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Today marks the anniversary of Shirley Chisholm's election to Congress in 1968. Chisholm, a Democrat who represented New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983, was the first Black woman elected to Congress. In 1972, Chisholm became the first Black woman from a major political party to run for president.

Before her political career, Chisholm earned a BA from Brooklyn College and an MA from Columbia University in elementary education and became known as an expert on early childhood education. She worked as a nursery school teacher, a director of a nursery and a child care center, and an educational consultant. She also volunteered with organizations like the Bedford-Stuyvesant Political League and the League of Women Voters, which eventually led to her political career.

Chisholm first ran for the New York State Assembly, where she served from 1964 to 1968. When asked why she became involved in politics, she said, "The people wanted me." She then decided to run for Congress in 1968 with the slogan "unbought and unbossed," which accurately reflected her strong personality.  She won the congressional seat in an upset victory over Independent candidate James Farmer and Republican candidate Ralph Carrano.

Former Sen. Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts received the Congressional Gold Medal yesterday for his lifelong and historic service to the nation.

Brooke, who was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and served in the U.S. military, was the nation's first African-American senator elected by popular vote and the last Republican African-American senator. He was elected in 1966 and served for two terms until 1979. 

Brooke was a champion of civil rights, fighting for strong enforcement in the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which he co-authored with former Sen. Walter Mondale of Minnesota, and voting rights for the District of Columbia. For his commitment to civil rights, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights honored Brooke in 1978 with the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award, the civil rights community's highest honor.

The Congressional Gold Medal is, along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.  It was first awarded in 1776 to then-General George Washington and John Paul Jones.  It has since been awarded to a wide array of notable figures, including Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, and Jackie Robinson. 

Ninety-two years ago today, civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer was born in Ruleville, Mississippi.

Hamer joined the civil rights movement late in life and quickly became a major national figure.  In 1962, she was among the first to volunteer to register to vote in Indianola, Mississippi, having traveled to the town to register after hearing a sermon by Rev. James Bevel of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). That decision ultimately cost her the sharecropping job she had held for nearly 20 years.

On the bus ride there, she sang hymns to help group morale.  It worked – she was asked by SNCC to join more registration bus rides because of the encouraging effect she had on those around her. She went on to help organize a number of voter registration drives in Mississippi, including the "Freedom Ballot Campaign" mock election and the "Freedom Summer" initiative, both in 1963.

Though the Civil Rights Movement was a non-violent movement, African Americans' struggle for civil rights was frequently violent. Knowing this, Congress put a provision into the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to create a body within the Department of Justice to be a "peacemaker" when community tensions arise based on race, color, or national origin. 

The Community Relations Service (CRS) provides aid to state and local governments and public and private organizations that are in preventing and resolving racial and ethnic tensions.  By providing independent conciliation services free of charge, CRS serves as an impartial mediator, facilitating racial harmony among communities of all sizes as well as the government.  In order to protect the integrity of the service and the engaged parties, the Act mandated that CRS' work be confidential and without publicity.

CRS played a critical role over the last 45 years in helping to make desegregation efforts run more smoothly in communities across the country.  Since its establishment, CRS has worked on a wide range of cases across the country, from school desegregation and urban riots, to tensions between local college students and community law enforcement.  In 2008, following the Jena 6 incident, CRS created a "Noose Incident Response Team" to better monitor community tensions around these incidents.

Today marks the 89th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ratified in 1920, the amendment gave women the right to vote. Women had been gaining suffrage, or the right to vote, on a state-by-state basis throughout the early 20th century, but the amendment granted all U.S. women full voting rights.

The amendment's ratification was the culmination of the Women's Suffrage Movement. Women's suffrage was first proposed in 1848 by participants of the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention, which included Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott.

The movement picked up steam when Alice Paul, president of the National Women's Party, lead eight thousand women in picketing the White House the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration in 1913. Women's active participation in the war effort during World War I also helped the movement gain support.