Honored graduates
25 years ago — 1993
Almost 90,000 people passed through Tom Lee Park Thursday through Saturday for this year’s new, improved Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Unofficial attendance was 88,791, Memphis in May executive director Cynthia Ham said Sunday. No one was sure, but organizers thought the figure represented a record since the event began charging admission in 1988. Last year’s crowd was about 75,000.
50 years ago — 1968
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas Thursday condemned some of the activities of protesting students at Columbia University as “totally inexcusable” from the point of view of even primitive morality.” He denounced their barring other students from classes, occupying buildings and rifling the desks and files of university officials. “The advocacy of civil rights does not require or justify the abandonment of all decency,” Fortas said in a rare interview.
75 years ago — 1943
Allied Headquarters, North Africa — Allied air forces destroyed 17 more Axis planes — bringing the total to 283 in four days — in their relentless onslaught against Italian airfields, according to a communique from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. He said the Axis lost 2,200 planes in the recently completed Tunisian campaign.
100 years ago — 1918
Memphis shouted herself hoarse Tuesday when 598 of her sons departed for Army training at Fort Thomas, Ky. It was the most tumultuous send-off the city has given any of her departing soldiers since the old First Tennessee was ordered to the Mexican border. The crowd stretched in double lines on Main Street from Adams to Calhoun and the cheering was deafening as the boys marched by in step with the stirring music played by a band. Wives, mothers and sisters wept brokenly as the train pulled out of Union Depot.
125 years ago — 1893
NEW ORLEANS — The solemn transfer of the remains of Jefferson Davis, late president of the Confederacy, from their temporary resting place in New Orleans to their permanent spot in Richmond, Va., will present a spectacle unprecedented in this country. A special train, draped in black from the engine to the caboose and covered with floral offerings will make the journey next Thursday. Mr. Davis died in 1889.