1.
Carl Van Vechten
–
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
2.
Harlem Renaissance
–
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
3.
James Weldon Johnson
–
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
4.
NAACP
–
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
5.
Haiti
–
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
6.
New England Conservatory of Music
–
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
7.
London
–
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
8.
Broadway theatre
–
Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would later revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
9.
Operetta
–
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. By this time, the part of the genre name had become misleading. With this new connotation, opéra comique had dominated the French operatic stage since the decline of tragédie lyrique, most researchers acknowledge that the credit for creating the operetta form should go to Hervé, a singer, composer, librettist, conductor, and scene painter. In 1842 he wrote the little opérette, LOurs et le pacha, based on the vaudeville show by Scribe. In 1848, Hervé made his first notable appearance on the Parisian stage, with Don Quichotte et Sancho Pança, hervés most famous works are the Gounod-parody Le Petit Faust and Mamzelle Nitouche. Jacques Offenbach further developed and popularized operetta, giving it its enormous vogue during the Second Empire, Offenbachs earliest one-act pieces included Les deux aveugles, Le violoneux and Ba-ta-clan, and his first full-length operetta success was Orphée aux enfers. Offenbachs tradition was carried on by Robert Planquette, André Messager. What characterizes Offenbachs operettas is both the way they portray life, and the extremely frivolous way this is done. The character was modeled after Offenbachs female star Hortense Schneider. Considering how Zolas Nana describes an Offenbach-style operetta performance in Paris, it is not surprising that the mostly male, upper-class audiences in other cities like Vienna and Berlin longed to see these shows in their home towns as well, which inspired worldwide performance of Offenbachs works. The highly erotic way Offenbachs operettas were originally played, with stars like Hortense Schneider created a reaction from certain parts of the general public. Operetta was considered an art form. Indeed, together with its grotesque qualities, frivolity is one of the elements of authentic operetta à la Offenbach. It was only later, when audiences widened and became more middle and lower class, the most significant composer of operetta in the German language was the Austrian Johann Strauss II. His first operetta was Indigo und die vierzig Räuber and his third operetta, Die Fledermaus, became the most performed operetta in the world, and remains his most popular stage work. Its libretto was based on a written by Offenbachs librettists. In all, Strauss wrote 16 operettas and one opera, most with great success when first premiered, many of his lesser operettas are now largely forgotten, since his later librettists were less talented and he often composed independently of the plot. Strausss operettas, waltzes, polkas, and marches often have a strongly Viennese style, the Theater an der Wien never failed to draw huge crowds when his stage works were first performed
10.
Mohawk people
–
The Mohawk people are the most easterly tribe of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois Confederacy. They are an Iroquoian-speaking indigenous people of North America, the Mohawk were historically based in the Mohawk Valley in present-day upstate New York west of the Hudson River, their territory ranged north to the St. As one of the five members of the Iroquois League. For hundreds of years, they guarded the Iroquois Confederation against invasion from that direction by tribes from the New England and their current major settlements include areas around Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence River in Canada and New York. In the Mohawk language, the say that they are from Kanienkehá. The Mohawk became wealthy traders as other nations in their confederacy needed their flint for tool making and their Algonquian-speaking neighbors, the people of Muh-heck Haeek Ing, a name transliterated by the Dutch as Mohican or Mahican, referred to the People of Ka-nee-en Ka as Maw Unk Lin. The Dutch heard and wrote this term as Mohawk, and also referred to the Mohawk as Egil or Maqua, the French colonists adapted these latter terms as Aignier and Maqui, respectively. They also referred to the people by the generic Iroquois, a French derivation of the Algonquian term for the Five Nations, the Algonquians and Iroquois were traditional competitors and enemies. The Mohawk had extended their own influence into the St. Lawrence River Valley and they are believed to have defeated the St. Lawrence Iroquoians in the 16th century, and kept control of their territory. In addition to hunting and fishing, for centuries the Mohawk cultivated productive maize fields on the floodplains along the Mohawk River. The Dutch were primarily merchants and the French also conducted fur trading and their Jesuit missionaries were active among First Nations and Native Americans, seeking converts to Catholicism. In 1614, the Dutch opened a trading post at Fort Nassau, the Dutch initially traded for furs with the local Mahican, who occupied the territory along the Hudson River. European contact resulted in a smallpox epidemic among the Mohawk in 1635. For instance, Johannes Megapolensis, a Dutch minister, recorded the spelling of the three villages as Asserué, Banagiro, and Thenondiogo. While the Dutch later established settlements in present-day Schenectady and Schoharie, further west in the Mohawk Valley, Schenectady was established essentially as a farming settlement, where Dutch took over some of the former Mohawk maize fields in the floodplain along the river. Through trading, the Mohawk and Dutch became allies of a kind, during their alliance, the Mohawks allowed Dutch Protestant missionary Johannes Megapolensis to come into their tribe and teach the Christian message. He operated from the Fort Nassau area about six years, writing a record in 1644 of his observations of the Mohawk, their language, and their culture. While he noted their ritual of torture of captives, he recognized that their society had few other killings, especially compared to the Netherlands of that period
11.
