1.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
2.
National Historic Landmark
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A National Historic Landmark is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Of over 85,000 places listed on the countrys National Register of Historic Places, a National Historic Landmark District may include contributing properties that are buildings, structures, sites or objects, and it may include non-contributing properties. Contributing properties may or may not also be separately listed, prior to 1935, efforts to preserve cultural heritage of national importance were made by piecemeal efforts of the United States Congress. The first National Historic Site designation was made for the Salem Maritime National Historic Site on March 17,1938. In 1960, the National Park Service took on the administration of the data gathered under this legislation. Because listings often triggered local preservation laws, legislation in 1980 amended the procedures to require owner agreement to the designations. On October 9,1960,92 properties were announced as designated NHLs by Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton, more than 2,500 NHLs have been designated. Most, but not all, are in the United States, there are NHLs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Three states account for nearly 25 percent of the nations NHLs, three cities within these states all separately have more NHLs than 40 of the 50 states. In fact, New York City alone has more NHLs than all but five states, Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, there are 74 NHLs in the District of Columbia. Some NHLs are in U. S. commonwealths and territories, associated states, and foreign states. There are 15 in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and other U. S. commonwealths and territories,5 in U. S. -associated states such as Micronesia, over 100 ships or shipwrecks have been designated as NHLs. About half of the National Historic Landmarks are privately owned, the National Historic Landmarks Program relies on suggestions for new designations from the National Park Service, which also assists in maintaining the landmarks. A friends group of owners and managers, the National Historic Landmark Stewards Association, works to preserve, protect, if not already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an NHL is automatically added to the Register upon designation. About three percent of Register listings are NHLs, american Water Landmark List of U. S
3.
Memphis, Tennessee
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Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U. S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the fourth Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf, Memphis had a population of 653,450 in 2013, making it the largest city in the state of Tennessee. It is the largest city on the Mississippi River, the third largest in the greater Southeastern United States, the greater Memphis metropolitan area, including adjacent counties in Mississippi and Arkansas, had a 2014 population of 1,317,314. This makes Memphis the second-largest metropolitan area in Tennessee, surpassed by metropolitan Nashville, Memphis is the youngest of Tennessees major cities, founded in 1819 as a planned city by a group of wealthy Americans including judge John Overton and future president Andrew Jackson. A resident of Memphis is referred to as a Memphian, and the Memphis region is known, particularly to media outlets, as Memphis and the Mid-South. Occupying a substantial bluff rising from the Mississippi River, the site of Memphis has been a location for human settlement by varying cultures over thousands of years. The historic Chickasaw Indian tribe, believed to be their descendants, French explorers led by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle and Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto would encounter the Chickasaw in that area, in the 16th century. J. D. L. Chickasaw Bluffs, located on the Mississippi River at the present day location of Memphis, spain and the United States vied for control of this site, which was a favorite of the Chickasaws. The United States gained the right to navigate the Mississippi River, the Spanish dismantled the fort, shipping its lumber and iron to their locations in Arkansas. Captain Isaac Guion led an American force down the Ohio River to claim the land, by this time, the Spanish had departed. The forts ruins went unnoticed twenty years later when Memphis was laid out as a city, the city of Memphis was founded on May 22,1819 by John Overton, James Winchester and Andrew Jackson. They named it after the ancient capital of Egypt on the Nile River, Memphis developed as a trade and transportation center in the 19th century because of its flood-free location high above the Mississippi River. Located in the delta region along the river, its outlying areas were developed as cotton plantations. The cotton economy of the antebellum South depended on the labor of large numbers of African-American slaves. Through the early 19th century, one million slaves were transported from the Upper South, Many were transported by steamboats along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. This gave planters and cotton brokers access to the Atlantic Coast for shipping cotton to England, the citys demographics changed dramatically in the 1850s and 1860s under waves of immigration and domestic migration. Due to increased immigration since the 1840s and the Great Famine, ethnic Irish made up 9.9 percent of the population in 1850, but 23.2 percent in 1860, when the total population was 22,623. They had encountered considerable discrimination in the city but by 1860 and they also gained many elected and patronage positions in the Democratic Party city government, and an Irish man was elected as mayor before the Civil War
4.
Tennessee
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Tennessee is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th largest and the 17th most populous of the 50 United States, Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky and Virginia to the north, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, and Arkansas and Missouri to the west. The Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, Tennessees capital and second largest city is Nashville, which has a population of 654,610. Memphis is the states largest city, with a population of 655,770, the state of Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. What is now Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state on June 1,1796. Tennessee was the last state to leave the Union and join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, occupied by Union forces from 1862, it was the first state to be readmitted to the Union at the end of the war. Tennessee furnished more soldiers for the Confederate Army than any other state besides Virginia and this sharply reduced competition in politics in the state until after passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-20th century. This city was established to house the Manhattan Projects uranium enrichment facilities, helping to build the worlds first atomic bomb, Tennessees major industries include agriculture, manufacturing, and tourism. Poultry, soybeans, and cattle are the primary agricultural products, and major manufacturing exports include chemicals, transportation equipment. In the early 18th century, British traders encountered a Cherokee town named Tanasi in present-day Monroe County, the town was located on a river of the same name, and appears on maps as early as 1725. The meaning and origin of the word are uncertain, some accounts suggest it is a Cherokee modification of an earlier Yuchi word. It has been said to mean meeting place, winding river, according to ethnographer James Mooney, the name can not be analyzed and its meaning is lost. The modern spelling, Tennessee, is attributed to James Glen, the governor of South Carolina, the spelling was popularized by the publication of Henry Timberlakes Draught of the Cherokee Country in 1765. In 1788, North Carolina created Tennessee County, the county to be established in what is now Middle Tennessee. When a constitutional convention met in 1796 to organize a new out of the Southwest Territory. Other sources differ on the origin of the nickname, according to the Columbia Encyclopedia. Tennessee ties Missouri as the state bordering the most other states, the state is trisected by the Tennessee River. The highest point in the state is Clingmans Dome at 6,643 feet, Clingmans Dome, which lies on Tennessees eastern border, is the highest point on the Appalachian Trail, and is the third highest peak in the United States east of the Mississippi River
5.
Downtown Memphis, Tennessee
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It is home to the Memphis Redbirds, the AAA affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team. Downtown is the oldest part of the city and includes the riverfront, the founders of Memphis dedicated the riverfront to the public now and forever as long as the public use continued. The land overlooking the riverfront was originally planned to become a public promenade to be called Mississippi Row, the upper riverfront became the site of the river landing where steamboats were loaded with cotton and other goods in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Between 1844 and 1886 the river landing was paved with limestone and this created what is today the largest intact Mississippi River landing still in existence, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The explosion of the steamboat Sultana in 1865 near Memphis was one of the worst marine disasters in history, there are several historic residences downtown, particularly in the Victorian Village neighborhood. Other historic homes include the Hunt-Phelan House, the Magevney House, the Burkle home and the Hunt Phelan House were reputed to have been part of the underground railroad by which escaped slaves made their way to freedom prior to the Civil War. In 1959, the Memphis Downtown Airport was opened on Mud Island, the one-runway airport could be reached by a pontoon-boat ferry and was used mostly by businessmen and shoppers. The Downtown Airport was closed in 1970 and it was replaced in the 1990s by the new urbanist Harbor Town development. The Downtown Memphis skyline contains the tallest buildings in the city, the administrative core of Memphis and Shelby County is also located in Downtown Memphis. These include the Memphis City Hall, and the Federal Building, located on North Main Street, Downtown Memphis also contains the Memphis branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Downtown Core is the heart of the business district and includes the majority of office space, retail, entertainment. It is a regional destination for entertainment, dining, and tourism and includes attractions such as Beale Street, FedExForum, AutoZone Park. The Memphis Riverfront stretches from the Meeman-Shelby Forest State Park in the north, the River Walk is a park system along the Mississippi River that connects the Mississippi River Greenbelt Park in the north, to Tom Lee Park in the south. Interstates I-40, I-55, I-69 and I-240 all run directly through downtown, the new Interstate 22 is about 10 miles away from Downtown. MATA operates the North End Terminal, its hub for Memphis public bus service, at the corner of Main Street. The majority of fixed bus routes operates by MATA terminate at the North End Terminal, the MATA Trolley is a heritage streetcar system that operates three lines in downtown along Main Street, Riverside Drive, and Madison Avenue. It consists of twenty four stations and has a ridership of approximately 2,500. Connections between MATA public bus and Main Street trolley line can be made at the North End Terminal, amtraks City of New Orleans passenger train runs through Downtown Memphis twice a day, stopping at Central Station
6.
