Emily Wilding Davison was born on October 11th 1872. She died on June 8th 1913. Emily Wilding Davison is one of the most famous of the Suffragettes It was Emily Wilding Davison who threw herself under the king’s horse at the Derby Of 1913 making her mark in history. As a young lady she had defied the odds a male dominated society imposed on women, by graduating with a BA at London University and after this she gained a first class honours degree at Oxford University. Emmeline Pankhurst believed that it was her experiences in prison that brought Emily Davison to the conclusion that only the ultimate sacrifice would bring any success to the Suffragettes. Though there had been some movement in the Houses of Parliament with regards to women’s rights, some historians argue that Emily’s act at the Derby so horrified those in charge that they were even more against the right to vote for women. They argued that Emily was a highly educated person. If a highly educated woman was willing to do what she did, what could society expect of less educated women? Suffragettes were concerned at the extreme ideas and plans of Emily Davison. Some felt that she was becoming too extreme in her actions and bringing the movement into disrepute.
Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, on January 29, 1737. Tom turned out to be a poor student, despite his father's best hopes, and flunked out at age 12. An attempt to follow in his father's footsteps at the corset shop also failed eventually Like many young men of the age, Tom wanted adventure. He found it at age 19, when he went to sea. After a few years at sea he soon realised he that travelling wasn't his cup of tea, the returned to England and became a tax officer. In that time he got fired twice, but he began to write The Case of the Officers of Excise. He met Benjamin Franklin, 2 years later, a famous publisher who helped him to get out of America and to Philadelphia. His first writing was “African Slavery In America” , a condemnation of slavery. Paine published a defence, titled “The Rights of Man”. This paper named Thomas Paine as an outlaw and an order that he was arrested. Paine escaped England and went to France, to join the Revolution. When King Louis XVI was killed, Paine found himself on the wrong end of public opinion again when he didn't approve of the killing. He was thrown in prison. The year was 1793, and Thomas Paine was in prison, perhaps on a list of people to be executed. He was writing again, this time the beginning of another master work, The Age of Reason. He was freed in 1794 after James Monroe the U.S. Minister to France, used all his influence on the Revolutionary government. Paine, however, chose to remain in France. He survived further threatening situations and stayed in France until 1802, when he accepted an invitation from then-President Thomas Jefferson to return to America. Paine died alone in New York City on June 8, 1809.
King was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was a Baptist minister, his mother a school teacher. He entered Morehouse College in 1944 and then went to Crozer Religious Seminary to undertake postgraduate study, receiving his doctorate in 1955. Returning to the South to become pastor of a Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, King first achieved national renown when he helped mobilise the black boycott of the Montgomery bus system in 1955. This was organised after Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man - in the segregated south, black people could only sit at the back of the bus. In 1957 King was active in the organisation of the Southern Leadership Christian Conference (SCLC), formed to co-ordinate protests against discrimination. He advocated non-violent direct action based on the methods of Gandhi, who led protests against British rule in India culminating in India's independence in 1947. In 1963, King led mass protests against discriminatory practices in Birmingham, Alabama where the white population were violently resisting desegregation. The city was dubbed 'Bombingham' as attacks against civil rights protesters increased, and King was arrested and jailed for his part in the protests. After his release, King participated in the enormous civil rights march on Washington in August 1963, and delivered his famous 'I have a dream' speech. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1965, he led a campaign to register blacks to vote. The same year the US Congress passed the Voting Rights Act outlawing the discriminatory practices that had barred blacks from voting in the south.As the civil rights movement became increasingly radicalised, King found that his message of peaceful protest was not shared by many in the younger generation. King began to protest against the Vietnam war and poverty levels in the US. He was assassinated on 4 April 1968 during a visit to Memphis, Tennessee.
Fifty years ago on January 30, 1948, India's "Father of the Nation", Mahatma Gandhi, was assassinated. Gandhi, one of the world's most famous pacifists, was killed by a fellow Hindu. He was born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on October 2, 1869, into a family of merchants. Breaking with caste tradition, he went to England to study law when he was 19. His fellow students in London shunned him because he was an Indian. It what he read Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience", which inspired his principle of non-violence. He returned to India in 1891. But two years later he left again, this time for South Africa where he was to stay for 20 years. He was the country's first "coloured" lawyer to be admitted to the bar. Deeply troubled by the country's racism towards Indians, he founded the Natal Indian Congress to agitate for Indian rights in 1894. India finally won independence in 1947. But for Mahatma Gandhi, triumph was tempered with disappointment over the violent partitioning of the country into India and Pakistan. But the alternative to partition was thought to be civil war between Hindus and Muslims, and so at the last minute Gandhi urged the Congress Party to accept partition. When he saw the extent of the bloodshed, Mahatma Gandhi again turned to non-violent protest. He went on a hunger strike, saying he would not eat until the violence stopped and India gave back the 550 million rupees (about £40m) that it was holding from Pakistan. But his efforts to achieve reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims eventually brought him death. He was assassinated by a fellow Hindu, Nathuram Godse, who felt that Gandhi had betrayed the Hindu cause. Mahatma Gandhi, aged 78, was on the way to a prayer meeting, when he was shot three times in the chest and died on January 30, 1948.
