Lawrence Douglas Wilder will be 89 on January 17.           

Douglas Wilder, the first African American to be elected
governor of an American state, took office as Governor
of Virginia on January 13, 1990.He broke a number of
color barriers in Virginia politics and remains an enduring
and controversial figure in the state’s political scene.

Born in 1931 in Church Hill, a poor and segregated
neighborhood of Richmond, Wilder is the grandson of
slaves and is named for Frederick Douglass. He grew
up in the Jim Crow era, graduating from Richmond’s
Virginia Union University in 1951. Wilder fought in the
Korean War, earning the Bronze Star, before studying
law at Howard University and returning to Richmond to
practice.

Wilder entered politics by way of a special election to the
State Senate in 1969, becoming the state’s first African
American state senator since Reconstruction.

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Under federal troop escort, the Little Rock Nine were escorted back
into Central High School for their first full day of classes. 
 

Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black
students entered an all-white High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Three
weeks earlier, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had surrounded the
school with National Guard troops to prevent its federal court-ordered
racial integration. After a tense standoff, President Dwight Eisenhower
federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 army troops
to Little Rock to enforce the court order.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivering a special broadcast on
the Little Rock situation.

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CARLATA BRADLEY

On this day in 1972, the last U.S. combat troops depart Vietnam.

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Norma Jean Paulus (Petersen) (March 13, 1933 – February 28, 2019)

(Portland, Ore.) – Former Oregon Secretary of State Norma Paulus has
died.   

Close friend Kerry Tymchuk confirmed her death to local news media
Thursday afternoon.

Paulus’ death comes a day after the state’s current Secretary of State
Dennis Richardson died of brain cancer.

In addition to serving as secretary of state, Paulus was an Oregon
representative from 1970 to 1976 and Superintendent of Public
Instruction. She was appointed to that position by former Gov. Neil
Goldschmidt in 1990 and was elected to it in 1994.

A member of the Republican Party, she was the first woman to be
elected to statewide office. She was elected secretary of state in 1976
and re-elected in 1980. She ran for governor in 1986 but lost.

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