It was fifty years ago this week that President Lyndon Johnson signed the voting rights bill into law in a ceremony in the President's Room at the Capitol building. He said the Justice Department would move quickly to enforce the new law by filing a lawsuit later in the day. The lawsuit would challenge the constitutionality of poll taxes in Mississippi. As the president was signing the bill, over 300 blacks lined up and registered to vote in Americus, Georgia. The registration process was watched by federal officials and aided by the first black clerks hired by the county Board of Registers in "modern times."

In Springfield, the police commissioners voted unanimously to defer hearings on police brutality complaints pending a related case in District Court. The complaints of police brutality were filed against seven policemen stemming from a July 16-17 incident at the Octagon Lounge at 146 Rifle St. in Springfield.

Also this week in 1965, the Massachusetts House killed a proposal that would have allowed physicians and pharmacists to prescribe birth control devices and disseminate birth control information to anyone over 21 years of age.

These are some of the headlines you'll see from Page 1 of The Republican and its predecessors over the past fifty years for the week of August 2 - August 8. Each week I'll put together a slideshow of Page 1 images from selected years over the course of that week. We're starting with a look back at one, five, thirty, forty and fifty years ago, with Page 1s from each day of the week for those years.

The slideshow for August 2 - August 8 is embedded at the top of this article.

We'll also find some humor printed out on page one over the years. In 1965 'Dennis The Menace' could be found on the bottom of page one six days a week. Ten years later he was still out on page one under the heading of 'DENNIS.'

Five years ago this week page one carried a profile of Albano's market on East Columbus Avenue in Springfield and their homemade Italian ice.

A year ago this week Mark G. Mastroianni was sworn in as U.S. District court judge, and the Univeristy of Massachusetts-Amherst was named a top school for best campus food by The Princeton Review. This was the second year in a row that UMass placed in the top three coming in second place after Virginia Tech this year and in third place the previous year.

And finally this week in 1975, Western Massachusetts was stuck in a heat wave. Marion Armfield of Agawam took advantage of the 100 plus degree temperatures to fry an egg on the pavement at David's Sandwich Shoppe where she was an employee. With a spatula in hand, she had her egg cooked, sunny side up, in ten minutes.

You'll find with looking through the slideshow, that while many stories come and go, many of the issues and topics that affected lives in the past, continue to have an impact on our lives today.

Copies of these and other stories can be found in the online archives. Links to the archives are at the bottom of the page at www.masslive.com/republican

The historic archive includes stories prior to 1989, and the Newsbank archive covers 1988 through the present day.

