The most famous people in America
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Harriet Tubman (Nicknamed "Moses")
Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by enslavers as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight, intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences and her Methodist upbringing led her to become devoutly religious.
1849 Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom. Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) traveled by night and in extreme secrecy, and later said she "never lost a passenger". After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America (Canada) and helped newly freed people find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858 and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.
When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance in the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people, she is widely credited as the first woman to lead an armed military operation in the United States. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her and was admitted to a home for elderly African Americans, which she helped establish years earlier. Tubman is commonly viewed as an icon of courage and freedom.
Birth and family
Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to enslaved parents, Harriet ("Rit") Green and Ben Ross. Rit was enslaved by Mary Pattison Brodess (and later her son Edward). Ben was enslaved by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Brodess's second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater River in the Madison area of Dorchester County, Maryland.
As with many enslaved people in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of Tubman's birth is known. Tubman reported the year of her birth as 1825, while her death certificate lists 1815 and her gravestone lists 1820. Historian Kate Larson's 2004 biography of Tubman records the year as 1822, based on a midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement.[1] Based on Larson's work, more recent biographies have accepted March 1822 as the most likely timing of Tubman's birth.
Tubman's maternal grandmother, Modesty, arrived in the U.S. on a slave ship from Africa; no information is available about her other ancestors. As a child, Tubman was told that she seemed like an Ashanti person because of her character traits, though no evidence has been found to confirm or deny this lineage. Her mother, Rit (who may have had a white father), was a cook for the Brodess family. Her father, Ben, was a skilled woodsman who managed the timber work on Thompson's plantation. They married around 1808 and, according to court records, had nine children together: Linah, Mariah Ritty, Soph, Robert, Minty (Harriet), Ben, Rachel, Henry, and Moses.
Rit struggled to keep her family together as slavery threatened to tear it apart. Edward Brodess sold three of her daughters (Linah, Mariah Ritty, and Soph), separating them from the family forever. When a trader from Georgia approached Brodess about buying Rit's youngest son, Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other enslaved people and freedmen in the community. At one point she confronted Brodess about the sale. Finally, Brodess and "the Georgia man" came toward the slave quarters to seize the child, where Rit told them, "You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open." Brodess backed away and abandoned the sale. Tubman's biographers agree that stories told about this event within the family influenced her belief in the possibilities of resistance.
Childhood
Tubman's mother was assigned to "the big house" and had scarce time for her own family; consequently, as a child, Tubman took care of a younger brother and baby, as was typical in large families. When she was five or six years old, Brodess hired her out as a nursemaid to a woman named "Miss Susan". Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rock the cradle as it slept; when the baby woke up and cried, Tubman was whipped. She later recounted a particular day when she was lashed five times before breakfast. She carried the scars for the rest of her life. She found ways to resist, such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings, and fighting back.
Also in her childhood, Tubman was sent to work for a planter named James Cook. She had to check his muskrat traps in nearby marshes, even after contracting measles. She became so ill that Cook sent her back to Brodess, where her mother nursed her back to health. Brodess then hired her out again. She spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness, comparing herself to "the boy on the Swanee River", an allusion to Stephen Foster's song "Old Folks at Home". As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to field and forest work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs.
As an adolescent, Tubman suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound (1 kg) metal weight at another slave who was attempting to flee. The weight struck Tubman instead, which she said: "broke my skull". Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her enslaver's house and laid on the seat of a loom, where she remained without medical care for two days. After this incident, Tubman frequently experienced extremely painful headaches. She also began having seizures and would seemingly fall unconscious, although she claimed to be aware of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep. Larson suggests she may have had temporal lobe epilepsy, possibly as a result of brain injury; Clinton suggests her condition may have been narcolepsy or cataplexy. A definitive diagnosis is not possible due to a lack of contemporary medical evidence, but this condition remained with her for the rest of her life.
After her injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and vivid dreams, which she interpreted as revelations from God. These spiritual experiences had a profound effect on Tubman's personality and she acquired a passionate faith in God. Although Tubman was illiterate, she was told Bible stories by her mother and likely attended a Methodist church with her family. Mystical inspiration guided her actions. She rejected the teachings of white preachers who urged enslaved people to be passive and obedient victims to those who trafficked and enslaved them; instead, she found guidance in the Old Testament tales of deliverance. This religious perspective informed her actions throughout her life.
Family and marriage
Anthony Thompson promised to manumit Tubman's father at age 45. After Thompson died, his son followed through with that promise in 1840. Tubman's father continued working as a timber estimator and foreman for the Thompson family.[39] Later in the 1840s, Tubman paid a white attorney five dollars (equivalent to $160 in 2023) to investigate the legal status of her mother, Rit. The lawyer discovered that Atthow Pattison, the grandfather of Mary Brodess, indicated in his will that Rit and any of her children would be manumitted at age 45 and that any children born after she reached age 45 would be freeborn. The Pattison and Brodess families ignored this stipulation when they inherited the enslaved family, but taking legal action to enforce it was an impossible task for Tubman.
