1.
Bob Cole (composer)
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Robert Allen Bob Cole was an African American composer, actor, playwright, and stage producer and director. In collaboration with Billy Johnson, he wrote and produced A Trip to Coontown, the popular song La Hoola Boola was also a result of their collaboration. Cole later partnered with brothers J. Rosamond Johnson, pianist and singer, and James Weldon Johnson, pianist, guitarist and lawyer and their vaudeville act featured classical piano pieces and their musicals featured sophisticated lyrics without the usual stereotypes such as hot-mamas and watermelons. Success enabled Cole and Rosamond to tour America and Europe with their act, the trios most popular songs were Louisiana Lize and Under the Bamboo Tree. Their more successful musicals were The Shoo-Fly Regiment and The Red Moon, Cole committed suicide by drowning himself in a creek in the Catskills in 1911 after a nervous breakdown and period of clinical depression that worsened in 1910. Cole was the pre‑eminent leader in the world of musical theater. As a composer, and even a performer, Cole influenced the development of musical theater. This reveals the difficulty in tracking early African American icons that, even though quite discretely, however, through the use of Thomas L. Riis’ article, an understanding of Bob Cole’s early life is revealed. The composer originated from Athens, Georgia, where his father and mother settled after the freedom of blacks through the Emancipation Proclamation, the town was significantly more progressive and advanced rapidly in all parts of the community, maybe on par in development with that of white communities. For example, there were a number of preachers in the black community – Athens bore thirteen churches. Robert Cole’s political role may have influenced his son’s own beliefs in the age of social and political distraught, during his involvement in politics, from 1867 to 1873, Robert Cole became a part of the black Athenians and assisted the Georgia State Legislature. In the end, Bob Cole’s father, with his side in the background, became a carpenter, supporting his family. Bob Cole, born on July 1,1868, was the first-born of his family and his family was driven in musicality, where both his parents were square dancers and all the children of the household were educated in certain musical instruments. However, after an amount of time, Bob was reunited with his family after they moved to Atlanta. Situated at Atlanta, Bob was able to attend school and possibly high school, however. Still focused on the world and following his musical inclinations, Cole moved to Florida. He later moved to Chicago where he was able to become basically a comedian of a sort – he told jokes, sung, and played the guitar in various clubs throughout the city. His interest towards vaudeville plays and the black musical genre was originated from his work with his fellow peer, Lew Henry
2.
Carl Van Vechten
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Carl Van Vechten was an American writer and artistic photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance and the literary executor of Gertrude Stein. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he was the youngest child of Charles and he graduated from Washington High School in 1898, and later the University of Chicago in 1903. In 1906, he moved to New York City and he was hired as the assistant music critic at The New York Times. His interest in opera had him take a leave of absence from the paper in 1907, while in England he married his long-time friend from Cedar Rapids, Anna Snyder. He returned to his job at the New York Times in 1909, at that time, Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, and Loie Fuller were performing in New York City. The marriage to Anna Snyder ended in divorce in 1912 and he wed actress Fania Marinoff in 1914 and their marriage lasted until the end of his life, even while his relationships with men were an open secret. They continued corresponding for the remainder of Steins life, and at her death she appointed Van Vechten her literary executor, several books of Van Vechtens essays on various subjects such as music and literature were published between 1915 and 1920. Van Vechtens controversial novel Nigger Heaven was published in 1926 and his essay Negro Blues Singers was published in Vanity Fair in 1926. Biographer Edward White suggests Van Vechten was convinced that Negro culture was the essence of America, by the start of the 1930s and at age 50, Van Vechten was finished with writing and took up photography, using his apartment at 150 West 55th Street as a studio. After the 1930s Van Vechten published little writing, though he continued writing letters to many correspondents, Van Vechten died in 1964, at the age of 84, in New York City. Most of Van Vechtens personal papers are held by the Beinecke Rare Book, the Beinecke Library also holds a collection titled Living Portraits, Carl Van Vechtens Color Photographs Of African Americans, 1939–1964, a collection of 1,884 color Kodachrome slides. The Library of Congress has a collection of approximately 1,400 photographs, there is also a collection of Van Vechtens photographs in the Prentiss Taylor collection in the Smithsonians Archives of American Art, and a Van Vechten collection at Fisk University. The Museum of the City of New Yorks collection includes 2,174 of Carl Van Vechtens photographs, brandeis Universitys department of Archives & Special Collections holds 1,689 Carl Van Vechten portraits. Van Vechten also donated materials to Fisk University to form the George Gershwin Memorial Collection of Music, the album ’O, Write My Name’, American Portraits, Harlem Heroes was completed in 1983. That year, the National Endowment for the Arts transferred the Eakins Press Foundation’s prototype albums to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, dust Tracks on a Road, An Autobiography. Guide to the Carl Van Vechten papers, 1833–1965, manuscripts and Archives, New York Public Library. Carl Van Vechten collection of papers, 1911–1964, berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library
3.
