Freedom Calendar 03/15/08 - 03/22/08

March 15, 1842, Birth of African-American Republican Robert De Large, elected to U.S. House from South Carolina in 1870.

March 16, 1868, Death of U.S. Senator David Wilmot (R-PA), anti-slavery champion and author of first Republican Party platform.

March 17, 1825, Birth of Benjamin Turner (R-AL), emancipated slave elected to House from Alabama in 1870; delegate to 1880 Republican National Convention.

March 18, 1877, Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes appoints African-American Republican and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass as D.C. Marshal.

March 19, 2003, Republican U.S. Representatives of Hispanic and Portuguese descent form Congressional Hispanic Conference.

March 20, 1854, Opponents of Democrats’ pro-slavery policies meet in Ripon, Wisconsin to establish the Republican Party.

March 21, 1965, Republican federal judge Frank Johnson authorizes Martin Luther King’s protest march from Selma to Montgomery, overruling Democrat Governor George Wallace.

March 22, 1871, Spartansburg Republican newspaper denounces Ku Klux Klan campaign to eradicate the Republican Party in South Carolina.

“Our destiny is largely in our own hands. If we find, we shall have to seek. If we succeed in the race of life it must be by our own energies, and by our own exertions. Others may clear the road, but we must go forward, or be left behind in the race of life."

Frederick Douglass, Republican Civil Rights Activist

Tags: President Bush and Freedom Calendar or Booker T. Washington and Republicans or African-Americans and Brown v. Board of Education or Ronald Reagan and Condoleezza Rice or Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass or 40 acres and a mule or Martin Luther King and Voting Rights Act of 1965 or Dred Scott