May 17 Birthday
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had established the "separate but equal" doctrine. Chief Justice Earl Warren, who had been appointed by Eisenhower less than a year earlier, wrote the opinion. The Court ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed" — a phrase that Southern states interpreted as permission to delay. Ten years later, 98% of Black children in the South still attended segregated schools. Brown was the legal foundation of the Civil Rights Movement, but the law did not enforce itself. It took federal troops in Little Rock, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and decades of activism to make Brown a reality. The Senate Watergate hearings began on May 17, 1973, with testimony from former White House counsel John Dean. The hearings were televised — the first Senate hearings to be broadcast gavel-to-gavel. 85% of American households watched some portion. Senator Howard Baker's question — "What did the president know, and when did he know it?" — became the defining query of the scandal. Dean testified that Nixon had been involved in the cover-up from the beginning. Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of the White House taping system, which provided the evidence that forced Nixon's resignation. The hearings transformed television news and created the template for every political scandal since. On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first US state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, following the state Supreme Court ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. The first couple to marry was Marcia Kadish and Tanya McCloskey at Cambridge City Hall, at 9:15 AM. Governor Mitt Romney invoked a 1913 law to prevent out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts. Same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. The change from 2004 to 2015 was one of the fastest shifts in public opinion on any social issue in American history. Bill Paxton, born this day in 1955, appeared in Aliens, Terminator, Titanic, and Apollo 13 — four of the biggest films of the 1980s and 1990s. He was the only actor to be killed on screen by an Alien, a Predator, and a Terminator. He died of a stroke at sixty-one in 2017. People born on May 17 fall under the zodiac sign of Taurus. The birthstone is Emerald and the birth flower is Lily of the Valley. Historical events on May 17 include 1954: Brown v. Board of Education — Supreme Court unanimously bans school segregation, 1973: Senate Watergate hearings begin, televised nationally, 2004: Massachusetts becomes first US state to legalize same-sex marriage. Famous people born on May 17 include Bill Paxton (1955), Sugar Ray Leonard (1956), Enya (1961).