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This is the archive for June 2008

Sunday, June 29, 2008

From wikipedia:
Nellie Tayloe Ross (November 29, 1876 – December 19, 1977) was an American politician, the governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927, and director of the National Mint from 1933-1953. She was the first woman to serve as governor of a U.S. state. To date, she remains the only woman to have served as governor of Wyoming. She was a staunch supporter of prohibition during the 1920s.

Learn more about Nellie Tayloe Ross at nellietayloeross.com.


Friday, June 27, 2008


From wikipedia:
Andrew Jackson Foster (1925 - 1987) was a missionary to the Deaf in Africa from 19:56 until his death in 1987. He became the first Black Deaf person to earn a bachelor's degree from Gallaudet College and the first to earn a master's degree from Eastern Michigan University. Eventually receiving a Master's Degree from Seattle Pacific Christian College, he founded Christian Mission for Deaf Africans in 1956, and set for Liberia, Africa.

Read more about Andrew Foster and his mission, free from the Christian Mission for the Deaf.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

From wikipedia:
Crystal Catherine Eastman (June 25, 1881 - July 8, 1928) was a lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts and graduated from Vassar College in 1903, receiving an M.A. in sociology from Columbia University in 1904. She was second in the class of 1907 at New York University Law School. She was the sister of socialist American writer Max Forrester Eastman.

Social efforts
Social work pioneer and journal editor Paul Kellogg offered Eastman her first job, investigating labor conditions for The Pittsburgh Survey sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation. Her report, Work Accidents and the Law (1910), became a classic and resulted in the first workers' compensation law, which she drafted while serving on a New York State commission. She continued to campaign for occupational safety and health while working as an investigating attorney for the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations during Woodrow Wilson's presidency. She was at one time called the "most dangerous woman in America," due to her free-love idealism and very fiery spirit.

Read more about Vassar alumus Crystal Eastman's life, free from innovators.vassar.edu.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

From wikipedia:
Memphis Minnie McCoy-Lawler (born Lizzie Douglas, June 3, 1897 in Algiers, Louisiana; died August 6, 1973 in Memphis, Tennessee) was an American Blues guitarist, vocalist, and composer.

Born Lizzie Douglas in Algiers, Louisiana, Minnie was one of the most influential and pioneering female blues musicians and guitarists of all time. She recorded for forty years, almost unheard of for any woman in show business at the time, and possibly unique among female blues artists. A flamboyant character who wore bracelets made of silver dollars, she was the biggest female blues singer from the early Depression years through World War II.

Read the lyrics of dozens of Memphis Minnie's pioneering blues songs, free from completealbumlyrics.com.

Monday, June 23, 2008

From wikipedia:
Winifred Holtby (June 23, 1898 - September 29, 1935) was an English novelist and journalist.

Born to a prosperous farming family in the village of Rudston, Yorkshire. Holtby was educated at home by a governess and then at Queen Margaret's School in Scarborough. Although she passed the entrance exam for Somerville College, Oxford in 1917; World War I changed her plans. In early 1918, she joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), but soon after she arrived in France, the war came to an end.

Learn more about Winifred Holtby, free from www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

From wikipedia:
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (June 22, 1906 – February 7, 2001) was a pioneering American aviator, author, and the spouse of fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Anne Spencer Morrow was the second of four children born to Dwight Whitney Morrow and Elizabeth Cutter Morrow. Her siblings were Elisabeth Reeve (born 1904), Dwight, Jr. (1908), and Constance (1913).

Anne was raised in a household that fostered achievement. Every day at 5 PM, her mother would drop everything and read to her children. After the young Morrows outgrew this practice, they would employ that hour to read by themselves, or to write poetry and diaries. Anne in particular later capitalized on this routine learned in her youth to write her diaries, eventually published to critical acclaim.

:earn more about Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her husband, Charles, free from pbs.org.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

From wikipedia:
Mary Therese McCarthy (June 21, 1912 – October 25, 1989) was an American author and critic. She was politically active

Born in Seattle, Washington, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918. She was raised in very unhappy circumstances by her Catholic father's parents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the direct care of an uncle and aunt she remembered for harsh treatment and abuse.

Read "The McCarthy Case," a review by Norman Mailer of Mary McCarthy's novel, The Group, free from nybooks.com.

Friday, June 20, 2008


Toshi, left, and Iri Maruki
Maruki Gallery Photo
Courier Staff Report
Iri Maruki was a Japanese artist noted for creating, with his wife Toshi Maruki, The Hiroshima Panels, a series of paintings which portray the horrific consequences of the destruction of that city by an American atomic bomb. Iri Maruki's father, uncle, two nieces and many friends died in the bombing.

Maruki was the eldest son in the Maruki family. Born in Hiroshima on June, 20, 1901, with a port-wine stain over the right half of his face after his mother fell down a flight of stairs in their small village home, he escaped military service in the war against China. Later, he survived the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. He also survived the American saturation fire raids on Tokyo near the end of the Second World War.

