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Site: mr-anderson.com
Course: mr-anderson.com (mr-anderson.com)
Glossary: Author Biographies
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Beals, Melba Pattillo | ||
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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. |
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Cohen, Warren | ||
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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. |
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Giovanni, Nikki | ||
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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." |
Greenberg, Paul | ||
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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
Hughes, Langston | ||
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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. |
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Jarrell, Randall | ||
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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. |
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Patterson, Raymond R. | ||
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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. |
R
Reiser, Bob | ||
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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. |
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