Around 1844, she married John Tubman, a free black man. Although little is known about him or their time together, the union was complicated because of her enslaved status. The mother's status dictated that of children, and any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Such blended marriages – free people of color marrying enslaved people – were not uncommon on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where by this time, half the black population was free. Most African-American families had both free and enslaved members. Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom.
Tubman changed her name from Armenta to Harriet soon after her marriage, though the exact timing is unclear. Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding, and Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. She possibly adopted her mother's name as part of a religious conversion or to honor another relative.
Escape from slavery
In 1849, Tubman became ill again, which diminished her value to slave traders. Edward Brodess tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer. Angry at him for trying to sell her and for continuing to enslave her relatives, Tubman began to pray for God to make Brodess change his ways. She said later: "I prayed all night long for my master till the first of March; and all the time he was bringing people to look at me, and trying to sell me." When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded, Tubman changed her prayer: "First of March I began to pray, 'Oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that man's heart, kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way'." A week later, Brodess died, and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments.
As in many estate settlements, Brodess's death increased the likelihood that Tubman would be sold and her family broken apart. His widow, Eliza, began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Despite her husband's efforts to dissuade her, Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate. She later said that "there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other".
Tubman and her brothers, Ben and Henry, escaped from slavery on September 17, 1849. Tubman had been hired out to Anthony Thompson (the son of her father's former owner), who owned a large plantation in an area called Poplar Neck in neighboring Caroline County; her brothers likely labored for Thompson as well. Because they were hired out, Eliza Brodess probably did not recognize their absence as an escape attempt for some time. Two weeks later, she posted a runaway notice in the Cambridge Democrat, offering a reward of up to US$100 each (equivalent to $3,660 in 2023) for their capture and return to slavery. Once they had left, Tubman's brothers had second thoughts. Ben may have regretted leaving his wife and children. The two men went back, forcing Tubman to return with them.
Sometime in October or November, Tubman escaped again, this time without her brothers. Before leaving she sang a farewell song to hint at her intentions, which she hoped would be understood by Mary, a trusted fellow slave: "I'll meet you in the morning", she intoned, "I'm bound for the promised land." While her exact route is unknown, Tubman made use of the network known as the Underground Railroad. This informal system was composed of free and enslaved black people, white abolitionists, and other activists. Most prominent among the latter in Maryland at the time were Quakers (members of the Religious Society of Friends). The Preston area near Poplar Neck contained a substantial Quaker community and was probably an important first stop during Tubman's escape. From there, she probably took a common route for people fleeing slavery – northeast along the Choptank River, through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania. A journey of nearly 90 miles (145 km) by foot would have taken between five days and three weeks.
Tubman had to travel by night, guided by the North Star and trying to avoid slave catchers eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves. The "conductors" in the Underground Railroad used deceptions for protection. At an early stop, the lady of the house instructed Tubman to sweep the yard to seem to be working for the family. When night fell, the family hid her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house. Given her familiarity with the woods and marshes of the region, Tubman likely hid in these locales during the day. The particulars of her first journey are unknown; because other escapees from slavery used the routes, Tubman did not discuss them until later in life. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relief and awe, and recalled the experience years later:
When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.............
Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ginsburg was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her older sister, Marilyn, died of meningitis at the age of six, when Joan was a baby, and her mother died shortly before she graduated from high school. She earned her bachelor's degree at Cornell University and married Martin D. Ginsburg, becoming a mother before starting law school at Harvard, where she was one of the few women in her class. Ginsburg transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated joint first in her class. During the early 1960s, she worked with the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure, learned Swedish, and co-authored a book with Swedish jurist Anders Bruzelius; her work in Sweden profoundly influenced her thinking on gender equality. She then became a professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School, teaching civil procedure as one of the few women in her field.
Ginsburg spent much of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women's rights, winning many arguments before the Supreme Court. She advocated as a volunteer attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union and was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels in the 1970s. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she served until her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993. Between O'Connor's retirement in 2006 and the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, she was the only female justice on the Supreme Court. During that time, Ginsburg became more forceful with her dissents, such as with Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007).
Despite two bouts with cancer and public pleas from liberal law scholars, she decided not to retire in 2013 or 2014 when President Barack Obama and a Democratic-controlled Senate could appoint and confirm her successor. Ginsburg died at her home in Washington, D.C., in September 2020, at the age of 87, from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer. The vacancy created by her death was filled 39 days later by Amy Coney Barrett. The result was one of three major rightward shifts in the Court since 1953, following the appointment of Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall in 1991 and the appointment of Warren Burger to replace Earl Warren in 1969.
