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The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and passed additional civil rights legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Lead-up to the Civil Rights Act Following the  Civil War , a trio of constitutional amendments abolished slavery, made the former slaves citizens and gave all men the right to vote regardless of race. Nonetheless, many states—particularly in the South—used poll taxes, literacy tests and other measures to keep their African-American citizens essentially disenfranchised. They also enforced strict segregation through

Martin Luther King, Jr . was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington, which helped bring about such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is remembered each year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a U.S. federal holiday since 1986.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta,   Georgia , the second child of Martin Luther King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a former schoolteacher. Along with his older sister Christine and younger brother Alfred Daniel Williams, he grew up in the city’s Sweet Auburn neigh

Al Qaeda The global terror network founded by Osama bin Laden has been responsible for thousands of deaths on 9/11 and several other deadly attacks across the globe. Before September 11, 2001, many Americans knew little of al Qaeda or its founder,   Osama bin Laden . But the roots of the militant Islamist network, whose name is Arabic for “the Base,” date back to the late 1970s and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Since declaring a holy war on the United States, Jews and their allies, al Qaeda has been found responsible for nearly 3,000 deaths on  9/11 , and numerous other deadly attacks around the world. The global terror network has been linked to radical groups across the Middle East and beyond. Bin Laden and the Origins of Al Qaeda During the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghan War in Afghanistan, in which the Soviet Union  gave support  to the communist Afghan government, Muslim insurgents, known as the mujahideen, rallied to fight a jihad (or holy war) against the inva

On this day in 1926, the two-man comedy series “Sam ‘n’ Henry” debuts on Chicago’s WGN radio station. Two years later, after changing its name to “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” the show became one of the most popular radio programs in American history." Though the creators and the stars of the new radio program, Freeman Gosden and Charles Carrell, were both white, the characters they played were two black men from the Deep South who moved to  Chicago  to seek their fortunes. By that time, white actors performing in dark stage makeup–or “blackface”–had been a significant tradition in American theater for over 100 years. Gosden and Carrell, both vaudeville performers, were doing a Chicago comedy act in blackface when an employee at the Chicago Tribune suggested they create a radio show. When “Sam ‘n’ Henry” debuted in January 1926, it became an immediate hit. In 1928, Gosden and Carrell took their act to a rival station, the Chicago Daily News’ WMAQ. When they discovered WGN owned the rights to t

On the afternoon of June 24, 1947, amateur aviator  Kenneth Arnold  was flying near Mt. Rainier, Washington, when he suddenly spotted nine unusual objects on the horizon. Arnold claimed the craft flitted from side to side and flipped in unison like “the tail of a Chinese kite,” and he estimated they were moving at around 1,700 miles per hour—far faster than any known aircraft. He initially assumed the physics-defying objects must be secret military vehicles, but he later admitted the incident was “as much a mystery to me as it is to everybody else.”  Arnold’s extraordinary story soon found its way into newspapers across the country, and reporters pounced on his description of the objects as moving “like a saucer if you skip it across water.” Within days, the term “flying saucer” was born. Coupled with the famed July 1947 incident at  Roswell , New Mexico, when the Air Force claimed a military weather balloon was mistaken for an alien spacecraft, Arnold’s encounter helped spark a wave