Born: c. 1770 Taskigi, Tennessee - Died: August 1843 Tamaulipas, Mexico
Native American scholar and linguist
Sequoyah, Cherokee scholar, is the only known Native American to have created an alphabet for his tribe. This advance helped thousands of Cherokee to become literate (able to read and write). Sequoyah was born at the Cherokee village of Taskigi in Tennessee. His father probably was Nathaniel Gist, a trader. His mother was part Cherokee and was abandoned by her husband before the birth of Sequoyah. He used his Cherokee name until he approached manhood, when he took the name George Guess (as he understood his father’s last name to be). A hunter and fur trader until a crippling hunting accident, Sequoyah became an excellent silversmith (maker of products containing silver). As an adult, he had contact with white people that made him curious about “talking leaves,” as he called books.
He believed that if the Cherokees had a system for gathering and passing on written information, it would help them keep their independence from white people.
In 1809 he decided to master this secret and to apply it to his own language. After a dozen years of ridicule and insults, he invented a Cherokee alphabet of eighty-five or eighty-six characters that allowed every sound used in Cherokee communication to be written down. In 1821 Sequoyah demonstrated his invention before the Cherokee council, which approved his work. Within two years, thousands of Cherokee had mastered the set of symbols, an advance that led to the printing of books in the Cherokee language as well as some newspapers printed partly in Cherokee. In 1823 Sequoyah went to Arkansas to teach his alphabet to the Cherokee who already had moved westward, and he moved with them to Oklahoma in 1828. He became somewhat active in tribal politics and was a Cherokee representative to Washington, D.C., in 1828. With his alphabet a success, Sequoyah devoted much of his time to studying other tribal languages in a search for common elements.
His tribe recognized the importance of his contribution when, in 1841, it voted him an allowance, which became an annuity (annual payment) of three hundred dollars. Early in 1843 Sequoyah became interested in finding the part of the Cherokee nation that had reportedly moved west of the Mississippi River prior to the American Revolution (1775–83; when the American colonies fought for their independence from British rule). His journey led him westward and southward. He died in August 1843, possibly in the state of Tamaulipas in Mexico. Sequoyah was honored by the state of Oklahoma, which placed a statue of him in Statuary Hall of the National Capitol. Also, a redwood tree, the Sequoia, was named in his honor, as was the Sequoia National Park.
Monday 20 December 2010
Will Rogers - Biography
Born: September 5, 1879 Oologah, Oklahoma - Died: August 15, 1935 Point Barrow, Alaska
American journalist, humorist, and performing artist
One of the most celebrated humorists (writers of clever humor) and public figures of his day, Will Rogers offered dry, whimsical commentaries on a variety of political, social, and economic issues, and he became the voice of the “average” citizen. Will Rogers was born on September 5, 1879, to Clement and Mary Rogers. Theyoungest of eight children, Will was raised in a wealthy and privileged family on a ranch near Claremore, Oklahoma, which was then Indian Territory. His father, Clement, a rancher and farmer, was also a sharp businessman and an influential politician. Although Rogers loved his father, their strong personalities often led to conflict. His relationship with his mother was loving and affectionate, and when she passed away, tenyear- old Rogers was devastated. Rogers was one-quarter Cherokee and liked to boast that this heritage, combined with his early experience as a cowboy, made him the ideal example of the American citizen. His early adult years were spent between working on the family ranch and traveling the world, and it was in South Africa that Rogers began his performing career with a Wild West show as a trick rider. He later joined a circus, then back in the United States, he worked in another Wild West show, which eventually led to a job in vaudeville, a theater style that used a variety of acts. In vaudeville he added to his performances with off beat lectures on the art of roping. Rogers’s humorous chatter, casual delivery, and southwestern drawl proved a popular combination, resulting in an invitation to join the popular Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. He delighted audiences with his homely philosophy (the study of knowledge) and sharp remarks, becoming a renowned humorist and interpreter of the news. Rogers and his wife and children moved to California, where he acted in a number of films, beginning with Laughing Bill Hyde (1918). Rogers’s two-year contract was terminated, however, when the studio changed hands.
He then began his own film production company, but when this failed he was forced to return to New York City and the Ziegfield Follies. Three years later the first two collections of Rogers’s humor appeared—The Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference and The Cowboy Philosopher on Prohibition, both published in 1919. The Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference poked fun at the political activities surrounding the Versailles Treaty (signed in 1919, the treaty helped settle matters following World War I [1914–18]). The second volume ridiculed the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1919, which outlawed the sale and consumption of alcohol. Rogers posed as the cowboy philosopher, a rural American gaping wide-eyed at the shenanigans of a modern world run by crooked businessmen and dishonest politicians. Yet although Rogers’s brand of popular humor appealed to the average citizen, he himself became a part of the establishment he made fun of. He befriended members of Congress as well as business leaders and at one time publicly supported the Fascist regime of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), who ruled Italy with a cruel and iron fist. Rogers, as quoted by James Feibleman in In Praise of Comedy: A Study in Its Theory and Practice, once stated that he wished his gravestone to read, “I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I have never met a man I didn’t like.” Rogers began a secondary career as an after-dinner speaker, and his success led in 1922 to a syndicated weekly newspaper column.
The first two years of these columns were collected in the 1924 book The Illiterate Digest. The columns showcase the cutting criticisms Rogers aimed at government, the influence of big business, and the then-popular topic of world disarmament (to reduce weapons) in the aftermath of World War I (1914–18). Rogers next moved onto the international stage of political humor. The Saturday Evening Post sent him abroad and his columns from Europe were collected in Letters of a Self-Made Diplomat to His President, published in 1926. The articles were published in the magazine in the form of fictional letters to then-president Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) and were full of humorous advice to the chief executive from Rogers’s European observations. The next leg of the journey for the Post took Rogers to the Soviet Union, the former country that today is made up of Russia and several smaller nations, and his columns about this experience appeared in There’s Not a Bathing Suit in Russia. This 1927 volume chronicles his trip to the world’s first Communist government, a political system where the goods and services are owned and distributed by a controlling central government. During this period Rogers further expanded into another media—the growing field of radio. He gave his first broadcast over the airwaves in 1926 and by 1930 had his own weekly slot. Like each of his speeches and syndicated columns, the radio speeches centered on a topic of current interest and were filled with Rogers’s stories and sharp commentary on the issue. By the end of the 1920s Rogers was using his position in the spotlight to campaign for humanitarian causes (causes that improve the life of others). During devastating flooding along the Mississippi River in 1927, he visited the ravaged areas, gave special performances and donated the proceeds to flood victims, and testified before Congress supporting increased disaster aid to the area.
The year 1929 dealt a severe blow to the American frame of mind—in October the stock market crashed and the country was plunged into a deep economic depression, putting millions out of work. Rogers continued in his role as the foremost humorist of the nation’s “little people” in his radio broadcasts and journalistic essays. In one piece, quoted by E. Paul Alworth in Will Rogers, he wrote: “Now everybody has got a scheme to relieve unemployment, but there is just one way to do it and that’s for everybody to go to work. ‘Where?’ Why right where you are, look around and you see lots of things to do, weeds to be cut, fences to be fixed, lawns to be mowed, filling stations to be robbed, gangsters to be catered to. . . .” Rogers supported the radical transformations President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) began under the New Deal beginning in 1933. The celebrity spoke out in favor of lending a helping hand to those affected the most by the economic situation and again gave benefit performances. He continued to star in films and indulged in his passion for airplanes. In August of 1935 a small plane carrying Rogers and a pilot friend, on their way to survey air routes from the United States to the Soviet Union, crashed over Point Barrow, Alaska, killing the entertainer. Rogers was fifty-five. His death was an occasion of national mourning. Newspapers and radio commentators praised him, a memorial was dedicated near his Oklahoma birthplace, and several volumes of his speeches, essays, broadcasts, and sayings appeared in print. Will Rogers is remembered as one of the best-loved celebrities of his era and one of the twentieth century’s best-known humorists. Forty years after his death, collections of his essays and quips were still appearing in bookstores.
American journalist, humorist, and performing artist
One of the most celebrated humorists (writers of clever humor) and public figures of his day, Will Rogers offered dry, whimsical commentaries on a variety of political, social, and economic issues, and he became the voice of the “average” citizen. Will Rogers was born on September 5, 1879, to Clement and Mary Rogers. Theyoungest of eight children, Will was raised in a wealthy and privileged family on a ranch near Claremore, Oklahoma, which was then Indian Territory. His father, Clement, a rancher and farmer, was also a sharp businessman and an influential politician. Although Rogers loved his father, their strong personalities often led to conflict. His relationship with his mother was loving and affectionate, and when she passed away, tenyear- old Rogers was devastated. Rogers was one-quarter Cherokee and liked to boast that this heritage, combined with his early experience as a cowboy, made him the ideal example of the American citizen. His early adult years were spent between working on the family ranch and traveling the world, and it was in South Africa that Rogers began his performing career with a Wild West show as a trick rider. He later joined a circus, then back in the United States, he worked in another Wild West show, which eventually led to a job in vaudeville, a theater style that used a variety of acts. In vaudeville he added to his performances with off beat lectures on the art of roping. Rogers’s humorous chatter, casual delivery, and southwestern drawl proved a popular combination, resulting in an invitation to join the popular Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway. He delighted audiences with his homely philosophy (the study of knowledge) and sharp remarks, becoming a renowned humorist and interpreter of the news. Rogers and his wife and children moved to California, where he acted in a number of films, beginning with Laughing Bill Hyde (1918). Rogers’s two-year contract was terminated, however, when the studio changed hands.
He then began his own film production company, but when this failed he was forced to return to New York City and the Ziegfield Follies. Three years later the first two collections of Rogers’s humor appeared—The Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference and The Cowboy Philosopher on Prohibition, both published in 1919. The Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference poked fun at the political activities surrounding the Versailles Treaty (signed in 1919, the treaty helped settle matters following World War I [1914–18]). The second volume ridiculed the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, passed in 1919, which outlawed the sale and consumption of alcohol. Rogers posed as the cowboy philosopher, a rural American gaping wide-eyed at the shenanigans of a modern world run by crooked businessmen and dishonest politicians. Yet although Rogers’s brand of popular humor appealed to the average citizen, he himself became a part of the establishment he made fun of. He befriended members of Congress as well as business leaders and at one time publicly supported the Fascist regime of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883–1945), who ruled Italy with a cruel and iron fist. Rogers, as quoted by James Feibleman in In Praise of Comedy: A Study in Its Theory and Practice, once stated that he wished his gravestone to read, “I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I have never met a man I didn’t like.” Rogers began a secondary career as an after-dinner speaker, and his success led in 1922 to a syndicated weekly newspaper column.
