This Day in History

On March 25, 1931, in the so-called “Scottsboro Boys” case, nine young black men were taken off a train in Ala- bama, accused of raping two white women; after years of convictions, death sentences and imprisonment, the nine were eventually vindicated.

On this date:

In 1634, English colonists sent by Lord Baltimore arrived in present-day Maryland.

In 1894, Jacob S. Coxey began leading an “army” of unemployed from Massillon, Ohio, to Washington, D.C., to demand help from the federal government.

In 1911, 146 people, most- ly young female immigrants, were killed when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York.

In 1915, the U.S. Navy lost its first commissioned submarine as the USS F-4 sank off Hawaii, claiming the lives of all 21 crew members.

In 1947, a coal-dust explosion inside the Centralia Coal Co. Mine No. 5 in Washington County, Illinois, claimed 111 lives; 31 men survived.

In 1960, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled that the D.H. Lawrence nov- el “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” was not obscene and could be sent through the mails. Ray Charles recorded “Georgia on My Mind” as part of his “The Genius Hits the Road” album in New York.

In 1963, private pilot Ralph Flores and his 21-year-old pas- senger, Helen Klaben, were rescued after being stranded for seven weeks in brutally cold conditions in the Yukon after their plane crashed.

In 1965, the Rev. Martin Lu- ther King Jr. led 25,000 people to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery after a five-day march from Selma to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks. Later that day, civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, a white Detroit homemaker, was shot and killed by Ku Klux Klansmen.

In 1985, “Amadeus” won eight Academy Awards, in- cluding best picture, best di- rector for Milos Forman and best actor for F. Murray Abraham.

In 1988, in New York City’s so-called “Preppie Kill- er” case, Robert Chambers Jr. pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin. (Chambers received 5 to 15 years in prison; he was released in 2003 after serving the full sentence.)