September 30 in history: Big steps for women’s voting rights, indigenous schoolkids at boarding schools, farm workers union, more

Check out This Day in History for Sept. 30, MainStream’s daily look at significant progressive, intersectional historical events.

1822: St. Augustine, Fl., native Joseph Marion Hernandez, a plantation owner and former Spanish military leader, becomes the first Hispanic elected to Congress. He couldn’t vote since Florida was not yet a state, but he lobbied on behalf of the state as its elected territorial delegate.

1889: Thirty-one years before women throughout America were allowed to vote, Wyoming becomes the first state to write a State Constitution that allows women to vote. The constitution also granted women the rights to be guardians of minor children, own and inherit property, and hold public office 

Above: Workers rights advocates Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, Orange Shirt Day to honor children victimized by Indigenous boarding schools; Shirley Weber, who proposed legislation studying reparations for Black residents of California; and talk-show host Jerry Springer.

1918: President Woodrow Wilson gives a speech supporting women’s right to vote, or what he called “justice to women.”  It would be another year before the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote nationwide.

1938: In one of history’s greatest examples of failed appeasement,  Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich Agreement with Germany’s Adolf Hitler, thinking Hitler had committed to stopping the Nazi conquest. Instead, Hitler invaded Poland a year later.

1962: Activists Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta establish the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), the union that would eventually become the United Farm Workers Union.

1991: The Jerry Springer Show debuts, spending its first year with serious guests like Jesse Jackson, tackling serious topics like homelessness, before transitioning into a sensational brawlfest for the next 26 years.

2013: Orange Shirt Day is founded as a day to commemorate victims of violence at Indigenous boarding schools. The date is also named National Truth and Reconciliation Day by the Canadien government in 2021.

2020: California becomes the first US state to pass a law studying reparations for Black residents and descendants of enslaved people. AB 3121 was introduced by Shirley Weber, now California’s secretary of state, modeled after HB 40, legislation that the late John Conyers had introduced at the federal level.

2022: Vladimir Putin escalates the Ukraine War  he started seven months earlier, by announcing Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian territories Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia that account for 20 percent of the entire country 

References for today’s history nuggets include history.com, On This Day and CBC. Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.