The first two years of these columns were collected in the 1924 book The Illiterate Digest. The columns showcase the cutting criticisms Rogers aimed at government, the influence of big business, and the then-popular topic of world disarmament (to reduce weapons) in the aftermath of World War I (1914–18). Rogers next moved onto the international stage of political humor. The Saturday Evening Post sent him abroad and his columns from Europe were collected in Letters of a Self-Made Diplomat to His President, published in 1926. The articles were published in the magazine in the form of fictional letters to then-president Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) and were full of humorous advice to the chief executive from Rogers’s European observations. The next leg of the journey for the Post took Rogers to the Soviet Union, the former country that today is made up of Russia and several smaller nations, and his columns about this experience appeared in There’s Not a Bathing Suit in Russia. This 1927 volume chronicles his trip to the world’s first Communist government, a political system where the goods and services are owned and distributed by a controlling central government. During this period Rogers further expanded into another media—the growing field of radio. He gave his first broadcast over the airwaves in 1926 and by 1930 had his own weekly slot. Like each of his speeches and syndicated columns, the radio speeches centered on a topic of current interest and were filled with Rogers’s stories and sharp commentary on the issue. By the end of the 1920s Rogers was using his position in the spotlight to campaign for humanitarian causes (causes that improve the life of others). During devastating flooding along the Mississippi River in 1927, he visited the ravaged areas, gave special performances and donated the proceeds to flood victims, and testified before Congress supporting increased disaster aid to the area.
The year 1929 dealt a severe blow to the American frame of mind—in October the stock market crashed and the country was plunged into a deep economic depression, putting millions out of work. Rogers continued in his role as the foremost humorist of the nation’s “little people” in his radio broadcasts and journalistic essays. In one piece, quoted by E. Paul Alworth in Will Rogers, he wrote: “Now everybody has got a scheme to relieve unemployment, but there is just one way to do it and that’s for everybody to go to work. ‘Where?’ Why right where you are, look around and you see lots of things to do, weeds to be cut, fences to be fixed, lawns to be mowed, filling stations to be robbed, gangsters to be catered to. . . .” Rogers supported the radical transformations President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) began under the New Deal beginning in 1933. The celebrity spoke out in favor of lending a helping hand to those affected the most by the economic situation and again gave benefit performances. He continued to star in films and indulged in his passion for airplanes. In August of 1935 a small plane carrying Rogers and a pilot friend, on their way to survey air routes from the United States to the Soviet Union, crashed over Point Barrow, Alaska, killing the entertainer. Rogers was fifty-five. His death was an occasion of national mourning. Newspapers and radio commentators praised him, a memorial was dedicated near his Oklahoma birthplace, and several volumes of his speeches, essays, broadcasts, and sayings appeared in print. Will Rogers is remembered as one of the best-loved celebrities of his era and one of the twentieth century’s best-known humorists. Forty years after his death, collections of his essays and quips were still appearing in bookstores.
Henry Kissinger - Biography
Aleading expert on international relations since the 1950s, Henry Kissinger was secretary of state under Presidents Richard Nixon (1913– 1994) and Gerald Ford (1913–). His impressive career also includes becoming the cowinner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. Henry Kissinger was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger on May 27, 1923, in Furth, Germany. He was the first of the two sons of Paula Stern Kissinger and Louis Kissinger. His father was a teacher who lost his job and career when the Nazis, carrying out the orders of Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), began persecuting (causing people to suffer for their beliefs) Jewish people in Germany. (The Nazi party was in control of the government of Germany from 1933 to 1945.) As a boy Kissinger loved sports but was a better student than athlete. When German anti-Semitism (hatred of Jewish people) increased, the family decided to leave Germany in 1938, moving first to England and then several months later to the United States.
The family settled in New York City, where Kissinger completed high school and began taking night classes at City College with the intention of becoming an accountant. While attending college he worked at a factory during the day. During World War II (1939–45; a war involving the United States and many other countries in the world in which millions of people lost their lives) Kissinger joined the military and served in Germany, working in Army Intelligence. He also became an American citizen during the war. Following the war Kissinger remained in Europe as an instructor at the European Command Intelligence School in Germany. In 1947 he returned to the United States and enrolled at Harvard University.
He graduated in the class of 1950 with a degree in government. He continued his studies as a graduate student, earning his master’s degree in 1952 and his Ph.D. in 1954, while also teaching at the university. Between 1952 and 1969 Kissinger directed the Harvard International Seminar, a type of study in which advanced students, led by a professor, conduct research, share their findings, and contribute to discussions. The seminar was held during the summer months. In this position, he was visited by many international figures with whom he would later deal as a foreign-affairs official. As part of the Council on Foreign Relations he published Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, which added to his reputation as a leading expert on international relations and national defense policy. For eighteen months beginning in 1956 he was director of a Rockefeller Brothers Fund special studies project—a program developed to investigate possible domestic and international problems. In 1957 he became a lecturer (public speaker) at Harvard. He was promoted to professor in 1962. Kissinger served as a consultant (one who gives professional advice) to the National Security Council, to the Arms Control Disarmament Agency, and to the Rand Corporation. From 1962 to 1965 he worked full time at Harvard. In 1965 he became a consultant to the State Department on Vietnam.
He visited Vietnam several times between 1965 and 1967. Most of 1968 he spent working on the unsuccessful bid of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979) for the Republican nomination for the presidency. In spite of Rockefeller’s defeat by Richard Nixon, at Rockefeller’s urging Nixon considered and appointed Kissinger to head the National Security Council. Kissinger did not agree with the U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union that had been developed under former presidents. He thought their positions had been inconsistent and too friendly. Kissinger viewed the Soviet Union as the main opponent of the United States in international affairs, but he had respect for the role of the Soviet Union as one of the superpowers. His attempts to ease tensions, known as détente (day-TAHNT), improved relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. As a result, one of Kissinger’s early successes during this period of détente was the completion of talks on the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT). SALT was an agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States to limit the number of nuclear weapons in each country.
The discussions lasted for nearly three years and ended with the signing of an agreement in Moscow, Russia, by President Nixon and Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982). Kissinger also played an important part in the settlement of the Quadripartite Agree-ment on Berlin, Germany, in September 1971. Berlin had been the source of problems between the East and West for many years, particularly after the creation of the Berlin Wall by the East German government in 1961 to prevent people from leaving the country. Through official negotiations (giveand- take discussions to settle an issue) handled by Ambassador Kenneth Rush (1910–1994), and secret negotiations directly involving Kissinger, an agreement was made to make it easier to travel between East and West Berlin. This agreement also improved relations between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Another of Kissinger’s successes (and one that caught the media by surprise) was the organization of Richard Nixon’s approach to China. The United States had refused to recognize the People’s Republic of China following the civil war that left Communists under Mao Zedong (1893–1976). Communists believe in revolution to establish a system in which the means of production—land, factories, mines, and so on—are owned by all people in common. Early in Nixon’s first term as president, efforts were made to allow interaction between China and the United States. Taking advantage of international conditions and moving secretly with the help of Pakistani President Yahya Khan (1917–1980), Kissinger flew to China and arranged for an invitation for Nixon to make an official state visit. Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 provided guidelines for the establishment of U.S.-China relations. During his eight years in the National Security Council and State Department, Kissinger flew to China a total of nine times. Kissinger was criticized most and forgiven least for his handling of the fighting in Southeast Asia.
The U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1955–75) had driven President Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973) from office, and it had been the desire of the Nixon administration to seek “peace with honor.” The Vietnam War was a war in which the government of South Vietnam, with U.S. assistance, fought against a Communist takeover by North Vietnam. Kissinger’s approach was to negotiate from a position of strength. The direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam reflected this position, but the secret bombing of Cambodia—referred to as the “secret war”—was criticized as an excessive use of military strength to force U.S. opponents to agree to end the war. All U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia was an attempt to keep Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from becoming controlled by Communist groups. The secret bombing of Cambodia was eventually stopped by actions of Congress. Kissinger successfully negotiated a truce with his North Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho (1911–1990) in Paris and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 with him. Kissinger had gone along with the wishes of Secretary of State William Rogers (1913–2001) while on the National Security Council. Following his appointment as secretary of state in 1973, he changed his handsoff policy toward the Middle East. During the three years he was secretary of state, Kissinger conducted what became known as “shuttle” diplomacy (negotiations between nations). He served as the middleman in negotiations to restore peace among Middle Eastern nations. Kissinger would often fly from Egypt to Israel to Syria or elsewhere and back again as he worked to help develop agreements to secure peace. In all, Kissinger made eleven “shuttle” missions, the longest lasting nearly a month. After leaving office following Ford’s loss to Jimmy Carter (1924–) in the 1976 presidential election, Kissinger was self-employed as the director of a consulting firm dealing with international politics. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest award given to a civilian (nonmember of a military, police, or fire-fighting unit), in 1977. He also received the Medal of Liberty, an award that was given only once, in 1986, to ten foreign-born American leaders. Kissinger produced two books of memoirs (accounts of his experiences) to explain events that had happened while he was in office. These explanations did not change the views of many critics, who believed that Kissinger had made major mistakes in developing U.S. foreign policy. In 1997 former Secretaries of State Kissinger and Alexander Haig (1924–) came under fire for their roles in helping U.S.-China trade. Some said that they stood to profit from contracts with the Chinese and that some of their dealings put the United States in a vulnerable (open to attack or damage) position. In 2001 Kissinger was named chancellor (president) of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The family settled in New York City, where Kissinger completed high school and began taking night classes at City College with the intention of becoming an accountant. While attending college he worked at a factory during the day. During World War II (1939–45; a war involving the United States and many other countries in the world in which millions of people lost their lives) Kissinger joined the military and served in Germany, working in Army Intelligence. He also became an American citizen during the war. Following the war Kissinger remained in Europe as an instructor at the European Command Intelligence School in Germany. In 1947 he returned to the United States and enrolled at Harvard University.
He graduated in the class of 1950 with a degree in government. He continued his studies as a graduate student, earning his master’s degree in 1952 and his Ph.D. in 1954, while also teaching at the university. Between 1952 and 1969 Kissinger directed the Harvard International Seminar, a type of study in which advanced students, led by a professor, conduct research, share their findings, and contribute to discussions. The seminar was held during the summer months. In this position, he was visited by many international figures with whom he would later deal as a foreign-affairs official. As part of the Council on Foreign Relations he published Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, which added to his reputation as a leading expert on international relations and national defense policy. For eighteen months beginning in 1956 he was director of a Rockefeller Brothers Fund special studies project—a program developed to investigate possible domestic and international problems. In 1957 he became a lecturer (public speaker) at Harvard. He was promoted to professor in 1962. Kissinger served as a consultant (one who gives professional advice) to the National Security Council, to the Arms Control Disarmament Agency, and to the Rand Corporation. From 1962 to 1965 he worked full time at Harvard. In 1965 he became a consultant to the State Department on Vietnam.