Mississippi River
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The Mississippi River is the chief river of the largest drainage system on the North American continent. Flowing entirely in the United States, it rises in northern Minnesota, with its many tributaries, the Mississippis watershed drains all or parts of 31 U. S. states and 2 Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains. The Mississippi ranks as the fourth longest and fifteenth largest river in the world by discharge, the river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Native Americans long lived along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, most were hunter-gatherers, but some, such as the Mound Builders, formed prolific agricultural societies. The arrival of Europeans in the 16th century changed the way of life as first explorers, then settlers. The river served first as a barrier, forming borders for New Spain, New France, and the early United States, and then as a vital transportation artery and communications link. Formed from thick layers of the silt deposits, the Mississippi embayment is one of the most fertile agricultural regions of the country. In recent years, the river has shown a shift towards the Atchafalaya River channel in the Delta. The word itself comes from Messipi, the French rendering of the Anishinaabe name for the river, see below in the History section for additional information. In addition to historical traditions shown by names, there are at least two measures of a rivers identity, one being the largest branch, and the other being the longest branch. Using the largest-branch criterion, the Ohio would be the branch of the Lower Mississippi. Using the longest-branch criterion, the Middle Mississippi-Missouri-Jefferson-Beaverhead-Red Rock-Hellroaring Creek River would be the main branch and its length of at least 3,745 mi is exceeded only by the Nile, the Amazon, and perhaps the Yangtze River among the longest rivers in the world. The source of this waterway is at Browers Spring,8,800 feet above sea level in southwestern Montana and this is exemplified by the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the phrase Trans-Mississippi as used in the name of the Trans-Mississippi Exposition. It is common to qualify a regionally superlative landmark in relation to it, the New Madrid Seismic Zone along the river is also noteworthy. These various basic geographical aspects of the river in turn underlie its human history and present uses of the waterway, the Upper Mississippi runs from its headwaters to its confluence with the Missouri River at St. Louis, Missouri. The source of the Upper Mississippi branch is traditionally accepted as Lake Itasca,1,475 feet above sea level in Itasca State Park in Clearwater County, however, the lake is in turn fed by a number of smaller streams. From its origin at Lake Itasca to St. Louis, Missouri, fourteen of these dams are located above Minneapolis in the headwaters region and serve multiple purposes, including power generation and recreation. The remaining 29 dams, beginning in downtown Minneapolis, all locks and were constructed to improve commercial navigation of the upper river
7.
Blues
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Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
8.
Tourism
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Tourism is travel for pleasure or business, also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. Tourism may be international, or within the travellers country, Tourism can be domestic or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a countrys balance of payments. Today, tourism is a source of income for many countries. International tourism receipts grew to US$1.03 trillion in 2011, the ITB Berlin is the worlds leading tourism trade fair. The word tourist was used by 1772 and tourism by 1811. It is formed from the tour, which is derived from Old English turian, from Old French torner, from Latin tornare, to turn on a lathe. Tourism is an important, even vital, source of income for many regions and it also creates opportunities for employment in the service sector of the economy associated with tourism. This is in addition to goods bought by tourists, including souvenirs, in 1936, the League of Nations defined a foreign tourist as someone traveling abroad for at least twenty-four hours. Its successor, the United Nations, amended this definition in 1945 and it includes movements for all purposes. In 1981, the International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism defined tourism in terms of particular activities chosen and undertaken outside the home, in this context, travel has a similar definition to tourism, but implies a more purposeful journey. The terms tourism and tourist are sometimes used pejoratively, to imply a shallow interest in the cultures or locations visited, by contrast, traveler is often used as a sign of distinction. The sociology of tourism has studied the values underpinning these distinctions. International tourist arrivals reached 1.035 billion in 2012, up from over 996 million in 2011, the World Tourism Organization reports the following ten destinations as the most visited in terms of the number of international travellers in 2016. International tourism receipts grew to US$1.2 trillion in 2014, based upon air traffic, the MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index reports the following cities as the top ten most popular destinations of international tourism worldwide. MasterCard reports the following cities as the top ten biggest earners on international tourism worldwide in 2015, as early as Shulgi, however, kings praised themselves for protecting roads and building waystations for travelers. During the Roman Republic, spas and coastal resorts such as Baiae were popular among the rich, pausanias wrote his Description of Greece in the 2nd century AD. In ancient China, nobles sometimes made a point of visiting Mount Tai and, on occasion, the Islamic hajj is still central to its faith and Chaucers Canterbury Tales and Wu Chengens Journey to the West remain classics of English and Chinese literature. The 10th- to 13th-century Song dynasty also saw secular travel writers such as Su Shi, under the Ming, Xu Xiake continued the practice
9.
Marion Post Wolcott
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Marion Post, later Marion Post Wolcott, was a noted American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty and deprivation. Marion Post was born in New Jersey on June 7,1910 and her parents split up and she was sent to boarding school, spending time at home with her mother in Greenwich Village when not at school. Here she met artists and musicians and became interested in dance. She studied at The New School, Post trained as a teacher, and went to work in a small town in Massachusetts. Here she saw the reality of the Depression and the problems of the poor, when the school closed she went to Europe to study with her sister Helen. Helen was studying with Trude Fleischmann, a Viennese photographer, Marion Post showed Fleischmann some of her photographs and was told to stick to photography. While in Vienna she saw some of the Nazi attacks on the Jewish population and was horrified, soon she and her sister had to return to America for safety. She went back to teaching but also continued her photography and became involved in the anti-fascist movement, at the New York Photo League she met Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand who encouraged her. Stryker was impressed by her work and hired her immediately, posts photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. They also often find humour in the situations she encountered, in 1941 she met Leon Oliver Wolcott, deputy director of war relations for the U. S. Department of Agriculture under Franklin Roosevelt. They married, and she continued her assignments for the FSA and she found it difficult to fit in her photography around raising a family and a great deal of traveling and living overseas. In the 1970s, a renewed interest in Wolcotts images among scholars rekindled her own interest in photography, in 1978, Wolcott mounted her first solo exhibition in California, and by the 1980s the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art began to collect her photographs. The first monograph on her work was published in 1983 and she was an advocate for womens rights, in 1986, Wolcott said, Women have come a long way, but not far enough. Speak with your images from your heart and soul, looking for the Light, The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott. Marion Post Wolcott, A Photographic Journey, albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press,1989. The Photography of Marion Post Wolcott Website created by Wolcotts daughter, hosted on J. David Sapirs site Fixing Shadows, available online, http, carmel, CA, Friends of Photography,1983. Prose, Francine, The Photographs of Marion Post Wolcott, an extensive anthology of Marion Post Wolcotts photography edited by her daughter, Linda Wolcott-Moore. FSA Photos, including many by Wolcott, posted by Library of Congress on Flickr Commons Website, oral history interview with Marion Post Wolcott,1965 Jan
10.
Orpheum Theatre (Memphis)
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These performances, along with the theater’s numerous educational offerings, are an integral component of the continued revitalization of downtown Memphis. Since it first opened in 1928, the Orpheum has dazzled patrons with its artisan millwork, gilding, original fixtures, a Mighty Wurlitzer organ, and architectural beauty. Saved by the Memphis Development Foundation in 1977, the Orpheum was one of the first buildings in Memphis placed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Orpheum Theatre, located at 203 S. Main St. opened its doors on November 19,1928, designed by architects C. W. and George Rapp of Chicago, the Orpheum seats just over 2,300 people and features glittering gold and silver leaf, marble, lush carpets, and antique crystal chandeliers. The theater boasts a Wurlitzer organ, the Halloran Centre for Performing Arts & Education, located next door to the Orpheum Theatre at 225 S. Main St. is the new home for the Orpheum’s community and it opened on September 23,2015. Totaling over 39,000 square feet, the Halloran Centre provides space for classes and workshops, a large rehearsal hall, a stage. In 1890 the Grand Opera House was built on the corner of Main, the Grand was billed as the most classy theater outside New York City. Vaudeville was the source of entertainment at the time, featuring singers, musicians. The Grand became part of the Orpheum Circuit in 1907, vaudeville at the Orpheum was successful for almost two decades. Then in 1923, after a show that featured singer Blossom Seeley, a fire started, in 1928, at a cost of $1.6 million, a new Orpheum was built on the original site of the Grand, but it was a different theater. The new Orpheum was twice as large as her predecessor and opulently decorated, lavish tasseled brocade draperies, enormous crystal chandeliers, gilded moldings, and the Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ were just a few of its new amenities. As vaudeville’s popularity waned, the Orpheum was purchased by Michael A. Lightman’s movie theater chain in 1940, in 1976, Lightman decided to sell the building, as intimate multiplex theaters were proving more lucrative than large single-screen venues. There was talk of demolishing the old theater, however, in 1977 the Memphis Development Foundation bought the theater, restored its former name of Orpheum, and began bringing Broadway productions and concerts back to the theater. In 1980, Pat Halloran was hired as the President and CEO of the Foundation, fifty-four years had taken a toll on the “South’s Finest Theatre”. The Orpheum was closed on Christmas in 1982 to begin a $5 million renovation to restore its 1928 opulence, restoration crews also cleaned the exterior of the building, repairing and repainting the Orpheum upright sign and the famous theater marquee. To meet audiences’ growing needs, a parlor with restrooms, a concessions area. Later, a “green room” — now the Broadway Club — was formed in the northeast corner of the lobby, in the end, the Orpheum had a seating capacity of 2,491, including 28 new private suites
11.
