ON THIS DAY AUGUST 26 2023

This Day in History: August 26

Featured Event

2015






American civil rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson—an organizer of the Selma March (1965), which was a landmark event in the civil rights movement that led directly to the passage of the Voting Rights Act—died at age 104.


Selma March
United States history





Selma March, also called Selma to Montgomery March, political march from Selma, Alabama, to the state’s capital, Montgomery, that occurred March 21–25, 1965. Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the march was the culminating event of several tumultuous weeks during which demonstrators twice attempted to march but were stopped, once violently, by local police. As many as 25,000 people participated in the roughly 50-mile (80-km) march. Together, these events became a landmark in the American civil rights movement and directly led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.


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Featured Biography

Melissa McCarthy
American actress




Melissa McCarthy, in full Melissa Ann McCarthy, (born August 26, 1970, Plainfield, Illinois, U.S.), American actress whose most notable roles highlighted her gift for physical comedy and raunchy one-liners.
McCarthy was brought up on an Illinois farm. After she graduated from high school, she began performing as a stand-up comic in New York City at such notable clubs as Stand Up New York and the Improv. She honed her acting skills at the Actors Studio and appeared in a number of stage productions before moving in the late 1990s to Los Angeles, where she performed (1997–2010) with the Groundlings improv troupe.


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