21 st. March. The vernal equinox (the first day of Spring)

1960 Police in Sharpeville, South Africa, fired into a crowd of demonstrators.

1965 The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a civil rights march from Selma, Alabama. (See January 15th entry.)

It can be snowing or freezing but the calendar is very clear about it; today, give or take a few hours for a vagrant vernal equinox, is the beginning of Spring. It colors our outlook; it makes us generally a bit more optimistic; it has us looking for the first buds and blossoms. Maybe the calendar is smarter than we are. Maybe the idea of Spring in our hearts is simply good medicine after a long hard winter—or a short dull winter, for that matter.

On this day in 1965, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, demanding equal rights for African-American citizens. It was neither the first nor the last march, nor the most unusual instance of this remarkable man’s leadership. This peaceful demonstration had a better outcome than another civil rights march held on this day in 1960. In Sharpeville, South Africa, police fired into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, killing sixty-nine people and wounding hundreds of others.