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 24:

Date	Type	Event
1923		A 34-year-old Black farmhand named Ben Hart is lynched by 10 unmasked men claiming to be sheriff’s deputies near Jacksonville, Florida, after being accused of "peeping" into a young white girl’s bedroom window. Police investigating Ben Hart’s murder soon determined he was at his home 12 miles away when the alleged peeping incident occurred. Learn more.
1950		Edith Spurlock Sampson, an American lawyer and judge, becomes the first Black U.S.delegate appointed to the United Nations. on 24 August 1950. Sampson had been forced to leave school at 14 due to family financial difficulties and found work cleaning and deboning fish at a market. She later returned to school and graduated from Peabody High School in Pittsburgh. She then went to work for Associated Charities and studied at the New York School of Social Work. After she received the highest grade in a criminology course, George Kirchwey of Columbia, one of her instructors, encouraged her to become an attorney. She moved to Chicago where, while working full-time during the day as a social worker, she studied law at night. Sampson graduated from John Marshall Law School in 1925 winning a special dean's commendation for ranking at the top of her jurisprudence class. In 1927 Sampson became the first woman to earn a Master of Laws from Loyola University's Graduate Law School. In 1934 Sampson was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court. In 1943, she became one of the first Black members of the National Association of Women Lawyers. In 1947 she was appointed an Assistant State's Attorney in Cook County. Learn more.
2019		Elijah McClain, 23-year-old man from Aurora, Colorado, dies of cardiac arrest after being apprehended by police and forcibly injected with sedatives. McClain taught himself to play the violin as a teenager, and he regularly visited animal shelters to play music for abandoned animals to comfort them. On the evening of McClain’s death, three officers from the Aurora Police Department—Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt, and Randy Roedema—responded to a 911 call about an individual in a face mask waving his arms. McClain’s friends later noted that he regularly wore a face mask to keep warm due to an anemic condition. He was listening to music and may have been dancing when flailing his arms while walking. In their filed report, the officers claimed that McClain resisted them when confronted and reached for one officer’s holstered gun. No video exists of the encounter because the officers stated their body cameras had fallen off, but the audio recording revealed McClain at one point told the officers, “I am an introvert. Please respect my boundaries that I am speaking. Leave me alone.” The officers handcuffed McClain and pinned him to the ground for fifteen minutes. During that time, he vomited, cried, complained of being unable to breathe, and apologized to the officers. Woodyard placed McClain into a choke-hold, causing him to briefly lose consciousness. Paramedics arrived on the scene and injected McClain with ketamine, a sedative meant to calm him down. McClain suffered cardiac arrest while being transported to the hospital and was pronounced brain dead three days later. Learn more.