Today in History: Civil Rights, some Grease, and a little Bjork

I'm focusing on 3 things today because I don't feel as though I can dedicate enough time or words to any one of them to keep them interesting: We'll see how it works out.

Please note that these things didn't actually happen today, they happened on the 13th of June but for some reason my scheduling of the post failed. It doesn't make these events any less meaningful though.

Congress passes the 14th Amendment

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This one is probably important to the folks still protesting in the streets of USA. It was the one that passed following the civil war and basically granted all people born or naturalized into the USA, regardless of skin color equal rights and protection by the laws. Basically, no more slaves. This happened in 1866.

There was a lot of opposition to the Amendment, including at the hands of Andrew Johnson who had recently become President after Lincoln's famous assignation at the theater. Johnson was a former slave holder and voiced that he did not approve of the 14th Amendment. Congress voted to pass it by a "veto-proof" 2/3 majority, which meant the new President's opposition to it was meaningless.

Proof of the "integration" can be seen in a Supreme Court ruling just 2 years later called Plessy v. Ferguson, which established that having separate areas for whites and coloreds did NOT violate the 14th Amendment and this lead to many decades of what become known as Jim Crowe laws

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It would be many years before things were truly equal for blacks in the United States, but it is difficult to argue that the 14th Amendment was a very important event, and day, for equality in the USA.

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Grease

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Based on a 1971 musical, this film was released in 1978 to a great deal of critical praise as well as becoming one of the most successful box office draws to date and the biggest draw in 1978. It became the best selling musical beating The Sound of Music which had been at the top for 13 years at that point. I don't know if it is still the highest grossing musical of all time but it's worldwide take at the box office including a re-release a few years ago put the grand total at $400 million.

Now, on a personal note, this film and all the songs in it were ruined for me and many other people in college, where the girls we knew and dated would relentlessly interrupt actual club music to have DJ's play "Summer Nights" so that they could dance like lunatics and mouth all the words to the songs, drunkenly, in public.

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Bjork's second album "Post" is released

The year was 1995 and yeah, Bjork was still very very strange

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Whether you found her style too all over the place to be down with (I kind of fit into this category) or if you appreciated how you never really knew what the Icelander was going to do next in her very unpredictable stylings of her songs, there was no denying that Bjork was an icon of the 1990's.

Even if you don't like Bjork you have probably heard that track in your life since it was featured in many different movies including Sucker Punch which I really liked.

The album is wild ride because honestly, from one track to the next - for example going from "Army of Me" (the above track) to "It's Oh So Quiet", which sounds like a big band song from the 40's is just a crazy transition to make. It is difficult to classify Bjork and most people don't even try because if the label were to stick, she would just totally change her style so that it would no longer be applicable. I think who is in charge of labels for musicians must be aware of this because she is normally just referred to as having " an eclectic musical style."

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So that'll do it for today (June 13th)'s events in history that were important according to me! Hope you learned something!