He visited Vietnam several times between 1965 and 1967. Most of 1968 he spent working on the unsuccessful bid of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller (1908–1979) for the Republican nomination for the presidency. In spite of Rockefeller’s defeat by Richard Nixon, at Rockefeller’s urging Nixon considered and appointed Kissinger to head the National Security Council. Kissinger did not agree with the U.S. foreign policy toward the Soviet Union that had been developed under former presidents. He thought their positions had been inconsistent and too friendly. Kissinger viewed the Soviet Union as the main opponent of the United States in international affairs, but he had respect for the role of the Soviet Union as one of the superpowers. His attempts to ease tensions, known as détente (day-TAHNT), improved relations between the Soviet Union and the United States. As a result, one of Kissinger’s early successes during this period of détente was the completion of talks on the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT). SALT was an agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States to limit the number of nuclear weapons in each country.
The discussions lasted for nearly three years and ended with the signing of an agreement in Moscow, Russia, by President Nixon and Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982). Kissinger also played an important part in the settlement of the Quadripartite Agree-ment on Berlin, Germany, in September 1971. Berlin had been the source of problems between the East and West for many years, particularly after the creation of the Berlin Wall by the East German government in 1961 to prevent people from leaving the country. Through official negotiations (giveand- take discussions to settle an issue) handled by Ambassador Kenneth Rush (1910–1994), and secret negotiations directly involving Kissinger, an agreement was made to make it easier to travel between East and West Berlin. This agreement also improved relations between the United States and the former Soviet Union. Another of Kissinger’s successes (and one that caught the media by surprise) was the organization of Richard Nixon’s approach to China. The United States had refused to recognize the People’s Republic of China following the civil war that left Communists under Mao Zedong (1893–1976). Communists believe in revolution to establish a system in which the means of production—land, factories, mines, and so on—are owned by all people in common. Early in Nixon’s first term as president, efforts were made to allow interaction between China and the United States. Taking advantage of international conditions and moving secretly with the help of Pakistani President Yahya Khan (1917–1980), Kissinger flew to China and arranged for an invitation for Nixon to make an official state visit. Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 provided guidelines for the establishment of U.S.-China relations. During his eight years in the National Security Council and State Department, Kissinger flew to China a total of nine times. Kissinger was criticized most and forgiven least for his handling of the fighting in Southeast Asia.
The U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War (1955–75) had driven President Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973) from office, and it had been the desire of the Nixon administration to seek “peace with honor.” The Vietnam War was a war in which the government of South Vietnam, with U.S. assistance, fought against a Communist takeover by North Vietnam. Kissinger’s approach was to negotiate from a position of strength. The direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam reflected this position, but the secret bombing of Cambodia—referred to as the “secret war”—was criticized as an excessive use of military strength to force U.S. opponents to agree to end the war. All U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia was an attempt to keep Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from becoming controlled by Communist groups. The secret bombing of Cambodia was eventually stopped by actions of Congress. Kissinger successfully negotiated a truce with his North Vietnamese counterpart Le Duc Tho (1911–1990) in Paris and shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 with him. Kissinger had gone along with the wishes of Secretary of State William Rogers (1913–2001) while on the National Security Council. Following his appointment as secretary of state in 1973, he changed his handsoff policy toward the Middle East. During the three years he was secretary of state, Kissinger conducted what became known as “shuttle” diplomacy (negotiations between nations). He served as the middleman in negotiations to restore peace among Middle Eastern nations. Kissinger would often fly from Egypt to Israel to Syria or elsewhere and back again as he worked to help develop agreements to secure peace. In all, Kissinger made eleven “shuttle” missions, the longest lasting nearly a month. After leaving office following Ford’s loss to Jimmy Carter (1924–) in the 1976 presidential election, Kissinger was self-employed as the director of a consulting firm dealing with international politics. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest award given to a civilian (nonmember of a military, police, or fire-fighting unit), in 1977. He also received the Medal of Liberty, an award that was given only once, in 1986, to ten foreign-born American leaders. Kissinger produced two books of memoirs (accounts of his experiences) to explain events that had happened while he was in office. These explanations did not change the views of many critics, who believed that Kissinger had made major mistakes in developing U.S. foreign policy. In 1997 former Secretaries of State Kissinger and Alexander Haig (1924–) came under fire for their roles in helping U.S.-China trade. Some said that they stood to profit from contracts with the Chinese and that some of their dealings put the United States in a vulnerable (open to attack or damage) position. In 2001 Kissinger was named chancellor (president) of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Reggie Jackson - Biography
Born: May 18, 1946 Wyncote, Pennsylvania
African American baseball player
Baseball great Reggie Jackson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993. Jackson’s hard-hitting, fast-footed style helped him lead two teams to five World Championships in only seven years. Jackson made headlines with his selfcentered remarks, hot temper, and colorful manner. Reginald Martinez Jackson was born on May 18, 1946, in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, to Martinez and Clara Jackson. Jackson was one of six children of African American and Spanish descent. When his parents divorced, young Jackson moved with two of his siblings to live with his father in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. Although his father always provided food for the family, Jackson recalls that they often “felt poverty.”
His father, a tailor and a dry cleaner, was once a semi-pro baseball player in the Negro leagues, and he was largely responsible for inspiring and encouraging his talented son to pursue a career in baseball. Jackson was an all-star athlete in track, on the football team, in basketball, and in baseball by the time he entered his senior year at Cheltenham High School. Reggie accepted a scholarship from Arizona State University. In his sophomore year he was chosen to the All-American first team in baseball. His performance caught the attention of Charles O. Finley, owner of the Kansas City Athletics, who offered Jackson a $95,000 bonus. He left college after his sophomore year and entered the world of professional baseball. In 1968 Jackson moved with the Athletics to their new home in Oakland, California. In his first full season in the majors he hit 29 home runs and drove in another 74 runs. But he also made a dozen outfield errors and struck out a near record-breaking 171 times. The following season, in 1969, he again held a record number of strikeouts with 142, but he hit a fantastic 47 home runs and led the American League in scoring with 123 runs. After the end of that season Jackson’s performance declined.
The increasing pressures of trying to keep up with his own home-run pace, as well as troubles in his marriage to wife Jenni, contributed to his temporary decline. Further, he failed to bargain successfully with Finley for a high increase in pay. His average and his homers dropped and his continued poor performance caused him to be benched for a portion of that season. In the winter of 1970 and 1971 Jackson went to Santurce, Puerto Rico, to work with Frank Robinson. Robinson, a veteran playermanager, helped Jackson to improve his play. Robinson’s tutoring helped him to work on his aggressive playing style while keeping his temper under control. The following season Jackson bounced back. He helped lead the Athletics to the American League Western Division title in 1971 with 32 home runs. In 1972 the Athletics won the title again. In the playoffs the Athletics beat the Detroit Tigers, with Jackson sliding into home plate to score the winning run in the final game. But he tore a muscle in one of his legs, which forced him to sit out of the World Series. Jackson watched as the Athletics defeated the Cincinnati Reds. Voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) in 1973, Jackson batted .293 and led the league with 32 home runs. That year the team went on to win the World Series over the New York Mets. Leading the league in runs, he was chosen MVP in the World Series. The Athletics won the World Series in 1974, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers, with Jackson hitting 29 homers for the season. Finally, in 1975, after winning the American League Western Division title, Jackson ended his nine-year career with the Athletics. Finley traded Jackson to the Baltimore Orioles and he stayed with them for one season.
In 1977 Jackson signed a five-year contract as a free agent with the New York Yankees for $300,000 a year. Once again he led his team to a World Series championship. The night of October 18, 1977, was one of Jackson’s greatest triumphs. In that game, he became only the second player in history to hit three home runs in one game. In the entire series, he hit five home runs, a World Series record. Jackson was named MVP of the World Series that fall. He followed that spectacular season with a second World Series win against the Dodgers in 1978. His walloping World Series hitting earned him the title “Mr. October,” as he could always be counted on to pull his team to victory in the Fall Classic. The Yankees won the American League pennant in 1981. Jackson hit his tenth and final World Series home run that year. The California Angels signed Jackson in 1982, and he reached the 500-homer mark in 1984. Jackson returned to the Athletics in 1987 and retired at the end of the season. He placed sixth on the all-time major league career home run list, with 563 home runs during his twenty-one-year baseball career. Retirement After retiring Jackson worked briefly as a sports broadcaster for the Angels before moving on to coach for the Athletics. He then took a job with the Upper Deck Company, handling sales of trading cards and sports collectibles. On August 1, 1993, Reggie Jackson became the 216th inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His achievements run to both extremes: ten World Series home runs; five World Championships; eleven American League Championships with three different teams; along with holding the major league record for lifetime strikeouts at 2,597. The Yankees retired Jackson’s number “44” baseball uniform. During the summer of 1993, Jackson returned to the Yankees as a special assistant and advisor to the general partners. Jackson continued his work in California for the trading card company, and he was made director of new business at a California- based computer company for which he was already a spokesman. He is also an avid car collector and runs a charity called the Mr. October Foundation for Kids. He has one daughter, Kimberly.
African American baseball player
Baseball great Reggie Jackson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993. Jackson’s hard-hitting, fast-footed style helped him lead two teams to five World Championships in only seven years. Jackson made headlines with his selfcentered remarks, hot temper, and colorful manner. Reginald Martinez Jackson was born on May 18, 1946, in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, to Martinez and Clara Jackson. Jackson was one of six children of African American and Spanish descent. When his parents divorced, young Jackson moved with two of his siblings to live with his father in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. Although his father always provided food for the family, Jackson recalls that they often “felt poverty.”
His father, a tailor and a dry cleaner, was once a semi-pro baseball player in the Negro leagues, and he was largely responsible for inspiring and encouraging his talented son to pursue a career in baseball. Jackson was an all-star athlete in track, on the football team, in basketball, and in baseball by the time he entered his senior year at Cheltenham High School. Reggie accepted a scholarship from Arizona State University. In his sophomore year he was chosen to the All-American first team in baseball. His performance caught the attention of Charles O. Finley, owner of the Kansas City Athletics, who offered Jackson a $95,000 bonus. He left college after his sophomore year and entered the world of professional baseball. In 1968 Jackson moved with the Athletics to their new home in Oakland, California. In his first full season in the majors he hit 29 home runs and drove in another 74 runs. But he also made a dozen outfield errors and struck out a near record-breaking 171 times. The following season, in 1969, he again held a record number of strikeouts with 142, but he hit a fantastic 47 home runs and led the American League in scoring with 123 runs. After the end of that season Jackson’s performance declined.
