1925 was a very busy year ...

I find it interesting to learn what key events took place one hundred years ago. It seems 1925 was a particularly busy year with a number of key events that would influence the next 100 years spiritually, physically, emotionally, intellectually and socially.

• The Scopes Trial: The Scopes "Monkey Trial" took place over the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryant were the attorneys representing the opposing sides.

• The dedication of Mount Rushmore: Mount Rushmore National Memorial was dedicated in South Dakota.The creation of Mount Rushmore is a story of struggle and desecration. The Black Hills are sacred to the Lakota, the occupants of the area when white settlers arrived. The location of the Lakota origin story is in the Black Hills. Sacred ceremonial sites such as the peak where elders greet the first lightning of the season, the location of hanblechya inside the rock towers of Bear Butte or the location where the pejuta wahpahkta (medicine stones) appear is in these hills. A great spiritual wound was realized when the dominant culture took this land and desecrated it.

• The publication of Mein Kampf: Adolf Hitler released his manifesto, Mein Kampf.

• The declaration of Benito Mussolini as dictator: Benito Mussolini, the Italian fascist leader, declared himself dictator. The Fascists and their moderate allies set about dismantling Italy's democratic institutions. He was proclaimed dictator for a year and increasingly merged his party and its paramilitary wing with the state and the official military. He also undertook a program of privatizations and anti-union legislation in order to assure industrialists and aristocrats that fascism would protect them from socialism.

• The first television pictures: John Logie Baird transmitted the first television pictures in London.

• The first march of the Ku Klux Klan: The first march of the Ku Klux Klan took place in Washington, D.C. The 1920s were the gilded age for the Klan, as many successful and powerful people were either openly Klansmen or sympathetic to the cause. The organization boasted a membership of 4 million nationwide, including prominent community leaders from coast to coast. Indeed, during this period, Klan membership was not something many members chose to keep secret. As historian Ibram X. Kendi has noted, “You had many members of the KKK who were politicians – senators, congressmen, statehouse representatives and that only encouraged members to appear publicly without their hoods.”

• The Syrian Federation is officially dissolved, the State of Aleppo and the State of Damascus having been replaced by the State of Syria.