The James Logan Courier

From wikipedia:
Shirley Verrett (born May 31, 1931) is an American mezzo-soprano and soprano who sings opera as well as American musical theater. Verrett has enjoyed great fame since the late 1960s and is much admired for her radiant voice, beauty, and great versatility.

Born into an African-American family of devout Seventh-day Adventists in New Orleans, Louisiana, Verrett showed early musical abilities, but initially a singing career was frowned upon by her family. Later Verrett went on to study in Los Angeles, California and at the Juilliard School in New York.

Listen to an interview with Shirley Verrett, free from National Public Radio.

From wikipedia:
Andrew Dewey Kirk (born May 28, 1898 in Newport, Kentucky; died December 11, 1992 in New York City) was a jazz bass saxophonist and tubist best known as a bandleader. He started his musical career playing with George Morrison's band, but then went on to join Terrence Holder's Dark Clouds of Joy. In 1929 he was elected leader after Holder departed. Renaming themselves Twelve Clouds of Joy they set up in the Pla-Mor Ballroom on the junction of 32nd and Main in Kansas City and made their first recording for Brunswick Records that same year. Mary Lou Williams came in as pianist at the last moment, but she impressed Brunswick's Dave Kapp, so she became a regular member of the band.

Listen to Andy Kirk and his Dark Clouds of Joy, free from redhotjazz.com.

From wikipedia:
Amelia Jenks Bloomer (May 27, 1818—December 30, 1894) was an American women's rights and temperance advocate. She created the "Loose Bloomer" for women's comfort.

Bloomer came from a family of modest means and received only a few years of formal schooling. When she was 22, she married attorney Dexter Bloomer who encouraged her to write for his New York newspaper, the Seneca Falls County Courier.

She spent her early years in Cortland County, New York. Bloomer and her family moved to Iowa in 1852. She died at Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Read the Petition from Mrs. Amelia Bloomer of Council Bluffs, Iowa Regarding
Suffrage in the West, 1878, free from the National Archives and Records Administration.

From wikipedia:
John Raleigh Mott (May 25, 1865 – January 31, 1955) was a long-serving leader of the YMCA and the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF). He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for his work in establishing and strengthening international Protestant Christian student organizations that worked to promote peace. From 1895 until 1920 Mott was the General Secretary of the WSCF. In 1910, Mott, an American Methodist layperson, presided at the 1910 World Missionary Conference, which launched both the modern Protestant missions movement and some say the modern ecumenical movement. From 1920 until 1928 he was the Chairperson of the WSCF.

Read John Mott's Nobel Prize lecture, free from nobelprize.org.

From wikipedia:
Lillian Moller Gilbreth, BA, MA, PhD, (b. Lillian Evelyn Moller May 24, 1878, Oakland, California – d. January 2, 1972, Phoenix, Arizona) was one of the first working female engineers holding a PhD.

She is arguably the first true industrial/organizational psychologist. She and her husband Frank Bunker Gilbreth were pioneers in the field of industrial engineering. Their interest in time and motion study may have had something to do with the fact that they had an extremely large family. The books Cheaper By The Dozen and Belles on Their Toes are the story of their family life with their twelve children.

Read The Psychology of Management by Lillian Moller Gilbreth, free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (May 23, 1810 - July 19, 1850) was a journalist, critic and women's rights activist.

Margaret Fuller was born May 23, 1810, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Margaret Fuller House, in which she was born, is still standing today. Her father, Timothy Fuller, a lawyer and prominent politician, gave her a vigorous classical education which shaped the bend of her mind but--according to Fuller's own testimony--also sensitized her to the personal expense of her society's masculinized values.

Read At Home And Abroad by Margaret Fuller, one of five of her works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Ram Mohan Roy, also written as Rammohun Roy, or Raja Ram Mohun Roy, (May 22, 1772 – September 27, 1833) was the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, one of the first Indian socio-religious reform movements. His remarkable influence was apparent in the fields of politics, public administration and education as well as religion. He is most known for his efforts to abolish the practice of sati, a Hindu funeral practice in which the widow sacrifices herself on her husband’s funeral pyre. It was he who first introduced the word "Hinduism" (or "Hindooism") into the English language in 1816.

Read about efforts to preserve Ram Mohan Roy's tomb in Bristol, England, free from the Telegraph newspaper of Calcutta, India.

François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture (born 20 May 1743 - died April 8, 1803) was an important leader of the Haitian Revolution. Born a slave in Saint-Domingue, in a long struggle for independence, he led enslaved Africans to victory over the whites, abolished slavery, and secured native control over the colony in 1797 while nominally governor of the colony. He expelled the French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, as well as the British armies; invaded Santo Domingo to free the slaves there; and wrote a constitution naming himself governor for life that established a new polity for the colony.

