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 23:

Date	Type	Event
1961		Dr. Vera Mae (Berry) Pigee leads a demonstration to desegregate the Illinois Central train terminal in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Under her leadership, three young students, Adrian Beard (16 year old student attending Immaculate Conception Catholic School), Wilma Jones (14 year old student attending Higgins High School), and Mary Jane Pigee (Vera Mae’s 18 year old daughter at Central State College) went into the terminal to challenge Mississippi’s segregated waiting rooms law. When the agent at the counter refused the purchase, police were called because the protesters refused to move. They were arrested and convicted for violating Mississippi’s segregation law. Undeterred, in the fall of 1961 Vera Mae Pigee and Idessa Johnson went to the whites-only section of Clarksdale Greyhound Bus terminal to stage a protest and continue to challenge the segregation law. This time they were not arrested. Then in December 1961 Dr Pigee and Mary Jane were harassed by Clarksdale police when they entered the whites-only terminal waiting room. They filed a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The incident also sparked additional protests by other Black residents of Clarksdale against the bus terminal and the police department. Those protests forced the Greyhound terminal to end its segregation policy on December 27, 1961. Learn more.
1989		Sixteen-year-old Yusef Hawkins and three friends went to the predominately white Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, to inquire about a used car for sale. While walking through the neighborhood, the four Black boys encountered a group of 30 white youths gathered in the street. Armed with baseball bats and at least one handgun, the white boys set upon the Black boys. Yusef was shot twice in the chest and was later pronounced dead at the nearby Maimonides Medical Center. It was later discovered that the leader of the group had organized his friends to ambush a Black youth who was rumored to be dating a white girl in the neighborhood who had recently spurned the advances of that leader; the mob mistakenly assumed that Hawkins was the Black youth for whom they intended to ambush. Yusef Hawkins was the third Black male to be murdered by a white mob in increasingly racially-polarized 1980s New York. Learn more.
1994		Eugene Bullard, the only African American pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force. Owing to his race, Bullard was not permitted to fly in the American military, but instead flew for France’s military. Bullard was one of the few Black combat pilots during World War I, along with William Robinson Clarke, a Jamaican who flew for the Royal Flying Corps, Domenico Mondelli from Italy, and Ahmet Ali Çelikten of the Ottoman Empire. Also a boxer and a jazz musician, he was called "L'Hirondelle noire" in French, "Black Swallow". Learn more.