After the raids, with the Allied invasion of Okinawa looming, he attempted to rejoin his family in Hiroshima, but lacked the necessary papers to board the already full trains and so he was still in Tokyo when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

See the Hiroshima Panels, free from the Maruki Gallery.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

From wikipedia:
Keye Luke (June 18, 1904 – January 12, 1991) was a Chinese-born American actor.

Luke was born in Guangzhou, China to a father who owned an art shop, and grew up in Seattle. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944. Before becoming an actor he was a local artist in Hollywood, and worked on several of the murals inside Grauman's Chinese Theater. He did some of the original artwork for the 1933 King Kong pressbook.

Luke made his film debut in The Painted Veil in 1934, and the following year gained his first big role, as Charlie Chan's eldest son in Charlie Chan in Paris. He worked so well with Warner Oland, the actor playing Chan, that "Number One Son" became a regular character in the series, alternately helping and distracting "Pop" Chan in each of his murder cases.

Read an interview by Keye Luke about his work in Hollywood, free from The Charlie Chan Family.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008


Carl Van Vechten's self-portrait
From wikipedia:
Carl Van Vechten (June 17, 1880 – December 21, 1964) was an American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein.

Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he graduated from Washington High School in 1898, and later the University of Chicago in 1903. In 1906, he moved to New York City. He was hired as the assistant music critic at the New York Times. His interest in opera had him take a leave of absence from the paper in 1907, to travel to Europe to explore opera. While in England he married his long time friend from Cedar Rapids, Anna Snyder. He returned to his job at the New York Times in 1909 and then became the first American critic of modern dance. At that time, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, and Loie Fuller were performing in New York City. The marriage to Anna Snyder ended in divorce in 1912 and he wed actress Fania Marinoff in 1914.

View Carl Van Vechten's portraits of creative Americans, free from the Library of Congress.

Monday, June 16, 2008

From wikipedia:
Geronimo (Chiricahua: Goyaałé, "one who yawns"; often spelled Goyathlay or Goyahkla in English) (June 16, 1829–February 17, 1909) was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who defended his people against the encroachment of the United States on their tribal lands for over 25 years.

Goyaałé (Geronimo) was born to the Bedonkohe band of the Apache, near Turkey Creek, a tributary of the Gila River in the modern-day state of Arizona, then part of Mexico, but which his family considered Bedonkohe land.

Read Geronimo's autobiography, Geronimo’s Story of His Life written with S. M. (Stephen Melvil) Barrett in 1906, free from ibiblio.org.

Friday, June 13, 2008

From wikipedia:
Carlos Antonio de Padua Chávez y Ramírez (June 13, 1899 – August 2, 1978) was a Mexican composer, conductor, teacher, journalist, and the founder and director of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. He was born in Popotla, near Mexico City. He was influenced by native Mexican cultures. Of his six Symphonies, his Symphony No. 2, which uses native Yaqui percussion instruments, is probably the most popular.

Read more about Carlos Chavez, free from chez.com.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

From wikipedia:
The Rt. Rev. Barbara Clementine Harris (born 12 June 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was the first woman ordained a bishop in the Anglican Communion.

Education
Harris attended the Philadelphia High School for Girls (Class of 1948). There, she excelled in music and wrote a weekly column for the Philadelphia version of the Pittsburgh Courier called "High School Notes by Bobbi". After graduation, Harris attended the Charles Morris Price School of Advertising and Journalism in Philadelphia where she earned a Certificate in 1950.

Read more about Barbara Harris at gale.cengage.com.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

From wikipedia:
Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1895 – October 26, 1952) was an American actress and the first black performer to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939).

McDaniel was also a professional singer-songwriter, comedienne, stage actress, radio performer and television star. Hattie McDaniel was in fact the first black woman to sing on the radio in America. Over the course of her career, McDaniel appeared in over 300 films, although she only received screen credits for about 80. She gained the respect of the African American show business community with her generosity, elegance and charm.

Watch Hattie McDaniel's speech on the occasion of winning the Academy Award for Best Support ing Actress in 1939.

Monday, June 09, 2008

From wikipedia:
Samuel Slater (June 9,1768 – April 21, 1835) was an early American industrialist popularly known as the "Founder of the American Industrial Revolution" because he brought British textile technology to America. A native of England, he trained as an engineer and violated a British emigration law in 1789 that was designed to keep manufacturing technology within the country when he left for New York in disguise. He soon found work in Rhode Island replicating British factory equipment for a textile mill, and earned the owner's backing to design and build the first water powered mill in the United States.