Woodrow Wilson
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Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Born in Staunton, Virginia, he spent his years in Augusta, Georgia and Columbia. In 1910, he was the New Jersey Democratic Partys gubernatorial candidate and was elected the 34th Governor of New Jersey, while in office, Wilson reintroduced the spoken State of the Union, which had been out of use since 1801. Leading the Congress that was now in Democratic hands, he oversaw the passage of progressive legislative policies unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933. The Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, through passage of the Adamson Act that imposed an 8-hour workday for railroads, he averted a railroad strike and an ensuing economic crisis. Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Wilson maintained a policy of neutrality, Wilson faced former New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes in the presidential election of 1916. By a narrow margin, he became the first Democrat since Andrew Jackson elected to two consecutive terms, Wilsons second term was dominated by American entry into World War I. In April 1917, when Germany had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and sent the Zimmermann Telegram, the United States conducted military operations alongside the Allies, although without a formal alliance. During the war, Wilson focused on diplomacy and financial considerations, leaving military strategy to the generals, loaning billions of dollars to Britain, France, and other Allies, the United States aided their finance of the war effort. On the home front, he raised taxes, borrowing billions of dollars through the publics purchase of Liberty Bonds. In his 1915 State of the Union Address, Wilson asked Congress for what became the Espionage Act of 1917, the crackdown was intensified by his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to include expulsion of non-citizen radicals during the First Red Scare of 1919–1920. Wilson staffed his government with Southern Democrats who implemented racial segregation at the Treasury, Navy and he gave department heads greater autonomy in their management. Following his return from Europe, Wilson embarked on a tour in 1919 to campaign for the treaty. The treaty was met with concern by Senate Republicans, and Wilson rejected a compromise effort led by Henry Cabot Lodge. Due to his stroke, Wilson secluded himself in the White House, disability having diminished his power, forming a strategy for re-election, Wilson deadlocked the 1920 Democratic National Convention, but his bid for a third-term nomination was overlooked. Wilson was a devoted Presbyterian and Georgist, and he infused his views of morality into his domestic and he appointed several well known radically progressive single taxers to prominent positions in his administration. His ideology of internationalism is now referred to as Wilsonian, an activist foreign policy calling on the nation to promote global democracy and he was the third of four children of Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Jessie Janet Woodrow. Wilsons paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland and his mother was born in Carlisle, England, the daughter of Rev. Dr. Thomas Woodrow from Paisley, Scotland, and Marion Williamson from Glasgow
12.
Booker T. Washington
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Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community, Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th, Washington was a key proponent of African-American businesses and one of the founders of the National Negro Business League. His base was the Tuskegee Institute, a black college in Alabama. As lynchings in the South reached a peak in 1895, Washington gave a speech, known as the Atlanta compromise and he called for black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. But, secretly, he also supported court challenges to segregation and restrictions on voter registration, black militants in the North, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, at first supported the Atlanta compromise but after 1909 and they tried with limited success to challenge Washingtons political machine for leadership in the black community but also built wider networks among white allies in the North. His long-term goal was to end the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of African Americans, in 1856, Washington was born into slavery in Virginia as the son of Jane, an African-American slave. After emancipation, she moved the family to West Virginia to join her husband Washington Ferguson, as a young man, Washington worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and attended college at Wayland Seminary. In 1881, Washington was named as the first leader of the new Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Washington attained national prominence for his Atlanta Address of 1895, which attracted the attention of politicians and the public. He became a spokesperson for African-American citizens. He built a network of supporters in many black communities, with black ministers, educators. Washington played a dominant role in politics, winning wide support in the black community of the South. He gained access to top leaders in politics, philanthropy. Washingtons efforts included cooperating with people and enlisting the support of wealthy philanthropists. This work continued for years after his death. Washington argued that the surest way for blacks to gain equal rights was to demonstrate industry, thrift, intelligence. Northern critics called Washingtons widespread organization the Tuskegee Machine, after 1909, Washington was criticized by the leaders of the new NAACP, especially W. E. B
13.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and emerged as a figure in world events during the mid-20th century. He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression and he is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U. S. Presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt was born in 1882 to an old, prominent Dutch family from Dutchess County and he attended the elite educational institutions of Groton School, Harvard College, and Columbia Law School. At age 23 in 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, and he entered politics in 1910, serving in the New York State Senate, and then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, Roosevelt was presidential candidate James M. Coxs running mate and he was in office from 1929 to 1933 and served as a reform governor, promoting the enactment of programs to combat the depression besetting the United States at the time. In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover in a landslide to win the presidency, Roosevelt took office while in the United States was in the midst of the worst economic crisis in its history. Energized by his victory over polio, FDR relied on his persistent optimism and activism to renew the national spirit. He created numerous programs to support the unemployed and farmers, and to labor union growth while more closely regulating business. His support for the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 added to his popularity, the economy improved rapidly from 1933–37, but then relapsed into a deep recession in 1937–38. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in 1937 prevented his packing the Supreme Court, when the war began and unemployment ended, conservatives in Congress repealed the two major relief programs, the WPA and CCC. However, they kept most of the regulations on business, along with several smaller programs, major surviving programs include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wagner Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security. His goal was to make America the Arsenal of Democracy, which would supply munitions to the Allies, in March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to Britain and China. He supervised the mobilization of the U. S. economy to support the war effort, as an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and initiate the development of the worlds first atomic bomb. His work also influenced the creation of the United Nations. Roosevelts physical health declined during the war years, and he died 11 weeks into his fourth term. One of the oldest Dutch families in New York State, the Roosevelts distinguished themselves in other than politics. One ancestor, Isaac Roosevelt, had served with the New York militia during the American Revolution, Roosevelt attended events of the New York society Sons of the American Revolution, and joined the organization while he was president
14.
NAACP
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Du Bois, Mary White Ovington and Moorfield Storey. Its mission in the 21st century is to ensure the political, educational, social and their national initiatives included political lobbying, publicity efforts, and litigation strategies developed by their legal team. The group enlarged its mission in the late 20th century by considering issues such as police misconduct, the status of foreign refugees. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the common term colored people. The NAACP bestows annual awards to people of color in two categories, Image Awards are for achievement in the arts and entertainment, and Spingarn Medals are for outstanding achievement of any kind and its headquarters is in Baltimore, Maryland. The NAACP is headquartered in Baltimore, with regional offices in New York, Michigan, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, Colorado. Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in that region, local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members. In the U. S. the NAACP is administered by a 64-member board, julian Bond, Civil Rights Movement activist and former Georgia State Senator, was chairman until replaced in February 2010 by health-care administrator Roslyn Brock. For decades in the first half of the 20th century, the organization was led by its executive secretary. James Weldon Johnson and Walter F. White, who served in that role successively from 1920 to 1958, were more widely known as NAACP leaders than were presidents during those years. Departments within the NAACP govern areas of action, local chapters are supported by the Branch and Field Services department and the Youth and College department. The Legal department focuses on cases of broad application to minorities, such as systematic discrimination in employment, government. The Washington, D. C. bureau is responsible for lobbying the U. S. government, the goal of the Health Division is to advance health care for minorities through public policy initiatives and education. As of 2007, the NAACP had approximately 425,000 paying and non-paying members, the NAACPs non-current records are housed at the Library of Congress, which has served as the organizations official repository since 1964. The records held there comprise approximately five million items spanning the NAACPs history from the time of its founding until 2003, in 1905, a group of thirty-two prominent African-American leaders met to discuss the challenges facing people of color and possible strategies and solutions. They were particularly concerned by the Southern states disenfranchisement of blacks starting with Mississippis passage of a new constitution in 1890, through 1908, southern legislatures dominated by white Democrats ratified new constitutions and laws creating barriers to voter registration and more complex election rules. In practice, this caused the exclusion of most blacks and many whites from the political system in southern states. Black voter registration and turnout dropped markedly in the South as a result of such legislation, men who had been voting for thirty years in the South were told they did not qualify to register
15.
Ida B. Wells
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Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, feminist, Georgist, and she was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, Wells lost her parents and she went to work and, with her grandmother, kept the rest of the family intact. She moved with some of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee and she was active in womens rights and the womens suffrage movement, establishing several notable womens organizations. Wells was a skilled and persuasive rhetorician and traveled internationally on lecture tours and her parents James Wells and Elizabeth Lizzie Wells, were both enslaved by Spires Bolling, an architect. She was one of eight children, the family resided at Bollings house, now named the Bolling-Gatewood House, where Lizzie Wells was a cook. Idas father was a master at carpentry, after the Civil War and emancipation and he was very interested in politics and became a member of the Loyal League. He attended Shaw University in Holly Springs, but he dropped out to help his family and he also attended public speeches and campaigned for local black candidates but never ran for office himself. A religious woman, Elizabeth Wells was very strict with her children, both of Idas parents were active in the Republican Party during Reconstruction. Ida attended Shaw like her father, but she was expelled for rebellious behavior after confronting the college president, while visiting her grandmother in the Mississippi Valley in 1878, Ida, then aged 16, received word that Holly Springs had suffered a yellow fever epidemic. Both of her parents and her infant brother died during that event, Wells would find a number of men who served as father figures later in her life, particularly Alfred Froman, Theodore W. Lott, and Josiah T. Settle. Following the funerals of her parents and brother, friends and relatives decided that the six remaining Wells children should be split up, to keep her younger siblings together as a family, she found work as a teacher in a black elementary school. Her paternal grandmother, Peggy Wells, along with friends and relatives, stayed with her siblings. Without this help, she would have not been able to keep her siblings together, Wells resented that in the segregated school system, white teachers were paid $80 a month and she was paid only $30 a month. This discrimination made her interested in the politics of race. In 1883, Wells took three of her siblings to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with her aunt and to be closer to other family members. She also learned that she could earn higher wages there as a teacher than in Mississippi, soon after moving, she was hired in Woodstock for the Shelby County school system. During her summer vacations she attended summer sessions at Fisk University and she held strong political opinions and provoked many people with her views on womens rights
16.
