“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it's the other way around. Human rights invented America.” — President Jimmy Carter, Farewell Address, January 14, 1981

On April 1, 1992, President George H. W. Bush hosted former President Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office for a private discussion. When a reporter asked Carter who he was supporting in that year’s presidential race, he said, “Bill Clinton,” as the two leaders laughed.

On March 31, 1978, President Jimmy Carter arrived in Nigeria for a state visit, marking the first-ever visit by a sitting U.S. president to sub-Saharan Africa.

On March 31, 1870, Thomas Mundy Peterson of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first African American to vote under the recently enacted 15th Amendment.

On March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson ended a televised address on Vietnam by announcing that he would not seek reelection that year, a surprise move that scrambled the presidential race.

“My own belief is this: No true American, no American worthy of the name, would want deliberately to exclude any other American from the full opportunity to enjoy every privilege and every right guaranteed to us by the Constitution.” — President Dwight Eisenhower

Days after his death in a plane crash, TIME magazine published a commemorative issue honoring John F. Kennedy Jr. In the cover story, columnist Margaret Carlson referred to Kennedy as “urban royalty with a public conscience, a black-tie aristocrat who took the subway.”

“How can we know who we are and where we are going if we don't know anything about where we have come from and what we have been through, the courage shown, the costs paid, to be where we are?” — David McCullough, Brave Companions: Portraits in History, 1991

On March 28, 1963, White House photographer Cecil Stoughton captured several candid photos of President John F. Kennedy and his children, Caroline and John Jr., along the West Wing Colonnade.

On March 27, 1963, President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy participated in a parade through Washington, D.C., to welcome Moroccan King Hassan II. Along the motorcade route, a photographer captured a now well-known photo of the First Couple.

On March 27, 2014, Pope Francis hosted President Barack Obama at the Vatican for their first meeting, where they reportedly discussed inequality and the plight of the poor.

On March 27, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln met with Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman in City Point, Virginia, to plan out the final stages of the Civil War. Confederate forces would surrender at Appomattox just 13 days later.

On March 26, 1930, Sandra Day O’Connor was born in El Paso, Texas. She would go on to serve as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, becoming the first woman to do so.

“Without a strong educational system, democracy is crippled. Knowledge is not only key to power. It is the citadel of human freedom.” — President Harry Truman

On March 24, 1962, President John F. Kennedy met with former President Dwight Eisenhower at Eisenhower’s California residence to discuss foreign affairs. During his time in office, Kennedy often sought Eisenhower’s advice and counsel.

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the landmark Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law at a ceremony at the White House.

On March 22, 1972, the U.S. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment, stating, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

On March 20, 2016, President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba in nearly ninety years. The visit came as his administration sought to normalize relations with the island nation after more than 50 years of isolation.

On March 19, 1891, Earl Warren was born in Los Angeles, California. He would go on to serve as governor of California and Chief Justice of the United States.

On March 18, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson hosted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Cabinet Room of the White House, along with other civil rights and labor leaders, to discuss housing discrimination.

On March 17, 1941, the National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C., as the nation’s premier museum dedicated to preserving and exhibiting works of art. President Franklin Roosevelt presided over the dedication ceremony.

On March 16, 1751, James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and the 4th president of the United States, was born in Virginia.

🗃️ On March 16, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy announced his candidacy for president in the Senate Caucus Room. In his remarks, Kennedy said, “I run because it is now unmistakably clear that we can change these disastrous, divisive policies only by changing the men who are now making them.”

“The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.” — President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, December 10, 2002

On March 15, 1933, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York.

“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” — President Dwight Eisenhower, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953

Throughout his life, John F. Kennedy Jr. questioned the public’s fascination with his father’s assassination, saying he preferred to focus instead on his father’s life and accomplishments.

On March 12, 1804, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of alleged partisan conduct and intemperate behavior from the bench. The Senate would later acquit him on all eight articles of impeachment.

On March 11, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act into law, authorizing the transfer of defense materials to Allied nations to aid their fight against the Axis powers.

On March 10, 1913, abolitionist Harriet Tubman died at approximately 91 years old. Her birth year is believed to be around 1822, though the exact year is uncertain due to the lack of official records for enslaved people at the time.

On March 10, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln placed Ulysses S. Grant in charge of all Union armies, a pivotal move that led to the eventual defeat of the Confederacy.

On March 9, 1965, just days after Bloody Sunday, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led another march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he and other demonstrators prayed before turning back.

In February 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation designating the week of March 8 as National Women’s History Week.

On March 8, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. and his sister, Caroline Kennedy, attended the Jackie Robinson Foundation Awards Dinner in New York City.

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” — President John F. Kennedy

Speaking just before the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in 2015, John Lewis said of that day, “I thought I was going to die on this bridge. I thought I saw death… but I refused to die.”

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” — President Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, December 10, 2002

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” — President Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, 1961

“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” — President John F. Kennedy, Address at Vanderbilt University, May 18, 1963

On March 4, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated in the midst of the Great Depression.

“Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right.” — President Lyndon B. Johnson, March 1965

🗃️ In July 2015, President Barack Obama announced the United States had reached an agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear program. In remarks at the White House, Obama said the deal made “our country and the world safer and more secure.”

During his time as president and vice president, Joe Biden carried a card in his pocket that listed the precise number of U.S. troop casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing the Peace Corps, an initiative that would send American volunteers abroad to assist in addressing social challenges in developing nations.

After receiving reports on the potential casualties from a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, President John F. Kennedy reportedly remarked to advisers, “And we call ourselves the human race.”

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” — Dwight Eisenhower, 1946

🗃️ On February 27, 1968, Walter Cronkite, anchorman of CBS Evening News and known as “the most trusted man in America,” broke from his usual objective reporting and predicted that America’s war in Vietnam would likely end in “stalemate” and that Washington should negotiate a settlement.

On February 27, 2013, President Barack Obama joined congressional leaders at the U.S. Capitol to unveil a statue honoring civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

“The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, September 1932

Writing on leadership in his 1967 memoir, former President Dwight Eisenhower wrote, “I once said, as a sort of wisecrack, that leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well.”