Back 'n Da Dayz

Former social worker Alice J. Stebbins Wells joined the L.A. Police Department in 1910, becoming the first policewoman in the U.S. with powers of arrest. Because of Wells’s efforts, 17 other US police departments were employing women by 1916.

Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in

New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. killed thousands of people. These attacks

were carried by jetliners that were high-jacked and crashed into the

buildings.

President George Bush issued a formal public apology to Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps by the US government during World War II (1941-1945). Many Japanese Americans were put in the camps because the US was at war with Japan and was biased against people of Japanese ancestry.

In 1888, a bill banning the immigration of working class-Chinese for twenty years was approved by congress. The ban did not include, however, Chinese officials, students, merchants or travelers.

In an ongoing battle between the US Cavalry and the Nez Perce, who refused to be removed to a reservation in Idaho, the Nez Perce held off the cavalry at Canyon Creek in Montana in 1877.

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, an African American church in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed in 1963. Four teenage girls were killed in the explosion.

This was one of the most cold-blooded acts of violence against African Americans during the early years of the civil rights movement.

Father Miguel Hildalgo y Costillo of Dolores, Mexico, met with the townspeople of Dolores to demand that Mexican land be returned to the people of Mexico and taken away from Spain, in 1810.

This date is celebrated as Independence Day in Mexico.

Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew for "beginning of the year") is the Jewish New Year and is celebra-ted on the first and second days of the Jewish month of Tishri (falling in September or October) by Orthodox and Conservative Jews and on the first day alone by Reform Jews. It begins the observance of the Ten

Penitential Days, a period ending with Yom Kippur that is the most solemn of the Jewish calendar. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are known as the High Holy Days.

On this day in 1987, a bill (HR442) passed in the US House of Representa-tives. This bill outlined a proposal for restitution and apology to those Jap-nese inmates of intern-ment camps of the World

War II era who were still alive. Under the terms of the bill, each individual who was imprisoned under Executive Order 9066 was to receive payment of $20,000.

Former men’s tennis champion, Bobby Riggs, challenged women’s champion, Billie Jean King, to what was billed as the “Match of the Century” in Houston in 1973. Riggs, who was labeled as a

“male chauvinist pig,” had great disdain for women’s tennis players and believed women could not play as well as men. King beat him in three straight sets: 6-4, 6-3, and 6-3.

In 1989, army general Colin Powell was confirmed by the Senate as chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff. With this appointment, General Powell became the highest-ranking African American in the military.

A Japanese fisherman named Aikahi Kubo-yama died on this day in 1954. Kuboyama became the world’s first H-bomb fatality as a result of being

dusted by radioactive debris during a US H-bomb explosion that took place on March 1st of that year.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered troops to Little Rock. Arkansas, in

1957 to enforce court-ordered desegregation of public schools. The act

followed the use of troops by Governor Faubus earlier

in the month to prevent school desegregation.

On this day in 1656, the first jury composed entirely of women was ordered by the General Provincial Court in Patuextent, Maryland. The court required an all-woman jury to hear the

case of Judith Catchpole, who was on trial for the murder of her child. The jury found Catchpole not guilty of the crime.

In 1957 nine African American children successfully integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, under escort from federal troops. This would not have been

Possible without the help of Daisy Bates, a state NAACP official and concerned citizen.

On this day in 1781, troops under the command of General George Washington began a siege of Yorktown. This battle, which resulted in the surrender of British General Cornwallis, ended the Revolutionary War.

The attempted enrollment of African American student James Meredith at the University of Mississippi in 1962 led to rioting among a group of angry whites. More than 200 people were arrested and another two

were killed in the ruckus that quickly became dubbed “the Battle of Ole Miss.”

On this day, seven Chero-kee chiefs and headmen entered into an alliance called “The Articles of A-agreement” with Lords Com-missioners of the British Court in London in 1730. The agreement

was a result of negotiations in which Sir Alexander Cummings convinced the Cherokee to accept Montoy as Emperor of Nequese (what is today Georgia)