1.
Richmond, Virginia
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Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond Region and it was incorporated in 1742, and has been an independent city since 1871. As of the 2010 census, the population was 204,214, in 2015, the population was estimated to be 220,289, the Richmond Metropolitan Area has a population of 1,260,029, the third-most populous metro in the state. Richmond is located at the line of the James River,44 miles west of Williamsburg,66 miles east of Charlottesville. Surrounded by Henrico and Chesterfield counties, the city is located at the intersections of Interstate 95 and Interstate 64, Major suburbs include Midlothian to the southwest, Glen Allen to the north and west, Short Pump to the west and Mechanicsville to the northeast. The site of Richmond had been an important village of the Powhatan Confederacy, and was settled by English colonists from Jamestown in 1609. The present city of Richmond was founded in 1737 and it became the capital of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia in 1780. During the American Civil War, Richmond served as the capital of the Confederate States of America, the city entered the 20th century with one of the worlds first successful electric streetcar systems. The Jackson Ward neighborhood is a hub of African-American commerce. Richmonds economy is driven by law, finance, and government, with federal, state. Dominion Resources and MeadWestvaco, Fortune 500 companies, are headquartered in the city, in 1737, planter William Byrd II commissioned Major William Mayo to lay out the original town grid. The settlement was laid out in April 1737, and was incorporated as a town in 1742, Richmond recovered quickly from the war, and by 1782 was once again a thriving city. A permanent home for the new government, the Virginia State Capitol building, was designed by Thomas Jefferson with the assistance of Charles-Louis Clérisseau, after the American Revolutionary War, Richmond emerged as an important industrial center. The legacy of the canal boatmen is represented by the figure in the center of the city flag, on April 17,1861, five days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the legislature voted to secede from the United States and joined the Confederacy. Official action came in May, after the Confederacy promised to move its capital to Richmond. It became the target of Union armies, especially in the campaigns of 1862. The Seven Days Battles followed in late June and early July 1862, during which Union General McClellan threatened to take Richmond, three years later, as March 1865 ended, the Confederate capitol became indefensible. On March 25, Confederate General John B, gordons desperate attack on Fort Stedman east of Petersburg failed
2.
Virginia
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Virginia is a state located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, as well as in the historic Southeast. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, the capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond, Virginia Beach is the most populous city, and Fairfax County is the most populous political subdivision. The Commonwealths estimated population as of 2014 is over 8.3 million, the areas history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607 the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent New World English colony, slave labor and the land acquired from displaced Native American tribes each played a significant role in the colonys early politics and plantation economy. Although the Commonwealth was under one-party rule for nearly a century following Reconstruction, the Virginia General Assembly is the oldest continuous law-making body in the New World. The state government was ranked most effective by the Pew Center on the States in both 2005 and 2008 and it is unique in how it treats cities and counties equally, manages local roads, and prohibits its governors from serving consecutive terms. Virginias economy changed from agricultural to industrial during the 1960s and 1970s. Virginia has an area of 42,774.2 square miles, including 3,180.13 square miles of water. Virginias boundary with Maryland and Washington, D. C. extends to the mark of the south shore of the Potomac River. The southern border is defined as the 36° 30′ parallel north, the border with Tennessee was not settled until 1893, when their dispute was brought to the U. S. Supreme Court. The Chesapeake Bay separates the portion of the Commonwealth from the two-county peninsula of Virginias Eastern Shore. The bay was formed from the river valleys of the Susquehanna River. Many of Virginias rivers flow into the Chesapeake Bay, including the Potomac, Rappahannock, York, and James, the Tidewater is a coastal plain between the Atlantic coast and the fall line. It includes the Eastern Shore and major estuaries of Chesapeake Bay, the Piedmont is a series of sedimentary and igneous rock-based foothills east of the mountains which were formed in the Mesozoic era. The region, known for its clay soil, includes the Southwest Mountains around Charlottesville. The Blue Ridge Mountains are a province of the Appalachian Mountains with the highest points in the state. The Ridge and Valley region is west of the mountains and includes the Great Appalachian Valley, the region is carbonate rock based and includes Massanutten Mountain. The Cumberland Plateau and the Cumberland Mountains are in the southwest corner of Virginia, in this region, rivers flow northwest, with a dendritic drainage system, into the Ohio River basin
3.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
4.
