Author Biographies
This glossary contains short biographical sketches about the authors of the novels and selections read in Mr. Anderson's classes.
Browse the glossary using this index
Special | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | ALL
B |
|---|
Beals, Melba Pattillo | |||
|---|---|---|---|
As a teenager, Melba Beals was caught up in a civil rights
firestorm. After the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision,
Beals was hopeful that she could attend the prestigious Little Rock
Central High School. When a federal judge ordered Centtal High to
desegregate in 1957 the NAACP recruited Beals and other black teens
for this difficult task. Angry mobs blocked the black students from
entering the high school, resulting in a three-week standoff
between students and segregationists. President Eisenhower had to
send troops to escort the black students into the school and force
integration. Even with this protection, Beals and the other black
students had to endure slurs, fights, and physical abuse as part of
the first integrated class at Central High. In a later interview
about her experiences, Beals noted that she wanted to attend
Central for the educational opportunities, not to be the first to
integrate. As a result other experience, Beals learned to relate to
the media and pursued a career in journalism. After receiving a
Masters degree in journalism from Columbia University, Beals worked
as a news reporter in California. Her novels Warriors Don’t Cry: A Searing Memoir of the
Battle to Integrate Little Rock Central High School and
White Is a State of Mind
were influential works describing the desegregation of public
schools. In 1999 the nine students who integrated LRHS were awarded
the Congressional Gold Medal, the
highest civilian honor in the United States. | |||
C |
|---|
Cannon, Angie | |||
|---|---|---|---|
After receiving her Masters degree in journalism, Angie Cannon
started her career as a staff writer at the Miami Herald. She then moved to the
San Francisco Chronicle,
where she covered education, and The Detroit News, where she reported on
city government. Following these newspaper jobs, Cannon covered the
White House and then the Justice Department for the Knight-Ridder
Washington bureau. In 1998 Cannon became a senior writer for U.S.
News and World Report, where she covered national legal, political,
criminal, and social issues. In 2003. with help from fellow writers
at U.S. News, Cannon
co-wrote 23 Days of Terror,
a reflection on the Washington, D.C. sniper shootings. | |||
Cohen, Warren | |||
|---|---|---|---|
After receiving a BA from Connecticut College in 1989, Warren Cohen joined
the research staff of Common
Cause magazine. He became a researcher for U.S. News and World Report in 1990 and
later reported on regional issues for that publication. Cohen
worked for U.S News until
2000, when he became a senior news producer for the VH1 cable
network. He co-wrote 23 Days of
Terror, which depicts the Washington, D.C. sniper shootings,
with fellow U.S. News
writer Angie Cannon. | |||
Coleman, Wim | |||
|---|---|---|---|
In a writing career spanning over twenty years, Wim Coleman has
written novels, plays, works of nonfiction, and many stories for
children. He often writes with his wife, Pat Perrin, Their newest
novel, The Maya Gateway,
investigates mythology, technology, and risk. Coleman’s
Stages of History is a
collection of royalty-free one-act plays about exciting events in
American history, and his Nine
Muses is a collection of original plays based on classic
myths. Both are available from Perfection Learning. | |||
Courlander, Harold | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Harold Courlander was an important folklorist who lived and worked all over the world. He wrote many novels and authored or edited more than thirty volumes of folktales featuring stories from Haiti, the American Southwest, Africa, Asia, India, and other cultures. | |||
Cullen, Countee | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Although there was no official documentation, Countee Cullen was
effectively adopted by Reverend Fred A. and Carolyn Cullen. Fred
Cullen was a pioneer black activist minister whose views had a
strong impression on his son. However, Countee Cullen’s poetry
often reflects unease towards this strong and conservative
Christian training. Cullen won his first writing contest while in
high school, with the poem "I Have a Rendezvous with Life." While
attending New York University, Cullen wrote most of the poems for
his first three volumes, Color,
Copper Sun, and The Ballad
of the Brown Girl. After graduating from NYU, Cullen earned
his Masters degree from Harvard University in English and French.
