February 4, 1882 American Colonization Society ship leaving New York City bound for Liberia. The American Colonization Society established the first settlement in what would become the west African state of Liberia. The new arrivals to the island called Perseverance were freeborn blacks from the U.S. who had emigrated with the encouragement of influential white Americans and funding from Congress. The colony was governed by whites for twenty years. Read more |
| February 4, 1913 Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama. She grew up to become civil rights leader Rosa Parks.  A teenage Rosa Parks poses with friend Samson Smith The Neville Brothers music video says thank you in “Sister Rosa” |
| February 4, 1987 The U.S. House of Representatives overrode President Ronald Reagan’s (second) veto (401-26) of the Clean Water Act. The law provided funds for communities to build waste treatment facilities and to clean up waterways. Reagan described it as ”loaded with waste and larded with pork.” |
February 4, 1990 The Colombian government recognized native rights to half of its 69,000 square miles of forest in the Amazon River basin, home to 55,000 indigenous people. In addition to the official Spanish, as many as 200 languages or dialects are spoken among Colombia’s peoples.  U’wa people  Boys on the Amazon More on indigenous peoples |
| February 4, 1996 Start of a week of marches for peace by thousands in Grozny, the embattled capital of Chechnya. |
February 4, 2004 The Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that gays were entitled to nothing less than marriage under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. They ruled that Vermont-style civil unions would not suffice, declaring they created an “unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples.” The actual text of the decision in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryfebruary.htm#february4
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