The James Logan Courier

From wikipedia:
John Ericsson (July 31, 1803 – March 8, 1889) was a Swedish inventor and mechanical engineer, as was his brother, Nils Ericson. He was born at Långbanshyttan in Värmland, Sweden, but primarily came to be active in the United States.

John's and Nils's father Olof Ericsson who worked as the supervisor for a mine in Värmland had lost money in speculations and had to move his family from Värmland to Forsvik in 1810. There he worked as a 'director of blastings' during the excavation of the Swedish Göta Canal. The extraordinary skills of the two brothers were discovered by Baltzar von Platen, the architect of the Göta Canal. The two brothers were dubbed cadets of mechanics of the Swedish Royal Navy and engaged as trainees at the canal enterprise. At the age of fourteen, John was already working independently as a surveyor. His assistant had to carry a footstool for him to reach the instruments during surveying work.

Visit the website of the John Ericsson National Memorial in Washington, D.C.

From wikipedia:
Betye Irene Saar (July 30, 1926 in Los Angeles, California) is an American artist, known for her work in the field of assemblage. Her education included a time at the University of California, Los Angeles, from where she received a degree in design in 1949, and graduate studies in printmaking and education at Pasadena City College, California State University, Long Beach.

Her interest in assemblage was inspired by a 1968 exhibition by Joseph Cornell, though she also cites the influence of Simon Rodia's Watts Towers, which she witnessed being built in her childhood. She began creating work typically consisting of found objects arranged within boxes or windows, with items drawing on various different cultures reflecting Saar's own mixed heritage (African, Native American, Irish and Creole).

Learn more about Betye Saar, see examples of her work, and watch video interviews of her, free from netropolitan.org.

From wikipedia
Malcolm Lowry (July 28, 1909 – June 26, 1957) was an English poet and novelist, best known for his novel Under the Volcano.

Lowry was born in Wallasey, in the English county of Merseyside (previously Cheshire), and was educated at The Leys School and St Catharine's College, Cambridge. By the time he graduated in 1931, the twin obsessions which would dominate his life—alcohol and literature—were firmly in place. Lowry was already well travelled, having sailed to the Far East as a deck hand on the Pyrrhus between school and university and made visits to America and Germany between terms. After Cambridge, Lowry lived briefly in London, existing on the fringes of the vibrant thirties literary scene and meeting Dylan Thomas, amongst others. Following this, he moved to France, where he married his first wife, Jan Gabrial, in 1934. It was a turbulent union, and, after an estrangement, Lowry followed her to New York (where he entered the Bellevue Hospital in 1936 following an alcohol-induced break-down) and then to Hollywood, where he tried his hand at screenwriting.

Visit the Malcolm Lowry homepage.

From wikipedia:
James Edwin Campbell (1867-1896) was an African American poet, editor, short story writer and educator. He was born in 1867 in Pomeroy, Ohio, and died there in 1896.

According to James Weldon Johnson, there is little known about his early life, which he kept shielded even from his closest associates. He attended public schools in Pomeroy and spent time at Miami College and wrote regularly for daily newspapers in Chicago in the 1880s and 1890s. Campbell participated in a group publication, the Four O’Clock Magazine, a literary magazine that was quite popular for a time.


Read Compensation, by James Edwin Campbell, free from poetry-archive.com.

From wikipedia:
Dorothea Towles Church (July 26, 1922—July 7, 2006) was the first successful black fashion model in Paris.

Church was born in Texarkana, Texas. She was the seventh of eight children in a farming family.

She attended Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, where she majored in biology. After her mother's death, a wealthy uncle invited her to move into his house in Los Angeles. She transferred to the University of Southern California, where she received a master's degree in education.


Read Dorothea Church's obituary in the New York Times.

From wikipedia:
Norman W. Lewis (23 July 1909 – 27 August 1979) was an award-winning painter, scholar, and teacher. He is associated with Abstract Expressionism. Lewis was African-American, of Caribbean descent.


Norman W. Lewis was born in Harlem, New York. His parents had emigrated from Bermuda. Always interested in art, he had amassed a large art history library by the time he was a young man. A lifelong resident of Harlem, he also travelled extensively during the two years that he worked on ocean freighters. An important early influence was the sculptor and teacher Augusta Savage, who provided him with open studio space at her Harlem Art Center. He also participated in WPA art projects, alongside his friends Romare Bearden and Jackson Pollock, among others.


