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 May 07:

Date	Type	Event
1839		Andrew Harris, just one year after graduating from the University of Vermont, delivers an address to nearly five thousand abolitionists at New York City’s Broadway Tabernacle, arguing that slavery in the South influences racism in the North. Harris is particularly mindful of his own situation, having been denied admission to Union and Middlebury Colleges because of his race. Read the full text Harris’s brief but powerful speech.
1867		After 9 days of mass sit-ins by African Americans on “whites-only” horse-drawn street cars bring transit in New Orleans to a standstill, city officials and the chief of police order the desegregation of the city’s streetcars. “Have no interference with negroes riding in cars of any kind,” the chief instructed his officers. “No passenger, has a right to eject any other passenger, no matter what his color.” Though the end of Reconstruction and the consequent far-reaching implementation of Jim Crow would result in ubiquitous re-segregation and apartheid conditions in following decades, the mass protests of 1867 previewed Rosa Parks and the Freedom Riders of the next century. Learn more.
1878		African-American abolitionist and inventor Joseph Richard Winters receives U.S. Patent number 203,517 for his innovations for a wagon-mounted fire escape ladder. Winters' ladder replaced the wooden ladder with a metal frame and parallel steps. Winters' innovation was utilized by the Chambersburg, Pennsylvania fire department who mounted the ladder on a horse-drawn wagon. Subsequently, on April 8, 1879, Winters received U.S. Patent number 214,224 for an "improvement" on the ladder, and on May 16, 1882, he received U.S. Patent number 258,186 for a fire escape ladder that could be affixed to buildings. Learn more.
1955		Reverend George Lee, co-founder of the Belzoni, Mississippi NAACP and the first African American to register to vote in Humphreys County since Reconstruction, is shot and killed in Belzoni. He is one of the early martyrs of the post-WWII Civil Rights Movement. Rev. Lee first moved to Belzoni to preach, but began working to register other African Americans to vote after the local NAACP was founded in 1953. He later served as chapter president and successfully registered some 100 African American voters in Belzoni—an extraordinary feat considering the significant risk of violent retaliation facing Black voters in the Deep South at the time. Learn more.