Early life and education
Ginsburg in 1959, wearing her Columbia Law School academic regalia
Joan Ruth Bader was born on March 15, 1933, at Beth Moses Hospital in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the second daughter of Celia and Nathan Bader, who lived in Brooklyn's Flatbush neighborhood. Her father was a Jewish emigrant from Odesa, Ukraine, at that time part of the Russian Empire, and her mother was born in New York to Jewish parents who came from Krakow, Poland, at that time part of Austria-Hungary. The Baders' elder daughter Marylin died of meningitis at age six. Joan, who was 14 months old when Marylin died, was known to the family as "Kiki", a nickname Marylin had given her for being "a kicky baby". When Joan started school, Celia discovered that her daughter's class had several other girls named Joan, so Celia suggested the teacher call her daughter by her second name, Ruth, to avoid confusion.3–4 Although not devout, the Bader family belonged to East Midwood Jewish Center, a Conservative synagogue, where Ruth learned tenets of the Jewish faith and gained familiarity with the Hebrew language. 14–15 Ruth was not allowed to have a bat mitzvah ceremony because of Orthodox restrictions on women reading from the Torah, which upset her. Starting as a camper from the age of four, she attended Camp Che-Na-Wah, a Jewish summer program at Lake Balfour near Minerva, New York, where she was later a camp counselor until the age of eighteen.
Celia took an active role in her daughter's education, often taking her to the library. Celia had been a good student in her youth, graduating from high school at age 15, yet she could not further her own education because her family instead chose to send her brother to college. Celia wanted her daughter to get more education, which she thought would allow Ruth to become a high school history teacher. Ruth attended James Madison High School, whose law program later dedicated a courtroom in her honor. Celia struggled with cancer throughout Ruth's high school years and died the day before Ruth's high school graduation.
Ruth Bader attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she was a member of Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority. 118 While at Cornell, she met Martin D. Ginsburg at age 17. She graduated from Cornell with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government on June 23, 1954. While at Cornell, Bader studied under Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov, and she later identified Nabokov as a major influence on her development as a writer. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the highest-ranking female student in her graduating class. Bader married Ginsburg a month after she graduated from Cornell. The couple moved to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Martin Ginsburg, a Reserve Officers' Training Corps graduate, was stationed as a called-up active duty United States Army Reserve officer during the Korean War. At age 21, Ruth Bader Ginsburg worked for the Social Security Administration office in Oklahoma, where she was demoted after becoming pregnant with her first child. She gave birth to a daughter in 1955.
In the fall of 1956, Ruth Bader Ginsburg enrolled at Harvard Law School, where she was one of only 9 women in a class of about 500 men. The dean of Harvard Law, Erwin Griswold, reportedly invited all the female law students to dinner at his family home and asked the female law students, including Ginsburg, "Why are you at Harvard Law School, taking the place of a man?" When her husband took a job in New York City, that same dean denied Ginsburg's request to complete her third year towards a Harvard law degree at Columbia Law School, so Ginsburg transferred to Columbia and became the first woman to be on two major law reviews: the Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review. In 1959, she earned her law degree at Columbia and tied for first in her class..........
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's home in Amherst. Evidence suggests that Dickinson lived much of her life in isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a penchant for white clothing and was known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even to leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most of her friendships were based entirely upon correspondence. Although Dickinson was a prolific writer, her only publications during her lifetime were 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems and one letter. The poems published then were usually edited significantly to fit conventional poetic rules. Her poems were unique for her era; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality (two recurring topics in letters to her friends), aesthetics, society, nature, and spirituality. Although Dickinson's acquaintances were most likely aware of her writing, it was not until after she died in 1886—when Lavinia, Dickinson's younger sister, discovered her cache of poems—that her work became public. Her first published collection of poetry was made in 1890 by her acquaintances Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd, though they heavily edited the content. A complete collection of her poetry first became available in 1955 when scholar Thomas H. Johnson published The Poems of Emily Dickinson. In 1998, The New York Times reported on a study in which infrared technology revealed that much of Dickinson's work had been deliberately censored to exclude the name "Susan". At least eleven of Dickinson's poems were dedicated to her sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson, and all the dedications were later obliterated, presumably by Todd. This censorship serves to obscure the nature of Emily and Susan's relationship, which many scholars have interpreted as romantic. Family and early childhood Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born at the family's homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830, into a prominent, but not wealthy, family. Her father, Edward Dickinson, was a lawyer in Amherst and a trustee of Amherst College. Two hundred years earlier, her patrilineal ancestors had arrived in the New World—in the Puritan Great Migration—where they prospered. Emily Dickinson's paternal grandfather, Samuel Dickinson, was one of the founders of Amherst College. In 1813, he built the Homestead, a large mansion on the town's main street, that became the focus of Dickinson family life for the better part of a century. Samuel Dickinson's eldest son, Edward, was treasurer of Amherst College from 1835 to 1873, served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1838–1839; 1873) and the Massachusetts Senate (1842–1843), and represented Massachusetts's 10th congressional district in the 33rd U.S. Congress (1853–1855). On May 6, 1828, he married Emily Norcross from Monson, Massachusetts. They had three children: William Austin (1829–1895), known as Austin, Aust, or Awe Emily Elizabeth Lavinia Norcross (1833–1899), known as Lavinia or Vinnie She was also a distant cousin to Baxter Dickinson and his family, including his grandson, the organist and composer Clarence Dickinson. By all accounts, young Dickinson was a well-behaved girl. On an extended visit to Monson when she was two, Dickinson's Aunt Lavinia described her as "perfectly well and contented—She is a very good child and but little trouble." Dickinson's aunt also noted the girl's affinity for music and her particular talent for the piano, which she called "the Moosic". Dickinson attended primary school in a two-story building on Pleasant Street. Her education was "ambitiously classical for a Victorian girl". Wanting his children to be well-educated, her father followed their progress even while away on business. When Dickinson was seven, he wrote home, reminding his children to "keep school, and learn, to tell me, when I come home, how many new things you have learned". While Dickinson consistently described her father warmly, her correspondence suggests that her mother was regularly cold and aloof. In a letter to a confidante, Dickinson wrote she "always ran Home to Awe [Austin] when a child, if anything befell me. She was an awful Mother, but I liked her better than none." On September 7, 1840, Dickinson and her sister Lavinia started together at Amherst Academy, a former boys' school that had opened to female students just two years earlier. At about the same time, her father purchased a house on North Pleasant Street. Dickinson's brother Austin later described this large new home as the "mansion" over which he and Dickinson presided as "lord and lady" while their parents were absent. The house overlooked Amherst's burial ground, described by one local minister as treeless and "forbidding"........
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women.
Throughout the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the United States in articles and through pamphlets such as Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases and The Red Record, which debunked the fallacy frequently voiced by whites at the time that all Black lynching victims were guilty of crimes. Wells exposed the brutality of lynching and analyzed its sociology, arguing that whites used lynching to terrorize African Americans in the South because they represented economic and political competition—and thus a threat of loss of power—for whites. She aimed to demonstrate the truth about this violence and advocate for measures to stop it.
Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi. At the age of 16, she lost both her parents and her infant brother in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic. She went to work and kept the rest of the family together with the help of her grandmother. Later, moving with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, Wells found better pay as a teacher. Soon, Wells co-owned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper, where her reporting covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality. Eventually, her investigative journalism was carried nationally in Black-owned newspapers. Subjected to continued threats and criminal violence, including when a white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses, Wells left Memphis for Chicago, Illinois. She married Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895 and had a family while continuing her work writing, speaking, and organizing for civil rights and the women's movement for the rest of her life.
Wells was outspoken regarding her beliefs as a Black female activist and faced regular public disapproval, sometimes including from other leaders within the civil rights movement and the women's suffrage movement. She was active in women's rights and the women's suffrage movement, establishing several notable women's organizations. A skilled and persuasive speaker, Wells traveled nationally and internationally on lecture tours. Wells died of kidney disease on March 25, 1931, in Chicago, and in 2020 was posthumously honored with a Pulitzer Prize special citation "for her outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching."
Early life
The Bolling–Gatewood House. The Wells family lived in a shack behind this house while enslaved by its owner, Spires Bolling.
Ida Bell Wells was born on the Bolling Farm near Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862, Ida Wells was the first child of James Madison Wells (1840–1878) and Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Warrenton). James Wells was enslaved, born to an enslaved woman named Peggy and Peggy's white enslaver. When James was 18, his father brought James to Holly Springs, hiring him out as a carpenter's apprentice to Spires Bolling, with James' wages going to his enslaver. One of ten children born on a plantation in Virginia, Lizzie was abducted and trafficked away from her family and siblings and tried without success to locate her family following the Civil War. Lizzie was owned by Spires Bolling for domestic labor in his home, now the Bolling-Gatewood House. Thus, before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, both of Wells' parents were enslaved to Spires Bolling and bore children under these conditions. James Wells built much of the Bolling-Gatewood house, in which Spires Bolling lived. The Bolling–Gatewood House has become the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum. The Wells family lived elsewhere on the property. Ground plans on display in the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum identify shacks behind the house as the residence of the Wells family.
After emancipation, Wells' father, James Wells, became a trustee of Shaw College (now Rust College). He refused to vote for Democratic candidates during the period of Reconstruction, became a member of the Loyal League, and was known as a "race man" for his involvement in politics and his commitment to the Republican Party. He founded a successful carpentry business in Holly Springs in 1867, and his wife Lizzie became known as a "famous cook".
Ida B. Wells was one of eight children, and she enrolled in the historically Black liberal arts college Rust College in Holly Springs (formerly Shaw College). In September 1878, both of Ida's parents died during a yellow fever epidemic that also claimed a sibling. Wells had been visiting her grandmother's farm near Holly Springs at the time and was spared.