He won more prizes than any other black writer of the I 920s and
was among the first African Americans to be recognized as a serious
poet. Cullen wrote less after the 1930s, partly due to his position
as French teacher at Frederick Douglass Junior High School. | |||
D |
|---|
Dove, Rita | |||
|---|---|---|---|
When Rita Dove was a child, her father broke the race barrier in
research chemistry When she grew up, she began breaking down
barriers as a writer. In 1970 she was recognized at the White
I-louse as one of the hundred most outstanding high school
graduates in the United States. In 1973, she graduated summa cum
laude (as well as Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi) with a degree
in English and then spent the next two summers on Fuibright
scholarships to Germany Dove published her first book of poetry in
1980, and in 1987 won the Pulitzer Prize for a book of poems about
her grandparents. In 1993. she became the youngest person and the
first African American to serve as poet laureate of the United
States. In addition to poetry Dove has written and published
essays, stories, and a play that was performed in theatres around
the world. Currently she is Commonwealth Professor of English at
the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, She and her husband,
the writer Fred Viebahn, have a grown daughter | |||
Du Bois, W. E. B. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
W. E. B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was a radical
attacker of injustice and defender of freedom for blacks,
considered one of the most influential black leaders of the first
half of the twentieth century. Du Bois helped to found the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
Between 1897 and 1914 Du Bois conducted many studies of black
society in America and published sixteen research papers on his
findings, He began these investigations with the belief that social
science could provide answers to racial problems—however Du Bois
gradually concluded that in a climate of racism, social change
could only be accomplished through agitation and protest.
Initially, Du Bois was a firm supporter of black capitalism, but
slowly he edged to the left until by 1905 he was drawn to Socialism
and Marxism. In 1961 Du Bois became disillusioned with the United
States and moved to Ghana, joined the Communist Party and one year
later renounced his American citizenship. Du Bois died in 1963 in
Accra, shortly after becoming a Ghanaian citizen. | |||
Dunbar, Paul Laurence | |||
|---|---|---|---|
One of the first African Americans to gain national recognition as
a poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in Ohio in 1872, the son of
former slaves, Dunbar died at the early age of 33, but was quite
prolific in his work, writing many short stories, novels, plays,
songs, essays, and the poetry he became most famous for. He gave
credit for his success to his mother, whose excitement for poetry
spurred him to begin writing and reciting poems at age six. Popular
with both black and white readers of his day Dunbar’s style
encompasses two distinct voices—the standard English of classical
poets and the evocative dialect of turn-of-the.century black
America, He was very gifted in using this dialect to convey
character, His poetry often addresses the difficulties encountered
by blacks in America, | |||
E |
|---|
Edwards, Junius | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Junius Edwards was born in Alexandria, Louisiana, He was educated
at the University of Oslo in Norway The short story "Liars Don’t
Qualify" has been anthologized in many books devoted to the writing
of contemporary black authors. It won first prize in the
Writer’s Digest Short Story
Contest. In 1959 Edwards won a Eugene F. Saxton Fellowship for
Creative Writing. His short story "Mother Dear and Daddy," can be
found in the anthology The Angry
Black. | |||
Espada, Martin | |||
|---|---|---|---|
The son of a political activist, Martin Espada was born and reared
in New York's impoverished East Side neighborhood. He grew up
participating in demonstrations for social justice. After becoming
a lawyer, he worked as a tenants’ rights advocate, but he also
wrote and published poems in the tradition of Pablo Neruda and the
poets of the Nuyorican scene. Espada’s work has won the Paterson
Poetry Prize and the PEN/Revson Fellowship, the Gustavo Myers
Outstanding Book Award, and the Independent Publisher Book Award,
Currently, he teaches writing at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, where he writes essays, edits anthologies, and continues
to write poems. | |||
F |
|---|
Farmer, James | |||
|---|---|---|---|
James Farmer was a leader in the fight to desegregate public
transportation in the I 960s, Born in Texas in 1920. Farmer was an
outstanding student and received degrees from Wiley College and
Howard University Along with several Christian pacifists, he
founded the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942, with the
purpose of directing challenges to American racism by using
Gandhi’s tactics of nonviolence. In 1947 Farmer participated in
CORE’s Chicago restaurant sit-ins, which helped end restaurant
discrimination against blacks. An articulate and charismatic man,
Farmer became the national director of CORE in 1961, organizing
Freedom Rides in the Deep South, He was appointed Secretary of
Health, Education, and Welfare by President Nixon. After leaving
