Five Things to Know Today, March 21

Welcome to Wednesday. Here are some things to know today.

The weather: It'll be partly sunny with a high of 81 degrees, the National Weather Service says, although we may have some rain between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.; the chance is 20 percent.

Gas prices: Little changed here. The lowest in Lilburn reported to www.georgiagasprices.com was $3.66 (at Kroger, 4155 Lawrenceville Hwy), and the highest was $3.76 (at Citgo, 4967 Lawrenceville Hwy).

How they overcame: Civil rights marchers started their third and finally successful walk from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., on this day in 1965. The first effort to leave Selma resulted in the infamous “Bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965, when the protestors were attacked by police and pushed back into Selma. They returned two days later for a symbolic march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Then a federal judge granted them protection and thousands set off on March 21 for the state capitol, where they arrived four days later. The marches helped raise support for the Voting Rights Act, which became law that same year.  

Connections: Think the Civil War generation is impossibly far back in time? At least one officer of that time was a political topic for the very top of our national government as late as 1999. Henry Ossian Flipper was born in a slave family in Thomasville, Ga., in 1856. His father bought the family’s freedom in 1865 and moved to Atlanta. Flipper went to university there, then won an appointment to West Point. He became the first African-American to graduate, but his Army career was cut short by a false accusation and dishonorable discharge. He went on to a successful business and government career and died in 1940. His heirs continued his fight to have his dishonorable discharge tossed out, and in 1976 the Army granted him an honorable discharge. Going further, President Bill Clinton in 1999 granted Flipper a full pardon.

Poems: It's World Poetry Day. Have a poem you'd like to see published? Send it to Lilburn Patch!

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