Harlem Renaissance
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The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s. During the time, it was known as the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance was considered to be a rebirth of African-American arts. The Harlem Renaissance is generally considered to have spanned from about 1918 until the mid-1930s, many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this flowering of Negro literature, as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, until the end of the Civil War, the majority of African Americans had been enslaved and lived in the South. During the Reconstruction Era, the emancipated African Americans, freedmen, began to strive for civic participation, political equality and economic, soon after the end of the Civil War the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 gave rise to speeches by African-American Congressmen addressing this Bill. By 1875 sixteen blacks had been elected and served in Congress, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was denounced by black Congressmen and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, part of Reconstruction legislation by Republicans. By the late 1870s, Democratic whites managed to power in the South. From 1890 to 1908 they proceeded to pass legislation that disenfranchised most Negros and many poor whites and they established white supremacist regimes of Jim Crow segregation in the South and one-party block voting behind southern Democrats. Convict laborers were typically subject to forms of corporal punishment, overwork. While a small number of blacks were able to land shortly after the Civil War. As life in the South became increasingly difficult, African Americans began to migrate north in great numbers, most of the African-American literary movement arose from a generation that had memories of the gains and losses of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Sometimes their parents or grandparents had been slaves and their ancestors had sometimes benefited by paternal investment in cultural capital, including better-than-average education. Many in the Harlem Renaissance were part of the early 20th century Great Migration out of the South into the Negro neighborhoods of the North, African Americans sought a better standard of living and relief from the institutionalized racism in the South. Others were people of African descent from racially stratified communities in the Caribbean who came to the United States hoping for a better life, uniting most of them was their convergence in Harlem. During the enormous influx of European immigrants in the late 19th century, the once exclusive district was abandoned by the middle class. Harlem became an African-American neighborhood in the early 1900s, in 1910, a large block along 135th Street and Fifth Avenue was bought by various African-American realtors and a church group. Many more African Americans arrived during the First World War, due to the war, the migration of laborers from Europe virtually ceased, while the war effort resulted in a massive demand for unskilled industrial labor. The Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of African Americans to cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, despite the increasing popularity of Negro culture, virulent white racism, often by more recent ethnic immigrants, continued to affect African-American communities, even in the North
4.
James Weldon Johnson
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James Weldon Johnson was an American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Johnson is best remembered for his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in 1920 he was the first African American to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930, Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture. He was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as US consul in Venezuela, in 1934 he was the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of literature and writing at Fisk University. Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Helen Louise Dillet, a native of Nassau, Bahamas, although originally headed to Cuba, their boat was intercepted by privateers and they were taken to Nassau, Bahamas, where they permanently settled. In 1833 Stephen Dillet became the first man of color to win election to the Bahamian legislature, jamess brother was John Rosamond Johnson, who became a composer. The boys were first educated by their mother, a musician and their mother imparted to them her great love and knowledge of English literature and the European tradition in music. At the age of 16, Johnson enrolled at Clark Atlanta University, in addition to his studies for the bachelors degree, he also completed some graduate coursework. Molded by the education for which Atlanta University was best known. He knew he was expected to devote himself to helping black people advance, Johnson was a prominent member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. Johnson and his brother Rosamond moved to New York City as young men and they collaborated on songwriting and achieved some success on Broadway in the early 1900s. Over the next 40 years Johnson served in several capacities, working in education, the diplomatic corps. In 1904 he participated in Theodore Roosevelts successful presidential campaign, after becoming president, Roosevelt appointed Johnson as United States consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela from 1906 to 1908, and to Nicaragua from 1909 to 1913. In 1910, Johnson married Grace Nail, whom he had met in New York City several years earlier while working as a songwriter, a cultured and well-educated New Yorker, Grace Nail Johnson later collaborated with her husband on a screenwriting project. After their return to New York from Nicaragua, Johnson became increasingly involved in the Harlem Renaissance and he wrote his own poetry and supported work by others, also compiling and publishing anthologies of spirituals and poetry. Owing to his influence and his poetry, Johnson became a leading voice in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He became involved in civil rights activism, especially the campaign to pass legislation against lynching
5.