that position in 1971, Farmer worked at the Council on Minority
Planning and Strategy, an African American think-tank. Farmer was
awarded the Congressional Medal for Freedom in 1998 and died of
complications from severe diabetes in July of 1999. | |||
Fleischman, Paul | |||
|---|---|---|---|
As a child growing up in California, Paul Fleischman liked riding
his bike and looking for found objects more than anything else in
the world. When he grew up he worked as a carpenter, bagel baker,
bookstore clerk, library aide, and proofreader before becoming a
writer. His work, which spans many genres, has won Newbery awards,
a Golden Kite award, and the Scott O’Dell award, Fleischman does
not write for recognition but because he is, he says, "a maker at
heart." He constructs his stories slowly and carefully, taking
pleasure in every page. Recently Fleischman has begun writing for
adults as well as children, but he has no intention of limiting his
work to one group of readers. | |||
Freedman, Russell | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Russel Freedman is a nonfiction writer who prefers to call himself
a "factual writer," because writing about factual topics sounds
more interesting than not
writing about fiction, Freedman has written close to forty books on
various topics, including animal behavior and the behavior of
admirable human beings, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Crazy Horse, and
Abraham Lincoln. He has won dozens of awards for making science and
history come alive. His books often include his carefully chosen
photographs about his topics. | |||
G |
|---|
Gage, Nicholas | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Civil war broke out in his native Greece in 1948 when Nicholas Gage
was a child. Communist insurgents were kidnapping children and
sending them to re-education camps inside Communist territory.
Nicholas and his three sisters eluded them when their mother
arranged for them to escape to the United States. At age nine,
Nicholas went to live with his father in Massachusetts. His mother,
who remained in Greece, was imprisoned, tortured, and executed.
When Gage grew up, he became an investigative reporter for the
New York Times. He returned
to Greece and learned about his mother’s fate, which led to the
writing of his bestselling book, Eleni. Currently, Gage works full-time
as a biographical and historical writer | |||
Geist, William E. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in 1945 in Champaign, Illinois, Bill Geist attended the
University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana. There he met his wife,
Jody. They were married in 1970. In 1971, he graduated from the
University of Missouri with a masters degree in communications.
From 1972 to 1980 Geist was a reporter and columnist for the
Chicago Tribune. In 1980
Geist joined the New York
Times, where his “About New York” column appeared twice a
week. Geist has been a correspondent for the CBS news program
Sunday Morning since 1987,
where his work was honored with an Emmy Award in 1992 for his
report on the sixty-sixth anniversary of America’s famed Route 66.
Geist also contributes to 60
Minutes II and is the bestselling author of six books,
including The Big Five-Oh: Facing,
Fearing and Fighting 50 and the New York Times bestseller Little League Confidential, an account
of his experience as a coach of his son and daughter’s Little
League teams. His biggest accomplishment, he says, comes from
taking third in the Illinois State Fair Bake-Off. | |||
Giovanni, Nikki | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr.. was born in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Called Nikki from an early age, she is considered a leader in the
black poetry movement. After graduating from Fisk University with a
history degree, Giovanni went on to attend the University of
Pennsylvania School of Social Work and the Columbia University
School of Fine Arts. Believing that change is necessary for growth,
Nikki’s poetry is renowned for its urgent call for black people to
embrace their own identity and to fully understand white-controlled
culture. Her poetry collection, Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black
]udgment, captures the militant attitude of the civil rights
and black arts movements of that time. Her work has been honored
with an NAACP Image Award as well as the Langston Hughes Medal
for Outstanding Poetry Giovanni prides herself on being "a Black
American, a daughter, a mother, and a professor of English." | |||
Gold, Michael | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Named ltzok Isaac Granich at birth, Michael Gold was born in 1894
in New York of Jewish immigrant parents. Deeply opposed to US
involvement in World War I, Gold moved to Mexico in 1917 to avoid
the draft. Gold returned to New York in 1920 and pursued a life in
publishing, writing, and editing numerous books about social issues
before his death in 1967. | |||
Greenberg, Paul | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Paul Greenberg is a nationally syndicated conservative columnist
for the Arkansas Democratic
Gazette in Little Rock, Arkansas. His editorials have won
the Pulitzer Prize, the Walker Stone Award,
and the H, L. Mencken Award. | |||
H |
|---|
Hampton, Henry | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in St. Louis in 1940, Henry Hampton suffered polio as a child.
