This Week In Alabama History
Dixie Bibb Graves was state's first female U.S. senator in '37
Ala. Dept. of Archives & History
August 17, 1870: Spanish-American War hero Richmond Pearson Hobson is born in Greensboro. Hobson later represented Alabama in the U.S. Congress and was active in the prohibition movement. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1933 for heroism during the Spanish-American War and became a Rear Admiral in 1934. Hobson died in 1937.
August 17, 1909: With a unanimous vote by the Legislature, Alabama becomes the first state to ratify the 16th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. When the amendment went into effect on Feb. 25, 1913, it gave Congress the power to collect income taxes.
August 20, 1937:Dixie Bibb Graves takes her seat in the U.S. Senate to become Alabama's first female senator. Only the fourth woman to serve as a U.S. senator, Graves had been appointed by her husband, Gov. Bibb Graves, to succeed Hugo Black, who had been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
August 20, 1965: Civil rights worker Jonathan Daniels, a white Episcopal seminary student from New Hampshire, is shot and killed in Lowndes County. Special deputy sheriff Tom Coleman, an ardent segregationist, admitted to the shooting, but was acquitted by an all-white jury six weeks later.
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