“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who
profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are
men who want crops without plowing up the ground;
they want rain without thunder and lightning.”
– Frederick Douglass, 1857 speech
____________________________________________________________
SEPTEMBER is:
National Hispanic Heritage Month
National Hunger Action Month
International Speak Out Month
____________________________________________________________
SEPTEMBER 12th is:
Chocolate Milkshake Day
Day of Encouragement: September 10, 2007: launched by The Encouragement Foundation in Arkansas, and proclaimed by the Government of Arkansas as a State Day
International Police Woman Day: September 10, 2002 – established by the International Association of Women Police to honor IAWP members
____________________________________________________________
Cape Verde Islands – National Day
Mexico – St. Patrick’s Battallion Commemoration
Russia – Day of Conception (9 months before Vladimir Lenin’s birth)
____________________________________________________________
490 BC (traditional) – Accepted date for the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians, and their Plataean allies, defeat the first Persian force to invade Greece on the plains of Marathon. Legend has it that Phidippides, an Athenian soldier who was the fastest runner, was chosen to warn other Greek cities of the Persian invasion, and though he ran a much longer distance, it was an unnamed soldier who ran the first ‘marathon’ after the battle to bring the news of victory to Athens whose run is remembered
362 – Sixteen Kingdoms: Jin Xiaowudi, age 10, succeeds his father Jin Jianwendi as Emperor of the Eastern Jin dynasty; he will reign from 372 to 396, the last Jim emperor to wield imperial power
379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I begins his reign as Ajaw of Tikal (379-404?); he was the son of Spearthrower Owl, a lord of Teotihuacan
1492 – Lorenzo de’ Medici born, Duke of Urbino, ruler of Florence (1516-1519), grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent
1590 – María de Zayas y Sotomayor born, Spanish author during Spain’s Golden Age; a pioneer of literary feminism; Novelas Amorosas y ejemplares (Amorous and Exemplary Novels), Desengaños Amorosos (Disenchantments of Love)
1725 – Guillaume Le Gentilborn, French astronomer who discovers several Messier objects, and is the firstto catalog the dark nebula Le Gentil 3 in the constellation Cygnus
1739 – Mary Bosanquet Fletcher born, Methodist preacher and philanthropist, who convinced John Wesley (leading figure in the founding of Methodism) to allow women to preach publicly. She and preacher Sarah Crosby were the most popular women preachers of their day, and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher was honored by Methodists as “Mother in Israel.” She was co-founder of The Cedars, an orphanage for girls, in the East London area of Leytonstone, where they were taught, manners, reading, writing, nursing and domestic skills, under strict discipline, as well as receiving intensive religious instruction. Rising costs and concerns about poor air quality caused her to move to the orphanage to Cross Hall, in Morley, West Yorkshire, thinking to save costs as the staff grew their food, but their lack of farming experience made this venture less successful than she hoped. She closed Cross Hall (after finding places for the orphans) in 1782 because she got married. She and her husband then worked together running a school. She began preaching more like the male preachers, by quoting biblical texts, continuing to preach and lead classes up to a few months before her death
1846 – Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning
1847 – Mexican-American War: The Battle of Chapultepec begins with the invading American army under General Winfield Scott besieging Mexican troops led by General Nicolás Bravo holding Chapultepec Castle
1848 – Switzerland approves its first Constitution, and becomes a Federal state
1853 – Celestia Parrish born, American educator and pioneering woman in psychology; overcame English-born psychologist E. B. Tichener’s prejudice against women to take a class from him and got him to correspond with her so she could better teach her students – later he submitted some of her papers to the America Journal of Psychology, after she founded the first psychology lab in the southern U.S. at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, VA; after teaching at the Georgia State Normal School, she became Georgia State Supervisor of Public Schools (1911-1918)
1857 – Manuel Espinosa Batista born, Columbian pharmacist who became a politician and campaigned for a separate Panamanian state, one of the founders of the Republic of Panama in 1903; also known for giving scholarships to poor boys who were promising students to study overseas, giving money to build new houses after the 1885 great fire in Colón, and making substantial donations to civic improvement projects
1859 – Florence Kelley born, American social and political reformer and activist, worked in favor of minimum wage, 8-hour workdays and against child labor and sweatshops