Following the funerals of her parents and brother, friends and relatives decided that the five remaining Wells children should be separated and sent to foster homes. Wells resisted this proposition. To keep her younger siblings together as a family, she found work as a teacher in a rural Black elementary school outside Holly Springs. Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells (née Peggy Cheers; 1814–1887), along with other friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings and cared for them during the week while Wells was teaching.
About two years after Wells' grandmother Peggy had a stroke and her sister Eugenia died, Wells and her two youngest sisters moved to Memphis to live with an aunt, Fanny Butler (née Fanny Wells; 1837–1908), in 1883. Memphis is about 56 miles (90 km) from Holly Springs.......
Early life
The Bolling–Gatewood House. The Wells family lived in a shack behind this house while enslaved by its owner, Spires Bolling.
Ida Bell Wells was born on the Bolling Farm near Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862, Ida Wells was the first child of James Madison Wells (1840–1878) and Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Warrenton). James Wells was enslaved, born to an enslaved woman named Peggy and Peggy's white enslaver. When James was 18, his father brought James to Holly Springs, hiring him out as a carpenter's apprentice to Spires Bolling, with James' wages going to his enslaver. One of ten children born on a plantation in Virginia, Lizzie was abducted and trafficked away from her family and siblings and tried without success to locate her family following the Civil War. Lizzie was owned by Spires Bolling for domestic labor in his home, now the Bolling-Gatewood House. Thus, before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, both of Wells' parents were enslaved to Spires Bolling and bore children under these conditions. James Wells built much of the Bolling-Gatewood house, in which Spires Bolling lived. The Bolling–Gatewood House has become the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum. The Wells family lived elsewhere on the property. Ground plans on display in the Ida B. Wells-Barnett Museum identify shacks behind the house as the residence of the Wells family.
After emancipation, Wells' father, James Wells, became a trustee of Shaw College (now Rust College). He refused to vote for Democratic candidates during the period of Reconstruction, became a member of the Loyal League, and was known as a "race man" for his involvement in politics and his commitment to the Republican Party. He founded a successful carpentry business in Holly Springs in 1867, and his wife Lizzie became known as a "famous cook".
Ida B. Wells was one of eight children, and she enrolled in the historically Black liberal arts college Rust College in Holly Springs (formerly Shaw College). In September 1878, both of Ida's parents died during a yellow fever epidemic that also claimed a sibling. Wells had been visiting her grandmother's farm near Holly Springs at the time and was spared.
Following the funerals of her parents and brother, friends and relatives decided that the five remaining Wells children should be separated and sent to foster homes. Wells resisted this proposition. To keep her younger siblings together as a family, she found work as a teacher in a rural Black elementary school outside Holly Springs. Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells (née Peggy Cheers; 1814–1887), along with other friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings and cared for them during the week while Wells was teaching.
About two years after Wells' grandmother Peggy had a stroke and her sister Eugenia died, Wells and her two youngest sisters moved to Memphis to live with an aunt, Fanny Butler (née Fanny Wells; 1837–1908), in 1883. Memphis is about 56 miles (90 km) from Holly Springs.......
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966), also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Sanger used her writings and speeches primarily to promote her way of thinking. She was prosecuted for her book Family Limitation under the Comstock Act in 1914. She feared the consequences of her writings, so she fled to Britain until public opinion had quieted. Sanger's efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States. Due to her connection with Planned Parenthood, Sanger is frequently criticized by opponents of abortion. Sanger drew a sharp distinction between birth control and abortion and was opposed to abortions throughout the bulk of her professional career, declining to participate in them as a nurse. Sanger remains a prominent figure in the American reproductive rights and feminist movements. Sanger has been criticized for supporting eugenics, including negative eugenics. Some historians believe her support of negative eugenics, a popular stance at that time, was a rhetorical tool rather than a personal conviction. In 2020, Planned Parenthood disavowed Sanger, citing her record with eugenics and racism.
In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S., which led to her arrest for distributing information on contraception, after an undercover policewoman bought a copy of her pamphlet on family planning. Her subsequent trial and appeal generated controversy. Sanger felt that for women to have a more equal footing in society and to lead healthier lives, they needed to be able to determine when to bear children. She also wanted to prevent so-called back-alley abortions, which were common at the time because abortions were illegal in the U.S. She believed that, while abortion may be a viable option in life-threatening situations for the pregnant, it should generally be avoided. She considered contraception the only practical way to avoid them.
In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In New York City, she organized the first birth control clinic to be staffed by all-female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem that had an all-African-American advisory council, where African-American staff was later added. In 1929, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, which served as the focal point of her lobbying efforts to legalize contraception in the United States. From 1952 to 1959, Sanger served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She died in 1966 and is widely regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement........
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. A member of the Republican Party, his presidency constituted the Reagan era, and he is considered one of the most prominent conservative figures in American history.
Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and began to work as a sports broadcaster in Iowa. In 1937, he moved to California and became a well-known film actor there. From 1947 to 1952, Reagan served as the president of the Screen Actors Guild. During the 1950s, he worked in television and spoke for General Electric. From 1959 to 1960, he again served as the Screen Actors Guild's president. In 1964, his "A Time for Choosing" speech gave Reagan attention as a new conservative figure. He was elected governor of California in 1966. During his governorship, he raised taxes, turned the state budget deficit into a surplus, and cracked down harshly on university protests. After challenging and losing to incumbent president Gerald Ford in the 1976 Republican presidential primaries, Reagan won the Republican nomination and then a landslide victory over incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election.
In his first term, Reagan implemented "Reaganomics", which involved economic deregulation and cuts in both taxes and government spending during a period of stagflation. He escalated an arms race and transitioned Cold War policy away from détente with the Soviet Union. Reagan also ordered the invasion of Grenada in 1983. Additionally, he survived an assassination attempt, fought public-sector labor unions, expanded the war on drugs, and was slow to respond to the AIDS epidemic in the United States, which began early in his presidency. In the 1984 presidential election, he defeated former Vice President Walter Mondale in another landslide victory. Foreign affairs dominated Reagan's second term, including the 1986 bombing of Libya, the Iran–Iraq War, the secret and illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras, and a more conciliatory approach in talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that culminated in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Reagan left the presidency in 1989 with the American economy had seen a significant reduction in inflation, the unemployment rate had fallen, and the United States had entered its then-longest peacetime expansion. At the same time, the national debt had nearly tripled since 1981 as a result of his cuts in taxes and increased military spending, despite cuts to domestic discretionary spending. Reagan's policies also helped contribute to the end of the Cold War and the end of Soviet communism. Alzheimer's disease hindered Reagan's post-presidency, and his physical and mental capacities rapidly deteriorated, ultimately leading to his death in 2004. Historians and scholars have typically ranked him among the middle to upper tier of American presidents, and his post-presidential approval ratings by the general public are usually high.
Early life
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in a commercial building in Tampico, Illinois, as the younger son of Nelle Clyde Wilson and Jack Reagan. Nelle was committed to the Disciples of Christ, which believed in the Social Gospel. She led prayer meetings and ran mid-week prayers at her church when the pastor was out of town. Reagan credited her spiritual influence and he became a Christian. According to American political figure Stephen Vaughn, Reagan's values came from his pastor, and the First Christian Church's religious, economic, and social positions "coincided with the words, if not the beliefs of the latter-day Reagan". Jack focused on making money to take care of the family, but this was complicated by his alcoholism. Neil Reagan was Reagan's older brother. Together, they lived in Chicago, Galesburg, and Monmouth before returning to Tampico. In 1920, they settled in Dixon, Illinois, living in a house near the H. C. Pitney Variety Store Building.
Reagan attended Dixon High School, where he developed an interest in drama and football. His first job involved working as a lifeguard at the Rock River in Lowell Park. In 1928, Reagan began attending Eureka College at Nelle's approval on religious grounds. He was a mediocre student who participated in sports, drama, and campus politics. He became student body president and joined a student strike that resulted in the college president's resignation. Reagan was initiated as a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity and served as president of the local chapter. Reagan played at the guard position for the 1930 and 1931 Eureka Red Devils football teams and recalled a time when two black football teammates were refused service at a segregated hotel; he invited them to his parent's home nearby in Dixon and his parents welcomed them. At the time, his parents' stance on racial questions was unusually progressive in Dixon. Reagan himself had grown up with very few black Americans there and was unaware of the race problem......
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913 – March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games.
Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifetime as "perhaps the greatest and most famous athlete in track and field history". He set three world records and tied another, all in less than an hour, at the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a feat that has never been equaled and has been called "the greatest 45 minutes ever in sport".
He achieved international fame at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, by winning four gold medals: 100 meters, long jump, 200 meters, and 4 × 100-meter relay. He was the most successful athlete at the Games and, as a black American man, was credited with "single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy".
The Jesse Owens Award is USA Track & Field's highest accolade for the year's best track and field athlete. Owens was ranked by ESPN as the sixth-greatest North American athlete of the 20th century and the highest-ranked in his sport. In 1999, he was on the six-man shortlist for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Century.
Early life and education
Jesse Owens, originally known as J.C., was the youngest of ten children (three girls and seven boys) born to Henry Cleveland Owens (a sharecropper) and Mary Emma Fitzgerald in Oakville, Alabama, on September 12, 1913. He was the grandson of a slave. At the age of nine, he and his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio for better opportunities as part of the Great Migration (1910–40) when 1.6 million African Americans left the segregated and rural South for the urban and industrial North. When his new teacher asked his name to enter in her roll book, he said "J.C.", but because of his strong Southern accent, she thought he said "Jesse". The name stuck, and he was known as Jesse Owens for the rest of his life.