Read Toussaint L'Ouverture: A Biography and Autobiography, by John Relly Beard, free from the University of North Carolina library.

From wikipedia:
Frank Luke Jr. (May 19, 1897 in Phoenix, Arizona – September 29, 1918 near Murvaux, France) was an American fighter ace, ranking second among U.S. Air Service pilots to Eddie Rickenbacker in number of aerial victories during World War I. Frank Luke is a recipient of the Medal of Honor.


Read more about Frank Luke and other "aces" from acepilots.com.
ke

From wikipedia:
Big Joe Turner (born Joseph Vernon Turner Jr., May 18, 1911 – November 24, 1985[1]) was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri.

Although he came to his greatest fame in the 1950s with his pioneering rock and roll recordings, particularly "Shake, Rattle and Roll", Turner's career as a performer stretched from the 1920s into the 1980s.

Learn more about Big Joe Turner, free from cascadeblues.org.

From wikipedia:
Tamara de Lempicka (May 16, 1898 - March 18, 1980), born Maria Górska in Warsaw, Poland, was a Polish Art Deco painter.

Born into a wealthy and prominent family, her father was a Polish lawyer, her mother, the former Malvina Decler, a Polish socialite. Maria was the middle child with two siblings. She attended boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, and spent the winter of 1911 with her grandmother in Italy and the French Riviera, where she was treated to her first taste of the Great Masters of Italian painting. In 1912, her parents divorced and Maria went to live with her wealthy Aunt Stefa in St. Petersberg, Russia. When her mother remarried, she became determined to break away to a life of her own. In 1913, at the age of fifteen, while attending the opera, Maria spotted the man she became determined to marry. She promoted her campaign through her well-connected uncle and in 1916 she married Tadeusz Łempicki in St. Petersburg; a well-known ladies man, gadabout, and lawyer by title, who was tempted by the significant dowry.

See examples of Tamara Lempicka's art, free from metarze.com.

From wikipedia:
Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming (May 15, 1857 – May 21, 1911), astronomer, was born in Dundee, Scotland, to Robert Stevens and Mary Walker Stevens. She attended public schools in Dundee, and at the age of 14, she became a pupil-teacher. She married James Orr Fleming, and they moved to the U.S. and settled in Boston, Massachusetts, when she was 21. While she was pregnant with her son, Edward, her husband abandoned her, and she had to find work to support herself and Edward.

She worked as a maid in the home of Professor Edward Charles Pickering. Pickering became frustrated with his male assistants at the Harvard College Observatory and famously declared his maid could do a better job.

Learn more about Williamina Fleming and her work, and see pictures of her working, free from the Open Collections Program at the Harvard University Library.

From wikipedia:
John Junior Roseboro (May 13, 1933 - August 16, 2002) was a Major League Baseball catcher and coach. He was born in Ashland, Ohio.

A left-handed-hitter, Roseboro had a lifetime .249 batting average with 104 home runs and 548 RBI in 1585 games played with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers (1957-67), Minnesota Twins (1968-69) and Washington Senators (1970). He was a Gold Glove Award winner twice and a four-time All-Star during a fourteen-year stay.

Read "40 years later, The Fight resonates in a positive way," by Gwen Knapp, free from the San Francisco Chronicle and sfgate.com.

From wikipedia:
William Francis Giauque (May 12, 1895 – March 28, 1982), born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, on May 12, 1895, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures close to absolute zero.

As his parents were U.S. citizens, they returned to the U.S. where he attended public schools primarily in Michigan. Following the death of his father in 1908, the family returned to Niagara Falls, where he studied at the Niagara Falls Collegiate Institute. After graduation, he looked for work in various power plants at Niagara Falls both for financial reasons and to pursue a career in electrical engineering but was unsuccessful.

Read William Giauque's Nobel Prize lecture, free from Nobelprize.org.

From wikipedia:
Harriet Quimby (May 11, 1875 – July 1, 1912) was the first female to gain a pilot license in the United States. In 1911 she earned the first U.S. pilot's certificate issued to a woman by the Aero Club of America, and less than a year later became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. Although Quimby lived only to age 37, she had a major impact on women's roles in aviation.

A historical marker has been erected near the remains of the farmhouse in Arcadia, Michigan where Quimby was born. After her family moved to San Francisco, California in the early 1900s, she became a journalist. She moved to New York City in 1903 to work as a theatre critic for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, which published over 250 of her articles over a nine-year period. She became interested in aviation in 1910, when she attended the Belmont Park International Aviation Tournament on Long Island, New York and met Matilde Moisant and her brother John, a well-known American aviator and operator of a flight school. On August 1, 1911, Quimby took her pilot's test and became the first U.S. woman to earn a pilot's certificate. Matilde Moisant soon followed and became the nation's second certified female pilot.

