Today we celebrate a day for those comic book collectors, its National Comic Book Day. This day is observed annually on the last Wednesday of September.
I use to remember my brother collecting Superman comic books, and if I get a chance to get a hold of one, I get to read it too, as long as I don’t get caught, or I will be banished, that is how he protects his collection of comic books.
A comic book or comic magazines are a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential panels or boxes representing individual scenes. The panels are usually accompanied with descriptive prose and written narrative, and dialogue is contained in word balloons, emblematic of the comics art form.
Comic books were first popularized in the United States and in the United Kingdom during the 1930s. The first modern comic book, the Famous Funnies, was released in the U.S. in 1933 and was a reprinting of the earlier newspaper humor comic strips, that had established many of the story-telling devices used in comics.
The largest comic book market is in Japan. In 1995, the manga, a Japanese comics, was marketed in Japan valued about $7 billion with an annual sale of 1.9 billion manga books/magazine. The comic book market in the United States and Canada was valued at $1.09 billion in 2016. As of 2017, the largest comic book publisher in the United States manga distributor Viz Media, followed by DC Comics and Marvel Comics.
So, today, celebrate this day if you are an avid comic book reader. You can attend a convention for comic book and view all the biggest collection of the comic book on the event, or just head to your nearest bookstore and buy some comic book to read or to add to your collection. Share on social media one of your collection of a comic book if you have one by using #ComicBookDay.
1957 Little Rock Nine begins first full day of classes
Under escort from the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division, nine black students enter all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Three weeks earlier, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had surrounded the school with National Guard troops to prevent its federal court-ordered racial integration. After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 army paratroopers to Little Rock to enforce the court order.
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in educational facilities was unconstitutional. Five days later, the Little Rock School Board issued a statement saying it would comply with the decision when the Supreme Court outlined the method and time frame in which desegregation should be implemented.
Arkansas was at the time among the more progressive Southern states in regard to racial issues. The University of Arkansas School of Law was integrated in 1949, and the Little Rock Public Library in 1951. Even before the Supreme Court ordered integration to proceed “with all deliberate speed,” the Little Rock School Board in 1955 unanimously adopted a plan of integration to begin in 1957 at the high school level. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit, arguing the plan was too gradual, but a federal judge dismissed the suit, saying that the school board was acting in “utmost good faith.” Meanwhile, Little Rock’s public buses were desegregated. By 1957, seven out of Arkansas’ eight state universities were integrated.
(excerpted from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/central-high-school-integrated)