After earning his BA from Washington University in St. Louis.
Hampton became a renowned movie producer. His television
documentary Eyes on the
Prize set the standard for documenting conflicting accounts
of an historical period—in this case, the civil rights movement.
The first episode in Eyes on the
Prize featured original footage of the Emmett Till story a
disturbing event that brought greater attention to racism and
lynching in the South, Hampton’s other films include The Great Depression and America’s War on Poverty, both of which
received critical acclaim, He also founded and ran Blackside
Productions, which was the largest African American-owned
documentary film production company becoming a fertile training
ground for young black filmmakers. | |||
Hausman, Gerald | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Gerald hasuman, born in 1945 in Baltimore, Maryland, is a storyteller, teacher, editor. He has authored retellings of many Native American stories and other traditional ethnic stories as well as books on animal mythology. Hausman and his wife founded a school for creative writing in Jamaica. | |||
Herzog, George | |||
|---|---|---|---|
George Herzog was born in 1901 in Budapest, Hungary. He became an American ethnomusicologist, teaching that cultural context should be included in the study of music. Herzog studied West African music during an anthropolgy expedition to Liberia from 1931-1932. He died in 1983. | |||
Hughes, Langston | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Due to his parents’ divorce, young james Langston Hughes was raised
by his grandmother. He was born in 1902 in Missouri and moved to
Illinois at age thirteen to live with his mother and her husband.
There he began writing poetry. He spent a year in Mexico visiting
his father and a year at Columbia University. Hughes later finished
his degree at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1924 Hughes
moved to Washington, D.C. He published his first book of poems,
The Weary Blues, in 1926.
His first novel, Nor Without
Laughter, published in 1930, won the Harmon Gold Medal for
Literature. Known for his insightful and colorful portrayals of
black life in America in the 1 920s through I 960s, Hughes wrote
novels, short stories and plays in addition to his poetry Unlike
other writers of his time, Hughes refused to differentiate between
his personal experience and the communal experience of black
America. He wanted to tell stories of his people in ways that
reflected their actual culture—including the suffering. the love of
music and laughter, and the rich language, Hughes died of
complications of prostate cancer in 1967, after which his home in
Harlem was given landmark status. | |||
J |
|---|
Jansson, Tove | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in 1914 in Helsinki, Finland, Tove Jansson, the daughter of a sculptor and a designer, studied painting in Finland, Sweden, and France. In addition to her success as an artist, jansson wrote and illustrated many children's books as well as comic strips, plays, and books for adults. Known worldwide as the creator of the Moomin books, a series that echoes Scandinavian folklore, Jansson was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966. Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages. She died in 2001. | |||
Jarrell, Randall | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Randall Jarrell was born in 1914 in Nashville, Tennessee. He had a reputation for being an exacting literary critic and an intense lover of literature. He was also admired as a poet and won the National Book Award in 1961 for The Woman at the Washington Zoo, one of his six books of poetry. In addition to his poetry and criticism, Jarrell wrote a novel and children's books, edited anthologies, and translated a number of works, including stories by the Grimm brothers. He died in 1965. | |||
Jiménez, Francisco | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in Tlaquepaque, Mexico, in 1943, Francisco Jiménez has won many awards for The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child from which "Learning the Game" appears. Jiménez was choosen as the 2002 U.S. Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Supoprt of Education (CASE) and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching for his work as a professor and program director at Santa Clara University. | |||