Learn more about Harriet Quimby, free from harrietquimby.org.

From wikipedia:
Dr. William Moulton Marston (May 9, 1893 – May 2, 1947) was an American psychologist, feminist theorist, inventor, and comic book author who created the character Wonder Woman. Two women, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne, (who lived with the couple in a polyamorous relationship), served as exemplars for the character and greatly influenced her creation.

He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2006.
Early life and career

Born in Saugus, Massachusetts, William Marston was educated at Harvard University, receiving his B.A. in 1915, an L.L.B. in 1918, and a Ph.D. in Psychology in 1921. After teaching at American University in Washington D.C. and Tufts University in Medford MA, Marston traveled to Universal Studios in California in 1929, where he spent a year as Director of Public Services.

Read more about William Moulton Marston and Wonder Woman, free from wonderwoman-online.com.

From wikipedia:

Mary Lou Williams (May 8, 1910 – May 28, 1981) was an American jazz stride pianist, composer, and arranger. Williams had written hundreds of compositions or arrangements, and recorded over a hundred records (in 78, 45, and LP versions). Williams wrote and arranged for such greats as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and she was friend, mentor, and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. She displayed remarkable versatility and power, and is probably the most influential woman in the history of jazz.

Listen to Mary Lou Williams perform Medi II, free from Project Playlist and Feedburner.

From the Kentucky Department of Libraries and Archives:

Ellis Wilson, an African-American, was born in 1899 in "the Bottom" of Mayfield, Kentucky.

[The exact date of his birth is unclear. Some list it as April 30, 1899. The African American Registry says his birth is celebrated on May 7.]

While working as a janitor and delivery person for Day's Ready-to-Wear Dress Shop, Wilson would make soap drawings on the store's windows before cleaning them. The owner of the shop was so impressed with the portraits, that he added the weekly portraits to Wilson's job duties. It was then that Wilson determined that he would be an artist.

In 1917, Wilson enrolled at Kentucky State College in Frankfort. Unfortunately, the only coursework offered by the institution was for the study of agriculture or education. No other Kentucky institution offered blacks post-secondary education in other fields. After two years at Kentucky State, Wilson enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Learn more about Ellis Wilson, and see examples of his paintings, free from Kentucky Educational Television.

From wikipedia:
Martin Robison Delany (May 6, 1812 – January 24, 1885) was an African-American abolitionist, arguably the first proponent of American black nationalism and the first African American field officer in the United States Army.

Delany was born free in Charles Town, West Virginia (then part of Virginia), though his father Samuel was a slave. Delany's maternal grandparents were born in Africa and his grandfather was said to have been a prince. When he was just a few years old, attempts were made to enslave the rest of his family, but his mother Pati carried her two youngest children twenty miles to the courthouse in Winchester to argue successfully for her family's freedom.

As he was growing up, Martin Delany and his siblings learned to read and write using "The New York Primer and Spelling Book," which had been given to them by a peddler. This was illegal in Virginia, where it was forbidden to teach black people literacy. When this was discovered in September 1822, Pati took her children to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, leaving Samuel, who remained a slave. This situation changed a year later when he bought his freedom after refusing to take a beating, rejoining his family in Chambersburg.

Read The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, by Martin Delany, free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Umm Kulthum (the name is spelled variously using the Roman alphabet as Om Koultoum, Om Kalthoum, Oum Kalsoum, Oum Kalthum, Omm Kolsoum, Umm Kolthoum, Um Kalthoom, Omme Kolsoum, and others). Born Umm Kulthum Ebrahim Elbeltagi (May 4, 1904 – February 3, 1975) was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and actress. Born in El Senbellawein, she is known as "the Star of the East" (kawkab el-sharq). More than three decades after her death, she is still recognized as one of Egypt's most famous and distinguished singers of the 20th century.

Learn more about Umm Kulthum, and hear and see samples of he perfomrances, free from the Al Mashriq website.

From wikipedia:
Andy Adams (May 3, 1859 – September 26, 1935) was an American writer of western fiction.

Andy Adams was born in Indiana. His parents, Andrew and Elizabeth (Elliott) Adams, were pioneers. As a boy he helped with the cattle and horses on the family farm. In the early 1880s he went to Texas, where he stayed for 10 years, spending much of that time driving cattle on the western trail. In 1890 he left the trail to try his hand at business, but the venture failed, so he turned his hand to gold-mining in Colorado and Nevada. In 1894, he settled in Colorado Springs, where he lived until his death.

Read Andy Adams' The Log of a Cowboy, one of six of his works available from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia: Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay (2 May 1828 - 24 October 1915) was a French traveller and archaeologist notable both for his explorations of Mexico and Central America, and for the pioneering use of photography to document his discoveries.

See a collection of Charnay's photos of Mexico, free from the American Philosophical Society.