Jane Helt Sumney (born 1833)

In 1833, in the year that Jane Helt Sumney was born, on March 4th, Andrew Jackson was sworn in for a second term as President of the United States. Jackson had won the election over Henry Clay of Kentucky - Jackson got 54.2 % of the popular vote.

In 1856, on February 18th, The American Party, also called the "Know-Nothings" because they were an anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant movement, assembled in Philadelphia to nominate their first Presidential candidate, former President Millard Fillmore. The party sought to keep the "purity" of elections by blocking "impure" foreigners.

In 1916, in June, the U.S. Congress authorized a plan to expand the armed forces over the next five years. Called the National Defense Act of 1916, the national law expanded the National Guard and Army (the Army added an aviation unit), created the Reserves, and gave the President expanded authority to federalize the National Guard. It also allowed the government to stockpile, in advance, materiel to be used in wartime.

In 1946, on July 4th, the Philippines gained independence from the United States. In 1964, Independence Day in the Philippines was moved from July 4th to June 12th at the insistence of nationalists and historians.

In 1964, in June, three young civil rights workers - Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner from New York City, and James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi - were kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi. Working with "Freedom Summer", they were registering African-Americans to vote in the Southern states. Their bodies were found two months later. Although it was discovered that the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office and the Philadelphia, Mississippi Police Department were involved, only 7 men were convicted and served less than six years.