Tuskegee University
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Tuskegee University is a private, historically black university located in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It was established by Booker T. Washington, the campus is designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site by the National Park Service and is the only one in the U. S. to have this designation. The university was home to scientist George Washington Carver and to World War IIs Tuskegee Airmen, the university is home to over 3,100 students from the U. S. and 30 foreign countries. Tuskegee University is ranked among the 2015 Best 379 Colleges and Universities by the Princeton Review, the universitys campus was designed by architect Robert Robinson Taylor, the first African American to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The school was founded on July 4,1881, as the Tuskegee Normal School for Colored Teachers and this was a result of an agreement made during the 1880 elections in Macon County between a former Confederate Colonel, W. F. Foster who was running on the ticket and a local Black Leader and Republican. At the time the majority of Macon County population was Black, Adams succeeded and Foster followed through with the school. A teachers’ school was the dream of Lewis Adams, a slave, and George W. Campbell, a banker, merchant, and former slaveholder. Despite lacking formal education, Adams could read, write, and he was an experienced tinsmith, harness-maker, and shoemaker and was a Prince Hall Freemason, an acknowledged leader of the African-American community in Macon County, Alabama. Adams and Campbell had secured $2,000 from the State of Alabama for teachers salaries but nothing for land, buildings, swanson formed Tuskegees first board of commissioners. Campbell wrote to the Hampton Institute, a black college in Virginia. Armstrong, the Hampton principal and a former Union general, recommended 25-year-old Booker T. Washington, as the newly hired principal in Tuskegee, Booker Washington began classes for his new school in a rundown church and shanty. The following year, he purchased a plantation of 100 acres in size. The earliest campus buildings were constructed on property, usually by students as part of their work-study. By the start of the 20th century, the Tuskegee Institute occupied nearly 2,300 acres, based on his experience at the Hampton Institute, Washington intended to train students in skills, morals, and religious life, in addition to academic subjects. Washingtons second wife Olivia A. Davidson, was instrumental to the success, gradually, a rural extension program was developed, to take progressive ideas and training to those who could not come to the campus. Tuskegee alumni founded smaller schools and colleges throughout the South, they continued to emphasize teacher training, as a young free man after the Civil War, Washington sought a formal education. He worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and attended college at Wayland Seminary in Washington and he returned to Hampton as a teacher
17.
Clarksdale, Mississippi
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Clarksdale is a city in Coahoma County, Mississippi, and seat of the county. The western boundary of the county is formed by the Mississippi River, located in the Mississippi Delta region, Clarksdale is an agricultural and trading center. It has been home to blues musicians. Clarksdale is named after John Clark, who founded the city in the mid-19th century, Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians occupied the Delta region prior to the arrival of European settlers. A similar forced removal of the Chickasaw Nation began in 1837, once in Indian Territory, following the removal of the Indians, European-American settlers migrated to the Delta region, where the fertile soil was excellent for growing cotton. They brought or purchased African-American slaves to work the cotton plantations developed in the county. John Clark founded the town in 1848 when he bought land in the area, Clark married the sister of James Lusk Alcorn, a major planter who owned a nearby plantation. Alcorn became a politician, elected by the legislature as US Senator. Thriving from the trade and associated business, Clarksdale soon earned the title The Golden Buckle on the Cotton Belt. African-American slaves made the work and built the wealth of King Cotton in the state. U. S. Census data shows Coahoma County, Mississippis 1860 population was 1,521 whites and 5,085 slaves, James Alcorn was a major planter, owning 77 slaves. When slavery was abolished, many black families labored as sharecroppers and they gained some independence but were often at a disadvantage in negotiations with white planters. Historian Nicholas Lemann writes segregation strengthened the grip of the system by ensuring that most blacks would have no arena of opportunity in life except for the cotton fields. Those gains were short-lived, as insurgent white paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts worked to suppress black voting from 1868 on, by 1875 white Democrats took control of the state legislature in Mississippi. They later passed Jim Crow laws, including legal segregation of public facilities, on October 9,1875, whites in Clarksdale began hearing rumors that General Peace was preparing his troops to plunder the town, rumors spread that he was planning to murder the whites. A white militia was formed, and they suppressed Peace’s revolt, across Mississippi, white militias frequently formed in response to similar fears of armed black revolt. In Clarksdale it is the story of the riot of October 9,1875. After the Reconstruction era and construction in 1879 of the Louisville, New Orleans and Texas Railway through the town, in 1886, the towns streets were laid out, it was not until 1913 that any were paved
18.
W. C. Handy
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William Christopher Handy was an American composer and musician, known as the Father of the Blues. Handy was one of the most influential American songwriters and he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, and he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. Handy was a musician who used elements of folk music in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers, Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, the son of Elizabeth Brewer and Charles Barnard Handy. His father was the pastor of a church in Guntersville. The log cabin of Handys birth has been preserved near downtown Florence, growing up he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking and plastering. Handy was deeply religious, and his style was influenced by the church music he sang. It was also influenced by the sounds of the natural world, Handys father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. Without his parents permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries and nuts. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home, and ordered him to take it back where it came from, but he also arranged for his son to take organ lessons. The organ lessons did not last long, but Handy moved on to learn to play the cornet and he joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a band member and spent every free minute practicing it. With a dozen men participating, the effect was sometimes remarkable. It was better to us than the music of a drum corps. He wrote, Southern Negroes sang about everything. They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect and he would later reflect that In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues. In September 1892, Handy travelled to Birmingham, Alabama, to take an exam, which he passed easily. Learning that it poorly, he quit the position and found employment at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer. In his time off from his job, he organized a string orchestra. He later organized the Lauzetta Quartet, when the group read about the upcoming Worlds Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend
19.
E. H. Crump
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Edward Hull Boss Crump was an American politician from Memphis, Tennessee. Representing the Democratic Party, he was the dominant force in the politics for most of the first half of the 20th century. He also dominated Tennessee state politics for most of the time from the 1920s to the 1940s and he was elected and served as mayor of Memphis from 1910 through 1915, and again briefly in 1940. However, he effectively appointed every mayor elected from 1915 to 1954. A native of Holly Springs in northern Mississippi, where he was born in 1874, Crump at the age of 19 moved to Memphis, Tennessee on September 21,1893, according to the Holly Springs Reporter. When he first arrived in Memphis, the ongoing Panic of 1893, eventually, he obtained a clerical position with Walter Goodman Cotton Company located on Front Street in downtown Memphis. This was the start of a business career as a broker and trader. In early 1901, Crump began seriously courting a 23-year-old young woman by the name of Bessie Byrd McLean, Bessie, or Betty, McLean was a prominent Memphis socialite and has been described as one of the citys most beautiful and most sought after women. She was the child of Mr. and Mrs. Robert McLean. Her father was serving as the vice president of the William R. Moore Dry Goods Company. Crump and McLean were married on January 22,1902 at the Calvary Episcopal Church, alongside his rising business career, Crump began to make the political connections that served him for the rest of his life. He was a delegate to the Tennessee Democratic State Convention in 1902 and 1904. In 1905, he was named to the municipal Board of Public Works, starting in the 1910s, Crump began to build a political machine which came to have statewide influence. He was particularly adept in his use of what were at the two politically weak minority groups in Tennessee, blacks and Republicans. Unlike most Southern Democrats of his era, Crump was not opposed to blacks voting, the party often paid the poll taxes required by state law since the late 1880s, otherwise this requirement resulted in disenfranchising many poor blacks. One of Crumps lieutenants in the community was funeral director N. J. Ford, whose family became influential in Memphis, state and national politics. A symbiotic relationship developed in which blacks aided Crump, and he aided them, Crump also skillfully manipulated Republicans, who were numerically very weak in the western two-thirds of the state due to the disenfranchisement of blacks, but dominated politics in East Tennessee. Frequently, they found it necessary to align with Crump in order to any of their goals in the state government
20.
The Memphis Blues
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The Memphis Blues is a song described by its composer, W. C. It was self-published by Handy in September 1912 and has been recorded by many artists over the years, subtitled Mr. Crump, The Memphis Blues is said to be based on a campaign song written by Handy for Edward Crump, a mayoral candidate in Memphis, Tennessee. Handy claimed credit for writing Mr. Crump, but Memphis musicians say it was written by Handys clarinetist, Paul Wyer. Many musicologists question how much Mr. Crump actually shared with The Memphis Blues, since the words, taken from an old song, Mama Don low. Many think Mr. Crump was probably the song as Mr. Crump Dont Like It. Handy first published the song as an instrumental and he immediately sold it to the music publisher Theron Bennett, who took it to New York to attempt to promote it. Handy later claimed he had been robbed, in any case, Bennett convinced George Honey Boy Evans to use it for his Honey Boy Minstrels. Bennett hired a songwriter, George A. Norton, to write lyrics for it. Bennett published it a later, but still the sheet music did poorly. Bennetts 1913 publication advertises it as Founded on W. C, Handys World Wide Blue Note Melody. It wasnt until Victor Recording Companys house band and Columbias house band recorded the song in 1914 that The Memphis Blues began to do well, harry James recorded a version in 1942. Blues Traveling, The Holy Sites of Delta Blues, putting Popular Music in its Place
21.
