she bowed her head in reverence. She also visited Croke Park, the site of Bloody Sunday in 1920, where 14 Irish civilians died after British forces opened fire on them. Thus, without voicing a political position, Queen Elizabeth II set the stage for improved relations between the peoples and governments of these two Commonwealth nations over which she reigns. More recently, the Queen publicly signed a Commonwealth Charter that opposes "all forms of discrimination, whether rooted in gender, race, color, creed, political belief or other grounds." With the stroke of the pen, the queen made a symbolic pledge for equal rights for all people in the 54 countries around the world that belong to the British Commonwealth. Never in her years as monarch had she done anything like this before. The press speculated that the signing of the Commonwealth Charter signals the Queen's support of gay rights. "The queen has to remain politically neutral," ABC News royal contributor Victoria Arbiter said. "While we won't hear her personal views on this, the fact that she is endorsing it publically in front of television cameras, it really does speak volumes." Through the course of her reign, Queen Elizabeth introduced reforms to the monarchy. In 1992, she volunteered to start paying both income and capital gains taxes. She opened her official residencies to the public — including Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle — in order to finance their maintenance. She supported ending the rule of male primogeniture, which means that now the eldest child can succeed to the throne, regardless of gender. On October 28, 2011, the sixteen Commonwealth countries at the Perth Commonwealth Summit voted unanimously to scrap male primogeniture in the British royal family. Henceforth, the oldest child in the direct line would be heir, regardless of gender. Despite her reputation for being distant and aloof, Queen Elizabeth II brought a personal touch to the British monarchy, introducing more informal engagements and increasing the number of visits to both countries within and outside of the Commonwealth. Queen Elizabeth is said to be the most well-travelled British monarch in history. As a means of staying connected to the people she serves, Elizabeth II also introduced the walkabout, in which she meets and greets large numbers of the public. In 1981, on one of the royal walkabouts, a British subject seeking fame and notoriety fired six blank shots at her. Despite the danger presented by these up close and personal appearances, she continued to do the walkabouts regularly. The Queen’s own service leadership works to encourage others to volunteer and serve their communities. Her Majesty is involved with over 600 charities and non-profit organizations — she serves to bring recognition to their achievements and contributions and to persuade other people to join. The personal side of Queen Elizabeth II It is said that when Elizabeth met Prince Philip, even though she was only 13 years old, she fell in love with him and they began exchanging letters. They were officially engaged on July 9, 1947 and they were married on November 20, 1947 at Westminster Abbey. They had four children, Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward. During the Queen’s reign she has experienced personal tragedies, including the death of her father at 56, the breakdown of her children’s marriages — particularly that of Prince Charles and Princess Diana of Wales — and the tragic death of Princess Diana in 1997. Her mother and sister also passed during her reign, both in 2002.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-23-2022

As one of the first parts of Canada to be explored and settled by Europeans over four centuries ago, Quebec has played a dynamic and fascinating role in the history of North America. This handy Cheat Sheet introduces you to some of the key things you should know about Quebec, from its original First Nation inhabitants and its world-famous historical landmarks to a helpful timeline of the most significant events that have shaped the rich history of Canada’s largest province.

Article / Updated 03-09-2022

Women's suffrage was a controversial subject as women's roles developed in society. By the time the twentieth century arrived, American feminists had been seeking the right to vote for more than 50 years. The suffrage movement was fanned even hotter in 1869, when African American males were given the right to vote through the Sixteenth Amendment, while women of all races were still excluded. One place where women were increasingly included was in the workplace. As the country shifted away from a rural, agrarian society to an industrial, urban one, more and more women had jobs — eight million by 1910. Moreover, they were getting better jobs. In 1870, 60 percent of working women were in domestic service. By 1920, it was only 20 percent, and women made up 13 percent of the professional ranks. Women were getting out of the house for more than just jobs, too. In 1892, membership in women’s clubs was about 100,000. By 1917, it was more than one million. And women’s increasing independence was reflected in the fact that the divorce rate rose from 1 in every 21 marriages in 1880 to 1 in 9 by 1916. Because women had always had nontraditional roles in the West, it wasn’t surprising that Western states and territories were the first to give females the right to vote: Wyoming in 1869, Utah in 1870, Washington in 1883, Colorado in 1893, and Idaho in 1896. By 1914, all the Western states except New Mexico had extended the voting franchise to women. By 1917, the suffrage movement was building momentum. In July of that year, a score of suffragists tried to storm the White House. They were arrested and taken to the county workhouse. President Woodrow Wilson was not amused, but sympathetic, and pardoned them. The next year, a constitutional amendment — the Nineteenth — was submitted to the states. When ratified in 1920, it gave women the right to vote in every state. Despite the significance of the Nineteenth Amendment, many leaders of the women’s movement recognized that the vote alone wouldn’t give women equal standing with men when it came to educational, economic, or legal rights. “Men are saying, perhaps, ‘thank God this everlasting women’s fight is over,’” said feminist leader Crystal Eastman after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. “But women, if I know them, are saying, ‘now at last we can begin.’”