Posts Archives - Page 4 of 4 - 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 June 27:

Date	Type	Event
1833		White Connecticut school teacher and activist Prudence Crandall is arrested and spends the night in jail for the "offense" of operating the first school for Black girls ("young Ladies and little Misses of color") in the United States, located in Canterbury, Connecticut. When Crandall admitted Sarah Harris, a 20-year-old African-American female student in 1832 to her school, she had what is considered to be the first integrated classroom in the United States. Parents of the white children began to withdraw them. Rather than ask the African-American student to leave, she decided that if white girls would not attend with the Blacks, she would educate Black girls. She was arrested and spent a night in jail. Soon the violence of the townspeople forced her to close the school. She left Connecticut and never lived there again. Much later the Connecticut legislature, with lobbying from Mark Twain, a resident of Hartford, passed a resolution honoring Crandall and providing her with a pension. Twain offered to buy her former Canterbury home for her retirement, but she declined. She died a few years later. In 1995 the Connecticut General Assembly named her the Official Heroine of Connecticut. Learn more.
1872		Internationally acclaimed poet, novelist, and essayist Paul Laurence Dunbar is born to two formerly enslaved people from Kentucky. Dunbar became one of the first influential Black poets in American literature, and was internationally acclaimed for his dialectic verse in collections such as Majors and Minors (1895) and Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896). But the dialectic poems constitute only a small portion of Dunbar’s canon, which is replete with novels, short stories, essays, and many poems in standard English. In its entirety, Dunbar’s literary body is regarded as an impressive representation of Black life in turn-of-the-century America. As Dunbar’s friend James Weldon Johnson noted in the preface to his Book of American Poetry: “Paul Laurence Dunbar stands out as the first poet from the Negro race in the United States to show a combined mastery over poetic material and poetic technique, to reveal innate literary distinction in what he wrote, and to maintain a high level of performance. He was the first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race. He was the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its short-comings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary form.” Learn more.
1911		A Walton County, Georgia mob of several hundred unmasked white men lynches two Black men named Tom Allen and Joe Watts after a local white judge—Charles H. Brand—refuses to allow state guardsmen to be present to prevent mob action. Judge Brand had been aware of the threat of mob violence for weeks, and had purposely delayed the trial until previously deployed guardsmen were no longer present to provide protection. Three months earlier, Judge Brand had also refused the assistance of state troops to protect a Black man named Charles Hale, who, left without the protection of those troops, was taken by a white mob and lynched. Despite his failure to protect these men, Judge Brand continued to serve as a judge until 1917. In 1917, Judge Brand was elected to Congress to represent Georgia's 8th Congressional District, where he served seven consecutive terms. Learn more.
1922		Composer, pianist, organist, and the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music, George Theophilus Walker is born. Walker received the Pulitzer for his work Lilacs in 1996. Walker was married to pianist and scholar Helen Walker-Hill and was the father of two sons, violinist and composer Gregory T.S. Walker and playwright Ian Walker. Learn more.
1939		Prolific African American inventor, entrepreneur, winner of the National Medal of Technology, and an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame Frederick McKinley Jones secures US patent # US2163754A for his invention of the ticket dispensing machine. His major inventions and innovations were in the area of refrigeration and brought great improvements to the long-haul transportation of perishable goods. He co-founded Thermo King. Learn more.