Ralph Norton Brown (1920 - 2010)

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1920 - In the year that Ralph Norton Brown was born, the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote, passed both Houses of Congress and was sent to the States to ratify. In August, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Amendment and it became law eight days later. Mississippi ratified it in 1984.

1943 - Ralph was 23 years old when on June 20th through June 22nd, the Detroit Race Riot erupted at Belle Isle Park. The rioting spread throughout the city (made worse by false rumors of attacks on blacks and whites) and resulted in the deployment of 6,000 Federal troops. 34 people were killed, (25 of them black) - mostly by white police or National Guardsmen, 433 were wounded (75 percent of them black) and an estimated $2 million of property was destroyed. The same summer, there were riots in Beaumont, Texas and Harlem, New York.

1958 - He was 38 years old when on January 31st, Explorer I, the United States' answer to Sputnik I (and 2,) was launched. America had entered the Space Race. The first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen radiation belt, it remained in orbit until 1970.

1960 - By the time he was 40 years old, on May 1st, an American CIA U-2 spy plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over the Soviet Union. Powers ejected and survived but was captured. The U.S. claimed that the U-2 was a "weather plane" but Powers was convicted in the Soviet Union of espionage. He was released in 1962 after 1 year, 9 months and 10 days in prison.

1998 - Ralph was 78 years old when on December 19th, the House of Representatives initiated impeachment charges against U.S. President Bill Clinton. He was subsequently acquitted of these charges by the Senate on February 12th.

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