K |
|---|
Kennedy, John F. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
The youngest man elected to be President of the United States, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy was also the youngest to die in office. Born in
Massachusetts in 1917. Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1940 and
entered the Navy where he was a WWII hero during an attack on his
PT boat. After the war, he became a Democratic congressman near
Boston, and in 1953 Kennedy advanced to the Senate. In 1955, while
recovering from a back injury, Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage,
which won the Pulitzer Prize in history Seventy million Americans
watched the Great Debates between Kennedy and Richard Nixon in
1960. Kennedy won the presidential race by a narrow margin. In his
inaugural address Kennedy famously stated, "Ask not what your
country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." In
response to urgent demands from many groups, Kennedy made moves to
support the cause of civil rights during the early 60s. In November
of 1963, after hardly 1,000 days in office, John F. Kennedy was
killed by an assassin’s bullet while riding in a motorcade in
Texas. | |||
Kennedy, Richard | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in 1932 in Jefferson City, Missouri, Richard kennedy has worked a number of jobs, including archivist, cab driver, deckhand, fireman, and teacher. he has earned critical acclaim for his distinct contribution to American chldren's literature. Two of his most notable works are Amy's Eyes, a five hundred-page juvenile novel, and Richard Kennedy: Collected Stories. | |||
King, Martin Luther | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in Atlanta in 1929, Martin Luther King attended segregated
schools in Georgia, graduating high school at age fifteen. His
grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors at the
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. After earning his BA from
Morehouse College in 1948, King spent three years studying at the
Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. At Crozer King won a
fellowship and enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University
where he met and married Coretta Scott and graduated in 1955.
Always a strong worker for civil rights, in 1955 King accepted
leadership of the first black nonviolent demonstration in the
U.S.—a bus boycott lasting 382 days. King faced jail, bombing, and
abuse as a leader of the boycott, but emerged as an irreplaceable
leader in the movement. In 1957 King was elected president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to
provide leadership for the burgeoning civil rights movement. King’s
Letter from a Birmingham
Jail was a manifesto of the black revolution, and over
250,000 people heard his "I Have a Dream" speech during the march
for civil rights in Washington, D.C. At age 35 King became the
youngest man to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, turning over the
$50,000 in prize money to further civil rights work. In April of
1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated while standing on a hotel
balcony in Memphis. | |||
L |
|---|
Lane, Rose Wilder | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Daughter of the famous author Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane was born in 1887 in De Smet, South Dakota. Lane began writing before her mother and for a while was better known. She wrote nonfiction books--including The Peaks of Shala, an account of her travels to Albania--ghostwrote fiction, and assisted her mother with teh Little House series. Lane died in 1968. | |||
Lazarus, Emma | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in 1849 to a prosperous Jewish-Portuguese family in New York
City, Emma Lazarus began writing as a teenager. In 1886, her father
published her first book of poems, entitled Poems and Translations. Lazarus was a
contemporary of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who admired her writing and
helped make Lazarus part of an elite circle of American writers.
Lazarus was an advocate for Jewish immigrants escaping persecution
in Europe and Russia, and many of her poems reflect that concern.