George Gershwin
–
George Jacob Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwins compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known, among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris as well as the opera Porgy and Bess. Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell and he began his career as a song plugger, but soon started composing Broadway theatre works with his brother Ira Gershwin, and Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, who refused him, after returning to New York City, he wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and the author DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess is now considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century, Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores until his death in 1937 from a malignant brain tumor – glioblastoma multiforme. Gershwins compositions have been adapted for use in films and for television. Many celebrated singers and musicians have covered his songs, Gershwin was of Russian Jewish and Ukrainian Jewish ancestry. His grandfather, Jakov Gershowitz, had served for 25 years as a mechanic for the Imperial Russian Army to earn the right of travel and residence as a Jew. His teenage son, Moishe Gershowitz, worked as a cutter for womens shoes. Moishe Gershowitz met and fell in love with Roza Bruskina, the daughter of a furrier in Vilnius. She and her family moved to New York due to increasing anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia, Moishe, faced with compulsory military service if he remained in Russia, moved to America as soon as he could afford to. Once in New York, he changed his first name to Morris, Gershowitz lived with a maternal uncle in Brooklyn, working as a foreman in a womens shoe factory. When he married Rose on July 21,1895, Gershowitz soon Americanized his name to Gershwine. Their first child was born on December 6,1896, Gershwin then moved his family into a second-floor apartment on Brooklyns Snediker Avenue. Their second son, soon to be renamed George, was born at there on September 26,1898 and his birth certificate identifies him as Jacob Gershwine, with the surname pronounced Gersh-vin in the Russian and Yiddish immigrant community. He was named after his grandfather, the one time Russian army mechanic, American practice by then was to give children a first and a middle name, but had no other. He changed the spelling of his name to Gershwin when he became a professional musician, George and Ira lived in many different residences, as their father changed dwellings with each new enterprise which he became involved in. Mostly, the boys grew up around the Yiddish Theater District and they frequented the local Yiddish theaters, with George occasionally appearing onstage as an extra
12.
The New York Times
–
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since September 18,1851, by The New York Times Company. The New York Times has won 119 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper, the papers print version in 2013 had the second-largest circulation, behind The Wall Street Journal, and the largest circulation among the metropolitan newspapers in the US. The New York Times is ranked 18th in the world by circulation, following industry trends, its weekday circulation had fallen in 2009 to fewer than one million. Nicknamed The Gray Lady, The New York Times has long been regarded within the industry as a newspaper of record. The New York Times international version, formerly the International Herald Tribune, is now called the New York Times International Edition, the papers motto, All the News Thats Fit to Print, appears in the upper left-hand corner of the front page. On Sunday, The New York Times is supplemented by the Sunday Review, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times Magazine and T, some other early investors of the company were Edwin B. Morgan and Edward B. We do not believe that everything in Society is either right or exactly wrong, —what is good we desire to preserve and improve, —what is evil, to exterminate. In 1852, the started a western division, The Times of California that arrived whenever a mail boat got to California. However, when local California newspapers came into prominence, the effort failed, the newspaper shortened its name to The New-York Times in 1857. It dropped the hyphen in the city name in the 1890s, One of the earliest public controversies it was involved with was the Mortara Affair, the subject of twenty editorials it published alone. At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, in 1869, Raymond died, and George Jones took over as publisher. Tweed offered The New York Times five million dollars to not publish the story, in the 1880s, The New York Times transitioned gradually from editorially supporting Republican Party candidates to becoming more politically independent and analytical. In 1884, the paper supported Democrat Grover Cleveland in his first presidential campaign, while this move cost The New York Times readership among its more progressive and Republican readers, the paper eventually regained most of its lost ground within a few years. However, the newspaper was financially crippled by the Panic of 1893, the paper slowly acquired a reputation for even-handedness and accurate modern reporting, especially by the 1890s under the guidance of Ochs. Under Ochs guidance, continuing and expanding upon the Henry Raymond tradition, The New York Times achieved international scope, circulation, in 1910, the first air delivery of The New York Times to Philadelphia began. The New York Times first trans-Atlantic delivery by air to London occurred in 1919 by dirigible, airplane Edition was sent by plane to Chicago so it could be in the hands of Republican convention delegates by evening. In the 1940s, the extended its breadth and reach. The crossword began appearing regularly in 1942, and the section in 1946
