Today in History -- 11/11/13 1885: In an interview Ohio Governor George Hoadley defended issuing a Thanksgiving Proclamation that did not mention God by declaring that “the founders of this Government wanted it free for the Jews and the Gentile, the infidel and the worshiper… I have no right to command the people of this State to worship God on a certain day.” 1900: Birthdate of Caroline Klein Simon, a pioneering attorney, communal worker, and state official. After graduating from law school in 1925, Simon was unable to find a law firm that would hire her. She turned to volunteering, working as an unpaid clerk at a law office and immersing herself in political work with many of New York Citys secular and Jewish womens organizations. She involved herself particularly in issues of crime prevention and correction. In 1935, Simon became executive director of the New York State Council of Jewish Women. Throughout her long and active life, Simon worked to change a number of discriminatory laws in her community. In the 1930s, Simon led a campaign to allow women to serve on juries in New York. In the 1940s, she helped to draft the nations first state law on job bias based on religion, race, or nationality, and was a founding member of the State Commission Against Discrimination. In 1957, Simon became the first woman to be nominated for city-wide office in New York City. Although she lost that election for president of the New York City Council, Governor Nelson Rockefeller named her New York Secretary of State in 1959. She held that position for four years. In 1958 Simon also served as the legal advisor to the American delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. In the 1960s, she sat on the New York Court of Claims. Simon remained active in legal work into her nineties. 1908: Birthdate of Harry Blackmun, who replaced Abe Fortas as U.S. Supreme Court Justice. It would not be until 1993 that another Jew would successful to a seat on the Supreme Court. 1913: At the Montefiore Home, opening of the largest Jewish hospital in the world, built at a cost of nearly $2,000,000. 1925: In the Bronx, Pauline and Milton Redlich gave birth to Norman Redlich, a quiet luminary of the New York legal community who pioneered the pro bono defense of indigent death row inmates and who, as a staff member of the Warren Commission, helped develop the so-called single-bullet theory to explain how President John F. Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman. 1952: The Jerusalem Post reported from Rehovot that more than 250,000 persons filed past the bier carrying the body of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of the State of Israel, statesman and scientist. Sirens brought the nation to a standstill at 2:30 p.m. A few hundred persons were privileged to be present during the burial ceremony in his garden, while some 30,000 others gathered on nearby hilltops. Messages of condolence poured from all over the world. US President-elect Dwight Eisenhower sent a cable to the Israeli Ambassador, Abba Eban, and asked him to forward it to Mrs. Vera Weizmann.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 03:13:54 +0000