Ruth Anna Fisher (March 15, 1886 – January 28, 1975) was an American historian, archivist, and teacher who played a major role in collecting sources from British archives for the Carnegie Institution and Library of Congress.

Jameson described her to fellow historian Waldo Gifford Leland in positive terms, saying that she had "the proper delicacy about the color line ... but highly intelligent and educated negroes have so hard a pathway in America.

In 1927, she joined the Library of Congress to supervise the copying of American history materials in British repositories, a project that generated as many as 100,000 pages a year after photographic reproduction became the norm.

[3]: 318  By then, she felt that the efforts in London had "about broken the back of the manuscripts material relating to our history to be found in England" although she expected new revelations still to pop up occasionally from public figures' own holdings.

It further seems as likely for a Hitler to arise here in these circumstances as in Germany.She retained strong connections to her friends in the U.K. and contributed some of the impressions from their letters to Du Bois' new journal Phylon.

[13] Although her chief impact was as a researcher rather than an organizer or activist, Fisher had a keen awareness of racial issues from an early age and was connected with many of those working for civil rights and for opportunities for Black Americans.

In 1915, in her hometown of Lorain, she spoke out against plans to show "The Mystery of Morrow's Rest" (previously titled "The Nigger"), a film about miscegenation based on a play by Edward Sheldon.

His demand is really simple, that the principles of democracy be put into practise for him.At age 77, Fisher participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963.