Author Biographies
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Sitkoff, Harvard | |||
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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 | |||
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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. | |||
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Walker, Margaret | |||
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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. | |||
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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 | |||
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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 | |||
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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 | |||
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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. | |||
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X, Malcolm | |||
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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. | |||