Week of Events
Virginia enacted the Statute for Religious Freedom
On this day in 1786, Virginia enacted the Statute for Religious Freedom. The statute disestablished the Church of England as Virginia’s official state-supported religion and implemented freedom of worship. 🙏 ✝️ 🙏 ☪️ 🙏 ✡️ 🙏 Authored by Thomas Jefferson, the statute was an important precursor to the protection of religious liberty and separation of […]
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!
Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Did you know? It took over 15 years for Martin Luther King Jr. Day to come into being. In the year after King’s death, Congressman John Conyers Jr. introduced legislation to create the federal holiday. Three years later, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference also presented Congress with a petition […]
On this day in 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts
On this day in 1809, American suspense and horror writer Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe’s short stories and poems, including such classics as “The Raven”, “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado”, are still widely read and admired for their macabre themes and mysterious story-telling. Did you know? Poe was […]
Florida Teacher Seminar: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement
Florida teachers gathered virtually with JMC faculty partners Peter Myers (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) and Lee Trepanier (Samford University) for an in-depth seminar on Martin Luther King Jr.'s political thought and the development of Civil Rights protections in the United States through Constitutional amendments, Supreme Court rulings, and federal legislation. Afterwards, JMC's Teacher Education Fellow, Dr. Danton Kostandarithes, led a classroom application […]
National Hot Sauce Day!
It’s National Hot Sauce Day! 🌶🌶🌶 Did you know that hot sauce has deep American roots? Chilis were domesticated in present-day Mexico around 5000 B.C. The Aztecs and Mayans combined chili peppers with water to make an early hot sauce. With increased trade and colonialism in the 1500s, chilis soon spread across the world. Though […]