To learn about the history and importance of the Black History Month Celebration, we recommend the 2010 article at BlackPast written by Daryl Michael Scott, Professor of History at Howard University and Vice President of Program for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Click here for the article.
An 8-year-old, bi-racial child in New Canaan was recently approached by a teammate who told a joke to which the punchline was that he was an N-word.
With unanimous agreement of Ridgefield Allies Board of Directors, the following letter has been submitted to the Ridgefield Board of Education and to Ridgefield Public Schools (RPS)Superintendent Dr. Susie Da Silva, recommending that RPS participate in the state-funded Open Choice program. Please share our letter and contact BOE and Dr Da Silva to encourage participation.
In observance of June as African-American Music Appreciation Month and LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and of World Music Day on June 21, Ridgefield Allies is celebrating music as it intersects with activism. Check in with us each day of June as we reveal each new entry in our month-long playlist and highlight that song’s importance in the struggle for social justice.
The Tulsa Race Massacre took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In what some historians have called “the single worst incident of racial violence in American history,” residents and businesses of Tulsa’s predominantly Black Greenwood District were attacked on the ground and from the air (private aircraft dropped homemade firebombs) by white mobs who deeply resented the financial prosperity of the residents of what was then known as the “Black Wall Street.” The proximate trigger for the incident was the sensationalist Tulsa Tribune newspaper’s exaggerated and fabricated report of an alleged assault of a young white woman by a young black man; the alleged assault was never substantiated, the alleged victim declined to press charges, and local investigators later speculated that the young man had merely accidentally bumped into the young woman. In less than 18 hours, at least 1,000 homes and businesses were destroyed, hundreds of African Americans were killed, and an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 African Americans were left homeless.