Milestones: March 20, 2024

March 20, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

Share this:

COVETED THE FRENCH MONARCHY — KING HENRY V ASCENDED TO THE ENGLISH THRONE ON MARCH 20, 1413, after his father, Henry IV, Died. Henry IV, arguably considered the first monarch of the House of Lancaster, had been sickly. His eldest son, Henry V, was born in 1387 in Wales. However, after becoming monarch, Henry V changed his priorities from fighting Welsh rebels to claiming the French crown, as he believed it was his legacy through his great-grandfather, Edward III. Invading France in 1415, Henry V won a surprising and extraordinary victory at the Battle of Agincourt, placing Normandy under English rule again. The 1420 Perpetual Peace of Troyes gave Henry the hand in marriage of Catherine of Valois, who was the daughter of King Charles VI. This also made him regent of France and heir to the French throne.

However, Henry V did not live long enough to become king of France. During another siege, his own health worsened, and he died at Vincennes in August 1422 of camp fever, known today as typhus. Shakespeare wrote his famous play about Henry V around 1599.

✰✰✰

BLOCKBUSTER NOVEL — HARRIET BEECHER STOWE’S NOVEL, “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN,” was published on March 20, 1852. Harriet Beecher Stowe and her brother, Brooklyn abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher, were both children of the famous Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher; Harriet was the seventh child. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was hugely successful, but the surprise was the huge and rapid volume of sales. The novel, which Stowe had written as a response to recently-tightened fugitive slave laws, sold 300,000 copies within three months. Stowe also drew her urgency in writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” from fugitive slaves she had met through the Underground Railroad. The book transformed the way the American public viewed slavery and established her as a literary hero; she had already published her first book, titled “Mayflower,” in 1843.

Stowe, along with essayist, poet, abolitionist and Transcendentalist Movement founder Ralph Waldo Emerson, was one of the original contributors to The Atlantic, which launched in November 1857. In 1863, when Lincoln announced the end of slavery, she danced in the streets.

✰✰✰

MOVEMENT’S TURNING POINT — PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON ON MARCH 20, 1965 PREVAILED OVER ALABAMA’S GOVERNOR TO PROTECT participants in a march from Selma to Montgomery, an action that marked a turning point in the civil rights movement. Alabama Gov. George Wallace, an impassioned segregationist, had refused to use state funds to deploy the Alabama National Guard needed protect the marchers in their third attempt to complete a walk that had been marred with violence. Although Governor Wallace appeared at first to cooperate with President Johnson to protect the marchers, he backpedaled, demanding on national TV that Johnson send in federal troops. The infuriated the president, and U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach announced that, because Wallace refused to utilize the 10,000 available guardsmen to preserve order in Alabama, Johnson himself was calling the guard up and giving them all necessary support.

Thanks to both the National Guard and federal troops that Johnson provided, the marchers arrived safely in Montgomery, and on March 25 King gave his “How Long, Not Long” speech from the steps of the Capitol building.

✰✰✰

G.O.P WAS FOUNDED — THE REPUBLICAN PARTY WAS FOUNDED ON MARCH 20, 1854, about a month after the anti-slavery Whig Party dissolved. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, which Sen. Stephen Douglas of Illinois had introduced, gave sovereignty to new territories west of Missouri, allowing each new state to decide whether to allow slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska bill thus voided the Missouri Compromise, which banned slavery above a certain geographic parallel. The anti-slavery Whigs decided to form a new party, which they called the Republican Party and which rapidly gained support in the North. The Republican Party was still new when Abraham Lincoln campaigned for president on their ticket and was elected over a divided Democratic Party, with most of the Southern states publicly threatening to secede from the Union and then following through on that warning. The Republican Party gained its identity and mission in the Civil War and was associated with the victorious North.

The Republican Party by the 1870s had already gotten a nickname: The “Grand Old Party,” or G.O.P. A variation of this was the “gallant old party,” so bestowed for the G.O.P.’s role in preserving the Union.

✰✰✰

SPOKE TO SOCIAL ISSUES — NORWAY’S FOREMOST PLAYWRIGHT, HENRIK IBSEN, WAS BORN ON MARCH 20, 1828 at Skien, one of that country’s oldest cities. He is best remembered for his plays “Peer Gynt” (for which fellow countryman and contemporary Edvard Grieg composed the music); Hedda Gabler,” “A Doll’s House” and “Enemy of the People.” Ibsen often tackled familial or societal issues, with “Hedda Gabler” and “A Doll’s House” in particular passing critique on the roles and ambitions of women. “Enemy of the People” explored a society’s ability to think for itself. The protagonist, a doctor returning to his homeland after an extended absence, has warned his community about a mysterious illness from the water system that has infected users of “The Baths,” a spa that was designed to bring both revenue and fame to their town. The town leaders have strong motives to silence the doctor and the citizens’ side against him, labeling him as the enemy rather than acknowledging his efforts to purify the waters.

American playwright Arthur Miller, who admired Ibsen, later rewrote An “Enemy of the People,” redacting much of the original play’s eugenicist language to a post-Holocaust audience.

✰✰✰

‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MISTER ROGERS!’ — FRED MCFEELY ROGERS, BORN MARCH 20, 1928, at Latrobe, PA, by age 25 had already begun producing television programs for children in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. His “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” premiered in Canada in 1966 and in the U.S. in 1968. Rogers, who was an ordained Presbyterian minister as well as an educator, gained a solid reputation for his genuine caring for children’s well-being, and he taught basic virtues like compassion, goodness and learning without being dogmatic. He also encouraged children to think and use their imaginations and created the “Neighborhood of Make Believe,” traveling there via a toy trolley, where he chatted with King Friday the Thirteenth, a young tiger named Daniel and a host of other now-beloved puppets. He also hosted noted singer Francois Clemmons, breaking the color barrier by taking a foot bath together.

Fred Rogers also authored a number of books for parents and children, wrote more than 200 songs and won dozens of awards, including Emmys, Peabodys and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, before his 2003 death just weeks before his 75th birthday.

See previous milestones, here.