Read an interview with Norman Lewis, free from the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art.

From wikipedia:
Lonette McKee (born July 22, 1954) is an American film and television actress, music composer/producer/songwriter, screenwriter and director.

McKee was born in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Dorothy and Lonnie McKee. Lonnie, was a bricklayer and auto manufacturer employee. McKee's career began in the music business in Detroit, Michigan as a child prodigy, where she started writing music/lyrics, singing, playing keyboards and performing at the age of seven. At fourteen, she recorded her first record, which became an instant regional pop/R&B hit. McKee wrote the title song for the film Quadroon when she was fifteen. She had written and produced three solo LPs, the most recent, "Natural Love", for Spike Lee's Columbia 40 Acres and A Mule label.

Visit Lonette McKee's official website.

From wikipedia:
Christian Abraham Fleetwood (July 21, 1840–September 28, 1914), was a non-commissioned officer in the United States Army, editor, musician, and government official. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the American Civil War.

Fleetwood was born in Baltimore on July 21, 1840, the son of Charles and Anna Maria Fleetwood, both free persons of color. He received his early education in the home of a wealthy sugar merchant, John C. Brunes, and his wife, the latter treating him like her son. He continued his education in the office of the secretary of the Maryland Colonization Society, went briefly to Liberia and Sierra Leone, and graduated in 1860 from Ashmun Institute (later Lincoln University) in Oxford, Pennsylvania. He and others published briefly the Lyceum Observer in Baltimore, said to be the first African American newspaper in the upper South.

Read Christian Fleetwood's "The Negro As Soldier," free from MedalofHonor.com.

From wikipedia:
Henry Dumas (July 20, 1934 – May 23, 1968) was an African American writer and poet.

Dumas was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas in 1934 and he lived there until the age of ten, when he moved to New York City; however, he always kept with him the religious and folk traditions of his hometown. In Harlem, he attended public school and graduated from Commerce High School in 1953. After graduating, he enrolled in the Air Force and was stationed at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he met future wife Loretta Ponton. The couple married in 1955 and had two sons, David in 1958 and Michael in 1962. Dumas was in the military until 1957, at which time he enrolled at Rutgers University but never attained a degree. In 1967 Dumas began work at Southern Illinois University as a teacher, counselor, and director of its "Experiment in Higher Education" program. It was here that he met fellow teacher and poet Eugene Redmond, forming a close collaborative relationship that would prove so integral to Dumas' posthumous career.

Read more about Henry Dumas and his poetry, free from Modern American Poetry.

From wikipedia:
Matthew "Mack" Robinson (July 18, 1912 – March 12, 2000) was an American athlete, setting a world record and winning a silver medal in the Olympics. He was the older brother of Baseball Hall of Fame member Jackie Robinson.

He was born in Cairo, Georgia, in 1912. He and his siblings were left fatherless at an early age, leaving their mother, Mallie Robinson, as the sole support of the children. She performed in a variety of manual labour tasks, and moved with her children to Pasadena, California, while the children were still young. Mack remained in town for school, and set national junior college records in the 100 meter, 200 meter, and long jump at Pasadena City College.

Read Rep. Adam Schiff's (D-Pasadena) speech honoring Mack Robinson.

From wikipedia:
Eunice Roberta Hunton Carter (1899-1970) was one of the first female African American lawyers in the United States, and broke down racial and gender barriers.

She established a lengthy career in both law and international politics. She was the first black woman to receive a law degree from Fordham University in New York City, and in 1935 she became the first black woman Assistant District Attorney in the state of New York.

Learn more about Eunice Carter, free from Stanford University.

From wikipedia:
Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier (born July 14, 1932 in Brooklyn, New York) is an African American actor, Christian minister, and former professional football player. He was a noteworthy college football player for Pennsylvania State University who earned a retrospective place in the National Collegiate Athletic Association 100th anniversary list of 100 most influential student athletes. As a professional player, Grier was a member of the original Fearsome Foursome of the 1957 New York Giants and played in the Pro Bowl twice.