1866 – The first American burlesque show, The Black Crook, opens in New York City
1873 – The first practical typewriter goes on sale
1880 – H. L. Mencken born, American journalist, critic and acerbic wit
1892 – Alfred Knopf born, American publisher; founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
1894 – Dorothy M. Wrinch born, English mathematician and biochemical theorist; she read mathematics at Girton College, Cambridge, and became a research student there in 1917. One of the founding members of the Biotheoretical Gathering in the 1930s, an inter-disciplinary group studying how proteins work. Known for her studies attempting to deduce protein structure using mathematical principles; her initial theory turned out to be incorrect, but her experimental work with Irving Langmuir led to the principle of the Hydrophobic effect being the driving force for protein folding
1897 – Irène Joliot-Curie born, French physicist, co-recipient with Frédéric Joliot-Curie of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of new radioactive elements and artificial radioactivity. From 1946, she was the director of the Radium Institute in Paris, founded by her mother, Nobel laureate Marie Curie. She died of leukemia at age 58 because of her exposure to radiation
1897 – Tirah Campaign, Battle of Saragarhi: 21 Jat Sikhs of the 36th Sikh regiment of the British Indian Empire all die defending the North-West Frontier signaling post where they were stationed, against at least 10,000 Afghan tribesmen. Though the Afghans overwhelmed the Sikhs, the post was recaptured two days later by another British Indian contingent. Commemorated as the Regimental Battle Honours Day of the modern Sikh Regiment of the Indian Army
1898 – Ben Shahn born, American painter and graphic artist
1902 – Marya Zaturenska born in Ukraine, American author and lyric poet who won the 1938 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection, Cold Morning Sky; she came to the U.S. with her family when she was 8 years old; as a teenager, she worked in a clothing factory during the day while attending high school classes at night, and won scholarships to attend college; published eight volumes of poetry, edited six poetry anthologies, and published A History of American Poetry, 1900-1940
1910 – GustavMahler’s Symphony #8 premieres in Munich
1913 – Jesse Owens born, American athlete, winner of four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, much to the chagrin of the Nazi ‘Aryan Master Race’ promoters
1915 – Over 4,200 Armenian Genocide survivors on Musa Dagh mountain, holding out against Turkish troops trying to forcibly deport them, are rescued by the French Third Squadron, with assistance from British ships, and taken to safety in Port Said
1916 – Adelina and August Van Buren finish the first successful transcontinental motorcycle tour by two women, after leaving New York City on July 5, 1916
1917 – Han Suyin born as Rosalie Matilda Kuanghu Chou in China, Eurasian physician and author who wrote novels in English and French set in East and Southeast Asia, as well as seven memoirs which began with her family’s life from 1885, and her life from birth through 1991. She also wrote historical studies of China, and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Suyin is best known for her novel, A Many-Splendoured Thing.
1921 – Stanislaw Lem born, Polish science fiction writer, philosopher and satirist who trained as a physician; best-known for his novel Solaris; one of the most widely-read science fiction authors in the world, whose books have sold over 45 million copies
1922 – The Episcopal Church removes the word “Obey” from the bride’s wedding vows
1928 – Katharine Hepburn made her stage debut in the play “The Czarina”
1928 – Muriel “Mickie” Siebert born, the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, joining the 1, 365 male members of the exchange in 1967 (in 1870, sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were the first women to open a Wall Street brokerage firm.) Siebert was also head of one of the first women’s banks. She was appointed by New York Governor Carey as Superintendent of Banks for New York State (1977-1980); co-author of Changing the Rules: Adventures of a Wall Street Maverick
1933 – Leó Szilárd, Hungarian-born physicist, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction
1940 –The Lascaux cave paintings discovered in France, outstanding examples of Paleolithic period art, estimated to be 17,000 years old
1943 – Leonard Peltier born, an Anishabe and Dakota/Lakota Native American activist, member of the American Indian Movement (AIM); in a controversial 1977 trial, he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first-degree murder of two FBI agents during the 1975 Pine Ridge Shootout, which Amnesty International placed under the ‘Unfair Trials’ category in its Annual Report: USA 2o1o, and posted a petition supporting his application for clemency, which has been denied by U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barak Obama. On January 19, 2025, the last full day of his presidency, Joe Biden commuted Peltier's life sentence to home confinement beginning on February 18, 2025. Peltier was released on that date.