Grey
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Grey or gray is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is a color without color and this means that there are equal components of red, green, and blue. The variations in intensity of these colors uniformly produce different shades of grey and it is the color of a cloud-covered sky, of ash and of lead. The first recorded use of grey as a name in the English language was in AD700. Grey is the dominant spelling in European and Commonwealth English, although remained in common usage in the UK until the second half of the 20th century. Gray has been the preferred American spelling since approximately 1825, although grey is an accepted variant, in Europe and the United States, surveys show that grey is the color most commonly associated with neutrality, conformity, boredom, uncertainty, old age, indifference, and modesty. Only one percent of respondents chose it as their favorite color, Grey comes from the Middle English grai or grei, from the Anglo-Saxon graeg, and is related to the Dutch grauw and grijs and German grau. The first recorded use of grey as a name in the English language was in AD700. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, grey was the color of undyed wool, and thus was the color most commonly worn by peasants and the poor. It was also the color worn by monks of the Franciscan order, Cistercian Order, Franciscan monks in England and Scotland were commonly known as the Grey friars, and that name is now attached to many places in Great Britain. During the Renaissance and the Baroque, grey began to play an important role in fashion, Black became the most popular color of the nobility, particularly in Italy, France, and Spain, and grey and white were harmonious with it. Grey was also used for the drawing of oil paintings. The painting would first be composed in grey and white, and then the colors, made with thin transparent glazes, the grisaille beneath would provide the shading, visible through the layers of color. Sometimes the grisaille was simply left uncovered, giving the appearance of carved stone, Grey was a particularly good background color for gold and for skin tones. It became the most common background for the portraits of Rembrandt Van Rijn and for many of the paintings of El Greco, the palette of Rembrandt was composed almost entirely of somber colors. Over this he put a layer of glaze made of mixture of blue smalt, red ochre. Using these ingredients and many others, he made greys which had, according to art historian Philip Ball, the warm, dark and rich greys and browns served to emphasize the golden light on the faces in the paintings. Grey became a fashionable color in the 18th century, both for womens dresses and for mens waistcoats and coats
5.
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
6.
American Civil War
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The American Civil War was an internal conflict fought in the United States from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America, the Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U. S. history. Among the 34 U. S. states in February 1861, War broke out in April 1861 when Confederates attacked the U. S. fortress of Fort Sumter. The Confederacy grew to eleven states, it claimed two more states, the Indian Territory, and the southern portions of the western territories of Arizona. The Confederacy was never recognized by the United States government nor by any foreign country. The states that remained loyal, including border states where slavery was legal, were known as the Union or the North, the war ended with the surrender of all the Confederate armies and the dissolution of the Confederate government in the spring of 1865. The war had its origin in the issue of slavery. The Confederacy collapsed and 4 million slaves were freed, but before his inauguration, seven slave states with cotton-based economies formed the Confederacy. The first six to declare secession had the highest proportions of slaves in their populations, the first seven with state legislatures to resolve for secession included split majorities for unionists Douglas and Bell in Georgia with 51% and Louisiana with 55%. Alabama had voted 46% for those unionists, Mississippi with 40%, Florida with 38%, Texas with 25%, of these, only Texas held a referendum on secession. Eight remaining slave states continued to reject calls for secession, outgoing Democratic President James Buchanan and the incoming Republicans rejected secession as illegal. Lincolns March 4,1861 inaugural address declared that his administration would not initiate a civil war, speaking directly to the Southern States, he reaffirmed, I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. After Confederate forces seized numerous federal forts within territory claimed by the Confederacy, efforts at compromise failed, the Confederates assumed that European countries were so dependent on King Cotton that they would intervene, but none did, and none recognized the new Confederate States of America. Hostilities began on April 12,1861, when Confederate forces fired upon Fort Sumter, while in the Western Theater the Union made significant permanent gains, in the Eastern Theater, the battle was inconclusive in 1861–62. The autumn 1862 Confederate campaigns into Maryland and Kentucky failed, dissuading British intervention, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which made ending slavery a war goal. To the west, by summer 1862 the Union destroyed the Confederate river navy, then much of their western armies, the 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River. In 1863, Robert E. Lees Confederate incursion north ended at the Battle of Gettysburg, Western successes led to Ulysses S. Grants command of all Union armies in 1864
7.
