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 16:
| Date | Type | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 1860 |  Pioneering showman and filmmaker William D. “Bill” Foster is born. Foster was among the first to prove the commercial viability of making Black-cast films and marketing them to Black audiences. He was the first African American to establish a movie production organization, the Foster Photoplay Company, which he started in Chicago in 1910. Although his company only lasted a few years, Foster managed to rack up a number of firsts that paved the way for the 20th century “race film” industry. Race films were to provide Black audiences with realistic alternatives to demeaning Hollywood stereotypes in the period 1913-1950. Foster's first film was The Railroad Porter (also released as The Pullman Porter), a two-reeler slapstick comedy typical of the time. While the “All-Colored” characters and storyline of The Railroad Porter might not seem vastly different from those of white-produced comedies of the era, Foster’s films focused on gainfully employed respectable characters who were capable of mature romantic relationships, far removed from white-produced films that featured Black characters as watermelon gulpers and chicken thieves. Learn more. | |
| 1861 |  Miriam Elizabeth Benjamin, the second African American woman to receive a patent from the United States government, is born in Charleston, South Carolina. In the early 1870s, her mother, Eliza Hopkins Benjamin, moved the family to Boston, Massachusetts. Benjamin attended high school in Boston before moving to Washington, D.C. in the 1880s. During her time in the city, Benjamin worked as a teacher and in the federal civil service as a government clerk. Benjamin received her first patent for her invention of a gong and signal chair (U.S. Patent number 386,289) in 1888. Benjamin’s invention received attention in the press and was featured in newspapers across the country. She lobbied to have it used as a means to signal pages in the U.S. House of Representatives, for example, and the eventual system installed closely resembled her proposal. The method used to signal flight attendants on airplanes can also be traced to Benjamin’s insight. In 1917, she patented a system to deliver medication via inserts in the sole of a shoe (U.S. Patent Number 1249,000). Benjamin likely also had success as a composer. Music historians believe she (under the pseudonym E.B. Miriam) composed at least two prominent marches. The United States Marine Band under John Philip Sousa performed one piece, “The Boston Elite Two Step,” in the early 1890s. Another composition, “The American Bugle Call,” gained even more attention as the campaign song for the 1904 Presidential Campaign of Theodore Roosevelt. Learn more. | |
| 1920 |  Charles Walter Dryden ("A-Train" Dryden) is born in New York City. Dryden was a U.S. Army Air Force officer and one of the original combat fighter pilot with the 332nd Fighter Group's 99th Fighter Squadron, best known as the Tuskegee Airmen, "Red Tails," or “Schwartze Vogelmenschen” ("Black Birdmen") among enemy German pilots. Among the United States' first eight (8) African American combat fighter pilots, Dryden is notable as a member of the Tuskegee Advance Flying School (TAFS)'s Class Number SE-42-C, the program's 2nd-ever aviation cadet program. Dryden was the first African American U.S. military pilot to engage in aerial combat against an enemy combatant, sharing this honor with 99th Fighter Squadron pilots Sidney P. Brooks, Willie Ashley, Lee Rayford, Leon C. Roberts and Spann Watson. In 1955, Dryden earned his Bachelors of Arts degree in political science from Hofstra University. He also earned a master's of arts degree in public law and government from Columbia University. Dryden served as a director of the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame which inducted him in 1998. In 1997, Dryden authored his best-selling autobiographical book, "A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman." Learn more. | |
| 1928 |  After thousands are killed by a category 4 hurricane, Black victims are denied proper burials in West Palm Beach, Florida. The hurricane destroyed a levee that protected a number of small, low-lying farming communities from the waters of Lake Okeechobee, killing thousands of residents, most of whom were Black migrant farm workers. After the hurricane, Black survivors were forced to recover the bodies of those killed. The officials in charge of the recovery effort ordered that food would be provided only to those who worked, and some who refused to work were shot. Bodies of white storm victims were buried in coffins in local cemeteries, but local authorities had the corpses of Black victims stacked in piles by the side of the roads, doused in fuel oil, and burned. Bodies of 674 Black victims were bulldozed into an unmarked mass grave; the site was later sold for private industrial use—first as a garbage dump, then a slaughterhouse, and then a sewage treatment plant. Learn more. |
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