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 August 04:

Date	Type	Event
1810		American abolitionist Robert Purvis is born in Charleston, South Carolina. He spent most of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1833 he helped found the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Library Company of Colored People. From 1845–1850 he served as president of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and also traveled to Britain to gain support for the movement. Of mixed race, Purvis and his brothers were three-quarters European by ancestry and inherited considerable wealth from their native British father after his death in 1826. Purvis's parents had lived in common law marriage, prevented from marrying because his mother was a free woman of color, of Moroccan and Jewish descent. The sons chose to identify with the Black community and used their education and wealth to support abolition of slavery and anti-slavery activities, as well as projects in education to help the advance of African Americans. Learn more.
1913		Poet, essayist, and educator Robert Hayden is born in Detroit, Michigan. Hayden grew up in Detroit and attended Detroit City College (now Wayne State University; B.A., 1936). He joined the Federal Writers’ Project, researching Black folklore and the history of the Underground Railroad in Michigan. His first collection of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust, was published in 1940. While a graduate student at the University of Michigan (M.A., 1944), he studied poetry with W.H. Auden. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978, a role today known as US Poet Laureate. He was the first African-American writer to hold the office. Learn more.
1948		Photographer, scholar, and artist Leo Antony “Tony” Gleaton is born in Detroit, Michigan. Gleason is best known for his photographic images capturing and documenting the African influence in the American West and Central and South America. Gleaton played football in high school and briefly at East Los Angeles Junior College before joining the U.S. Marine Corps in 1967. While on his first tour of duty in Vietnam, he became fascinated with the camera. In 1980 he hitchhiked throughout the American West. His photographic ventures in Texas, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Kansas formed the essence of his project titled Cowboys: Reconstructing an American Myth. This collection featured a series of portraits of African, Native, Mexican, and Euro-American cowboys. From 1986 to 1992, Gleaton resided with the Tarahumara Indians in northern Mexico and then moved to Guerrero and Oaxaca. Here, Gleaton began what is now his most famous project, Tengo Casi 500 Años: Africa’s Legacy in Mexico, Central & South America. In 2002 Gleaton became a visiting professor of photography at Texas Tech University. That same year, he finished a Master’s in Art at Bard College. In 2004 Gleaton became a scholar in residence for the Texas Tech Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library in Lubbock, Texas. The collection houses the Tony Gleaton Archive. Learn more.
1950		Novelist, poet, and performance artist Ramona Lofton, better known as Sapphire, is born on August 4, 1950 in Fort Ord, California, the second oldest of four children born to military parents. Her father was an army sergeant and her mother was a soldier in the Women’s Army Corps. Throughout her childhood, her family maintained a middle-class façade while hiding incest and alcoholism. Lofton dropped out of high school, but eventually attended the City College of New York, majored in modern dance and graduated with honors in 1993; she obtained a master degree in fine arts in 1995 from Brooklyn College. In the 1980s, Lofton adopted the stage name Sapphire and immersed herself in the Slam Poetry movement emerging in New York City. She also became a member of the United Lesbians of Color for Change, Inc., a nonprofit organization in New York. She gained prominence for her 1996 debut novel, Push, and other works that focus on the alarming realities of inner city life; in 2009, Push became a widely acclaimed film directed by Lee Daniels. Learn more.
1964		Following several weeks of national news coverage and an intensive search by federal authorities, the bodies of Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, all three civil rights workers with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), are found in Longdale, Mississippi. The three men, who went missing after being released from a local Mississippi jail, had been shot to death and buried in a shallow grave. They had been arrested on “traffic charges” by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Price held the three men until other Klansmen could arrive. The three civil rights workers were not seen alive again. While their disappearance resulted in national news stories, Michael Schwerner’s wife and fellow-CORE worker, Rita, admonished reporters in 1964: “The slaying of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my husband and Andrew Goodman were white that the national alarm has been sounded.” Indeed, investigators searching Mississippi’s woods, fields, swamps, and rivers that summer found the remains of eight African American men: Henry Dee and Charles Moore, college students who were kidnapped, beaten, and murdered in May 1964; and six unidentified corpses, including one wearing a CORE T-shirt. Learn more.