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 March 09:

Date	Type	Event
1841		The U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Schooner Amistad, affirming the lower federal district court’s earlier ruling that the captive Mende Africans aboard the Schooner La Amistad were free people when they fought to escape their kidnapping and illegal confinement, entitled to take whatever legal measures necessary to secure their freedom, including the use of force, and authorizing their release. Learn more.
1911		White firemen on various lines of the Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific Railroad went on strike and violently rioted in Somerset, KY, after the company refused to honor their demand that all Black firemen be fired within 90 days. Previously, the railroad and the white firemen had agreed that one of the three lines between Nashville and Oakland would employ Black firemen, none of whom could be promoted to engineers. In the ensuing riot violence, eight Black firemen and two deputy sheriffs were killed and locomotive cab windows were shot out of passing trains. Learn more.
1965		African American voting rights activists conduct the second (of three) Selma to Montgomery protest marches in March 1965. The immediately-preceding prior march, on March 7, had ended when state troopers and county possemen violently attacked the nonviolent marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an event now known as Bloody Sunday. In sharp contrast, second march ended peacefully and has come to be known as Turnaround Tuesday. It is so named because when troopers, police, and marchers confronted each other at the county end of the bridge, the troopers stepped aside to let them pass, but Martin Luther King, Jr., them led the marchers back to the church Selma church from which the March had originated. However, that evening three white Unitarian Universalist ministers in Selma for the march were attacked on the street and beaten with clubs by four KKK members. The worst injured was Reverend James Reeb from Boston. Fearing that Selma's public hospital would refuse to treat Reeb, activists took him to Birmingham's University Hospital, two hours away. Reeb died on Thursday, March 11 at University Hospital, with his wife by his side. The Selma to Montgomery marches were a series of marches along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of violent segregationist repression. The marches were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South. By highlighting racial injustice, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the civil rights movement. The Selma to Montgomery marches were preceded earlier in the year by several local and regional marches protesting the denial of voting rights. Local and state officials sought to fiercely repress the peaceful marches, with approximately 3,000 people arrested by the end of February. The February 18 murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by a state trooper directly precipitated planning for the Selma to Montgomery marches. Learn more.