Louis Armstrong
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Louis Armstrong, nicknamed Satchmo or Satch, was an American trumpeter, composer, singer and occasional actor who was one of the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s and he was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to cross over and he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. His artistry and personality allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society which were restricted for black men of his era. Armstrong often stated that he was born on July 4,1900, although he died in 1971, it was not until the mid-1980s that his true birth date, August 4,1901, was discovered by the researcher Tad Jones through the examination of baptismal records. Armstrong was born into a family in New Orleans, Louisiana. He spent his youth in poverty, in a neighborhood known as the Battlefield. His father, William Armstrong, abandoned the family when Louis was an infant and his mother, Mary Mayann Albert, then left Louis and his younger sister, Beatrice Armstrong Collins, in the care of his grandmother, Josephine Armstrong, and at times his uncle Isaac. At five, he moved back to live with his mother, her relatives and he attended the Fisk School for Boys, where he most likely had early exposure to music. He hung out in dance halls close to home, where he observed everything from licentious dancing to the quadrille, after dropping out of the Fisk School at age eleven, Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. He also started to get into trouble, Cornet player Bunk Johnson said he taught Armstrong to play by ear at Dago Tonys Tonk in New Orleans, although in his later years Armstrong gave the credit to Oliver. It has given me something to live for and he also worked for a Lithuanian-Jewish immigrant family, the Karnofskys, who had a junk-hauling business and gave him odd jobs. They took him in and treated him like family, knowing he lived without a father and he later wrote a memoir of his relationship with the Karnofskys, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La. the Year of 1907. Armstrong wore a Star of David pendant for the rest of his life and wrote about what he learned from them, how to live—real life, professor Peter Davis instilled discipline in and provided musical training to the otherwise self-taught Armstrong. Eventually, Davis made Armstrong the band leader, the home band played around New Orleans and the thirteen-year-old Louis began to draw attention by his cornet playing, starting him on a musical career. At fourteen he was released from the home, living again with his father and new stepmother, Gertrude, Armstrong got his first dance hall job at Henry Ponces, where Black Benny became his protector and guide. He hauled coal by day and played his cornet at night, later, he played in brass bands and riverboats of New Orleans, and began traveling with the well-regarded band of Fate Marable, which toured on a steamboat up and down the Mississippi River. He described his time with Marable as going to the University, in 1919, Joe Oliver decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Orys band, Armstrong replaced him
22.
Muddy Waters
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McKinley Morganfield, better known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician who is often cited as the father of modern Chicago blues. Muddy Waters grew up on Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and by age 17 was playing the guitar and he was recorded in Mississippi by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. In 1943, he moved to Chicago to become a full-time, in 1946, he recorded his first records for Columbia Records and then for Aristocrat Records, a newly formed label run by the brothers Leonard and Phil Chess. These songs included Hoochie Coochie Man, I Just Want to Make Love to You, in 1958, he traveled to England, laying the foundations of the subsequent blues boom there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, Muddy Waters influence was tremendous, not just on blues and rhythm and blues but on rock and roll, hard rock, folk music, jazz, and country music. His use of amplification is often cited as the link between Delta blues and rock and roll, Muddy Waters birthplace and date is not conclusively known. He stated that he was born in Rolling Fork, Mississippi in 1915, a 1955 interview in the Chicago Defender is the earliest he claimed 1915 as his year of birth, which he continued to use in interviews from that point onward. The 1920 census lists him as five years old as of March 6,1920, the Social Security Death Index, relying on the Social Security card application submitted after his move to Chicago in the mid-1940s, lists him as being born April 4,1913. His gravestone gives his year as 1915. Muddy Waters grandmother, Della Grant, raised him after his mother died shortly after his birth, Grant gave him the nickname Muddy at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek. Waters was added later, as he began to play harmonica. The remains of the cabin on Stovall Plantation where Waters lived in his youth are now at the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale and he had his first introduction to music in church, I used to belong to church. I was a good Baptist, singing in the church, so I got all of my good moaning and trembling going on for me right out of church, he recalled. By the time, he was 17, he had purchased his first guitar, I sold the last horse that we had. Made about fifteen dollars for him, gave my grandmother seven dollars and fifty cents, I kept seven-fifty, the people ordered them from Sears-Roebuck in Chicago. He started playing his songs in joints nearby his hometown, mostly in a owned by Colonel William Howard Stovall. In August 1941, Alan Lomax went to Stovall, Mississippi and he brought his stuff down and recorded me right in my house, Muddy recalled in Rolling Stone, and when he played back the first song I sounded just like anybodys records. Man, you dont know how I felt that Saturday afternoon when I heard that voice, later on he sent me two copies of the pressing and a check for twenty bucks, and I carried that record up to the corner and put it on the jukebox
23.
Albert King
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Albert Nelson, known professionally as Albert King, was an American blues guitarist and singer, whose playing influenced many other blues guitarists. One of the Three Kings of the Blues Guitar, he is perhaps best known for the 1967 single Born Under a Bad Sign. King stood taller than average, with sources reporting 6 ft 4 in or 6 ft 7 in, in May 2013, King was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was born on a plantation in Indianola, Mississippi. During his childhood he would sing at a gospel group at a church where his father played the guitar. One of 13 children, King grew up picking cotton on plantations near Forrest City, Arkansas, King was famed for his powerful string-bending style as well as for his soulful, smoky vocals. King often said he was born in Indianola and was a half-brother of B. B. King, King carved his own indelible niche in the blues hierarchy by creating a deep, dramatic sound that was widely imitated by both blues and rock guitarists. Albert King’s readily identifiable style made him one of the most important artists in the history of the blues, but his own identity was a longtime source of confusion. In interviews he said he was born in Indianola on April 25,1923, and whenever he appeared in Indianola at Club Ebony, the event was celebrated as a homecoming. He often claimed to be a half-brother of Indianola icon B. B. King, citing the fact that B. B. s father was named Albert King. But when he applied for a Social Security card in 1942, he gave his birthplace as “Aboden”, Mississippi, musicians also knew him as Albert Nelson in the 1940s and 50s. But when he made his first record in 1953–when B. B. had become a national blues star–he became Albert King and he also sometimes used the same nickname as B. B. –“Blues Boy”–and named his guitar Lucy. B. B. however, claimed Albert as just a friend, not a relative, and once retorted, “My name was King before I was famous. ”According to King, he was five when his left the family and eight when he moved with his mother, Mary Blevins. King said his family had lived in Arcola, Mississippi. He made his first guitar out of a box, a piece of a bush, and a strand of broom wire. As a left-hander learning guitar on his own, he used a normal string setup and tuning, King picked cotton, drove a bulldozer, worked in construction, and other jobs until he was finally able to support himself as a musician. He began his work as a musician with a group called the Groove Boys in Osceola. Moving north to Gary, Indiana, and later St. Louis, Missouri, he played drums for Jimmy Reeds band
24.
Memphis Minnie
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Lizzie Douglas, known as Memphis Minnie, was a blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter whose recording career lasted from the 1920s to the 1950s. She recorded around 200 songs, some of the best known being Bumble Bee, Nothing in Rambling, Douglas was born on June 3,1897, in Algiers, Louisiana. She was the eldest of 13 siblings and her parents, Abe and Gertrude Douglas, nicknamed her Kid when she was young, and her family called her that throughout her childhood. It is reported that she disliked the name Lizzie, when she first began performing, she played under the name Kid Douglas. When she was 7, she and her family moved to Walls, Mississippi, the following year she received her first guitar, as a Christmas present. She learned to play the banjo by the age of 10 and the guitar by the age of 11, the family later moved to Brunswick, Tennessee. After Minnies mother died, in 1922, Abe Douglas moved back to Walls, in 1910, at the age of 13, she ran away from home to live on Beale Street, in Memphis. She played on street corners for most of her teenage years and her sidewalk performances led to a tour of the South with the Ringling Brothers Circus from 1916 to 1920. She then went back to Beale Street, with its thriving blues scene and she began performing with Joe McCoy, her second husband, in 1929. They were discovered by a talent scout for Columbia Records, in front of a barber shop and she and McCoy went to record in New York City and were given the names Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie by a Columbia A&R man. Over the next few years she and McCoy released a series of records, in February 1930 they recorded the song Bumble Bee for the Vocalion label, which they had already recorded for Columbia but which had not yet been released. It became one of Minnies most popular songs, she recorded five versions of it. Minnie and McCoy continued to record for Vocalion until August 1934 and their last session together was for Decca, in September. Each singer was to sing two songs, after Broonzy sang Just a Dream and Make My Getaway, Minnie won the prize with Me and My Chauffeur Blues and Looking the World Over. By 1935 Minnie was established in Chicago and had one of a group of musicians who worked regularly for the record producer. Back on her own after her divorce from McCoy, Minnie began to experiment with different styles, by the end of the 1930s, in addition to her output for Vocalion, she had recorded nearly 20 sides for Decca and eight sides for Bluebird. She also toured extensively in the 1930s, mainly in the South, in 1938 Minnie returned to recording for the Vocalion label, this time accompanied by Charlie McCoy, Kansas Joes brother, on mandolin. Around this time she married the guitarist and singer Ernest Lawlars and they began recording together in 1939, with Son adding a more rhythmic backing to Minnies guitar
25.