The increasing pressures of trying to keep up with his own home-run pace, as well as troubles in his marriage to wife Jenni, contributed to his temporary decline. Further, he failed to bargain successfully with Finley for a high increase in pay. His average and his homers dropped and his continued poor performance caused him to be benched for a portion of that season. In the winter of 1970 and 1971 Jackson went to Santurce, Puerto Rico, to work with Frank Robinson. Robinson, a veteran playermanager, helped Jackson to improve his play. Robinson’s tutoring helped him to work on his aggressive playing style while keeping his temper under control. The following season Jackson bounced back. He helped lead the Athletics to the American League Western Division title in 1971 with 32 home runs. In 1972 the Athletics won the title again. In the playoffs the Athletics beat the Detroit Tigers, with Jackson sliding into home plate to score the winning run in the final game. But he tore a muscle in one of his legs, which forced him to sit out of the World Series. Jackson watched as the Athletics defeated the Cincinnati Reds. Voted the American League’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) in 1973, Jackson batted .293 and led the league with 32 home runs. That year the team went on to win the World Series over the New York Mets. Leading the league in runs, he was chosen MVP in the World Series. The Athletics won the World Series in 1974, defeating the Los Angeles Dodgers, with Jackson hitting 29 homers for the season. Finally, in 1975, after winning the American League Western Division title, Jackson ended his nine-year career with the Athletics. Finley traded Jackson to the Baltimore Orioles and he stayed with them for one season.
In 1977 Jackson signed a five-year contract as a free agent with the New York Yankees for $300,000 a year. Once again he led his team to a World Series championship. The night of October 18, 1977, was one of Jackson’s greatest triumphs. In that game, he became only the second player in history to hit three home runs in one game. In the entire series, he hit five home runs, a World Series record. Jackson was named MVP of the World Series that fall. He followed that spectacular season with a second World Series win against the Dodgers in 1978. His walloping World Series hitting earned him the title “Mr. October,” as he could always be counted on to pull his team to victory in the Fall Classic. The Yankees won the American League pennant in 1981. Jackson hit his tenth and final World Series home run that year. The California Angels signed Jackson in 1982, and he reached the 500-homer mark in 1984. Jackson returned to the Athletics in 1987 and retired at the end of the season. He placed sixth on the all-time major league career home run list, with 563 home runs during his twenty-one-year baseball career. Retirement After retiring Jackson worked briefly as a sports broadcaster for the Angels before moving on to coach for the Athletics. He then took a job with the Upper Deck Company, handling sales of trading cards and sports collectibles. On August 1, 1993, Reggie Jackson became the 216th inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His achievements run to both extremes: ten World Series home runs; five World Championships; eleven American League Championships with three different teams; along with holding the major league record for lifetime strikeouts at 2,597. The Yankees retired Jackson’s number “44” baseball uniform. During the summer of 1993, Jackson returned to the Yankees as a special assistant and advisor to the general partners. Jackson continued his work in California for the trading card company, and he was made director of new business at a California- based computer company for which he was already a spokesman. He is also an avid car collector and runs a charity called the Mr. October Foundation for Kids. He has one daughter, Kimberly.
Andrew Jackson - Biography
Born: March 15, 1767 Waxhaw, South Carolina - Died: June 8, 1845 Nashville, Tennessee
American president and lawyer
Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) was the seventh president of the United States. He symbolized the democratic advances of his time, while strengthening the power of the presidential office in American government. Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in Waxhaw country, which is now part of North and South Carolina. His father, who died shortly before Andrew’s birth, had come with his wife to America from Ireland in 1765. Andrew attended several academies in the Waxhaw settlement, but his education was incomplete and he never developed a taste for learning. After the outbreak of the American Revolution (1775–83), where the American colonies fought to break away from British rule, Jackson, barely thirteen years old, served as an orderly (an attendant). Following a battle, Jackson and his brother were captured by the British and taken to a prison camp. When Jackson refused to clean an officer’s boots, the officer slashed him with a sword, leaving a permanent scar on his forehead and left hand. Jackson was the only member of his family to survive the war. Many believe that his harsh, adventuresome, early life developed his strong, aggressive qualities of leadership, his violent temper, and his need for intense loyalty from friends.
After the war Jackson drifted from one job to another and from one relative to another. He wasted a small inheritance and for a time lived a wild and undisciplined life. Then, in 1784 Jackson left for Salisbury, North Carolina, where he studied law in a local office. Three years later, after earning his law license, he moved to the western district that eventually became Tennessee. Living in Nashville, Tennessee, Jackson soon became a distinguished lawyer. Within ten years he became one of the most important landowners in the state. He also achieved social status by marrying Rachel Donelson (1767–1828), the daughter of one of the region’s original settlers. In 1796 Jackson represented his county when the Southwest Territory (areas west of the Mississippi River) petitioned Congress for admission as a state to the Union, as the United States was known. Although he played a modest, or small, part in the proceedings, one tradition does credit him with suggesting the name of the new state: Tennessee, taken from the name of a Cherokee Indian chief. After Tennessee was admitted as the sixteenth state of the Union, Jackson was elected to its only seat in Congress. The following year he became judge of the Superior Court of Tennessee. He resigned from the bench in 1804 to devote himself to his plantation, where he later built a graceful mansion called the “Hermitage.” In the election of 1828 Jackson won an overwhelming victory. During the campaign, Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) of New York and John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) of South Carolina joined forces behind Jackson. Jackson and his supporters soon became known as the Democratic Party. Supporters of Adams and Clay were now called National Republicans. Relations between President Jackson and Vice President Calhoun soon turned sour. The two argued over the important constitutional question of the nature of the Union. Calhoun strongly believed in a state’s doctrine (official statement) of nullification, or the right of a state to undo any federal law that disagreed with the state’s views. Jackson strongly believed nullification was wrong and could weaken the Union. Calhoun wound up resigning before the end of his term.
The presidential contest of 1832 revolved around the important political issue of the national bank, or the bank controlled by the national government. Jackson believed the Second Bank of the United States (established in 1816) was unconstitutional, or that it disagreed with the nation’s rules. Also, Jackson maintained that the Bank had failed to establish a sound and uniform currency, or money that could be used across the country. When the Bank applied to Congress to continue its work, Jackson vetoed (rejected) the bill. Although the bill would pass in the end, Jackson sent a strong message by saying how “the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” With this message Jackson broadened presidential power by giving social, political, and economic reasons for vetoing the bill.
In the 1832 presidential election Jackson and vice presidential candidate Van Buren defeated Henry Clay. Jackson then informed Congress of his intention to pay off the national debt. This goal was achieved on January 1, 1835, thanks to income the federal government received from land sales and tariffs (import taxes). Jackson supported a policy of “rotation” with respect to Federal offices. He declared that no one man has more right to office than any other man. Jackson also supported moving Native Americans west of the Mississippi River as the most humane, or fair, policy the government could pursue in dealing with the Native Americans. Jackson signed more than ninety treaties with various tribes, in which lands owned by Native Americans within the existing states, were exchanged for new lands in the open West.
Another issue in Jackson’s second term was that of tarriffs. The North called for high rates, but the South considered them a way of financially supporting northern manufacturers at the expense of southern businesses. With the passage of the Tariff of 1832, which reduced the import taxes but not enough to satisfy southern states, South Carolina reacted violently. The state called on Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification and soon declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void. The state then warned the federal government that if force were used to execute the law, the state would secede, or withdraw membership, from the Union. Jackson would not back down, and threatened the state with treason, or a high crime against one’s country. A compromise tariff was soon hurried through Congress. Jackson had avoided a national crisis, and his actions during the controversy were masterful. Through the careful use of presidential powers and compromise, he preserved the Union and upheld the power of federal law. At the end of his two terms in office, having participated in the inauguration of his successor, Martin Van Buren, Jackson retired to his plantation. He continued to keep his hand in national politics until his death on June 8, 1845.
American president and lawyer
Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) was the seventh president of the United States. He symbolized the democratic advances of his time, while strengthening the power of the presidential office in American government. Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in Waxhaw country, which is now part of North and South Carolina. His father, who died shortly before Andrew’s birth, had come with his wife to America from Ireland in 1765. Andrew attended several academies in the Waxhaw settlement, but his education was incomplete and he never developed a taste for learning. After the outbreak of the American Revolution (1775–83), where the American colonies fought to break away from British rule, Jackson, barely thirteen years old, served as an orderly (an attendant). Following a battle, Jackson and his brother were captured by the British and taken to a prison camp. When Jackson refused to clean an officer’s boots, the officer slashed him with a sword, leaving a permanent scar on his forehead and left hand. Jackson was the only member of his family to survive the war. Many believe that his harsh, adventuresome, early life developed his strong, aggressive qualities of leadership, his violent temper, and his need for intense loyalty from friends.
After the war Jackson drifted from one job to another and from one relative to another. He wasted a small inheritance and for a time lived a wild and undisciplined life. Then, in 1784 Jackson left for Salisbury, North Carolina, where he studied law in a local office. Three years later, after earning his law license, he moved to the western district that eventually became Tennessee. Living in Nashville, Tennessee, Jackson soon became a distinguished lawyer. Within ten years he became one of the most important landowners in the state. He also achieved social status by marrying Rachel Donelson (1767–1828), the daughter of one of the region’s original settlers. In 1796 Jackson represented his county when the Southwest Territory (areas west of the Mississippi River) petitioned Congress for admission as a state to the Union, as the United States was known. Although he played a modest, or small, part in the proceedings, one tradition does credit him with suggesting the name of the new state: Tennessee, taken from the name of a Cherokee Indian chief. After Tennessee was admitted as the sixteenth state of the Union, Jackson was elected to its only seat in Congress. The following year he became judge of the Superior Court of Tennessee. He resigned from the bench in 1804 to devote himself to his plantation, where he later built a graceful mansion called the “Hermitage.” In the election of 1828 Jackson won an overwhelming victory. During the campaign, Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) of New York and John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) of South Carolina joined forces behind Jackson. Jackson and his supporters soon became known as the Democratic Party. Supporters of Adams and Clay were now called National Republicans. Relations between President Jackson and Vice President Calhoun soon turned sour. The two argued over the important constitutional question of the nature of the Union. Calhoun strongly believed in a state’s doctrine (official statement) of nullification, or the right of a state to undo any federal law that disagreed with the state’s views. Jackson strongly believed nullification was wrong and could weaken the Union. Calhoun wound up resigning before the end of his term.