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
6.
Saint-Domingue
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Saint-Domingue was a French colony on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola from 1659 to 1804. The French had established themselves on the portion of the islands of Hispaniola. In the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697, Spain formally recognized French control of Tortuga island, in 1791, the slaves and some free people of color of Saint-Domingue began waging a rebellion against French authority. The rebels became reconciled to French rule following the abolition of slavery in the colony in 1793, France controlled the entirety of Hispaniola from 1795 to 1802, when a renewed rebellion began. The last French troops withdrew from the portion of the island in late 1803, and the colony later declared its independence as Haiti, its indigenous name. Spain controlled the island of Hispaniola from the 1490s until the 17th century. The official name was La Española, meaning The Spanish and it was also called Santo Domingo or San Domingo, after Saint Dominic. Spain later ceded the western coast of the island to France, retaining the rest of the island, including the Guava Valley. The French called their portion of Hispaniola Saint-Domingue, the French equivalent of Santo Domingo, the Spanish colony on Hispaniola remained separate, and eventually became the Dominican Republic, the capital of which is still named Santo Domingo. By the early 17th century, the island and its neighbors, notably Tortuga. In 1606, the king of Spain ordered all inhabitants of Hispaniola to move close to Santo Domingo, rather than secure the island, however, this resulted in French, English and Dutch pirates establishing bases on the now-abandoned north and west coasts of the island. French buccaneers established a settlement on the island of Tortuga in 1625 before going to Grande Terre, at first they survived by pirating Spanish ships, eating wild cattle and hogs, and selling hides to traders of all nations. The settlement on Tortuga was officially established in 1659 under the commission of King Louis XIV, in 1665, French colonization of the islands Hispaniola and Tortuga entailed slavery-based plantation agricultural activity such as growing coffee and cattle farming. It was officially recognized by King Louis XIV, the economy of Saint-Domingue became focused on slave-based agricultural plantations. They followed the example of neighboring Caribbean colonies in coercive treatment of the slaves, more cattle, and slave agricultural holdings, coffee plantations and spice plantations were implemented, as well as fishing, cultivation of cocoa, coconuts and snuff. Saint-Domingue quickly came to overshadow the previous colony in both wealth and population, thus, the income and the taxes from slave-based sugar production became a major source of the French budget. Among the first buccaneers was Bertrand DOgeron, who played a big part in the settlement of Saint-Domingue and he encouraged the planting of tobacco, which turned a population of buccaneers and freebooters, who had not acquiesced to royal authority until 1660, into a sedentary population. But in 1670, shortly after Cap-Français had been established, the crisis of tobacco intervened, the first sugar windmill was built in 1685
7.
