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 September 03:

Date	Type	Event
1783		Born into slavery, at the age of 23 Richard Allen purchases his freedom for $2,000 after working odd jobs for five years. Allen would go on to become an educator, writer, minister and founder of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Allen cared passionately about education and opened a day school for African American children. He abhorred slavery, worked actively for abolition, and maintained his home as a stop on the Underground Railroad. He was committed to self-determination for African Americans in the United States, and eventually opposed all colonization plans for African Americans in other countries. Learn more.
1838		Enslaved from birth, Frederick Douglass escapes to freedom at age 21. Dressed in a sailor’s uniform to conceal his identity, Douglass traveled from Maryland by train, steam ferry, steamboat and foot to New York City and freedom in less than 24 hours. After escaping from slavery, Douglass became one of America's greatest orators and writers, and a national leader of the abolitionist movement. He was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to slaveholders' arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Likewise, Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave. Douglass also actively supported women's suffrage. Douglass held several public offices, the first African American to do so. Without his permission, Douglass became the first African-American nominated for Vice President of the United States as the running mate and Vice Presidential nominee of Victoria Woodhull, on the Equal Rights Party ticket. Learn more.
1901		Alabama adopts a new state constitution prohibiting interracial marriage, mandating separate schools for Black and white children, and containing multiple superficially "race-neutral" provisions specifically designed to disenfranchise Black voters and suppress Black political power while providing "grandfather" clauses and exceptions to allow white local registrars (who were specifically chosen and trained to disqualify Black voters) to qualify otherwise ineligible poor white voters. Alabama was home to approximately 75,000 registered African American voters before the new constitution was enacted, but drafters estimated the new rules would reduce that number to less than 30,000. Several of the discriminatory provisions of the 1901 constitution, including the mandate to maintain racially segregated public schools, have never been repealed. Learn more.
1944		Recy Taylor, a 25-year old African-American woman who grew up as a sharecropper in Abbeville, Alabama, is gang-raped by six white men. At the time of the attack, Recy and her husband, Willie Guy Taylor, had a three-year-old daughter, Joyce. After abducting her at gunpoint, driving her deep into the woods, and each taking turns raping her, the six white men left her at the edge of town. When her father found her, they both went to Three Points police station where Recy told Sheriff George H. Gamble what happened that night. After describing the vehicle, the sheriff located and had its owner, Hugo Wilson, brought to the sheriff’s office where Taylor identified him as one of her attackers. Although Wilson named the other men involved, he insisted that there had been no rape because they paid Recy Taylor for sex; he was not arrested. In an effort to intimidate Taylor, her house was firebombed, forcing her family to move in with her father and siblings. As news spread of Taylor’s attack, she received support from the Black community, including newspapers and civil rights organizations. Responding first to pressure from the NAACP, and later to efforts by Esther Cooper Jackson of the Southern Youth Negro Conference, two separate grand juries were convened in 1944 and 1945, but both declined to indict the six men accused of the rape—Hugo Wilson, Herbert Lovett, Dillard York, Robert Gamble, Joe Culpepper, and Luther Lee. The brutal rape left Taylor unable to have additional children; her only child Joyce died in a car accident in 1967. Though denied justice, Taylors refusal to remain silent after her rape brought attention to the sexual abuse of African-American women in the Jim Crow South and inspired others across the South to speak out. In 2011, the Alabama legislature passed a resolution giving Recy Taylor an official apology. Recy Taylor died on December 28, 2017, in Abbeville, Alabama at the age of 97. She was known for her humor, her love of church, and her love of singing. Learn more.