As a youth, Owens took different menial jobs in his spare time: he delivered groceries, loaded freight cars, and worked in a shoe repair shop while his father and older brother worked at a steel mill. During this period, Owens realized that he had a passion for running. Throughout his life, Owens attributed the success of his athletic career to the encouragement of Charles Riley, his junior high school track coach at Fairmount Junior High School. Since Owens worked after school, Riley allowed him to practice before school instead.
Owens and Minnie Ruth Solomon (1915–2001) met at Fairmont Junior High School in Cleveland when he was 15 and she was 13. They dated steadily through high school. Ruth gave birth to their first daughter Gloria in 1932. They married on July 5, 1935, and had two more daughters together: Marlene, born in 1937, and Beverly, born in 1940. They remained married until he died in 1980.
Owens first came to national attention when he was a student of East Technical High School in Cleveland; he equaled the world record of 9.4 seconds in the 100 yards (91 m) dash and long-jumped 24 feet 9+1⁄2 inches (7.56 m) at the 1933 National High School Championship in Chicago.......
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King Jr. Day (officially the Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., and often referred to shorthand as MLK Day) is a federal holiday in the United States observed on the third Monday of January each year. King was the chief spokesperson for nonviolent activism in the Civil Rights Movement, which protested racial discrimination in federal and state law and civil society. The movement led to several groundbreaking legislative reforms in the United States.
Born in 1929, Martin Luther King Jr.'s actual birthday is January 15 (which in 1929 fell on a Tuesday). The earliest Monday for this holiday is January 15 and the latest is January 21. The Monday observance is similar to those federal holidays which fall under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act.
The campaign for a federal holiday in King's honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later on January 20, 1986. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. Official observance in each state's law as well as federal law occurred in 2000.........
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology giant Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of Next and chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar. He was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955 and adopted shortly afterward. He attended Reed College in 1972 before withdrawing that same year. In 1974, he traveled through India, seeking enlightenment before later studying Zen Buddhism. He and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to further develop and sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Together, the duo gained fame and wealth a year later with the production and sale of the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers. Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto in 1979, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface (GUI). This led to the development of the unsuccessful Apple Lisa in 1983, followed by the breakthrough Macintosh in 1984, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI. The Macintosh launched the desktop publishing industry in 1985 with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics and PostScript.
In 1985, Jobs departed Apple after a long power struggle with the company's board and its then-CEO, John Sculley. That same year, Jobs took some Apple employees with him to found Next, a computer platform development company that specialized in computers for higher education and business markets, serving as its CEO. In 1986, he helped develop the visual effects industry by funding the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm that eventually spun off independently as Pixar, which produced the first 3D computer-animated feature film Toy Story (1995), and became a leading animation studio, producing over 27 films since.
In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as CEO after the company acquired NeXT. He was largely responsible for reviving Apple, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. He worked closely with British designer JonyIve to develop a line of products and services that had larger cultural ramifications, beginning with the "Think Different" advertising campaign, and leading to the iMac, iTunes, Mac OS X, Apple Store, iPod, iTunes Store, iPhone, App Store, and iPad. In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor. He died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor in 2011, and in 2022, was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.......
Jobs was born in San Francisco in 1955 and adopted shortly afterward. He attended Reed College in 1972 before withdrawing that same year. In 1974, he traveled through India, seeking enlightenment before later studying Zen Buddhism. He and Wozniak co-founded Apple in 1976 to further develop and sell Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Together, the duo gained fame and wealth a year later with the production and sale of the Apple II, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputers. Jobs saw the commercial potential of the Xerox Alto in 1979, which was mouse-driven and had a graphical user interface (GUI). This led to the development of the unsuccessful Apple Lisa in 1983, followed by the breakthrough Macintosh in 1984, the first mass-produced computer with a GUI. The Macintosh launched the desktop publishing industry in 1985 with the addition of the Apple LaserWriter, the first laser printer to feature vector graphics and PostScript.
In 1985, Jobs departed Apple after a long power struggle with the company's board and its then-CEO, John Sculley. That same year, Jobs took some Apple employees with him to found Next, a computer platform development company that specialized in computers for higher education and business markets, serving as its CEO. In 1986, he helped develop the visual effects industry by funding the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm that eventually spun off independently as Pixar, which produced the first 3D computer-animated feature film Toy Story (1995), and became a leading animation studio, producing over 27 films since.
In 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as CEO after the company acquired NeXT. He was largely responsible for reviving Apple, which was on the verge of bankruptcy. He worked closely with British designer JonyIve to develop a line of products and services that had larger cultural ramifications, beginning with the "Think Different" advertising campaign, and leading to the iMac, iTunes, Mac OS X, Apple Store, iPod, iTunes Store, iPhone, App Store, and iPad. In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor. He died of respiratory arrest related to the tumor in 2011, and in 2022, was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.......