The presidential contest of 1832 revolved around the important political issue of the national bank, or the bank controlled by the national government. Jackson believed the Second Bank of the United States (established in 1816) was unconstitutional, or that it disagreed with the nation’s rules. Also, Jackson maintained that the Bank had failed to establish a sound and uniform currency, or money that could be used across the country. When the Bank applied to Congress to continue its work, Jackson vetoed (rejected) the bill. Although the bill would pass in the end, Jackson sent a strong message by saying how “the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” With this message Jackson broadened presidential power by giving social, political, and economic reasons for vetoing the bill.
In the 1832 presidential election Jackson and vice presidential candidate Van Buren defeated Henry Clay. Jackson then informed Congress of his intention to pay off the national debt. This goal was achieved on January 1, 1835, thanks to income the federal government received from land sales and tariffs (import taxes). Jackson supported a policy of “rotation” with respect to Federal offices. He declared that no one man has more right to office than any other man. Jackson also supported moving Native Americans west of the Mississippi River as the most humane, or fair, policy the government could pursue in dealing with the Native Americans. Jackson signed more than ninety treaties with various tribes, in which lands owned by Native Americans within the existing states, were exchanged for new lands in the open West.
Another issue in Jackson’s second term was that of tarriffs. The North called for high rates, but the South considered them a way of financially supporting northern manufacturers at the expense of southern businesses. With the passage of the Tariff of 1832, which reduced the import taxes but not enough to satisfy southern states, South Carolina reacted violently. The state called on Calhoun’s doctrine of nullification and soon declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void. The state then warned the federal government that if force were used to execute the law, the state would secede, or withdraw membership, from the Union. Jackson would not back down, and threatened the state with treason, or a high crime against one’s country. A compromise tariff was soon hurried through Congress. Jackson had avoided a national crisis, and his actions during the controversy were masterful. Through the careful use of presidential powers and compromise, he preserved the Union and upheld the power of federal law. At the end of his two terms in office, having participated in the inauguration of his successor, Martin Van Buren, Jackson retired to his plantation. He continued to keep his hand in national politics until his death on June 8, 1845.
Marcus Garvey - Biography
Born: August 17, 1887 St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica - Died: June 10, 1940 London, England
Jamaican activist and African nationalist
Marcus Garvey, a black man from the West Indies, was the first to forcefully speak about the concept of African nationalism—of black people returning to Africa, the continent of their forefathers, in order to build a great nation of their own. His writings and ideas would inspire many leaders of the civil rights movement during the second half of the twentieth century. Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, on August 17, 1887, the youngest child of a stonemason (one who prepares stones for building). He went to the local elementary school, and at the age of fourteen became an apprentice (working to gain experience) in the printing trade. In 1903 he went to the capital, Kingston, to work as a printer. He soon became involved in public activities and helped form the Printers Union, the first trade union in Jamaica. In 1907 he took part in the unsuccessful printers strike, where organized workers refused to work unless certain demands were met. This experience influenced the young Garvey in both his political and journalistic passions. He soon began publishing a periodical called the Watchman.
In 1910 Garvey began a series of travels that transformed him from an average person
concerned about the problems of those with less opportunity, to an African nationalist
determined to lift an entire race from bondage. He visited Costa Rica, Panama, and
Ecuador, and worked as an editor for several radical newspapers. After briefly returning
home, he proceeded to England, where contacts with African nationalists stimulated in
him a keen interest in Africa and in black history. In each country he visited, he noted that
the black man was in an inferior position, subject to the ever-changing ideals of
stronger races. His reading of Booker T.Washington’s (1856–1915) “Up from Slavery”
at this time had a great effect upon him. Also at this time Garvey met Duse
Mohammed Ali, a Sudanese-Egyptian and strong supporter of African self-rule. Garvey
began writing for Ali’s small magazines and was introduced to other black activists.
On his return to Jamaica in 1914 from England, Garvey formed the Universal Negro
Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). These organizations
were intended “to work for the general uplift of the Negro peoples of the world,”
and would become the centerpiece for his life’s work.
In 1916 Garvey went to the United States to raise funds to carry on the work of his Jamaican organizations. He was immediately caught up in the unrest of the times, and his voice thundered in the evenings on the streets of Harlem in New York City, New York. A New York branch of the UNIA was established, soon followed by branches in other cities in the United States, in Central and South America, and in the Caribbean.
The expansion of the UNIA was publicized by its official voice, Negro World, a newspaper published in English, Spanish, and French. Published in New York City from 1918 to 1933, the magazine was succeeded by the monthly Black Man, which ran through the 1930s, published after 1934 in London. Negro World reached out to black communities all over the world. It even penetrated into the interior of Africa, even though the white rulers there had banned it. Garvey stressed the need for blacks to return to Africa for the building of a great nation, but he realized that until this was accomplished,
Africans needed to make themselves economically independent wherever they lived.
He encouraged black people to start their own businesses—to take the business of their ghettos into their own hands. Together with the American clergyman Archbishop George A. McGuire (1866– 1934), Garvey formed the African Orthodox Church. This was in accordance with one of his basic principles, for he believed that each race must see God through its own racial eyes. The Black Christ and the Black Madonna were officially announced at the UNIA convention of 1924. The Black Star Line shipping company and the Negro Factories Corporation were to be the commercial strengths of the Garvey movement. But it was the failure of the shipping venture that gave Garvey’s enemies the opportunity to destroy him. Investments in the shipping line were lost, and in 1925 Garvey was imprisoned in the United States. After serving two years and ten months of a five-year sentence, he was deported, or forced out of the country, to Jamaica. Previously, his plans for colonization in Liberia had been ruined by the colonial powers that brought pressure to bear on the Liberian government. As a result, the land that had been granted to the Garvey organization for the settlement of overseas Africans was given to the white American industrialist Harvey Firestone (1863–1938). And the expensive equipment shipped to Liberia for the use of Garvey’s colonists was seized.
In Jamaica, Garvey attempted to enter local politics, but restrictions at the time did not allow the vote to the black masses. He went to England and continued his work of social protest and his call for the liberation (freeing) of Africa. He died in London on June 10, 1940. Marcus Garvey was married twice. His second wife, Amy Jacques, whom he married in 1922, bore him two sons. The Garvey movement was the greatest international movement of African peoples in modern times. At its peak, from 1922 to 1924, the movement counted more than eight million followers. The youngest members of the movement were taken in at five years of age and, as they grew older, they graduated to the sections for older children. Garvey emphasized the belief in the One God, the God of Africa, who should be visualized through black eyes. He preached to black people to become familiar with their ancient history and their rich cultural heritage.
He called for pride in the black race—for example, he made black dolls for black children. His was the first voice to clearly demand black power. It was he who said, “A race without authority and power is a race without respect.” In emphasizing the need to have separate black institutions under black leadership, Garvey anticipated the mood and thinking of the future black nationalists by nearly fifty years. He died, as he lived, an unbending leader of African nationalism. The symbols which he made famous, the black star of Africa and the red, black, and green flag of African liberation, continued to inspire younger generations of African nationalists.
Jamaican activist and African nationalist
Marcus Garvey, a black man from the West Indies, was the first to forcefully speak about the concept of African nationalism—of black people returning to Africa, the continent of their forefathers, in order to build a great nation of their own. His writings and ideas would inspire many leaders of the civil rights movement during the second half of the twentieth century. Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, on August 17, 1887, the youngest child of a stonemason (one who prepares stones for building). He went to the local elementary school, and at the age of fourteen became an apprentice (working to gain experience) in the printing trade. In 1903 he went to the capital, Kingston, to work as a printer. He soon became involved in public activities and helped form the Printers Union, the first trade union in Jamaica. In 1907 he took part in the unsuccessful printers strike, where organized workers refused to work unless certain demands were met. This experience influenced the young Garvey in both his political and journalistic passions. He soon began publishing a periodical called the Watchman.
In 1910 Garvey began a series of travels that transformed him from an average person
concerned about the problems of those with less opportunity, to an African nationalist
determined to lift an entire race from bondage. He visited Costa Rica, Panama, and
Ecuador, and worked as an editor for several radical newspapers. After briefly returning
home, he proceeded to England, where contacts with African nationalists stimulated in
him a keen interest in Africa and in black history. In each country he visited, he noted that
the black man was in an inferior position, subject to the ever-changing ideals of
stronger races. His reading of Booker T.Washington’s (1856–1915) “Up from Slavery”
at this time had a great effect upon him. Also at this time Garvey met Duse
Mohammed Ali, a Sudanese-Egyptian and strong supporter of African self-rule. Garvey
began writing for Ali’s small magazines and was introduced to other black activists.
On his return to Jamaica in 1914 from England, Garvey formed the Universal Negro
Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). These organizations
were intended “to work for the general uplift of the Negro peoples of the world,”
and would become the centerpiece for his life’s work.
In 1916 Garvey went to the United States to raise funds to carry on the work of his Jamaican organizations. He was immediately caught up in the unrest of the times, and his voice thundered in the evenings on the streets of Harlem in New York City, New York. A New York branch of the UNIA was established, soon followed by branches in other cities in the United States, in Central and South America, and in the Caribbean.
The expansion of the UNIA was publicized by its official voice, Negro World, a newspaper published in English, Spanish, and French. Published in New York City from 1918 to 1933, the magazine was succeeded by the monthly Black Man, which ran through the 1930s, published after 1934 in London. Negro World reached out to black communities all over the world. It even penetrated into the interior of Africa, even though the white rulers there had banned it. Garvey stressed the need for blacks to return to Africa for the building of a great nation, but he realized that until this was accomplished,
Africans needed to make themselves economically independent wherever they lived.
He encouraged black people to start their own businesses—to take the business of their ghettos into their own hands. Together with the American clergyman Archbishop George A. McGuire (1866– 1934), Garvey formed the African Orthodox Church. This was in accordance with one of his basic principles, for he believed that each race must see God through its own racial eyes. The Black Christ and the Black Madonna were officially announced at the UNIA convention of 1924. The Black Star Line shipping company and the Negro Factories Corporation were to be the commercial strengths of the Garvey movement. But it was the failure of the shipping venture that gave Garvey’s enemies the opportunity to destroy him. Investments in the shipping line were lost, and in 1925 Garvey was imprisoned in the United States. After serving two years and ten months of a five-year sentence, he was deported, or forced out of the country, to Jamaica. Previously, his plans for colonization in Liberia had been ruined by the colonial powers that brought pressure to bear on the Liberian government. As a result, the land that had been granted to the Garvey organization for the settlement of overseas Africans was given to the white American industrialist Harvey Firestone (1863–1938). And the expensive equipment shipped to Liberia for the use of Garvey’s colonists was seized.