Lazarus died of Hodgkin’s disease at age 38. Her poem "The New
Colossus," which in 1904 was etched on the base of the Statue of
Liberty, became one of the most often quoted poems in the English
Language. | |||
M |
|---|
Medearis, Angela Shelf | |||
|---|---|---|---|
With her father in the Air Force, Angela Medearis and her family
moved often during her childhood. She is the author of over 80
award-winning children’s books, including, Seven Spools of Thread, Picking Peas for a
Penny, and Daisy and the Doll. In addition, Medearis’ works
include several books about African American arts and Texas
history. She also founded a nonprofit organization called Book
Boosters, Inc., which develops tutoring programs for elementary
children needing a “boost” in their self-esteem and help with
reading. In addition to her published novels, Medearis has also
written four cookbooks and developed educational videos and
television programs for children. | |||
Meltzer, Milton | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in Massachusetts in 1915 to the children of Jewish immigrants,
Milton Meltzer learned to read early in life. He does not recall
how he learned to read, but does remember days spent at the library
reading such stories as The
Arabian Nights and Gulliver’s Travels. A full scholarship
paid Meltzer's way through Columbia University. After serving in
the Army Air Force during World War II, Meltzer returned to the
United States to work as a publicist and then a freelance writer
and editor In 1946, he published his first book, a pictorial
history of Black Americans. Today, he has written more than seventy
books, mostly nonfiction books for young adults. Many of his books
have either won awards or been nominated for them, and several have
been named Best Children’s Book of the Year. | |||
Mora, Pat | |||
|---|---|---|---|
An author and poet of Mexican-American descent, Pat Mora has
written more than 25 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for
children and adults. Her grandparents immigrated to the United
States during the Mexican Revolution. They spoke only Spanish.
Their daughter Estela, who was Pat's mother, grew up translating
English into Spanish for her parents. Estela raised her daughter to
be bilingual. Thus, many of Mora's books contain both English and
Spanish text. | |||
P |
|---|
Patterson, Raymond R. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Raymond Patterson was an African American poet, writer, and
professor from Harlem, New York. Patterson received his BA from
Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and his Masters degree in
English from New York University He has since become a prolific
poet, whose work is highly anthologized. He is the author of
26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man
and Other Poems as well as Elemental Blues, a book-length poem on
the life of the enslaved African poet Phyllis Wheatley. His work
often explored the roles of African Americans in the arts and
society With his wife, Patterson created Black Poets Reading, a
nonprofit speakers’ bureau. In 1968 he joined the faculty of New
York City College, where he founded the Langston Hughes
Festival, which he directed from 1973 to 1993. Patterson died in
2001 at the age of 71. | |||
Poston, Ted | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born Theodore Roosevelt Augustus Major Poston, Ted Poston grew up
working on his father’s small newspaper in Hopkinsville, Kentucky
After college he decided to make journalism his career. He went to
New York City, where he landed a job as city hall reporter for the
New York Post. Later, Poston won many journalistic awards for his
work covering race relations and the civil rights movement. He also
published about twenty short stories, including "The Revolt of the
Evil Fairies," one of many stories based on his life at Booker T.
Washington Colored Grammar School in Hopkinsville. | |||
R |
|---|
Randall, Dudley | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Poet, publisher, and founder of the Broadside Press, Dudley Randall
was born in Washington, D.C., in 1914. His family moved to Detroit
shortly thereafter. His first published poem appeared in the
Detroit Free Press when he
was just thirteen years old. Randall worked at a post office while
earning degrees in English and library science. For the next five
years Randall was a librarian at Morgan State and Lincoln
Universities, after which he returned to Detroit to a position at
the Wayne County Federated Library System. In 1969 he became the
librarian and poet in residence at the University of Detroit until
his retirement in 1974. Randall’s well-known poem Ballad of Birmingham was written in
response to the 1963 church bombing where four young black girls
were killed. This became the first project of Randall’s Broadside
Press, which printed this poem to protect its rights. The first