Lance Armstrong
Lance Edward Armstrong (September 18, 1971) is an American former professional road racing cyclist. He achieved international fame for winning the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times from 1999 to 2005, but was stripped of his titles after an investigation into doping allegations, called the Lance Armstrong doping case, found he used performance-enhancing drugs over his career. Armstrong is currently banned for life from all sanctioned bicycling events.
At age 16, Armstrong began competing as a triathlete and was a national sprint-course triathlon champion in 1989 and 1990. In 1992, he began his career as a professional cyclist with the Motorola team. Armstrong had success between 1993 and 1996 with the World Championship in 1993, the Clásica de San Sebastián in 1995, Tour DuPont in 1995 and 1996, and a handful of stage victories in Europe, including stage 8 of the 1993 Tour de France and stage 18 of the 1995 Tour de France. In 1996, he was diagnosed with a potentially fatal metastatic testicular cancer. After his recovery, Armstrong founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation (now the Livestrong Foundation) to assist other cancer survivors.
Returning to cycling in 1998, Armstrong was a member of the US Postal/Discovery team between 1998 and 2005 when he won his seven Tour de France titles. Armstrong retired from racing at the end of the 2005 Tour de France, but returned to competitive cycling with the Astana team in January 2009, finishing third in the 2009 Tour de France later that year. Between 2010 and 2011, he raced with Team Radio Shack and retired for a second time in 2011.
Armstrong became the subject of doping allegations after winning the 1999 Tour de France. For years, he denied involvement in doping. In 2012, a United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) investigation concluded that Armstrong had used performance-enhancing drugs for his career and named him as the ringleader of "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen." While maintaining his innocence, Armstrong chose not to contest the charges, citing the potential toll on his family. He received a lifetime ban from all sports that follow the World Anti-Doping Code, ending his competitive cycling career. The International Cycling Union (UCI) upheld USADA's decision and decided that Armstrong's stripped wins would not be allocated to other riders. In January 2013, he publicly admitted his involvement in doping. In April 2018, Armstrong settled a civil lawsuit with the United States Department of Justice and agreed to pay US$5 million to the U.S. government after whistleblower proceedings were commenced by Floyd Landis, a former team member.
Early life
Armstrong was born Lance Edward Gunderson on September 18, 1971, at Methodist Hospital in Richardson, Texas. His mother, Linda Armstrong Kelly grew up in Oak Cliff. Armstrong was named after Lance Rentzel, a Dallas Cowboys wide receiver. His parents divorced in 1973 when Lance was two. He attended Plano East Senior High School.
At age 16, Armstrong began competing as a triathlete and was a national sprint-course triathlon champion in 1989 and 1990. In 1992, he began his career as a professional cyclist with the Motorola team. Armstrong had success between 1993 and 1996 with the World Championship in 1993, the Clásica de San Sebastián in 1995, Tour DuPont in 1995 and 1996, and a handful of stage victories in Europe, including stage 8 of the 1993 Tour de France and stage 18 of the 1995 Tour de France. In 1996, he was diagnosed with a potentially fatal metastatic testicular cancer. After his recovery, Armstrong founded the Lance Armstrong Foundation (now the Livestrong Foundation) to assist other cancer survivors.
Returning to cycling in 1998, Armstrong was a member of the US Postal/Discovery team between 1998 and 2005 when he won his seven Tour de France titles. Armstrong retired from racing at the end of the 2005 Tour de France, but returned to competitive cycling with the Astana team in January 2009, finishing third in the 2009 Tour de France later that year. Between 2010 and 2011, he raced with Team Radio Shack and retired for a second time in 2011.
Armstrong became the subject of doping allegations after winning the 1999 Tour de France. For years, he denied involvement in doping. In 2012, a United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) investigation concluded that Armstrong had used performance-enhancing drugs for his career and named him as the ringleader of "the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen." While maintaining his innocence, Armstrong chose not to contest the charges, citing the potential toll on his family. He received a lifetime ban from all sports that follow the World Anti-Doping Code, ending his competitive cycling career. The International Cycling Union (UCI) upheld USADA's decision and decided that Armstrong's stripped wins would not be allocated to other riders. In January 2013, he publicly admitted his involvement in doping. In April 2018, Armstrong settled a civil lawsuit with the United States Department of Justice and agreed to pay US$5 million to the U.S. government after whistleblower proceedings were commenced by Floyd Landis, a former team member.
Early life
Armstrong was born Lance Edward Gunderson on September 18, 1971, at Methodist Hospital in Richardson, Texas. His mother, Linda Armstrong Kelly grew up in Oak Cliff. Armstrong was named after Lance Rentzel, a Dallas Cowboys wide receiver. His parents divorced in 1973 when Lance was two. He attended Plano East Senior High School.
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