In Jamaica, Garvey attempted to enter local politics, but restrictions at the time did not allow the vote to the black masses. He went to England and continued his work of social protest and his call for the liberation (freeing) of Africa. He died in London on June 10, 1940. Marcus Garvey was married twice. His second wife, Amy Jacques, whom he married in 1922, bore him two sons. The Garvey movement was the greatest international movement of African peoples in modern times. At its peak, from 1922 to 1924, the movement counted more than eight million followers. The youngest members of the movement were taken in at five years of age and, as they grew older, they graduated to the sections for older children. Garvey emphasized the belief in the One God, the God of Africa, who should be visualized through black eyes. He preached to black people to become familiar with their ancient history and their rich cultural heritage.
He called for pride in the black race—for example, he made black dolls for black children. His was the first voice to clearly demand black power. It was he who said, “A race without authority and power is a race without respect.” In emphasizing the need to have separate black institutions under black leadership, Garvey anticipated the mood and thinking of the future black nationalists by nearly fifty years. He died, as he lived, an unbending leader of African nationalism. The symbols which he made famous, the black star of Africa and the red, black, and green flag of African liberation, continued to inspire younger generations of African nationalists.
Gabriel García Márquez - Biography
Born: March 6, 1928 - Aracataca, Colombia Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist
Gabriel García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist whose works have earned him the reputation of being one of the greatest living writers in Spain and Latin America. Born in Aracataca, Colombia, on March 6, 1928, Gabriel García Márquez was the oldest of Gabriel Eligio García and Luisa Santiaga Márquez Iguarán’s twelve children. His father was a telegraph operator. The family was poor, and García Márquez spent the first eight years of his life with his maternal grandparents. They were the most important and influential people in his life, and he loved listening to them tell stories about Colombia’s old days. García Márquez received his early education from the Liceo Nacional of Zipaquirá, Colombia, from which he graduated in 1946. He then entered the University of Bogotá to study law. (He studied for several years but did not enjoy it and never finished.)
He wrote his first story in 1947, and it was published in the newspaper El Espectador. Over the next few years he had several more stories published in newspapers. In 1948 civil war broke out in the country and García Márquez moved to Cartagena, Colombia, where he worked as a journalist for the newspaper El Universal. In 1950 he moved to Barranquilla, Colombia, where he wrote for El Heraldo. In 1954 he returned to Bogotá and worked at El Espectador while writing short stories on the side. Between 1955 and 1960 several published works had begun to establish García Márquez’s fame in the Spanish-speaking world. La hojarasca (1955), a short novel, is set in the made-up town of Macondo in the swampy coastal area of northeastern Colombia known as the Ciénaga. The story reflects the changes the twentieth century brought to the life of this sleepy country town. Much of García Márquez’s work centers around funerals. In La hojarasca mourners who knew the dead man in life think about the past, each from his own point of view.
Three different people—an old colonel, his daughter, and her son—tell their story. The dead man, a doctor and former friend of the colonel, had committed suicide. The narrators do not entirely explain what happened, but in the course of each story much of the past history of the village of Macondo is revealed. A strong feeling of doom fills the novel. Macondo and the Buendía family were further developed in El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1961; Nobody Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories). The next collection of short stories, Los funerales de la Mama Grande (1962), strengthened García Márquez’s growing reputation. The publication of Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude) created a stir when it sold over one hundred thousand copies in fifteen editions in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1969. The story of Cien años de soledad describes the rise and fall of a village as seen in the lives of five generations of one family.
It ends with flood and drought, which comes as the last living Buendía figures out the ancient predictions of doom and learns that “races condemned to 100 years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.” The family is meant to represent Colombia, and through extension, both South America and the rest of the world. Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), the famous Chilean poet, praised Cien años de soledad, and it is generally considered García Márquez’s masterpiece. García Márquez considered his next novel, El otono del patriarca (1975; The Autumn of the Patriarch), “a perfect integration (combination) of journalism and literature.” García Márquez continued to write novels, short stories, essays, and film scripts. In 1982 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1983 he wrote the film script Erendira, adapted from his 1972 novella (short novel) La increible y triste historia de la candida Erendira y su abuela desalmada (Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother). García Márquez’s other famous novel, El amor en los tiempos del colera (Love in the Time of Cholera) was written in 1985 (with an English translation published in 1988). This novel is an exploration of love and the relationship between aging, death, and decay. After Cholera he published the novels El general en su laberinto (1989; The General in His Labyrinth, 1990), Doce cuentos peregrinos (1992; Strange Pilgrims,1993), and Of Love and Other Demons (1994).
García Márquez’s fictional blend of history, politics, real social situations, and fantasy (something made up) has given rise to the term “magical realism.” The use of magical realism was often imitated by other Latin American authors, especially Isabel Allende (1942–). García Márquez’s need to tell a story drives his writing. In the July 1997 issue of Harper’s, García Márquez writes, “The best story is not always the first one but rather the one that is told better.” In 1999 García Márquez returned to journalism with the purchase of Cambio, a weekly newspaper in Colombia. He rolled up his sleeves and went to work trying to improve both the paper’s content and its sales.
His duties ranged from interviewing heads of state and business leaders to editing copy and photographs. García Márquez told the New York Times that he wanted his paper’s young reporters “to tell a story, to go back to the time when a reader could know what happened as if he were there himself.” Later that year García Márquez was diagnosed with cancer and disappeared from public life.
Gabriel García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist whose works have earned him the reputation of being one of the greatest living writers in Spain and Latin America. Born in Aracataca, Colombia, on March 6, 1928, Gabriel García Márquez was the oldest of Gabriel Eligio García and Luisa Santiaga Márquez Iguarán’s twelve children. His father was a telegraph operator. The family was poor, and García Márquez spent the first eight years of his life with his maternal grandparents. They were the most important and influential people in his life, and he loved listening to them tell stories about Colombia’s old days. García Márquez received his early education from the Liceo Nacional of Zipaquirá, Colombia, from which he graduated in 1946. He then entered the University of Bogotá to study law. (He studied for several years but did not enjoy it and never finished.)
He wrote his first story in 1947, and it was published in the newspaper El Espectador. Over the next few years he had several more stories published in newspapers. In 1948 civil war broke out in the country and García Márquez moved to Cartagena, Colombia, where he worked as a journalist for the newspaper El Universal. In 1950 he moved to Barranquilla, Colombia, where he wrote for El Heraldo. In 1954 he returned to Bogotá and worked at El Espectador while writing short stories on the side. Between 1955 and 1960 several published works had begun to establish García Márquez’s fame in the Spanish-speaking world. La hojarasca (1955), a short novel, is set in the made-up town of Macondo in the swampy coastal area of northeastern Colombia known as the Ciénaga. The story reflects the changes the twentieth century brought to the life of this sleepy country town. Much of García Márquez’s work centers around funerals. In La hojarasca mourners who knew the dead man in life think about the past, each from his own point of view.
Three different people—an old colonel, his daughter, and her son—tell their story. The dead man, a doctor and former friend of the colonel, had committed suicide. The narrators do not entirely explain what happened, but in the course of each story much of the past history of the village of Macondo is revealed. A strong feeling of doom fills the novel. Macondo and the Buendía family were further developed in El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (1961; Nobody Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories). The next collection of short stories, Los funerales de la Mama Grande (1962), strengthened García Márquez’s growing reputation. The publication of Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude) created a stir when it sold over one hundred thousand copies in fifteen editions in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1969. The story of Cien años de soledad describes the rise and fall of a village as seen in the lives of five generations of one family.
It ends with flood and drought, which comes as the last living Buendía figures out the ancient predictions of doom and learns that “races condemned to 100 years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.” The family is meant to represent Colombia, and through extension, both South America and the rest of the world. Pablo Neruda (1904–1973), the famous Chilean poet, praised Cien años de soledad, and it is generally considered García Márquez’s masterpiece. García Márquez considered his next novel, El otono del patriarca (1975; The Autumn of the Patriarch), “a perfect integration (combination) of journalism and literature.” García Márquez continued to write novels, short stories, essays, and film scripts. In 1982 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1983 he wrote the film script Erendira, adapted from his 1972 novella (short novel) La increible y triste historia de la candida Erendira y su abuela desalmada (Innocent Erendira and Her Heartless Grandmother). García Márquez’s other famous novel, El amor en los tiempos del colera (Love in the Time of Cholera) was written in 1985 (with an English translation published in 1988). This novel is an exploration of love and the relationship between aging, death, and decay. After Cholera he published the novels El general en su laberinto (1989; The General in His Labyrinth, 1990), Doce cuentos peregrinos (1992; Strange Pilgrims,1993), and Of Love and Other Demons (1994).
García Márquez’s fictional blend of history, politics, real social situations, and fantasy (something made up) has given rise to the term “magical realism.” The use of magical realism was often imitated by other Latin American authors, especially Isabel Allende (1942–). García Márquez’s need to tell a story drives his writing. In the July 1997 issue of Harper’s, García Márquez writes, “The best story is not always the first one but rather the one that is told better.” In 1999 García Márquez returned to journalism with the purchase of Cambio, a weekly newspaper in Colombia. He rolled up his sleeves and went to work trying to improve both the paper’s content and its sales.
His duties ranged from interviewing heads of state and business leaders to editing copy and photographs. García Márquez told the New York Times that he wanted his paper’s young reporters “to tell a story, to go back to the time when a reader could know what happened as if he were there himself.” Later that year García Márquez was diagnosed with cancer and disappeared from public life.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar - Biography
Born: October 19, 1910 Lahore, India (now part of Pakistan) - Died: August 21, 1995 Chicago, Illinois
Indian-born American astrophysicist and mathematician
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar worked on the origins and structures of stars, earning an important place in the world of science. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist’s most celebrated work concerns the radiation of energy from stars, particularly the dying fragments known as white dwarf stars.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, better known as Chandra, was born on October 19,1910, in Lahore, India (now part of Pakistan), the first son of C. Subrahmanyan Ayyar and Sitalakshmi (Divan Bahadur) Balakrishnan. Chandra came from a large family—he had six brothers and three sisters. As the firstborn son, Chandra inherited his paternal grandfather’s name, Chandrasekhar. His uncle was the Nobel Prize-winning Indian physicist, Sir C. V.Raman (1888–1970).