Christian
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A Christian is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Christian derives from the Koine Greek word Christós, a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mashiach, while there are diverse interpretations of Christianity which sometimes conflict, they are united in believing that Jesus has a unique significance. The term Christian is also used as an adjective to describe anything associated with Christianity, or in a sense all that is noble, and good. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there were 2.2 billion Christians around the world in 2010, by 2050, the Christian population is expected to exceed 3 billion. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey Christianity will remain the worlds largest religion in 2050, about half of all Christians worldwide are Catholic, while more than a third are Protestant. Orthodox communions comprise 12% of the worlds Christians, other Christian groups make up the remainder. Christians make up the majority of the population in 158 countries and territories,280 million Christian live as a minority. In the Greek Septuagint, christos was used to translate the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ, in other European languages, equivalent words to Christian are likewise derived from the Greek, such as Chrétien in French and Cristiano in Spanish. The second mention of the term follows in Acts 26,28, where Herod Agrippa II replied to Paul the Apostle, Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. The third and final New Testament reference to the term is in 1 Peter 4,16, which believers, Yet if as a Christian, let him not be ashamed. The city of Antioch, where someone gave them the name Christians, had a reputation for coming up with such nicknames, in the Annals he relates that by vulgar appellation commonly called Christians and identifies Christians as Neros scapegoats for the Great Fire of Rome. Another term for Christians which appears in the New Testament is Nazarenes which is used by the Jewish lawyer Tertullus in Acts 24, the Hebrew equivalent of Nazarenes, Notzrim, occurs in the Babylonian Talmud, and is still the modern Israeli Hebrew term for Christian. A wide range of beliefs and practices is found across the world among those who call themselves Christian, denominations and sects disagree on a common definition of Christianity. Most Baptists and fundamentalists, for example, would not acknowledge Mormonism or Christian Science as Christian, in fact, the nearly 77 percent of Americans who self-identify as Christian are a diverse pluribus of Christianities that are far from any collective unity. The identification of Jesus as the Messiah is not accepted by Judaism, the term for a Christian in Hebrew is נוּצְרי, a Talmudic term originally derived from the fact that Jesus came from the Galilean village of Nazareth, today in northern Israel. Adherents of Messianic Judaism are referred to in modern Hebrew as יְהוּדִים מָשִׁיחַיים, the term Nasara rose to prominence in July 2014, after the Fall of Mosul to the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The nun or ن— the first letter of Nasara—was spray-painted on the property of Christians ejected from the city, where there is a distinction, Nasrani refers to people from a Christian culture and Masihi is used by Christians themselves for those with a religious faith in Jesus. In some countries Nasrani tends to be used generically for non-Muslim Western foreigners, another Arabic word sometimes used for Christians, particularly in a political context, is Ṣalībī from ṣalīb which refers to Crusaders and has negative connotations
8.
African Americans
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African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American, Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 73. 2–80. 9% West African, 18–24% European, according to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities, immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come. The first recorded Africans in British North America were 20 and odd negroes who came to Jamestown, as English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Typically, young men or women would sign a contract of indenture in exchange for transportation to the New World, the landowner received 50 acres of land from the state for each servant purchased from a ships captain. An indentured servant would work for years without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery, servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom and they raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of slavery when they sentenced John Punch. One of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black slaves, John Casor
9.
