The Rosa Parks Act [AL Legislature] News
The Rosa Parks Act [AL Legislature]

An Act,. Relating to pardons; to provide that a person convicted of violating a state law or municipal ordinance whose purpose was to maintain or enforce racial segregation or discrimination would be granted a pardon of the conviction upon application, Alabama Legislature, passed April 18, 2006 ["The Rosa Parks Act", HB 592, as amended; a bill that would pardon Rosa Parks, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists convicted of violating Jim Crow laws in the state]. Read the full text of the legislation. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.