Chandra received his early education at home, beginning when he was five. From his mother he learned Tamil (a language spoken in India), from his father, English and arithmetic. He set his sights upon becoming a scientist at an early age, and to this end, undertook some independent study of calculus and physics. Private tutors taught Chandra until 1921, when he enrolled in the Hindu High School in Triplicane, India. With typical drive and motivation, he studied on his own and rose to the head of the class, completing school by the age of fifteen. After high school Chandra attended Presidency College in Madras, India. For the first two years he studied physics, chemistry, English, and Sanskrit. For his bachelor’s honors degree he wished to take pure mathematics but his father insisted that he take physics. Chandra registered as an honors physics student but attended mathematics lectures, where his teachers quickly realized his brilliance. Chandra also took part in sporting activities and joined the debating team. A highlight of his college years was the publication of his paper, “The Compton Scattering and the New Statistics.” These and other early successes while still an eighteen-year-old undergraduate only strengthened Chandra’s determination to pursue a career in scientific research, despite his father’s wish that he join the Indian civil service. Upon graduating with a master’s degree in 1930, Chandra set off for Trinity College in Cambridge, England. As a research student at Cambridge he turned to astrophysics, inspired by a theory of stellar (stars) evolution that had occurred to him as he made the long boat journey from India to Cambridge. In the summer of 1931 he worked with physicist Max Born (1882–1970) at the Institut für Theoretische Physik at Göttingen in Germany. In 1932 he left for Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was able to devote more of his energies to pure physics. A series of Chandra’s lectures on astrophysics given at the University of Liège, in Belgium in February 1933 received a warm reception.
During a four-week trip to Russia in 1934—where he met physicists Lev Davidovich Landau (1908–1968), B. P. Geraismovic, and Viktor Ambartsumian—he returned to the work that had led him into astrophysics to begin with: white dwarfs. Upon returning to Cambridge, he took up researching white dwarfs again.
As a member of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1932, Chandra was entitled to present papers at its twice monthly meetings. It was at one of these that Chandra, in 1935, announced the results of the work that would later make his name. As stars evolve, he told the assembled audience, they release energy generated by their conversion of hydrogen into helium and even heavier elements. As they reach the end of their life, stars have less hydrogen left to convert so they release less energy in the form of radiation. They eventually reach a stage when they are no longer able to generate the pressure needed to maintain their size against their own gravitational pull, and they begin to shrink, eventually collapsing into themselves. Their electrons (particle with a negative charge) become so tightly packed that their normal activity is shut down and they become white dwarfs, or tiny objects of enormous density.
Chandra became a United States citizen in 1953. He retired from the University of Chicago in 1980, although he remained on as a post-retirement researcher. In 1983 he published a classic work on the mathematical theory of black holes. His semi-retirement also left him with more time to pursue his hobbies and interests: literature and music, particularly orchestral, chamber, and South Indian. Chandra died in Chicago on August 21, 1995, at the age of eighty-two. Throughout his life Chandra strove to acquire knowledge and understanding. According to an autobiographical essay published with his Nobel lecture, he was motivated “principally by a quest after perspectives.”
Indian-born American astrophysicist and mathematician
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar worked on the origins and structures of stars, earning an important place in the world of science. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist’s most celebrated work concerns the radiation of energy from stars, particularly the dying fragments known as white dwarf stars.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, better known as Chandra, was born on October 19,1910, in Lahore, India (now part of Pakistan), the first son of C. Subrahmanyan Ayyar and Sitalakshmi (Divan Bahadur) Balakrishnan. Chandra came from a large family—he had six brothers and three sisters. As the firstborn son, Chandra inherited his paternal grandfather’s name, Chandrasekhar. His uncle was the Nobel Prize-winning Indian physicist, Sir C. V.Raman (1888–1970).
Chandra received his early education at home, beginning when he was five. From his mother he learned Tamil (a language spoken in India), from his father, English and arithmetic. He set his sights upon becoming a scientist at an early age, and to this end, undertook some independent study of calculus and physics. Private tutors taught Chandra until 1921, when he enrolled in the Hindu High School in Triplicane, India. With typical drive and motivation, he studied on his own and rose to the head of the class, completing school by the age of fifteen. After high school Chandra attended Presidency College in Madras, India. For the first two years he studied physics, chemistry, English, and Sanskrit. For his bachelor’s honors degree he wished to take pure mathematics but his father insisted that he take physics. Chandra registered as an honors physics student but attended mathematics lectures, where his teachers quickly realized his brilliance. Chandra also took part in sporting activities and joined the debating team. A highlight of his college years was the publication of his paper, “The Compton Scattering and the New Statistics.” These and other early successes while still an eighteen-year-old undergraduate only strengthened Chandra’s determination to pursue a career in scientific research, despite his father’s wish that he join the Indian civil service. Upon graduating with a master’s degree in 1930, Chandra set off for Trinity College in Cambridge, England. As a research student at Cambridge he turned to astrophysics, inspired by a theory of stellar (stars) evolution that had occurred to him as he made the long boat journey from India to Cambridge. In the summer of 1931 he worked with physicist Max Born (1882–1970) at the Institut für Theoretische Physik at Göttingen in Germany. In 1932 he left for Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was able to devote more of his energies to pure physics. A series of Chandra’s lectures on astrophysics given at the University of Liège, in Belgium in February 1933 received a warm reception.
During a four-week trip to Russia in 1934—where he met physicists Lev Davidovich Landau (1908–1968), B. P. Geraismovic, and Viktor Ambartsumian—he returned to the work that had led him into astrophysics to begin with: white dwarfs. Upon returning to Cambridge, he took up researching white dwarfs again.
As a member of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1932, Chandra was entitled to present papers at its twice monthly meetings. It was at one of these that Chandra, in 1935, announced the results of the work that would later make his name. As stars evolve, he told the assembled audience, they release energy generated by their conversion of hydrogen into helium and even heavier elements. As they reach the end of their life, stars have less hydrogen left to convert so they release less energy in the form of radiation. They eventually reach a stage when they are no longer able to generate the pressure needed to maintain their size against their own gravitational pull, and they begin to shrink, eventually collapsing into themselves. Their electrons (particle with a negative charge) become so tightly packed that their normal activity is shut down and they become white dwarfs, or tiny objects of enormous density.
Chandra became a United States citizen in 1953. He retired from the University of Chicago in 1980, although he remained on as a post-retirement researcher. In 1983 he published a classic work on the mathematical theory of black holes. His semi-retirement also left him with more time to pursue his hobbies and interests: literature and music, particularly orchestral, chamber, and South Indian. Chandra died in Chicago on August 21, 1995, at the age of eighty-two. Throughout his life Chandra strove to acquire knowledge and understanding. According to an autobiographical essay published with his Nobel lecture, he was motivated “principally by a quest after perspectives.”
Marc Chagall - Biography
Born: July 7, 1887, Vitebsk, Russia - Died: March 28, 1985
Maritimes, France - Russian painter and artist
Russian painter Marc Chagall was one of the great masters of the School of Paris. He was also praised as an influence on surrealism, a twentiethcentury artistic movement that expressed the subconscious in wild imagery. Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal on July 7, 1887, in Vitebsk, Russia, to a poor Jewish family that included ten children. His father, Zakhar Chagall, worked in a fish factory and his mother, Ida Chagall, worked in the family home and ran a grocery store.
The years of his childhood, the family circle, and his native village became the main themes of his art. These first impressions lingered in his mind like original images and were transformed into paintings with such titles as the Candlestick with the Burning Lights, the Cow and Fish Playing the Violin, the Man Meditating on the Scriptures, the Fiddler on the Roof, and I and My Village. According to French poet and critic André Breton (1896–1966), with Chagall “the metaphor [comparison of images] made its triumphant return into modern painting.” And it has been said that Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was a triumph of the mind, but Chagall was the glory of the heart. Chagall received early schooling from a teacher friend who lived nearby. He then attended the town school, but he only did well in geometry. He became an apprentice (a person who works for another in order to learn a profession) to a photographer but did not like the work. He then decided that he wanted to become an artist and talked his parents into paying for art lessons.
He began his artistic instruction under the direction of a painter in Vitebsk. In 1907 he moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he attended the school of the Imperial Society for the Protection of the Arts and studied briefly with famed Russian painter Leon Bakst (1866–1924). These were difficult years for Chagall. He was extremely poor and was unable to support himself with his artwork. He took a job as a servant and also learned how to paint signs. In Bakst’s studio he had his first contact with the modern movement that was sweeping Paris, and it freed his inner resources. His pictures of this early period are pleasant images of his childhood.
With some help from a patron (someone who supported him financially), Chagall went to Paris in 1910. The poets Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961), Max Jacob (1876–1944),and Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), and the painters Roger de La Fresnaye (1885–1925), Robert Delaunay (1885–1941), and Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) became his friends. Chagall participated in the art showings at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne in 1912, but it was his first one-man show in Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin, Germany, which established him internationally as a leading artist. Chagall has created great artworks throughout the later years of his life. In the 1960s and 1970s, his stained glass art appeared in such buildings as the United Nations (UN) in New York City. In 1973 a museum of his works was opened in Nice, France. In 1977, the Louvre, a world-famous art museum in Paris, exhibited sixty-two of his paintings, an extremely rare event for a living artist.
Maritimes, France - Russian painter and artist
Russian painter Marc Chagall was one of the great masters of the School of Paris. He was also praised as an influence on surrealism, a twentiethcentury artistic movement that expressed the subconscious in wild imagery. Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal on July 7, 1887, in Vitebsk, Russia, to a poor Jewish family that included ten children. His father, Zakhar Chagall, worked in a fish factory and his mother, Ida Chagall, worked in the family home and ran a grocery store.
The years of his childhood, the family circle, and his native village became the main themes of his art. These first impressions lingered in his mind like original images and were transformed into paintings with such titles as the Candlestick with the Burning Lights, the Cow and Fish Playing the Violin, the Man Meditating on the Scriptures, the Fiddler on the Roof, and I and My Village. According to French poet and critic André Breton (1896–1966), with Chagall “the metaphor [comparison of images] made its triumphant return into modern painting.” And it has been said that Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) was a triumph of the mind, but Chagall was the glory of the heart. Chagall received early schooling from a teacher friend who lived nearby. He then attended the town school, but he only did well in geometry. He became an apprentice (a person who works for another in order to learn a profession) to a photographer but did not like the work. He then decided that he wanted to become an artist and talked his parents into paying for art lessons.
He began his artistic instruction under the direction of a painter in Vitebsk. In 1907 he moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, where he attended the school of the Imperial Society for the Protection of the Arts and studied briefly with famed Russian painter Leon Bakst (1866–1924). These were difficult years for Chagall. He was extremely poor and was unable to support himself with his artwork. He took a job as a servant and also learned how to paint signs. In Bakst’s studio he had his first contact with the modern movement that was sweeping Paris, and it freed his inner resources. His pictures of this early period are pleasant images of his childhood.
