Milestones: March 15, 2024

March 15, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH — THE SOOTHSAYER SPURINNA GIVES THIS WARNING TO THE ROMAN DICTATOR JULIUS CAESAR IN THE WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE play based on the assassination that happened on March 15, 44 B.C.E. A group of 60 Roman senators conspired to kill Julius Caesar, with the ringleaders being Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Caesar had risen through the ranks, being elected in 63 B.C.E. as pontifex maximus, or “high priest,” allegedly through some serious bribing. He was made governor of what was then Farther Spain before returning to covet and gain the office of consul, the highest and most powerful office in the Roman Republic. Caesar had ambitious plans for the Republic that included reforms and expansions within central Europe. Crowned as dictator for life, Julius Caesar undoubtedly made some enemies in the Roman Senate who became his assassins.

One of Caesar’s lasting contributions was the establishment of the Julian calendar, which was in wide use until the 18th century when some nations switched to the more modern Gregorian calendar used today. The Orthodox Church in Russia and parts of North Africa still observe the Julian calendar in the 21st century.

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AT THE HEART OF INHERITANCE DISPUTE — MAINE WAS ADMITTED TO THE UNION ON MARCH 15, 1820. AS THE 23rd state, Maine was part of the Missouri Compromise that welcomed Maine as a free state on the South’s condition that Missouri be admitted as a slaveholder state. Originally part of Massachusetts, Maine was being administered as a province of that colony more than a century before the American Revolution. French explorer Samuel de Champlain had first claimed Maine for the French province of Acadia in 1603. But British forces intercepted the territory and destroyed a French colony in 1613. Meanwhile, a Spaniard named Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who was a leading figure in the Plymouth Company, initiated British settlement in Maine after receiving a grant and royal charter. The Massachusetts Bay Colony took control of the land in 1647 when Gorges died.

A dispute arose between the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Gorges’ heirs over who had rights to the Maine property. Massachusetts finally purchased the Gorges’ property rights in 1677.

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JOHNSON PLEADS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS LAW — PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON ON MARCH 15, 1965, ADDRESSED A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS TO URGE THE PASSAGE OF LEGISLATION that would guarantee voting rights for all. Johnson borrowed the slogan “We shall overcome” from African American leaders of the civil rights movement as he declared that “every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.” Even though the 14th and 15th Amendments that were passed after the Civil War guaranteed citizenship and equal protection under the law, and the right to vote regardless of race or color, Southern states found ways to circumvent the U.S. Constitution, even passing laws required Blacks to undergo character and literacy tests before they could register to vote. Johnson told Congress on March 15, 1965, “Their cause must be our cause too,” Johnson said. “Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

On Aug. 6, 1965, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which made it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state and local elections that were designed to deny the vote to Black Americans, and gave them the legal means to challenge voting restrictions.

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NAZIS INVADE CZECHOSLOVAKIA — HITLER’S FORCES INVADED AND OCCUPIED CZECHOSLOVAKIA ON MARCH 15, 1939, after threatening a bombing raid against Prague and exploiting the weaknesses of Czech President Emil Hacha. The previous September, Hitler had joined Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in signing the Munich Pact, which stipulated that Germany would be given Czechoslovakia in exchange for peace. But the pact was a stalling device so that Hitler would have time to achieve his real — imperialistic — ambition of separating the Sudetenland (that part of Czechoslovakia with a major ethnic German population) and making Slovakia “independent.” Hitler’s forces also invaded the provinces of Moravia and Bohemia, which offered no resistance. Czechoslovakia’s coal, iron, steel and electricity were seized.

The movie ‘Casablanca,” whose flashback action takes place during Hitler’s June 1940 invasion of Paris, features Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo (played by actor Paul Henreid). The invasion of Czechoslovakia had happened 15 months before this part of the film, which won Best Picture in 1942.

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FIRST INDIGENOUS CABINET SECRETARY — DEB HAALAND, THE FIRST INDIGENOUS PERSON IN U.S. HISTORY TO SERVE AS A CABINET SECRETARY, ON MARCH 15, 2021, took the oath of office as Secretary of the Interior, the position she currently holds. Then President-elect Joe Biden had in December 2020 nominated Haaland, who at the time was a first-term congressperson from New Mexico. Three months later, the Senate confirmed her for the job by a 51-to-40 vote. A member of the Laguna Pueblo, Haaland thus made history as the first Native American person to oversee the Interior Department. The Department of the Interior was established in 1849 with a nefarious purpose: removing Indigenous people from their ancestral lands. The department’s mission has been transformed to uphold the government’s treaty obligations to 574 federally recognized tribal groups, as well as to manage the 500 million acres of public land and 63 national parks.

Haaland was one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress in 2018.

See previous milestones, here.