Read the Memoir for Samuel Slater, the Father of American Manufactures, by George White, free from googlebooks.com.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

From wikipedia:
Lena Baker (June 8, 1901 – March 5, 1945) was an African American maid who was executed for murder by the State of Georgia in 1945 for killing her employer, Ernest Knight in 1944. At her trial she claimed that he had imprisoned and threatened to shoot her should she attempt to leave, whereupon she took his gun and shot him.

As a child Baker and her family worked for a farmer named J.A. Cox chopping cotton. They were not paid well and even working in a laundry, the family was poor.

Read Missing Mamma: The Lena Baker Story, free from trutv.com.




Saturday, June 07, 2008

From wikipedia:
Charlotte of Belgium (Princess Marie Charlotte Amélie Augustine Victoire Clémentine Léopoldine of Belgium), (June 7, 1840–January 19, 1927) as Charlotte (or Carlota), Empress of Mexico was the consort of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico.

Princess of Belgium

The only daughter of Leopold I, King of the Belgians (1790–1865) by his second wife, Louise-Marie, Princess of France (1812–1850), Charlotte was born at Laeken Palace in Brussels, Belgium. She was named after her father's first wife, Princess Charlotte of Wales, who had died during childbirth. Charlotte had three brothers: Louis-Philippe, who died in infancy, Leopold, who on the death of their father became Leopold II of Belgium and Philippe, Count of Flanders. She was also a first cousin to both Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her husband, Prince Albert, as well as Ferdinand II of Portugal.

Learn more about the Empress Carlota and the Mexican Monarchy, free from casaimperial.org.

Friday, June 06, 2008

From wikipedia:
Pierre Corneille (June 6, 1606 – October 1, 1684) was a French tragedian who was one of the three great 17th Century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. He has been called “the founder of French tragedy” and produced plays for nearly 40 years.

Early life and plays
Corneille was born at Rouen, France, to Marthe le Pesant and Pierre Corneille (a minor administrative official). He was given a rigorous Jesuit education and at 18 began to study law. His practical legal endeavors were largely unsuccessful. Corneille’s father secured two magisterial posts for him with the Rouen department of Forests and Rivers. During his time with the department he wrote his first play. It is unknown exactly when he wrote it, but the play, the comedy Mélite, surfaced when Corneille brought it to a group of traveling actors in 1629. The actors approved of the work and made it part of their repertoire. The play was a success in Paris and Corneille began writing plays on a regular basis. He moved to Paris in the same year and soon became one of the leading playwrights of the French stage. His early comedies, starting with Mélite, depart from the French farce tradition by reflecting the elevated language and manners of fashionable Parisian society. Corneille describes his variety of comedy as "une peinture de la conversation des honnêtes gens" ("a painting of the conversation of the gentry"). His first true tragedy is Médée, produced in 1635.

Read The Cid, by Pierre Corneille, one of two of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

From wikipedia:
Ruth Benedict (born Ruth Fulton, June 5, 1887–September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist.

She was born in New York City, and attended Vassar College, graduating in 1909. She entered graduate studies at Columbia University in 1919, studying under Franz Boas, receiving her PhD and joining the faculty in 1923. Margaret Mead, with whom she may have shared a romantic relationship, and Marvin Opler were among her students and colleagues.

Read the obituary of Ruth Fulton Benedict, written by Margaret Mead, free from americanethnography.com.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

From wikipedia:
Rosalind Russell (June 4, 1907 – November 28, 1976) was an American award-winning film and stage actress, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as originating the role of Auntie Mame on Broadway and in film.

It is notable that she won all 5 Golden Globes for which she was nominated. She was tied with Meryl Streep for wins until the 2007 awards when Streep was awarded a sixth.

Watch Rosalind Russell sing "Rose's Turn," from the film "Gypsy," free from YouTube.

Monday, June 02, 2008

From wikipedia:
John Hope (June 2, 1868 - February 20, 1936), born in Augusta, Georgia, was an African-American educator and political activist. He was the son of a white father, who was a farmer, and a black mother.

Hope graduated from Worcester Academy in 1890, then taught at Brown University. On December 29, 1897 he married the former Lugenia D. Burns[1], who would become a well-known social reformer. In 1898, he became professor of Classics at Atlanta Baptist College, (now Morehouse College), and in 1906 was appointed the institution's first black president.

Read more about John Hope, free from the New Georgia Encyclopedia.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

From wikipedia:
Dr Henry Faulds (1 June 1843 – 19 March 1930) was a Scottish scientist who is noted for the development of fingerprinting.

Faulds was born in the Scottish town of Beith, North Ayrshire into a family of modest means. Aged 13, he was forced to leave school, and went to Glasgow to work as a clerk to help support his family; at 21 he decided to enroll at the Facility of Arts at Glasgow University, where he studied mathematics, logic and the classics. He later studied medicine at Anderson's College, and graduated with a physician’s license.

Read Henry Faulds' 1905 Guide to Fingerprint Identification, along with other documents on the use of fingerprinting, free from galton.org.