With some help from a patron (someone who supported him financially), Chagall went to Paris in 1910. The poets Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961), Max Jacob (1876–1944),and Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), and the painters Roger de La Fresnaye (1885–1925), Robert Delaunay (1885–1941), and Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) became his friends. Chagall participated in the art showings at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne in 1912, but it was his first one-man show in Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin, Germany, which established him internationally as a leading artist. Chagall has created great artworks throughout the later years of his life. In the 1960s and 1970s, his stained glass art appeared in such buildings as the United Nations (UN) in New York City. In 1973 a museum of his works was opened in Nice, France. In 1977, the Louvre, a world-famous art museum in Paris, exhibited sixty-two of his paintings, an extremely rare event for a living artist.
Miguel De Cervantes - Biography
Born: c. 1547 / Alcalá de Henares, Spain - Died: April 23, 1616
Madrid, Spain ,Spanish author and novelist .
Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes is one of the greatest novelists of the Spanish language. His masterpiece, Don Quixote, is one of the most important and influential books in the history of the novel.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in Alcalá de Henares in the old kingdom of Toledo, Spain. His birth date is unknown but a record states that he was christened on October 9, 1547.
It is likely that because of the Christian name he was given, he was born on September 29, Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel. He was the second son and the fourth of seven children of the pharmacist-surgeon Rodrigo de Cervantes and his wife, Leonor de Cortinas. Nothing is known of Miguel Cervantes’ life until 1569. In that year Juan López de Hoyos, a humanist (having to do with human concerns and values) teacher who was devoted to literary culture and whose ideas emphasized nonreligious concerns, brought out a volume in memory of the death of Queen Isabel de Valois in 1568.
Cervantes contributed three poems to this work, and López de Hoyos wrote of him as “our dear and beloved pupil.” Since López de Hoyos was an admirer of the Dutch humanist Erasmus (c. 1466–1536), Cervantes’ attitudes about religion and his admiration toward Erasmus is reflected in his works. Other than the probable likelihood that he studied with the Jesuits in Seville, Spain, that is all that is known about his education.
In 1570 Cervantes joined the Spanish forces at Naples, Italy. At this time the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and the Mediterranean countries (Christians) were at war over control of land and power. As a soldier he witnessed the naval victory at the Gulf of Lepanto (now Gulf of Corinth), Greece, on October 7, 1571. Aboard the Marquesa, in the thick of the battle, he was wounded twice in the chest and once in the left hand. The last wound maimed his hand for life. Cervantes often mentioned this victory in his works. The fleet returned to Messina, and there Cervantes recovered. He saw battle action from 1572 through 1574. While on garrison duty in Palermo, Italy, he felt he was ready for a promotion to captain. He got letters of recommendation and obtained leave to sail back to Spain. With his brother Rodrigo he sailed from Naples on the Sol in September 1575.
On September 26 the Sol was captured with its crew and passengers. Cervantes lived in slavery for five years. In captivity he demonstrated an unbreakable will and honorable courage. He led several escape attempts but failed. Twice his family gave priests ransom money, but the amounts were not enough. The first ransom money was used to rescue his brother.
While in Tomar, Portugal, in 1581, Cervantes was given money to accomplish a royal mission to Oran. This he did, but the royal service was not very rewarding.
In a signed letter, addressed to the royal secretary and dated February, 17, 1582, Cervantes tells of his misfortunes in trying to obtain a post in the Peninsula. He also states that he is ready to apply for some post in the Indies, and reports some progress in the writing of the Galatea. This novel was to be his first published book, but it did not appear until 1585. About this same time, Cervantes turned to writing for the theater, an activity that guaranteed a certain income if the plays were successful. In the Adjunta to his Viaje del Parnaso (1614) and in the prologue to his Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses (1615), he tells of his dramatic successes and his eventual downfall. In a manuscript discovered in 1784 it was learned that of these early plays only two have survived: Los tratos de Argel and La Numancia. On December 12, 1584, Cervantes married Doña Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, from Esquivias, in the old kingdom of Toledo, Spain. About a year or two before his wedding, Cervantes had an affair with Ana Franca de Rojas, with whom he had a daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, who was to become an important figure in his later years.
In 1587 Cervantes was in Seville, Spain. The war between Spain and England was gearing up. The preparation of the Spanish Armada for its disastrous expedition against England was happening on a grand scale. But his new post as commander of the navy brought him only grief, shame, and discomfort. The Cathedral church of Seville excommunicated (denied the rights of church practices and membership) him for taking their grain in Ecija. He traveled considerably, but his finances went from bad to worse. On May 21, 1590, he wrote to the king requesting one of four vacant posts in the Indies. His request was denied. As he had before, he turned to the theater for financial help. Cervantes agreed to write six plays, but payment would be withheld if the producer did not find each of the plays to be “one of the best ever produced in Spain.” Nothing is known of the outcome of this contract. For the next seven years Cervantes was in and out of jail for bad financial deals.
When Cervantes was sixty-five years old he entered a period of extraordinary literary creativity. His Novelas ejemplares were published in Madrid in 1613. They are twelve little masterpieces, with which Cervantes created the art of short story writing in Spain.
In 1614 his poem Viaje del Parnaso was published. But that same year a counterfeit (fake; not genuine) copy of Don Quixote, signed with a false name, was published.
The identity of this author remains the greatest mystery of Spanish literature. His writing was not affected by the publication of the counterfeit, and in 1615 he published Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses, concrete proof of his devotion to the theater. Later in 1615 Cervantes published his own second part of Don Quixote. The only fitting praise of the authentic second part of Don Quixote is to say that it is even better than the first part. Cervantes then put all of his energy into finishing Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, a novel of adventures. He had probably begun it at the turn of the century. He signed the dedication to the Count of Lemos (dated April 19, 1616) on his deathbed. He died four days later in Madrid. His widow published his last work in 1617. Cervantes’ unmarked grave is in the convent of the Calle de Lope de Vega in Madrid, Spain.
Madrid, Spain ,Spanish author and novelist .
Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes is one of the greatest novelists of the Spanish language. His masterpiece, Don Quixote, is one of the most important and influential books in the history of the novel.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in Alcalá de Henares in the old kingdom of Toledo, Spain. His birth date is unknown but a record states that he was christened on October 9, 1547.
It is likely that because of the Christian name he was given, he was born on September 29, Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael the Archangel. He was the second son and the fourth of seven children of the pharmacist-surgeon Rodrigo de Cervantes and his wife, Leonor de Cortinas. Nothing is known of Miguel Cervantes’ life until 1569. In that year Juan López de Hoyos, a humanist (having to do with human concerns and values) teacher who was devoted to literary culture and whose ideas emphasized nonreligious concerns, brought out a volume in memory of the death of Queen Isabel de Valois in 1568.
Cervantes contributed three poems to this work, and López de Hoyos wrote of him as “our dear and beloved pupil.” Since López de Hoyos was an admirer of the Dutch humanist Erasmus (c. 1466–1536), Cervantes’ attitudes about religion and his admiration toward Erasmus is reflected in his works. Other than the probable likelihood that he studied with the Jesuits in Seville, Spain, that is all that is known about his education.
In 1570 Cervantes joined the Spanish forces at Naples, Italy. At this time the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and the Mediterranean countries (Christians) were at war over control of land and power. As a soldier he witnessed the naval victory at the Gulf of Lepanto (now Gulf of Corinth), Greece, on October 7, 1571. Aboard the Marquesa, in the thick of the battle, he was wounded twice in the chest and once in the left hand. The last wound maimed his hand for life. Cervantes often mentioned this victory in his works. The fleet returned to Messina, and there Cervantes recovered. He saw battle action from 1572 through 1574. While on garrison duty in Palermo, Italy, he felt he was ready for a promotion to captain. He got letters of recommendation and obtained leave to sail back to Spain. With his brother Rodrigo he sailed from Naples on the Sol in September 1575.
On September 26 the Sol was captured with its crew and passengers. Cervantes lived in slavery for five years. In captivity he demonstrated an unbreakable will and honorable courage. He led several escape attempts but failed. Twice his family gave priests ransom money, but the amounts were not enough. The first ransom money was used to rescue his brother.
While in Tomar, Portugal, in 1581, Cervantes was given money to accomplish a royal mission to Oran. This he did, but the royal service was not very rewarding.
In a signed letter, addressed to the royal secretary and dated February, 17, 1582, Cervantes tells of his misfortunes in trying to obtain a post in the Peninsula. He also states that he is ready to apply for some post in the Indies, and reports some progress in the writing of the Galatea. This novel was to be his first published book, but it did not appear until 1585. About this same time, Cervantes turned to writing for the theater, an activity that guaranteed a certain income if the plays were successful. In the Adjunta to his Viaje del Parnaso (1614) and in the prologue to his Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses (1615), he tells of his dramatic successes and his eventual downfall. In a manuscript discovered in 1784 it was learned that of these early plays only two have survived: Los tratos de Argel and La Numancia. On December 12, 1584, Cervantes married Doña Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, from Esquivias, in the old kingdom of Toledo, Spain. About a year or two before his wedding, Cervantes had an affair with Ana Franca de Rojas, with whom he had a daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, who was to become an important figure in his later years.
In 1587 Cervantes was in Seville, Spain. The war between Spain and England was gearing up. The preparation of the Spanish Armada for its disastrous expedition against England was happening on a grand scale. But his new post as commander of the navy brought him only grief, shame, and discomfort. The Cathedral church of Seville excommunicated (denied the rights of church practices and membership) him for taking their grain in Ecija. He traveled considerably, but his finances went from bad to worse. On May 21, 1590, he wrote to the king requesting one of four vacant posts in the Indies. His request was denied. As he had before, he turned to the theater for financial help. Cervantes agreed to write six plays, but payment would be withheld if the producer did not find each of the plays to be “one of the best ever produced in Spain.” Nothing is known of the outcome of this contract. For the next seven years Cervantes was in and out of jail for bad financial deals.
When Cervantes was sixty-five years old he entered a period of extraordinary literary creativity. His Novelas ejemplares were published in Madrid in 1613. They are twelve little masterpieces, with which Cervantes created the art of short story writing in Spain.
In 1614 his poem Viaje del Parnaso was published. But that same year a counterfeit (fake; not genuine) copy of Don Quixote, signed with a false name, was published.
The identity of this author remains the greatest mystery of Spanish literature. His writing was not affected by the publication of the counterfeit, and in 1615 he published Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses, concrete proof of his devotion to the theater. Later in 1615 Cervantes published his own second part of Don Quixote. The only fitting praise of the authentic second part of Don Quixote is to say that it is even better than the first part. Cervantes then put all of his energy into finishing Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, a novel of adventures. He had probably begun it at the turn of the century. He signed the dedication to the Count of Lemos (dated April 19, 1616) on his deathbed. He died four days later in Madrid. His widow published his last work in 1617. Cervantes’ unmarked grave is in the convent of the Calle de Lope de Vega in Madrid, Spain.
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