Check out This Day in History for Sept. 28, MainStream’s daily look at significant progressive, intersectional historical events.
1829: One of the earliest appeals to abolish slavery is published: Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, written by David Walker, a young African American born free in North Carolina, and who relocated to Boston to join the anti-slavery movement. Read the full text here.
Above, l to r: SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Ca., and the “abortion pill” RU 486 (mifepristone); cover of Walker’s Appeal; and Trevor Noah.Â
1868: The Opelousas Massacre takes place in a small Louisiana town when Black schoolteacher Emerson Bentley is attacked in front of his students by three white men angered by an editorial Bentley wrote. Bentley had objected to intimidation tactics by white members of the Democratic Party, as the Republican Party recruited Black voters. Resulting riots would claim 250 mostly Black lives in the coming two weeks.
1982:Â The first legislation seeking to allocate funding for AIDS research was introduced, but would go on to fail, leaving another year before AIDS research funding begins. Also, eight people in the Chicago area died of tainted Tylenol, an incident that triggered the tamper-proof caps we have on drugstore medicine today.
2000: The abortion pill — also known as mifepristone or RU-486 — is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to terminate pregnancies of 49 days or less.
2008: Elon Musks’s SpaceX becomes the first private company to send a liquid-fueled rocket into orbit, with the launch of Falcon I.
2015:Â South African comedian Trevor Noah succeeds Jon Stewart as host of the late-night comedy/commentary program “The Daily Show”, a post he’ll hold for the next 10 years.
2020: Johns Hopkins University announces that COVID-19, the virus that shut down the world for more than a year, surpasses 1 million in deaths worldwide, and 33 million known cases.
Sources for today’s references include On This Day and Today in History. Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