Brown University
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Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges established before the American Revolution. At its foundation, Brown was the first college in the United States to accept students regardless of their religious affiliation and its engineering program was established in 1847 and was the first in the Ivy League. It was one of the early doctoral-granting U. S. institutions in the late 19th century, adding master, Browns New Curriculum is sometimes referred to in education theory as the Brown Curriculum and was adopted by faculty vote in 1969 after a period of student lobbying. In 1971, Browns coordinate womens institution Pembroke College was fully merged into the university, Pembroke Campus now operates as a place for dorms and classrooms. Undergraduate admissions is very selective, with a rate of 8.3 percent for the class of 2021. The University comprises The College, the Graduate School, Alpert Medical School, the School of Engineering, the School of Public Health, and the School of Professional Studies. The Brown/RISD Dual Degree Program, offered in conjunction with the Rhode Island School of Design, is a course that awards degrees from both institutions. Browns main campus is located in the College Hill Historic District in the city of Providence, the Universitys neighborhood is a federally listed architectural district with a dense concentration of Colonial-era buildings. On the western edge of the campus, Benefit Street contains one of the finest cohesive collections of restored seventeenth-, Browns faculty and alumni include eight Nobel Prize laureates, five National Humanities Medalists, and ten National Medal of Science laureates. Other notable alumni include eight billionaire graduates, a U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, to erect a public Building or Buildings for the boarding of the youth & the Residence of the Professors. Stiles and Ellery were co-authors of the Charter of the College two years later, there is further documentary evidence that Stiles was making plans for a college in 1762. On January 20, Chauncey Whittelsey, pastor of the First Church of New Haven, answered a letter from Stiles, should you make any Progress in the Affair of a Colledge, I should be glad to hear of it, I heartily wish you Success therein. Isaac Backus was the historian of the New England Baptists and an inaugural Trustee of Brown, Mr. James Manning, who took his first degree in New-Jersey college in September,1762, was esteemed a suitable leader in this important work. Manning arrived at Newport in July 1763 and was introduced to Stiles, stiless first draft was read to the General Assembly in August 1763 and rejected by Baptist members who worried that the College Board of Fellows would under-represent the Baptists. A revised Charter written by Stiles and Ellery was adopted by the Assembly on March 3,1764, in September 1764, the inaugural meeting of the College Corporation was held at Newport. Governor Stephen Hopkins was chosen chancellor, former and future governor Samuel Ward was vice chancellor, John Tillinghast treasurer, the Charter stipulated that the Board of Trustees be composed of 22 Baptists, five Quakers, five Episcopalians, and four Congregationalists. Of the 12 Fellows, eight should be Baptists—including the College president—and the rest indifferently of any or all Denominations, the Charter was not the grant of King George III, as is sometimes supposed, but rather an Act of the colonial General Assembly. In two particulars, the Charter may be said to be a uniquely progressive document, the oft-repeated statement is inaccurate that Browns Charter alone prohibited a religious test for College membership, other college charters were also liberal in that particular
10.
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
11.
