Ridgefield Allies

Today in “Hidden” History is a daily listing of important but little-known events illustrating the range of innovators, contributors, or incidents excluded from formal history lessons or common knowledge. Hidden history is intended not as an exhaustive review, but merely as an illustration of how popular narratives "hide" many matters of fundamental importance. Bookmark this page and check daily to quickly expand your knowledge. Suggest entries for Today in “Hidden” History by clicking the Contact Us link. Entries for July 29:

Date	Type	Event
1880		The Philadelphia-based newspaper, The Christian Recorder, publishes a plea from a Black woman named Nancy Williams. Nearly fifteen years after the abolition of chattel slavery in the United States, Ms. Williams ran an ad seeking information about her daughters Millie and Mary, from whom she was sold away in 1860 while enslaved in Missouri. Approximately half of enslaved people were separated from a spouse or parent during the Domestic Slave Trade. The particularly cruel practice of separating children from parents prioritized the desire for money and power that fueled the slave trade in the United States. Ms. Williams’s ad shares the ages of her daughters when she was parted from them: Millie, the oldest, was nine years old, while Mary was six years old. “It will be twenty years in October since I saw them,” Ms. Williams wrote, “and I would be more than glad to hear from them.” Learn more.
1909		American author Chester Bomar Himes is born. His works, some of which have been filmed, include If He Hollers Let Him Go, published in 1945, and the Harlem Detective series of novels for which he is best known, set in the 1950s and early 1960s and featuring two black policemen called Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. In 1958 Himes won France's Grand Prix de Littérature Policière. Himes’s view of race relations was profoundly shaped when chemicals exploded in his brother Joseph’s face during a classroom demonstration. Rushed to the nearest hospital, the blinded boy was refused treatment because of Jim Crow laws. "That one moment in my life hurt me as much as all the others put together," Himes wrote in The Quality of Hurt. “I loved my brother. I had never been separated from him and that moment was shocking, shattering, and terrifying....We pulled into the emergency entrance of a white people's hospital. White clad doctors and attendants appeared. I remember sitting in the back seat with Joe watching the pantomime being enacted in the car's bright lights. A white man was refusing; my father was pleading. Dejectedly my father turned away; he was crying like a baby. My mother was fumbling in her handbag for a handkerchief; I hoped it was for a pistol.” Learn more.
1910		The Slocum Massacre begins as white mobs roam freely through the predominantly Black community of Slocum, Texas, shooting and attacking as they encounter African Americans. Only six deaths were officially confirmed, but it is estimated as many as one hundred African Americans lost their lives in the massacre. Historians have provided several explanations for the motives of the all-white perpetrators of the massacre. When the story spread, it was altered to favor the white suspects and the Black residents of Slocum were blamed. The whites from the mob did their best to destroy any evidence against them. African Americans reached out to higher levels of government for a fair investigation, but little to nothing was done on their behalf. As a result, the African American population in Slocum, Texas declined drastically. Learn more.
1988		Haben Girma, a disability rights advocate and attorney who became the first deaf and blind graduate of Harvard Law School in Massachusetts when she graduated with a Juris Doctor degree (JD) in 2013, is born in Oakland, California to her mother, Saba Gebreyesus, who was a refugee from Eritrea. Girma was educated in the Oakland Public Schools where she benefited from the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, a civil rights law that outlawed discrimination based on disability. Girma learned braille while in school using a digital technology device that helped her read and absorb information faster than with the previous generations of Braille readers. Learn more.