B.B. King
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Riley Benjamin King, known professionally as B. B. King, was an American blues singer, electric guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. King introduced a style of soloing based on fluid string bending and shimmering vibrato that influenced many later electric blues guitarists. King was known for performing throughout his musical career, appearing at more than 200 concerts per year on average into his 70s. In 1956, he appeared at 342 shows. King was born on a plantation in Berclair, Mississippi. He was attracted to music and the guitar in church, and began his career in juke joints. He later lived in Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago, King died at the age of 89 in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 14,2015, from congestive heart failure and diabetic complications. Riley Benjamin King was born on September 16,1925, on a plantation called Berclair, near the town of Itta Bena, Mississippi. He considered the city of Indianola, Mississippi to be his home. When Riley was four years old, his mother left his father for another man, so the boy was raised by his grandmother, Elnora Farr, in Kilmichael. While young, King sang in the choir at Elkhorn Baptist Church in Kilmichael. King was attracted to the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ because of its music, the local minister led worship with a Sears Roebuck Silvertone guitar. The minister taught King his first three chords and it seems that at the age of 12 he purchased his first guitar for $15.00, although another source indicates he was given his first guitar by Bukka White, his mothers first cousin. In November 1941 King Biscuit Time first aired, broadcasting on KFFA in Helena and it was a radio show featuring the Mississippi Delta blues. King listened to it while on break at a plantation, a self-taught guitarist, he then wanted to become a radio musician. In 1946, King followed Bukka White to Memphis, Tennessee, White took him in for the next ten months. However, King returned to Mississippi shortly afterward, where he decided to prepare himself better for the next visit and he performed on Sonny Boy Williamsons radio program on KWEM in West Memphis, where he began to develop an audience. Kings appearances led to engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis
26.
Rufus Thomas
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Thomas, Jr. was an American rhythm-and-blues, funk, soul and blues singer, songwriter, dancer, DJ and comic entertainer from Memphis, Tennessee. He recorded for labels, including Chess Records and Sun Records in the 1950s. He is best known for his novelty dance records, including Walking the Dog, Do the Funky Chicken and Push and Pull. According to the Mississippi Blues Commission, Rufus Thomas embodied the spirit of Memphis music perhaps more than any other artist, occupied many important roles in the local scene. He began his career as a tap dancer, vaudeville performer and he later worked as a disc jockey on radio station WDIA in Memphis, both before and after his recordings became successful. He remained active into the 1990s, and as a performer and he was the father of the singers Carla Thomas and Vaneese Thomas and the keyboard player Marvell Thomas. Thomas was born in the community of Cayce, Mississippi. He moved with his family to Memphis, Tennessee, around 1920 and his mother was a church woman. Thomas made his debut as a performer at the age of six, by the age of 10, he was a tap dancer, performing on the streets and in amateur productions at Booker T. Washington High School, in Memphis. From the age of 13, he worked with Nat D, after graduating from high school, Thomas attended Tennessee A&I University for one semester, but economic constraints led him to leave to pursue a career as a full-time entertainer. Thomas also began performing in traveling tent shows, in 1936 he joined the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, an all-black revue that toured the South, as a tap dancer and comedian, sometimes part of a duo, Rufus and Johnny. He married Cornelia Lorene Wilson in 1940, at a service officiated by Aretha Franklins father, Rev. C. L. Franklin, Thomas worked a day job in the American Finishing Company textile bleaching plant, which he continued to do for over 20 years. He also formed a comedy and dancing duo, Rufus and Bones, with Robert Bones Couch, one early winner was B. B. King, and others first discovered by Thomas later in the 1940s included Bobby Bland, in the early 1940s, Thomas began writing and performing his own songs. He regarded Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Gatemouth Moore as his musical influences, as an established performer in Memphis, aged 33 in 1950, Thomas recorded his first 78 rpm single, for Jesse Ericksons small Star Talent label in Dallas, Texas. Thomas said, I just wanted to make a record, I never thought of getting rich. I just wanted to be known, be a recording artist, the record sold five copies and I bought four of them. The record, Ill Be a Good Boy/Im So Worried, gained a Billboard review stating, in 1951 he made his first recordings at Sam Phillips Sun Studio, for the Chess label, but they were not commercially successful
27.
Rosco Gordon
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Rosco N. Gordon III was an American blues singer and songwriter. He is best known for his 1952 No.1 R&B hit single, Booted, Gordon was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up on Florida street. He was a pioneer of the Memphis blues style and he made a number of his early recordings for Sam Phillips at Sun Records. Gordon played piano in a known as the Rosco rhythm. This rhythm was an influence on the Jamaican pianist Theophilus Beckford, Booted and No More Doggin were both released in 1952. Phillips sold the master of Booted to both RPM and Chess Records, and both released the track as a single. The RPM release reached No.1 on the Billboard R&B record chart, Chess and the Bihari brothers later settled the conflict, with the Biharis getting exclusive rights to Gordon and Chess signing Howlin Wolf to an exclusive contract. Gordons last single to reach the charts was Just a Little Bit, in 1962, he gave up the music industry and moved to Queens, New York, with his new wife, where he purchased a partnership in a laundry business. Following his wifes death in 1984, he returned to performing in the New York area. C, the documentary, The Road to Memphis, aired on PBS television. Six weeks after filming finished, Gordon died of an attack at his apartment in Rego Park. He was interred in the Rosedale Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey, No More Doggin was covered by the Groundhogs on their 1972 album Hogwash and by Colin James on his 1993 album Colin James and the Little Big Band. Rosco Gordon full biography Rosco Gordon discography on Soulful Kinda Music website PBS website for The Road to Memphis Rosco Gordon overview Rosco Gordon interview Rosco Gordon biography
28.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
29.
Memphis blues
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The Memphis blues is a style of blues music ocreated from the 1910s to the 1930s by musicians in the Memphis area, like Frank Stokes, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis and Memphis Minnie. The style was popular in vaudeville and medicine shows and was associated with Beale Street, handy, the Father of the Blues, published the song The Memphis Blues. In lyrics, the phrase has been used to describe a depressed mood, in addition to guitar-based blues, jug bands, such as Gus Cannons Jug Stompers and the Memphis Jug Band, were extremely popular practitioners of Memphis blues. The jug band style emphasized the danceable, syncopated rhythms of early jazz and it was played on simple, sometimes homemade, instruments such as harmonicas, violins, mandolins, banjos, and guitars, backed by washboards, kazoo, guimbarde and jugs blown to supply the bass. Sun recorded Howlin Wolf, Willie Nix, Ike Turner, B. B. King, electric Memphis blues featured explosive, distorted electric guitar work, thunderous drumming, and fierce, declamatory vocals. Musicians associated with Sun Records included Joe Hill Louis, Willie Johnson and Pat Hare
30.
Furry Lewis
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Walter E. Furry Lewis was an American country blues guitarist and songwriter from Memphis, Tennessee. Lewis was one of the first of the blues musicians active in the 1920s to be out of retirement. Lewis was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, many sources give 1893, the date he gave in his later years, but the researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc suggest 1899, based on his 1900 census entry, and other sources suggest 1895 or 1898. His family moved to Memphis when he was seven and he acquired the nickname Furry from childhood playmates. By 1908, he was playing solo at parties, in taverns and he was also invited to play several dates with W. C. In his travels as a musician, he was exposed to a variety of performers, including Bessie Smith, Blind Lemon Jefferson. Like his contemporary Frank Stokes, he tired of traveling. His position as a sweeper for the city of Memphis. Lewis made his first recordings for Vocalion Records in Chicago in 1927, a year later he recorded for Victor Records at the Memphis Auditorium, in a session with the Memphis Jug Band, Jim Jackson, Frank Stokes, and others. He again recorded for Vocalion in Memphis in 1929, the tracks were mostly blues but included two-part versions of Casey Jones and John Henry. He sometimes fingerpicked and sometimes played with a slide and he made many successful records in the late 1920s, including Kassie Jones, Billy Lyons & Stack-O-Lee and Judge Harsh Blues. In 1969, the record producer Terry Manning recorded Lewis in his Fourth Street apartment iin Memphis and these recordings were released in Europe at the time by Barclay Records and again in the early 1990s by Lucky Seven Records in the United States and in 2006 by Universal Records. Joni Mitchells song Furry Sings the Blues, is about her visit to Lewiss apartment, Lewis despised the Mitchell song and demanded she pay him royalties. In 1972 he was the performer in the Memphis Blues Caravan, which included Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes, Clarence Nelson, Hammie Nixon, Memphis Piano Red, Sam Chatmon. He opened twice for the Rolling Stones, performed on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, had a part in a Burt Reynolds movie, Lewis began to lose his eyesight because of cataracts in his final years. He contracted pneumonia in 1981, which led to his death from heart failure in Memphis on September 14 of that year, at the age of 88
31.
