January 10, 1959 (Saturday)
- The U.S. District Court in Atlanta ordered the University System of Georgia to admit qualified African-Americans in its segregated colleges, striking down a requirement that at least two college alumni had to sign for a student to enroll. Meanwhile the federal court in Little Rock ordered the school board to integrate and reopen the Arkansas city's high schools, which had been closed for four months.
- Born: Mark Martin, American NASCAR driver; in Batesville, Arkansas, and Rigoberta Menchú, Guatemalan writer, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in Chimel
Read more about this topic: January 1959
Famous quotes containing the word january:
“Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days—whatever there may be for the dust—the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which, after a lingering disease of many months sank into a lethargy, and expired, January 22d, 1821, A.D. leaving a successor inconsolable for the very loss which occasioned its existence.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)