1944 – U.S. Army troops enter Germany for the first time during WWII
1950 – Marguerite Blais born, French Canadian Quebec Liberal politician, journalist, and media host: Member of the Quebec National Assembly for Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne (2007-2015); president of Conseil de la famille et de l’enfance (2003-2007); director general of the Fondation du maire de Montréal pour la jeunesse; advocate for the deaf community and persons with hearing disabilities
1954 – The TV show Lassie makes its television debut on CBS
1957 – Hans Zimmer born in Germany, American composer of film scores; 9 Academy Award nominations with one win for The Lion King
1959 – Bonanza premieres, the first TV series in color
1964 – Canyonlands, near Moab UT, becomes a National Park
1962 – President John F. Kennedy, at a speech at Rice University, reaffirms that the U.S. will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade
1966 – The Beatles receive a gold record for “Yellow Submarine”
1973 – Tarana Burke born, African-American civil rights activist who started the ‘Me Too’ movement in 2006 which was the inspiration for #MeToo after the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal launched dozens of revelations of cases of sexual abuse and harassment; Senior Director at Girls for Gender Equity; one of “the silence breakers” named collectively by TIME Magazine as its 2017 ‘Person’ of the Year
1973 – Kara David born, Filipina journalist and television host; news anchor of News to Go at GMA News TV, and host-writer for the i-Witness documentary series; founder and president of the Project Malasakit foundation, which aids people in remote communities and sends poor children to school; in 2010, she became the second person from the Philippines to win a Peabody Award, for her documentary Ambulansyang de Paa (Ambulance on Foot)
1974 – Caroline Aigle born, French aviator; the first woman fighter pilot in the French Air Force. In 1999, she was the first woman to receive the fighter pilot wings, and was assigned to the Mirage 2000-5 in the escadon 2/2 “Côte-d’Or” in 2000, and promoted to the rank of Commandant (similar to Major in the U.S Air Force) in 2005. She was among the top candidates to become an astronaut for the European Space Agency, but was diagnosed with cancer and died a month later, in 2007, at the age of 32. She was posthumously award the Médaille de l’Aéronautique (Aeronautics Medal)
1977 – South African anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko dies at age 30, while in police custody, which triggers an international outcry
1978 – U.N. General Assembly adopts a plan of action to promote and implement technical cooperation among developing countries
1980 – A Turkish coup d’état, led by Chief of the General Staff General Kenan Evren, overthrows the ineffective Grand National Assembly of Turkey, so factionalized that it wasn’t able to elect a President for six months prior to the coup
1981 – Jennifer Hudson born, African American singer and actress, known for her film debut in Dreamgirls, which won the 2007 Best Supporting Actress Oscar. In 2008, her mother, brother and nephew were killed by her sister’s estranged husband. The Hudson family started The Hudson-King Foundation for Families of Slain Victims, and she co-founded with her sister the Julian D. King Gift Foundation, named for her nephew, which provides Christmas presents and school supplies to families in need in the Chicago area
photo by Ray Tamarra -GCImages
1991 – Space shuttle Discovery launches an observatory to study the Earth’s ozone layer
1992 – Dr. Mae Jemison becomes first African-American woman in space. She is the payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Endeavor. Also onboard are Mission Specialist N. Jan Davis and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mark C. Lee. They are the first married couple to fly together in space, and Mamoru Mohri becomes the first Japanese person to fly into space
2000 – Dutch lawmakers give same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt children
2005 – Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael Brown resigns, three days after losing his onsite command of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts
2013 – The Washington Post reports that Syrian rebels have begun receiving ‘light weapons’ delivered by the CIA, while an op-ed in the New York Times written by Russian President Vladimir Putin urges America to “return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement” in dealing with Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile
2015 – Venezuelan director Lorenzo Vigas is awarded a Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival for Desde allá (From Afar)