Haiti
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Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti and formerly called Hayti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican Republic, the region was originally inhabited by the indigenous Taíno people. Spain discovered the island on 5 December 1492 during the first voyage of Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic, when Columbus initially landed in Haiti, he had thought he had found India or Asia. On Christmas Day 1492, Columbus flagship the Santa Maria ran aground north of what is now Limonade, the island was named La Española and claimed by Spain, which ruled until the early 17th century. Competing claims and settlements by the French led to the portion of the island being ceded to France. The development of plantations, worked by slaves brought from Africa. Upon his death in a prison in France, he was succeeded by his lieutenant, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the Haitian Revolution lasted just over a dozen years, and apart from Alexandre Pétion, the first President of the Republic, all the first leaders of government were former slaves. The Citadelle Laferrière is the largest fortress in the Americas, Henri Christophe – former slave and first king of Haiti, Henri I – built it to withstand a possible foreign attack. It has the lowest Human Development Index in the Americas, most recently, in February 2004, a coup détat originating in the north of the country forced the resignation and exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. A provisional government took control with security provided by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, the name Haïti comes from the indigenous Taíno language which was the native name given to the entire island of Hispaniola to mean, land of high mountains. The h is silent in French and the ï in Haïti, is a mark used to show that the second vowel is pronounced separately. In English, this rule for the pronunciation is often disregarded, the name Haïti was restored by Haitian revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines as the official name of independent Saint-Domingue, as a tribute to the Amerindian predecessors. The Taíno name for the island was Haiti. The people had migrated over centuries into the Caribbean islands from South America, genetic studies show they were related to the Yanomami of the Amazon Basin. They also originated in Central and South America, after migrating to Caribbean islands, in the 15th century, the Taíno were pushed into the northeast Caribbean islands by the Caribs. In the Taíno societies of the Caribbean islands, the largest unit of organization was led by a cacique, or chief. The caciquedoms were tributary kingdoms, with payment consisting of harvests, Taíno cultural artifacts include cave paintings in several locations in the country. These have become symbols of Haiti and tourist attractions
8.
New England Conservatory of Music
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NEC is especially known for its strings, woodwinds, and brass departments, and its prestigious chamber music program. At the collegiate level, NEC offers the Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts, as well as the Undergraduate Diploma, Graduate Diploma, also offered are five-year joint double-degree programs with Harvard University and Tufts University. NEC is the music school in the United States designated as a National Historic Landmark. Its primary concert hall, Jordan Hall, hosts approximately 600 concerts each year, in June 1853, Eben Tourjée, at the time a nineteen-year-old music teacher from Providence, Rhode Island, made his first attempt to found a music conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts. He met with a group of Bostons most influential leaders to discuss a school based on the conservatories of Europe. The group included John Sullivan Dwight, a music critic, Dr. J. Baxter Upham, president of the Harvard Musical Association, and Oliver Ditson. Tourjée made his attempt in December 1866, when he again met with a group of Bostons top musicians. Among Upham, Ditson, and Dwight at this meeting were Carl Zerrahn, a popular Boston conductor, and Charles Perkins, in the thirteen-year interim, Tourjee had founded three music schools in Rhode Island, and this time was able to win over his audience. The men agreed to help Tourjee, and The New England Conservatory officially opened on February 18,1867 and it consisted of seven rooms rented above Music Hall off Tremont Street in downtown Boston. In 1870 it moved to the former St. James Hotel in Franklin Square in the South End, the NEC campus consists of three buildings on both sides of Gainsborough Street, between St. Botolph Street and Huntington Avenue, one block from Symphony Hall. The second building, at 33 Gainsborough, is the Residence Hall, a dormitory which also houses the Harriet M. Spaulding Library. The St. Botolph Building, at 241 St. Botolph street, contains Pierce Hall, a laboratory, the electronic music studio. Jordan Hall is NECs central performing space, opened in 1903, Jordan Hall was the gift of New England Conservatory trustee Eben D. Jordan the 2nd, a member of the family that founded the Jordan Marsh retail stores and himself an amateur musician. In 1901, Jordan donated land for NECs main building, while offering to fund a concert hall with a gift of $120,000. The dedication concert of Jordan Hall, performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a major renovation project was completed in 1995. Admission to NEC is based primarily on a live audition. The conservatory offers degrees in orchestral instruments, conducting, piano, jazz studies, contemporary improvisation, opera and voice, composition, music history, New England Conservatorys Preparatory School is an open-enrollment institution for pre-college students. The preparatory school offers classes and private instruction for young musicians
9.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
