September 4 · This Day in America
Forty-four pobladores — eleven families who walked more than a thousand miles up from Sonora and Sinaloa — gather near the Porciuncula River and found a farming town for the Spanish crown: El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles. They are a mixed people: Indigenous, Spanish, and African; more than half trace African ancestry. They came for land and a fresh start, the oldest American story there is. The settlement they staked out on a dusty riverbank will become the second-largest city in the United States, a place whose name means the angels and whose light the whole world learns to recognize. It begins with farmers, water, and the nerve to start over somewhere new.
Source: www.pbssocal.org
Also on this day · 1957
On orders from Governor Orval Faubus, armed troops surround Central High School and block nine Black teenagers from entering. A mob jeers; fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford, alone, walks a gauntlet of hate caught forever on film. The standoff forces a president's hand: weeks later, Eisenhower sends the 101st Airborne to walk the children in. Courage in saddle shoes, against a country deciding what it meant.
Source: www.nps.gov