Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 March 8b

Poll tax repeal poster from Texas, c. 1918

The women's poll tax repeal movement in the United States was the attempt, predominantly led by women, to secure the abolition of poll taxes as a prerequisite for voting in the Southern states. After women were granted the right to vote in 1920, some Southern states introduced or expanded poll tax statutes in order to disenfranchise them. In response, women began organizing to repeal these laws (poster pictured), initially to little effect. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, both black and white women pressed at state and national levels for the abolition of these laws, and also filed lawsuits. Louisiana abandoned its poll tax law in 1932, and the number of women voters increased by 77 percent. Florida, Tennessee and Arkansas followed. In 1964, the Twenty-fourth Amendment was passed, prohibiting poll taxes as a barrier to voting in federal elections. The Supreme Court finally ended the struggle after four decades in its ruling on Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966. (Full article...)

Krishna Yadav receiving the Nari Shakti Puraskar

• ... that Krishna Yadav's journey from finding jobs for her family growing vegetables in Delhi to creating jobs for others won her an award (pictured) on International Women's Day?
• ... that Chichester & Selsey Ladies F.C. broke away from Chichester City for an undisclosed reason but retained their colours and football league position?
• ... that YaYa Gosselin booked her first job a month after signing with an agent at the age of five?
• ... that for 300 years a Kathakali dancer had to be a high-caste man until the Tripunithura Kathakali Kendram Ladies Troupe was formed in 1975?
• ... that Andréa Guiot appeared internationally in French soprano roles such as Mireille, Marguerite, Manon, and Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen, which she recorded alongside Maria Callas in the title role?
• ... that after being told that women could not compete in athletics at the 1924 Summer Olympics, the FSFSF set up their own Women's Olympiad?
• ... that Pat Lundvall was the first female chair of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, but garnered controversy for some of her decisions relating to mixed martial arts?
• ... that Susan B. Anthony took British citizenship to avoid testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee and later spent nine years trying to repatriate?

Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic

• In Zamfara, Nigeria, 279 girls who had been kidnapped from a secondary school by armed bandits are released.
• In
  the men's singles at the Australian Open
  (both winners pictured).
• Porfirije is enthroned as the 46th Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
• NASA's Perseverance rover, carrying the Ingenuity helicopter, successfully lands on Mars.

March 8: International Women's Day; National Heroes and Benefactors Day in Belize (2021); Aurat March in Pakistan; Commonwealth Day in the Commonwealth of Nations (2021)

Maya ruins at Copán

• 1576 – A Spanish colonial officer wrote a letter to King Philip II containing the first mention of the Maya ruins of Copán (pictured) in present-day Honduras.
• 1658 – After a devastating defeat in the Second Northern War, King Frederick III of Denmark–Norway was forced to give up nearly half his Danish territory to Sweden to save the remainder.
• 1910 – French aviator Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's licence.
• 1924 – Three violent explosions at a coal mine near Castle Gate, Utah, killed all 171 miners working there.
• 1966 – Nelson's Pillar, a large granite pillar topped by a statue of Lord Nelson in Dublin, Ireland, was severely damaged by a bomb.