collection of poetry printed by Broadside was Poem Counterpoem, in which ten poems
were thematically matched on facing pages. Broadside Press was
instrumental in establishing the reputations of many African
American poets and writers, | |||
Reiser, Bob | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Bob Reiser is a storyteller, teacher, and author of books for
children and adults. He accompanies himself on the flute and drum,
which brings warmth to his stories. In addition, he teaches
children to tell stories of their own. Reiser is the author of six
books for adults and children and has worked with folk music icon
Pete Seeger and jazz
drummer Panama Francis. His book Everybody Says Freedom was cowritten
with Seeger. | |||
S |
|---|
Seeger, Pete | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born to parents who loved and taught music, Pete Seeger fell in
love with the banjo and folk music at an early age. Seeger left
Harvard University in the middle of his sophomore year, setting out
to absorb American folk music from its source in communities across
the country. He formed his first folk group, The Almanac Singers,
with Woody Guthrie and other musicians in 1940. They traveled
throughout the U.S. and Mexico as singer-activists, bolstering
labor movements and other social causes. In 1942 Seeger joined the
U.S. Army and continued playing music, often performing for his
fellow soldiers. In 1945, after being discharged from the Army as a
corporal. Seeger founded People’s Songs, Inc., a musicians’ union
helping bind the labor movement to folk music in an effort to
advance both. In 1948 he co-founded the famous Weavers, a
folk-singing quartet that recorded many hit songs. Many of Seeger’s
recordings supported civil rights and the environment while
protesting war. | |||
Siegelson, Kim L. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in 1962 in George, Kim L. Siegelson based "In the Time of the Drums" on accounts of an incident that was supposed to have taken place on St. Simons Island, Goerge. For this story, Siegelson received the American Library Assocation Coretta Scott King Award as well as several other awards. Her works include The Terrible, Wonderful Tellin' at Hog Hammock, and Trembling Earth. | |||
Sitkoff, Harvard | |||
|---|---|---|---|
After earning his PhD from Columbia University, Harvard Sitkoff
went on to become a professor of history at the University of New
Hampshire. He is the author of New
Deal for Blacks and the editor of 50 Years Later: The New Deal Evaluated.
Sitkoff has also written A History
of Our Time and The
Struggle for Black Equality, 1954-1992. | |||
Soto, Gary | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Gary Soto was born in 1952 in Fresno, California. His works reflects his experience as a third-generation Mexican-American raised in a working-class family; he has been admired for addressing personal issues as well as universal issues of social concern. The first Mexican-American writer to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Soto has won many awards for his poetry, essays, and children's books, including such works as Baseball in April and Other Stories, Jesse, and Neighborhood Odes. | |||
W |
|---|
Walker, Margaret | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in Birmingham, Alabama. in 1915, Margaret Walker was the
daughter of a Methodist minister and a music teacher, She was
encouraged to read poetry and philosophy at an early age. Walker
attended New Orleans University for two years until Langston Hughes
recognized her talent as a poet and urged her to seek training in
the North, She transferred to Northwestern University and received
her BA in English at nineteen. In 1937 her poem For My People was published in
Poetry magazine, while she
worked with the Federal Writers Project under President Roosevelt’s
WPA. There she met and befriended the author Richard Wright, often
helping him revise and edit texts. Walker’s involvement with the
WPA gave her a firsthand glimpse of the struggles of inner-city
blacks in Chicago. She returned to school in 1939, participating in
the Creative Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where she
earned her Masters degree in 1940 and her PhD in 1941. Walker was a
professor at Jackson State College for 30 years. During that time,
she published her first volume of poems, For My People. In 1966 Walker published
Jubilee, a neoslave
narrative based on the memories of her maternal grandmother. | |||
Wallace, George C. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
As a four-time governor of Alabama, Wallace has become known as the
embodiment of resistance to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Wallace worked his way through the University of Alabama Law School
by boxing professionally, waiting tables, and driving a taxi.