West Virginia
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West Virginia /ˌwɛst vərˈdʒɪnjə/ is a state located in the Appalachian region of the Southern United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the north, West Virginia is the 9th smallest by area, is ranked 38th in population, and has the second lowest household income of the 50 United States. The capital and largest city is Charleston, West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20,1863, and was a key Civil War border state. The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States, the unique position of West Virginia means that it is often included in several geographical regions, including the Mid-Atlantic, the Upland South, and the Southeastern United States. It is the state that is entirely within the area served by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The state is noted for its mountains and rolling hills, its historically significant logging and coal mining industries and it is one of the most densely karstic areas in the world, making it a choice area for recreational caving and scientific research. The karst lands contribute to much of the states cool trout waters and it is also known for a wide range of outdoor recreational opportunities, including skiing, whitewater rafting, fishing, hiking, backpacking, mountain biking, and hunting. Many ancient man-made earthen mounds from various mound builder cultures survive, especially in the areas of Moundsville, South Charleston. The artifacts uncovered in these give evidence of village societies and they had a tribal trade system culture that crafted cold-worked copper pieces. The Iroquois drove out other American Indian tribes from the region to reserve the upper Ohio Valley as a ground in the 1670s. Siouan language tribes such as the Moneton had also recorded in the area previously. West Virginia was originally part of the British Virginia Colony from 1607 to 1776, residents of the western and northern counties set up a separate government under Francis Pierpont in 1861, which they called the restored government. Most voted to separate from Virginia and the new state was admitted to the Union in 1863, in 1864 a state constitutional convention drafted a constitution, which was ratified by the legislature without putting it to popular vote. West Virginia abolished slavery and temporarily disfranchised men who had held Confederate office or fought for the Confederacy, West Virginias history has been profoundly affected by its mountainous terrain, numerous and vast river valleys, and rich natural resources. These were all factors driving its economy and the lifestyles of its residents, a 2010 analysis of a local stalagmite revealed that Native Americans were burning forests to clear land as early as 100 BC. Some regional late-prehistoric Eastern Woodland tribes were involved in hunting and fishing, practicing the slash. Another group progressed to the more time-consuming, advanced companion crop fields method of gardening, also continuing from ancient indigenous people of the state, field space and time was given to tobacco growing through to early historic. Maize did not make a contribution to the diet until after 1150 BP
12.
Alpha Phi Alpha
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Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. is the first African-American, intercollegiate Greek-lettered fraternity. It was initially a literary and social club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University, in Ithaca. The group later evolved into a fraternity with a date of December 4,1906. It employs an icon from Ancient Egypt, the Great Sphinx of Giza and its aims are Manly deeds, Scholarship, and Love For All Mankind, and its motto is First of All, Servants of All, We Shall Transcend All. Its archives are preserved at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, chapters were chartered at Howard University and Virginia Union University in 1907. The fraternity has over 290,000 members and has open to men of all races since 1940. Currently, there are more than 730 active chapters in the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, Alpha Phi Alpha is a social organization with a service organization mission and provided leadership and service during the Great Depression, World Wars, and Civil Rights Movement. The fraternity addresses social issues such as apartheid, AIDS, urban housing, and other economic, cultural, and political issues of interest to people of color. National Programs and Initiatives of the Fraternity include A Voteless People Is a Hopeless People, My Brothers Keeper, Go To High School, Go To College, Project Alpha, and the World Policy Council. It also conducts philanthropic programming initiatives with the March of Dimes, Head Start, the Boy Scouts of America, members of this prestigious Fraternity include many Historical Civil Rights Leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. NAACP Founder W. E. B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, and Dick Gregory, Alpha Phi Alpha was directly responsible for the conception, funding, and construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial next to the National Mall in Washington D. C. Poindexter organized a group of students for literary discussion and social functions at Cornell University, the group initially consisted of 15 students and included females. The initial study group consisted of 14 students and these students included four from Washington, D. C. - Robert Ogle, Fred Morgan Phillip, Fannie Holland, there were also four men and a woman from New York State, George Kelley, Arthur Callis, James Thomas, Gordon Jones, and Paul Ray. From West Virginia came Eugene Kinckle Jones and Mary Vassar, Vertner Tandy came from Kentucky, and G. H. Chapman was from Florida. The group met every two weeks at 421 North Albany Street, where Poindexter roomed, Poindexter was stated to have a relationship with the other students of the group that was more faculty to student than peer-to-peer, given that he was the secretary of a professor at Cornell. In December 1905, Poindexter organized a meeting of students which included Murray, Ogle, Phillips, Chapman, Kelley, Callis, Tandy, and George Tompkins. Robert Ogle had seen an article in the Chicago Defender magazine about a Negro fraternity at Ohio State University called Pi Gamma Omicron, Pi Gamma Omicron inspired Ogle to try to transform the literary society into a fraternity
