March 27, 1912: In Washington, D.C., Helen Taft, wife of President
William Taft, and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted two Yoshino cherry trees on the northern
bank of the Potomac River, near the Jefferson Memorial.

The event was held in celebration of a gift, by the Japanese
government, of  3,020 cherry trees to the U.S. government.

The planting of Japanese cherry trees along the Potomac was
first proposed by socialite Eliza Scidmore, who raised money
for the endeavor. Helen

Taft had lived in Japan while her husband was president of the
Philippine Commission, and knowing the beauty of cherry
blossoms she embraced Scidmore’s idea. After learning of
the first lady’s interest, the Japanese consul in New York
suggested making a gift of the trees to the U.S. government
from the city of Tokyo.

MIKE GRACIA

On this day in 1751, James Madison, drafter of the Constitution,
recorder of the Constitutional Convention, author of the Federalist 
Papers and fourth president of the United States, was born on a
plantation in Virginia.

Madison first distinguished himself as a student at the College
of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he successfully completed a four-year course of study in two years and, in 1769,
helped found the American Whig Society, the second literary and
debate society at Princeton (and the world), to rival the previously established Cliosophic Society.

On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed a
joint session of Congress to urge the passage of legislation
guaranteeing voting rights for all.

Using the phrase “we shall overcome,” borrowed from African
American leaders struggling for equal rights, Johnson declares
that “every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.”

Johnson reminds the nation that the Fifteenth Amendment, which
was passed after the Civil War, gave all citizens the right to vote
regardless of race or color.

President Johnson (right) meeting with civil rights leaders.

President Lyndon Johnson signing the 1965
Civil Rights Bill, also known as The Voting
Rights Act.

On March 4, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd president of the
United States. In his famous inaugural address, delivered outside
the east wing of the U.S. Capitol, Roosevelt outlined his “New
Deal”—an expansion of the federal government as an instrument
of employment opportunity and welfare—and told Americans that
“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Although it was a
rainy day in Washington, and gusts of rain blew over Roosevelt
as he spoke, he delivered a speech that radiated optimism a
nd competence, and a broad majority of Americans united
behind  their new president and his radical economic proposals
to lead the nation out of the Great Depression.