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 31:

Date	Type	Event
1842		Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin an African-American publisher, journalist, civil rights leader, suffragist, and editor of the Woman's Era, the first national newspaper published by and for African-American women, is born to a mixed race family in Boston, Massachusetts; her mother was an English-born white woman and her father was from the island of Martinique, and founder of the Boston Zion Church. Ruffin founded, with her daughter Florida Ridely and Boston school principal Maria Baldwin, the “Women’s Era Club.” Believing that a national organization for black women was needed, she convened the first annual convention in 1895 which drew 100 women from 20 clubs across the United States. She named the organization the National Federation of Afro-Am Women, which a year later united with the Colored Women’s League to become the National Association of Colored Women. Mary Church Terrell was the combined organization’s president while Ruffin and several others served as vice-presidents. In 1910, Ruffin became one of the founding members of the Boston NAACP. Learn more.
1945		American supermodel and actress Peggy Ann Freeman, known professionally as Donyale Luna, is born. She gained popularity in Western Europe during the late 1960s. Generally cited as "the first black supermodel", Luna was the first African-American model to appear on the cover of the British edition of Vogue, in March 1966.[ She entered modeling in a period that favored "white passing models" and has been described as "the first black model who really began to change things; to enable more diverse beauty paradigms to break through". She is known to have been a covergirl 11 times between 1965 and 1975. She appeared in several underground films like the screen tests of Andy Warhol (1966), and had roles in Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966), and most notably as Enotea in the 1969 Federico Fellini film Fellini Satyricon, as well as Otto Preminger's Skidoo (1968) in the role of "'God's Mistress". Learn more.
1989		Writer and secular humanist activist Norman (Norm) Robert Allen Jr. founds African Americans for Humanism, the first organization focused on the promotion of humanism and humanist ideals among people of African descent. He was the executive director of the organization from 1991 to 2010 as well as editor of its quarterly, the AAH Examiner. He also edited African American Humanism: An Anthology (1991) and The Black Humanist Experience: An Alternative to Religion (2003). Allen views secular humanism, a human-centered approach to living drawing upon reason, science, and secular ideals and guided by empathy and compassion, as particularly relevant for African Americans because in the narrative of American history Black freethinkers have largely been ignored. Learn more.