Read Roosevelt Grier's account of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, free from Brown Eyed Handsome Man.

From wikipedia:
George Lewis (13 July,1900 – 31 December 1968) was an American jazz clarinetist who achieved his greatest fame and influence in his later decades of life. Gary Giddins describes him as "an affecting musician with a fat-boned sound but limited technique".

George Lewis' legal name was George Louis Francois Zenon. He was born in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. Lewis was playing clarinet professionally by 1917. He played with Buddy Petit and Chris Kelly regularly, and sometimes with trombonist Kid Ory and many other band leaders, seldom traveling far from the greater New Orleans area.

From wikipedia:
Beah Richards (July 12, 1920 – September 14, 2000) was an American actress with a long career on stage, screen and television. She was also a poet, playwright and author.

Born Beulah Richardson in Vicksburg, Mississippi, her mother was a seamstress and PTA advocate and her father was a Baptist minister. In 1948, she graduated from Dillard University in New Orleans and two years later moved to New York City. Her career started to take off in 1955 when she portrayed an eighty-four-year-old-grandmother in the off-Broadway show Take a Giant Step. She often played the role of a mother or grandmother, and continued acting her entire life. She appeared in the original Broadway productions of Purlie Victorious, The Miracle Worker, and A Raisin in the Sun.

Learn more about Beah Richards, and the documentary about her, Beah: A Black Woman Speaks, free from HBO.

From wikipedia:
Pedro Luis Brión (July 6,1782, Curaçao—September 27, 1821, Curaçao) was a military officer who fought in the Venezuelan War of Independence. He who rose to the rank of admiral in the navies of Venezuela and the old Republic of Colombia.

Merchant Pedro Luis Brión and María Detrox, both from what is now Belgium, were his parents. They arrived in Curaçao in 1777. In 1794 they sent their son to the Netherlands to complete his education. While he was there, he enlisted in the forces of the Batavian Republic to fight the British invasion of the northern Netherlands. He participated in the battles of Bergen (September 19, 1799) and Castricum (October 16, 1799). He was taken prisoner by the British but freed after a short time in the prisoner exchange under the Convention of Alkmaar.

Read more about Luis Brion and Simon Bolivar in the Memoirs of Simon Bolivar by Henri La Fayette Villaume Ducoudray Holstein, free from googlebooks.com.

From wikipedia:
Dr. Pilar Barbosa de Rosario (July 4, 1898-January 22, 1997) was an educator, historian and political activist.

Barbosa born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, was the daughter of Jose Celso Barbosa, also known as the "Father of the Puerto Rican Pro-Statehood Movement". Her father was a member of the Puerto Rican Senate from 1917-1921. Barbosa received her primary and secondary education in Bayamon and was exposed to politics at a young age. As a teenager she enjoyed teaching others. After she graduated from high school, she enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico.

Read Pilar Barbosa's obituary in the New York Times.

From wikipedia:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935) was a prominent American novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and non fiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", which she wrote after a severe bout of post-partum depression.

Read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one of five of her works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Hedda Hopper (May 2, 1885 – February 1, 1966) was an American actress and gossip columnist, whose long-running feud with friend turned arch-rival Louella Parsons became at least as notorious as many of Hopper's columns.

She was born Elda Furry in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, the daughter of David and Margaret Furry, who were Quakers.

Her siblings included Dora Furry (born March 1880); Sherman Furry (born June 1882); Cameron Furry (born September 1887); Edgar Furry (April 20, 1889-November 1975); Frank M. Furry (born August 1891); and Margaret Furry (born July 1897).

Read The Bitter Feud between Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, free from associatedcontent.com.

From wikipedia:
Thomas Andrew Dorsey (July 1, 1899, Villa Rica, Georgia - January 23, 1993, Chicago), is known as "the father of gospel music". Earlier in his life he was a leading blues pianist known as Georgia Tom.

As formulated by Dorsey, gospel music combines Christian praise with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. His conception also deviates from what had been, to that time, standard hymnal practice by referring explicitly to the self, and the self's relation to faith and God, rather than the individual subsumed into the group via belief.

Learn more about Thomas Dorsey and his music, free from pbs.org.