2018 – The number of migrant children detained by the Trump Administration has risen sharply since 2017, reaching a record 12,800 in September 2018, The New York Times reports. There were 2,400 undocumented immigrant children in custody in May 2017. The Trump administration has cracked down on illegal immigration despite the court-ordered release of hundreds of children separated from their parents at the border in the administration’s effort to prevent undocumented families from entering the country. The increase has left federal shelters on the brink of exceeding capacity. The Times said the data indicated that the increase was due to a reduction in the number of children being released to relatives or sponsors, not to an increase in the number of migrant children entering the country
2019 – After the third Democratic Presidential Debate, women’s rights activists and several candidates for the Democratic nomination criticized the continued lack of questions about the threat to abortion rights, the gender pay gap, and two-paycheck family issues like paid parental leave and affordable childcare. California Senator Kamala Harris said, “... yet again, women’s access to reproductive health care is under full attack” and “should have been brought up last night – it wasn’t.” Former Texas Representative Beto O’Rourke also noted the absence, as well as Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Christina Reynolds of EMILY’s List, which is dedicated to electing Democratic women candidates who support abortion rights, said “We have moved beyond the point when it’s enough for a candidate to say they are pro-choice. Women deserve to hear from presidential candidates the specific ways in which they will protect Roe v. Wade and our rights. There are real differences in both the records and plans for these candidates and it’s time we discuss it more directly.” 57% of American say abortion should be legal at least in most cases, while 42% want abortion banned in all or most cases, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in May. Among Democrats, about 75% think abortion should be legal in all or most cases
2021 – In the UK, 665 general practitioners, nurses, and social, youth, and outreach workers signed a letter to the Home Secretary warning that the proposed “Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill” is “oppressive” and would force frontline professionals to betray the trust of vulnerable people and become complicit in surveillance. Signatories are “appalled” by the proposals, which they believe “directly conflict with our duties and will actively put people we work with in harm’s way … [T]his bill will hinder our ability as frontline workers to effectively support the people with whom we work by eroding relationships of trust and duties of confidentiality. Most importantly, it will expand the criminalisation, surveillance, and punishment of already overpoliced communities. A separate report specifically said the bill would put vulnerable young women at further risk of threat, more violence, abuse, and exploitation. The government wants to put a statutory duty on public agencies, such as healthcare and education providers, to reduce and prevent serious violence by disclosing information on service users. The bill also proposes to increase the sentence length for assaults on emergency workers from 12 months to two years, but a report by Agenda, the alliance for women and girls at risk, and the Alliance for Youth Justice said assaults on emergency workers already make up 17% of total offences leading to prison sentences for black young women aged 18-24, compared with 6% for their white counterparts. The experts also warned in their letter that the proposed serious violence reduction orders will give police an “individualised, suspicionless” stop-and-search power with minimal safeguards, with people likely to face “intrusive monitoring.” The report says young women coerced in relationships or experiencing criminal exploitation could face up to two years’ imprisonment because they “ought to have known” someone in their company was in possession of drugs or weapons. Pippa Goodfellow, director of the Alliance for Youth Justice, spoke of the additional problems faced because of Covid-19, and added, “It is vital that systems and services work together to meet these growing and emerging needs, whilst standing firmly against punitive measures that will criminalise those most in need of support,” A petition opposing the bill’s proposals was signed by almost 600,000 people, while more than 30,000 people wrote directly to the prime minister to object
____________________________________________________________
