Today is the feast day of Augustine of Hippo. This African, also known as St. Augustine, is viewed by many as one of the Fathers of the Church.

Also on this day in history:

1565 – Pedro Menéndez de Avilés sights land near St. Augustine, Florida and founds the oldest continuously occupied European-established city in the continental United States. When the Spanish conquistador Pedro Menendez founded St. Augustine in 1565, not only were there black members of his crew, but he noted that his arrival had been preceded by free Africans in the French settlement at Fort Caroline, just a few miles north. The first Africans who came to the US came as explorers and they came long before 1619.

1582– Taichang Emperor, of China was born. (d. 1720)

1818– Jean Baptiste Point du Sable,  African American founder of Chicago died.

1833– The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 receives Royal Assent, abolishing slavery through most the British Empire.

1867– The United States takes possession of the (at this point unoccupied) Midway Atoll, moving the country into colonization in the Pacific Islands.

1879– Cetshwayo, last king of the Zulus, is captured by the British.

1901– Silliman University is founded in the Philippines. The first American private school in the country.

1917– Ten Suffragettes are arrested while picketing the White House.

1951- birthday of Suzuki Keiichi,  Japanese composer, performer, and singer-songwriter. He is perhaps best known to English-speaking audiences for his music for the Super Nintendo game EarthBound.

1952 – Rita Dove, American poet was born.

1953– Nippon Television broadcasts Japan’s first television show, including its first TV advertisement.

1955– Black teenager Emmett Till is brutally murdered in Mississippi galvanizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement.

1957– U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond begins a filibuster to prevent the Senate from voting on Civil Rights Act of 1957; he stopped speaking 24 hours and 18 minutes later, the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single Senator.

1963 – March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech.

1963 – Emily Hoffert and Janice Wylie are murdered in their Manhattan apartment, prompting the events that would lead to the passing of the Miranda Rights

1990 – Iraq declares Kuwait to be its newest province.

1998– Pakistan’s National Assembly passes a constitutional amendment to make the “Qur’an and Sunnah” the “supreme law” but the bill is defeated in the Senate.

1998 – Second Congo War: Loyalist troops backed by Angolan and Zimbabwean forces repulse the rebels’ offensive on Kinshasa.

2007 – Miyoshi Umeki, Japanese-American actress and singer died. (b.1929)

“when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”