George Washington Lee
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George Washington Lee was an African-American soldier, author, political leader and corporate executive. Born in Heathman, Mississippi in 1894, Lee spent most of his life in Memphis, Lee received numerous citations for his benevolence and civic initiatives. Lees parents, the Reverend George and Hattie Stringfellow, separated before his birth, and George and his brother Abner were raised by their mother, Hattie Lee soon moved the family to nearby Indianola, Mississippi, a more populated and prosperous community. As a boy, Lee obtained summer employment at a store in Indianola. Lee entered Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in Lorman, Mississippi, in the summer of 1912, Lee moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he found work as a bellhop at the Gayoso Hotel. When the hotels manager died in 1916, Lee demonstrated his skill at writing, at the outbreak of World War I, Lee was determined to enter the Fort Des Moines Provisional Army Officer Training School in Iowa. In the qualifying examinations, Lee excelled in physical skill and intelligence, and at the age of twenty-three was selected to attend the camp. Lieutenant Lees 920th Division proved their bravery while stationed in France and his Division none-the-less received racist insults and innuendos from white soldiers. Lieutenant Lee received a discharge in 1919, and returned to Memphis where he soon found employment as a salesman with the black-owned Mississippi Life Insurance Company. Within weeks he was promoted to manager, and then to vice-president in 1920, Lee refused, asserting that he did not want to enable the takeover of a black-owned business. Lee went on to join the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, where he became a senior vice-president, George Lee was active in the Republican Party, and in the 1928 presidential election served as national director of Veterans for Hoover. In 1952, Lee delivered one of the speeches at the Republican national convention in Chicago, in the 1956 presidential election, Lee is credited with delivering Tennessee to Eisenhower. In 1934, Lee authored Beale Street, Where the Blues Began, Lees second novel, River George, was published in 1937. Lees stories were published in The Negro Digest, The Worlds Digest, and Southern Literary Messenger, and in 1942, in 1951, The Chicago Defender named Lee one of ten Most Useful Men for his efforts at voter registration in Memphis. Lee became Grand Commissioner of Education and the Civil Rights Department of the National Elks and for the Memphis chapter of the Benevolent, in 1956, Lee was the first African-American to have a US post office named after him, in Memphis. As Memphis black leaders became more radical throughout the 1940s and 1950s and he opposed the violence of the Rap Brown Black Power movement, and during the 1960s he traveled around the country criticizing black power movements towards violence. He believed black people should appeal to the sense of conscience to guilt rather than simply demand their own rights through violence. A number of George Lees speeches have been inserted into the Congressional Record, in 2006, construction began on Lees Landing Retail, Entertainment and Parking, in the Beale Street district of Memphis
32.
United States Congress
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The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States consisting of two chambers, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the Capitol in Washington, D. C, both senators and representatives are chosen through direct election, though vacancies in the Senate may be filled by a gubernatorial appointment. Members are usually affiliated to the Republican Party or to the Democratic Party, Congress has 535 voting members,435 Representatives and 100 Senators. The House of Representatives has six non-voting members in addition to its 435 voting members and these members can, however, sit on congressional committees and introduce legislation. Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the members of the House of Representatives serve two-year terms representing the people of a single constituency, known as a district. Congressional districts are apportioned to states by using the United States Census results. Each state, regardless of population or size, has two senators, currently, there are 100 senators representing the 50 states. Each senator is elected at-large in their state for a term, with terms staggered. The House and Senate are equal partners in the legislative process—legislation cannot be enacted without the consent of both chambers, however, the Constitution grants each chamber some unique powers. The Senate ratifies treaties and approves presidential appointments while the House initiates revenue-raising bills, the House initiates impeachment cases, while the Senate decides impeachment cases. A two-thirds vote of the Senate is required before a person can be forcibly removed from office. The term Congress can also refer to a meeting of the legislature. A Congress covers two years, the current one, the 115th Congress, began on January 3,2017, the Congress starts and ends on the third day of January of every odd-numbered year. Members of the Senate are referred to as senators, members of the House of Representatives are referred to as representatives, congressmen, or congresswomen. One analyst argues that it is not a solely reactive institution but has played a role in shaping government policy and is extraordinarily sensitive to public pressure. Several academics described Congress, Congress reflects us in all our strengths, Congress is the governments most representative body. Congress is essentially charged with reconciling our many points of view on the public policy issues of the day. —Smith, Roberts, and Wielen Congress is constantly changing and is constantly in flux, most incumbents seek re-election, and their historical likelihood of winning subsequent elections exceeds 90 percent
33.
Memphis in May
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Memphis in May is a month-long festival held in Memphis, Tennessee. The festival, which is saluting Colombia in 2017, honors a specific foreign country every year, the Beale Street Music Festival takes place the first weekend in May and showcases an eclectic lineup of national and local musical talent. International Week is a series of exhibits, screenings, arts, the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest has become one of the most popular barbecue contests in the country and is celebrating its 40th year in 2017. The Beale Street Music Festival is a music festival that has both a mix of big-name stars performing side by side with local musical acts. Held during the first weekend of May in the citys Tom Lee Park at the foot of Beale Street and it typically hosts over 100,000 people during the weekend. The Beale Street Music Festival is the program that has been held every year since the inception of Memphis in May in 1977. Its history can be traced back to the 1800s, when African-American musicians throughout the South would come to Beale Street,2017 Beale Street Music Festival dates, May 5 -7,2017. Every year the festival recognizes a different country and is saluting Colombia in 2017, a week of events that typically begin the day after the Beale Street Music Fest, International Week is dedicated to a country and showcases the foods and culture of that nation. The goal of International Week is for students, by the time they graduate from high school, to have had the opportunity to experience the customs. Countries recognized in the earliest years– Japan, Germany and Canada – have been featured twice, perhaps most important are the trade delegates that visit Memphis and have introductions to suitable, high-level trade partners. The WCBCC started in 1978 with 26 teams, the contest drew 50 teams in 1979,80 in 1980, and 180 teams from nine states in 1981. It has now grown to be the largest pork barbecue competition in the world, more than 250 teams from 20+ states and several countries compete, and an estimated 100,000 people attend the competition. Media from around the world, including BBC and The Food Network, the original champion at the first competition was Bessie Louise Cathey, who won a $500 prize, a sizable return for her $12 entry fee. Today, the prizes for each event range from $300 to $15,000 for the cooking competition. Todays entry fees range from $700 to $2,600 just for renting the booth space. Some teams regularly budget amounts in excess of $15,000 just for the competition, the total was 55,297 pounds of pork, and thus earned the WCBCC a record in the 1990 edition. Over 16 tons of pork were smoked at the 2016 WCBCC, the 2017 World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest will expand the weekend into four days instead of three for the very first time. The competition has three official meat categories, rib, shoulder and whole hog, there is also the Patio Porkers division, which encourages up to 40 amateur teams to enter
34.
Tom Lee Park
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Tom Lee Park is a city park located to the immediate west of downtown Memphis, Tennessee, overlooking the Mississippi River. Encompassing about 30 acres parallel to the Mississippi River for about one mile, it offers views of the Mississippi River. The park is named after Tom Lee, an African-American riverworker, Tom Lee Park is a popular location for walkers, joggers, roller bladers and cyclists, and hosts events throughout the year, including the Beale Street Music Festival that kicks off Memphis in May. Tom Lee Park is approximately one mile long, but not more than 400 ft wide at any point. It encompasses about 30 acres, running south from Beale Street, bounded by the Mississippi River to the west, luxury homes and condominiums line the top of the bluff overlooking the park and the river. The park is named after area resident Tom Lee, late during the afternoon of May 8,1925, Lee steered his 28 ft skiff Zev upriver after delivering an official to Helena, Arkansas. Also on the river was a steamboat, the M. E. Norman, carrying members of the Engineers Club of Memphis, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and their families. Tom Lee witnessed the M. E. Norman capsize in the swift current 15 mi downriver from Memphis at Cow Island Bend, although he could not swim, he rescued 32 people with five trips to shore. Lee acted quickly, calmly and with no regard for his own safety, because of his efforts, only 23 people died. To honor the hero, the Memphis Engineers Club raised enough money to purchase a house for Lee, Tom Lee died of cancer on April 1,1952 at John Gaston Hospital. Two years after his death, the park along the Memphis Riverfront was named in his honor, in October 2006, a bronze sculpture by artist David Alan Clark was erected in the park to commemorate the event and to honor the civil hero. The sculpture depicts the rescue of a survivor saved from drowning in the Mississippi River, among several events held throughout the year, the park is well known throughout the city and region as the site of different outdoor events. The annual Memphis in May celebration is an event in the park. M. E. Norman Memphis, Tennessee Memphis in May Memphis Riverfront Park
35.
