The women's poll tax repeal movement in the United States was the
attempt, predominantly led by women, to secure the abolition of poll
taxes as a prerequisite for voting in the Southern states. After women
were granted the right to vote in 1920, some Southern states introduced
or expanded poll tax statutes in order to disenfranchise them. In
response, women began organizing to repeal these laws (poster pictured),
initially to little effect. During the Great Depression of the 1930s,
both black and white women pressed at state and national levels for the
abolition of these laws, and also filed lawsuits. Louisiana abandoned
its poll tax law in 1932, and the number of women voters increased by 77
percent. Florida, Tennessee and Arkansas followed. In 1964, the Twenty-
fourth Amendment was passed, prohibiting poll taxes as a barrier to
voting in federal elections. The Supreme Court finally ended the
struggle after four decades in its ruling on Harper v. Virginia State
Board of Elections in 1966.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_poll_tax_repeal_movement>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1658:
After a devastating defeat in the Second Northern War, King
Frederick III of Denmark–Norway was forced to give up nearly half his
Danish territory to Sweden to save the remainder.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Roskilde>
1910:
French aviator Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to
receive a pilot's licence.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymonde_de_Laroche>
1924:
Three violent explosions at a coal mine near Castle Gate, Utah,
killed all 171 miners working there.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Gate_Mine_disaster>
1966:
Nelson's Pillar, a large granite pillar topped by a statue of
Lord Nelson in Dublin, Ireland, was severely damaged by a bomb.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson%27s_Pillar>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle:
(figuratively, humorous, simile) A woman is capable of living a complete
and independent life without a man.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/a_woman_without_a_man_is_like_a_fish_without_a_bicycle>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Survival in a stable environment depends almost entirely on
remembering the strategies for survival that have been developed in the
past, and so the conservation and transmission of these becomes the
primary mission of education. But, a paradoxical situation develops when
change becomes the primary characteristic of the environment. Then the
task turns inside out — survival in a rapidly changing environment
depends almost entirely upon being able to identify which of the old
concepts are relevant to the demands imposed by the new threats to
survival, and which are not.
--Neil Postman
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Postman>
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