September 27 in History: Gwendolyn Brooks makes Pulitzer Prize history, new HIV awareness day, “Silent Spring” is released, more

1919: The Democratic National Committee votes to allow female members, just a few months after the passage of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote, but a few months before the Amendment was applied in practice.

1938: The Nazi regime in Germany bans Jewish lawyers from practicing law, five years after taking power.

1950: Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize, receiving the honor for her second book of poetry, “Annie Allen.”

1961: Rachel Carson publishes “Silent Spring,” the book about the dangers of pesticide use that eventually leads to the banning of DDT.

1979:  The U.S. Congress approves the U.S. Department of Education, which had been relegated to a smaller “office” since its original founding in 1867.

1990: The Motion Picture Association of America creates the new NC-17 (no children under 17) rating to replace the infamous X-rating.

2008: The National Association of People with AIDS (NAPWA), which is the country’s oldest HIV advocacy organization, creates the  National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NGMHAAD) “to recognize the disproportionate impact of the epidemic on gay men,” who along with bisexual men account for about 67 percent of HIV infections.

2018: India’s Supreme Court declares its anti-adultery law, Section 497, unconstitutional because it only allowed the complainant to be a man whose wife had sex with another man, infringing on the rights of women. Though declared unconstitutional, the law remains a grounds for requesting divorce in India.

2024: The Israeli Army assassinates Hasran Nasallah, who had led Hezbollah for 30 years. The killing was largely in retaliation for the October 7 Massacre in 2023, after which Hezbollah had begun bombing Israel in solidarity with Hamas, the terrorist group that conducted the massacre.