August 4
1693. The date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of champagne.
1790. The recently passed federal Tariff Act gives rise to the creation of the Revenue Cutter Service, which will eventually become known as the Coast Guard.
1892. The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River home. They had been killed with a hatchet -- in the case of the father, Andrew Borden, the blows had crushed his skull and split his left eyeball. The murders and eventual trial are the late 1800s equivalent of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the OJ Simpson trial. Eventually, Lizzie is acquitted, though no one else was ever arrested or tried for the murders, and the controversy over who committed the murders continues to this day.
1914. Germany invades Belgium. In response, England declares war on Germany.
1964. The bodies of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi. They had disappeared on June 21.
Their efforts, and the efforts of all civil rights workers involved in integration and civil rights, were strongly opposed by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a state agency reporting directly to the governor which had as its stated objective the protection of the state and her sister states from federal encroachment. Primarily, it's aims were to resist such laws as the Civil Rights Act and the integration of schools. It also served to pass information regarding civil rights workers to others, including the Ku Klux Klan. The members of the Commission were the governor and lieutenant governor of the state, the speaker of the state house of representatives, and the attorney general. The staff also secretly worked with, and funded, the White Citizens Council, a white supremacist organization. The organziation was disbaned in 1978. In 1989 a federal judge ordered the Commission's records opened to the public, which did not occur until 1999 due to legal challenges. The records indicated hte Commission's involvement in the murder of the three civil rights workers, as the Commission had passed information regarding them, and their newly issued Mississippi license plate, to the sheriff of Neshoba County, who had been implicated in the murders.
Their story is memorialized in the film Mississippi Burning, and Andrew Goodman was the inspiration for the Simon & Garfunkel song "He Was My Brother".
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Simon & Garfunkel
He was my brother
Five years older than I
He was my brother
Twenty-three years old the day he died
Freedom writer
They cursed my brother to his face
Go home outsider
This town's gonna be your buryin' place
He was singin' on his knees
An angry mob trailed along
They shot my brother dead
Because he hated what was wrong
He was my brother
Tears can't bring him back to me
He was my brother
And he died so his brothers could be free
He died so his brothers could be free
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pd9VP966QnM