On September 4, 1884, the United Kingdom ended its policy of shipping convicted prisoners to the colony of New South Wales. Learn more about the lives of convicts in New South Wales from the State Library.
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On September 4, 1957, Arkansas Governor Orville Faubus called out state National Guard troops to prevent federal court-ordered integration of black students into Central High School in Little Rock. President Eisenhower subsequently sent the US 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to enforce the ruling.
On September 3, 1939, World War II began for the Allies when the United Kingdom, France, New Zealand, and Australia declared war on Germany after it invaded Poland. Learn more about the Second World War from the History Channel.
On September 3, 1838, abolitionist and human rights advocate Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery in Baltimore by posing as a free sailor and boarding a train bound for Philadelphia. Read Douglass’ 1881 tract My Escape from Slavery.
On September 2, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convicted the former mayor of Taba, Jean-Paul Akayesu, on nine counts of crimes against humanity and genocide for his role in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. A month later, Akayesu was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes. Read ICTR documents from the trial [...]
On September 2, 1963, then-Alabama Governor George Wallace surrounded the Tuskegee High School with Alabama National Guard troops in an effort to prevent its integration pursuant to a federal court order in Lee vs. Macon County. In response, President John F. Kennedy federalized the Guard and sent it back to its barracks.
On September 1, 1951, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States signed ANZUS, a mutual defense accord similar to NATO in Europe. The alliance between the US and New Zealand, however, has been suspended since 1985, after the institution of New Zealand’s nuclear-free zone prohibited US nuclear warships from entering New Zealand’s ports.
On September 1, 1942, a federal judge in Sacramento, California, US, upheld the wartime detention of Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals during World War II. Learn more about Japanese-American internment.
On August 31, 1980, the communist government of Poland and labor leaders settled the Gdansk Agreement. The accord settled a summer of labor strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. With the Agreement, Poland became the first communist country to allow the creation of an independent labor union, which was called Solidarity. Solidarity then [...]
On August 31, 1965, President Johnson signed a law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense subject to a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine. In response to the law and in protest of the war in Vietnam, the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first public [...]