Hard Rock Cafe
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Hard Rock Cafe International, Inc. is a chain of theme restaurants founded in 1971 by Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton in London. In 1979, the cafe began covering its walls with rock and roll memorabilia, in 2007, Hard Rock was sold to the Seminole Tribe of Florida, and since then it is headquartered in Orlando, Florida. As of December 2015, there were 191 Hard Rock locations in 59 countries, including 168 cafes,23 hotels, and 11 casinos. The first Hard Rock Cafe opened on June 14,1971 at Gloucester House, Piccadilly, London, under the ownership of young Americans Peter Morton, Hard Rock initially had an eclectic decor but it later started to display memorabilia. The chain began to expand worldwide in 1982 with locations in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Paris, Hard Rock Cafe locations in the United States vary from smaller, more tourist driven markets to large metropolises. Hard Rock Cafe typically does not franchise cafe locations in the United States, all US cafes are corporate owned and operated, except for cafes in Tampa and Four Winds New Buffalo casino. However, in the transition of the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel property originally owned, Morton retained hotel naming rights west of the Mississippi. When Morton sold his Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel to the Morgans Hotel Group, he sold those naming rights. The Albuquerque hotel no longer pays for the Hard Rock rights, more hotels franchised from Morgans are planned for Sioux City and Vancouver. In 1990, The Rank Group, a London-based leisure company, acquired Mecca Leisure Group, Rank went on to purchase Hard Rock America from Peter Morton as well as Hard Rock Canada from Nick Bitove. After the completion of these acquisitions, Rank gained worldwide control of the brand, in March 2007, the Seminole Tribe of Florida acquired Hard Rock Cafe International, Inc. and other related entities from Rank for US$965 million. Most customers, it was argued, do not realize that they are subsidizing a low wage when they give the tip, HRC is known for its collection of rock and roll memorabilia. The collection began in 1979 with an un-signed Red Fender Lead II guitar from Eric Clapton, Clapton wanted management to hang the guitar over his regular seat in order to lay claim to that spot, and they obliged. This prompted Pete Townshend of The Who to give one of his guitars, Hard Rocks archive includes over 80,000 items, and is the largest private collection of Rock and Roll memorabilia in the world. Marquee pieces from the collection were displayed in a Hard Rock museum named The Vault in Orlando. After the closure, items were disbursed to various restaurant locations, the London Vault remains open and free to visitors, located in the retail Rock Shop of the original cafe. In 2005, Deep Purple launched its new album Rapture of the Deep in Hard Rock Cafe London and this show at the release party itself was released as a DVD. The Hard Rock Café is also in possession of a Bedford VAL6 axle coach used in the 1967 film The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, the vehicle was completely refurbished after filming
36.
A. Schwab's
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A. Schwab dry goods store is the only remaining original business on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. A family owned store, their motto is If you cant find it at A. Schwab and it began as a men’s haberdashery, transitioned to a dry goods store, and later evolved into a seller of quirky merchandise. Products include various hoodoo items, assorted dry goods, and tourist memorabilia, a. Schwabs was also the retailer of the largest overalls in the world which sold two pair a year. The overalls were so large they hung from the ceiling, a. Schwab, the oldest store in the Mid-South, is housed in the oldest remaining building on Beale Street. The store was founded at another location on Beale Street and moved to 163 Beale Street in 1911, both of these buildings were constructed before 1890. Prior to the expansion,165 Beale housed a Piggly Wiggly, after 136 years, the Schwab family sold the business at the end of 2011
37.
FedExForum
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FedExForum is an arena located in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. It is the home of the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA, the venue also has the capability of hosting ice hockey games, concerts, and family shows. The arena officially opened in September 2004 after much debate and also a wind storm on July 22,2003 that nearly brought down the cranes that were building it near the famed Beale Street. It was built at a cost of US$250 million and is owned by the City of Memphis, naming rights were purchased by one of Memphis most well-known businesses, FedEx, FedExForum was financed using $250 million of public bonds, which were issued by the Memphis Public Building Authority. FedExForum was designed by architectural firm Ellerbe Becket, concrete work done with the help of Dowco Construction and Apac. The arena is 805,850 ft² in size, covering 14 acres, the Arena is round, with a dome. The playing floor is lower than ground level and it is capable of seating 18,119 for basketball and has 1,000 premiere courtside seats. There are 27 courtside suites,32 club suites,4 party suites and it also contains a full-sized practice basketball court, visible from the huge lobby. The plans called for a transit bus depot, which brought a federal grant of $6 million, but the depot was changed to a premium parking garage. FedExForums interior was designed to pay tribute to Memphis musical heritage, with paintings, most of the Arenas restaurants are named in conjunction with FedExForums overall theme of music with Opus Restaurant and the Blue Note Lounge. The two other restaurants are sponsor-driven with the Lexus Lounge just off the Arena Floor and Jack Daniels Old No.7 in the Grand Lobby of the Arena. FedExForum was the first arena to utilize new see-through shot clock units which allow spectators seated behind the basket to see the action without having the clocks interfere with their view. On September 25,2004, FedExForum hosted the Glen Johnson vs Roy Jones Jr. for the IBF Light heavyweight title, Johnson won the fight with a 9th-round knockout. On September 21,2006, the Nashville Predators and the Columbus Blue Jackets played the first NHL game ever at FedEx Forum, FedExForum has hosted three major professional wrestling events. In 2007, World Wrestling Entertainments Unforgiven took place on September 16, in 2015, it hosted WWE Fastlane on February 22. The first of five WWE house shows took place on September 19,2004 and it has hosted seven episodes of WWE Raw and four of WWE SmackDown. One notable instance of WWE at the arena was when Daniel Bryan occupied Raw with hundreds of his fans inside the ring and surrounding the area on March 10,2014. On February 23,2008, FedExForum hosted the basketball game featuring the No.1 ranked Memphis Tigers vs. the No.2 ranked Tennessee Volunteers
38.
Coyote Ugly Saloon
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The Coyote Ugly Saloon is an American drinking establishment and the namesake of an international chain of bars. It served as the setting for the 2000 movie Coyote Ugly, the original Coyote Ugly Saloon opened January 27,1993, in New York City, after New York University alumna Liliana Lovell declined an internship on Wall Street for a career as a bartender. Lovell held several bartending jobs during college and perfected a routine of dancing on the bar, singing, and challenging customers to drinking contests. Changing the way bars were staffed, she began hiring women and training them in the wild routine. In 2001, the second Coyote Ugly Saloon opened in Las Vegas at the New York-New York Hotel & Casino, in 2002, a new company-owned bar opened in New Orleans French Quarter. In 2003, Lovell relocated from New York City to New Orleans to run the bar, in 2004, the company opened additional corporately owned locations in San Antonio, TX, Austin, TX, Nashville, TN, and a franchised location in Panama City, FL. In 2005, the opened an additional corporately owned location in Denver, CO and another in 2006 in Memphis. In June 2009, the first new Coyote Ugly in three years opened in Oklahoma City, following the Moscow opening, the franchisees in Russia opened in St. Petersberg, Russia in 2010 followed by Kazan, Russia in 2011 and Yekaterinburg, Russia in 2012. In 2014, the company opened their newest bar in San Diego, in 2015, the Coyote Ugly franchisee in Russia opened their fifth location in Sochi. Currently, Coyote Ugly is scheduled to open new bars abroad with recently signed agreements in the UK, Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan is scheduled to open in mid-September,2016 followed by Cardiff, Wales in the UK in early October,2016 and these new openings will bring the number in the chain to 24. The bar reached national prominence in 1997 when former bartender Elizabeth Gilbert wrote of her experiences in an article for GQ magazine, producer Jerry Bruckheimers company bought the rights to the story from Lovell, and he produced the movie Coyote Ugly, based on the article. The film was shot on a set in Los Angeles, with filmed in Manhattan. Coyote Ugly opened in August 2000 with Maria Bello in the role of Lovell and it grossed more than $110 million worldwide. From 2006 to 2008, CMT ran three seasons of The Ultimate Coyote Ugly Search produced by Touchstone Television. The first two seasons saw a group of prospective employees paired with a serving Coyote in the hope of getting a job at the bar, bartop dancing Coyote Ugly Saloon official website
39.
Joyce Cobb
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Joyce Cobb is an American singer specializing in jazz and R&B. She is closely associated with blues and jazz artists, most specifically being in the style and lineage of Memphis Minnie, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday. Joyce Cobb was born on June 2,1945 in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, in 1955 her family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, when her father was hired at Tennessee State University as the head of the Health and physical education department. Her parents owned a record collection of music that was influential on her at a young age. Her first vocal training during that time was at Cathedral of the Incarnation, during grade and high school this mainly consisted of singing requiems and she sang in the girls glee club and choir during that time also, Cobb had 14 years of private piano training. From 1963 to 1967 she attended Central State University and acquired a degree in Social Welfare. Her professional music career started in Dayton, Ohio singing with different blues, while pursuing a masters degree at Wright State University in social work by day, she was singing in clubs at night. She was offered a gig singing in duo with Bill Temme for Ramada Inn hotels. Between 1969 and 1971 Cobb was on Ramada Inns Midwest circuit for entertainment, performing in duo under the title Joyce and William Duo both singing and playing guitars. After two and a half working for the Ramada hotel chain she returned to Nashville in 1971 and worked in a variety of musical genres appearing at Opryland, on radio. She was one of the first acts at Opryland USA in 1972 and was voted Best Performer in 1974 and she became a regular fixture on WSM-AM radios The Waking Crew with Ralph Emery, in addition to the Ralph Emery Show on NBC affiliate WSMV-TV, broadcasting out of Nashville. She also was a regular guest on Teddy Barts The Noon Show and this first country music single was to launch her career, it was the last time she would record in that genre. Due to her success in country music with a promising hit single, in 1976 she was signed with Stax Records. Unfortunately the label was in decline at this time and went out of business shortly after she moved to Memphis, I said, Oh, I want to stay here. Shortly after her move to Memphis Al Bennett acquired Hi Records in 1977, Cream produced a different set of artists than Cobb started with in Nashville, they had a solid reputation making soul, R&B, and disco recordings. With Cream, she first recorded a Top 40 hit single in 1979 with her original tune Dig The Gold and it was distributed in North America under for the Cream label and sold in Europe under the Polydor label. The single showed her versatility as both a performer and writer, a reggae style song that was put to a funk/disco beat, Dig The Gold charted to #42 for Billboard and #10 for Cashbox giving her a first real success as an internationally recognized pop artist. With her reputation growing as a pop singer and writer who could handle a variety of styles