Wallace opposed advancement rights for blacks as well as increased
power for the national government. In 1963 Wallace gained national
prominence when he kept his campaign pledge to stand “in the
schoolhouse door’ to block the integration of Alabama’s schools. He
personally blocked the path of two black students attempting to
register at the University of Alabama. During all his years in
office, Alabama ranked near the bottom of the states in per capital
income, education spending, and welfare. In 1972 wallace was hit by
the bullet of a would-be assassin, leaving him paralyzed from the
waist down and confined to a wheelchair. He died in 1998. | |||
Warren, Earl | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Chief justice of the United States Supreme Court during one of the
most turbulent eras in history, Earl Warren tried controversial
cases that went to the heart of civil liberties and the nature of
our political system. Born in California, the son of a railroad
repairman, warren spent summers working on the rail system,
developing insights into the anti-Asian racism then rampant on the
west coast. After attending law school at the University of
Berkeley, warren served briefly in wwl then worked for the Alameda
County District Attorney for eighteen years. Though known as a
tough prosecutor, warren was also sensitive to the rights of the
accused and personally fought to secure public defense for those
who couldn’t afford it. Between 1938 and 1942, Warren served as the
attorney general of California, and was then elected governor of
that state. As governor, warren was best-known for evacuating
Japanese immigrants from the West Coast. President Eisenhower
appointed him Chief Justice in 1953, taking over a court deeply
divided between those advocating a more active role and those
interested in morejudicial restraint, warren secured consensus on
Brown v. Board of Education in one of his first cases. The Brown
case was just the first in a long string of judgments creating a
more active role for the Supreme Court. | |||
Wilbur, Richard | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in 1921 in New York City, Richard Wilbur won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1957 for Things of This World: Poems and his second in 1989 for New and Collected Poems. He is known primarily as a writer of poetry; he has also written a number of critical essays, translations of French poetry and his critiques of Edgar Allan Poe. In 1987, Wilbur became the second poet laureate of the United States. | |||
Wright, Richard | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Born in Mississippi in 1908, Richard Wright was the son of an
illiterate sharecropper father and a schoolteacher mother. when
wright was five years old, his father left the family and his
mother was forced to take domestic jobs away from home, wright’s
first published story, "The Voodoo of Hell's Half Acre," appeared
in three parts in the Southern
Register in 1924. He moved to Memphis at age seventeen,
borrowing the library card of an Irish coworker in order to satisfy
his voracious literary appetite. Wright moved to Chicago in 1927
and joined the Communist Party. He worked with the Federal Negro
Theater in Chicago under the Federal Writers Project. In 1937
Wright moved to New York City and helped start New Challenge magazine. During this
time his short story collection, Uncle Tom’s Children, won first prize
in a Story magazine contest. wright’s novel Native Son was published in 1940,
becoming the first best-selling novel by an African American writer
Black Boy, wright’s
personal and emotional account of his childhood and adolescence in
the Jim Crow South, was published in 1945 and also became a
best-seller In 1947 wright moved permanently to France, settling in
Paris, though he traveled extensively. This international outlook
broadened the scope of his writing until his death in 1960 of a
heart attack. | |||
X |
|---|
X, Malcolm | |||
|---|---|---|---|
He was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1925 to Louise
and Earl Little. Louise was a homemaker, busy caring for the
family’s eight children, and Earl was an outspoken Baptist minister
and avid supporter of Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey Earl’s
activism prompted death threats from the white supremacist
organization Black Legion, and the family’s home in Michigan was
burned to the ground in 1929. Two years later Earl’s mutilated body
was found, though the police ruled both tragedies as accidents.
Several years later Louise had an emotional breakdown that sent her
to a mental hospital and the children to various foster homes and
orphanages. Although Malcolm was a good student, he dropped out and
spent time in Boston working odd jobs before moving to Harlem, New
York, and becoming involved in criminal activities. Malcolm and a
friend were eventually arrested in Boston on burglary charges in
1946. He used his seven-year prison sentence to continue his
education, studying the teachings of Nation of Islam founder Elijah
Muhammad. By the time of his parole in 1952, Malcolm was a devoted
follower with the new surname “X” to replace his slave name,
Intelligent and charismatic, Malcolm X was soon appointed minister
and national spokesman for the Nation of Islam. After several
years, he discovered that Elijah Muhammad did not follow his own
teachings, and Malcolm felt betrayed. After terminating his
relationship with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm went on to found
Muslim Mosque. Inc., which had a new message for all races about
integration in the United States. In 1965, three Nation of Islam
members assassinated Malcolm X at Manhattan’s Audubon
Ballroom. | |||