March 22, 1959 (Sunday)
- In a televised address, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro announced that, effective immediately, he was outlawing all racial discrimination. Previously segregated clubs, parks and beaches were opened to Cuba's black residents by law.
- The Constitutional Assembly of Mauritania approved a democratic constitution for the African state, which would become independent of France in 1960. Provisions for a multiparty parliamentary system would last only five years, after which Governor Moktar Ould Daddah's Mauritanian People's Party became the only legal party.
- Born: Matthew Modine, American film actor, in Loma Linda, California
Read more about this topic: March 1959
Famous quotes containing the word march:
“At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)