On April 20, 1871, the U.S. Congress passed the Third Force Act, commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, granting President Ulysses S. Grant the authority to declare martial law and use military force to crush the KKK.
Grant signed the Act the following day.
On April 19, 1975, President Gerald Ford was accompanied by Senator Ted Kennedy and his niece Caroline in Lexington, Massachusetts, to commemorate the bicentennial of the first battle of the Revolutionary War.
Reflecting on the start of the war years later, John Adams wrote, “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.”
On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution started with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. Known as the “shot heard ‘round the world,” the battle commenced the eight-year struggle for American independence from British rule.
The vote was a major victory for the administration, with Carter saying it represented a “new era in the relationship of the United States, not merely with Panama but with all the nations of the Hemisphere.”
On April 18, 1978, President Jimmy Carter was photographed reclined in the Oval Office after the Senate ratified the Panama Canal Treaties.
“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
— Edward Murrow
On April 17, 1790, Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia at the age of 84.
Three years earlier, as he left the Constitutional Convention, he was asked whether the framers had designed a monarchy or a republic. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
On April 16, 1962, Walter Cronkite became anchor of the CBS Evening News.
He would hold the title for nearly 20 years and would become known as “the most trusted man in America.”
Booth, a staunch supporter of the Confederacy and opponent of the abolition of slavery, had tracked Lincoln’s movements in the weeks before he carried out the assassination.
On April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln died one day after being shot by John Wilkes Booth.
Lincoln’s death came just after the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox and before the newly-reelected president could carry out his vision for Reconstruction in the South.
On April 14, 2014, The New Yorker published its now-famous magazine cover featuring a satirical illustration of President Barack Obama as a doctor serving congressional Republicans.
The publication came just after the first enrollment period ended for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
In April 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower and Dr. Jonas Salk appeared in the White House Rose Garden to celebrate the success of a new polio vaccine.
Just five days after the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox, on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.
Lincoln died the following morning.
The law, which became known as Romneycare, would later serve as the model for President Barack Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) program.
On April 12, 2006, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed a bill into law establishing the country’s first state-level universal health insurance program.
On April 12, 1983, Harold Washington was elected mayor of Chicago, becoming the first African American to lead America’s third-largest city.
During his eight-day imprisonment, the civil rights leader penned the now-famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” writing, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
On April 12, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama, for defying a court order against anti-segregation protests.
Just three hours after President Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Vice President Harry Truman took the oath of office at the White House, becoming the 33rd president of the United States.
Speaking to reporters that day, Truman said, “if you ever pray, pray for me now.”
On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt died at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat at the age of 63.
On April 11, 1928, Ethel Skakel Kennedy was born in Chicago.
In his remarks, Lincoln called for reconciliation, reconstruction of the South, and voting rights for African Americans, angering John Wilkes Booth, who was in the audience.
On April 11, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered what would be his final speech from a White House window celebrating the recent end of the Civil War.
On April 11, 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt was photographed for the final time in Warm Springs, Georgia.
He died the following day after serving 12 years as president.
In his remarks that day, just one week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Johnson declared, “fair housing for all—all human beings who live in this country—is now a part of the American way of life.”
On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law, barring discrimination regarding race, religion, or national origin in the sale, rental, or financing of housing.
Speaking on the 36th president’s legacy that day, Obama said that he “grasped like few others the power of government to bring about change.”
On April 10, 2014, President Barack Obama visited the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, where he viewed a replica of Johnson’s Oval Office.
On April 9, 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the American Civil War.