The History Book Club discussion
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My Life
PRESIDENTIAL SERIES
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GLOSSARY - MY LIFE
Here is a link to Clinton's birthplace in Hope:http://www.nps.gov/wicl/index.htm
President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site is located at 117 South Hervey Street (U.S. Route 278) in Hope, Arkansas. Built in 1917 by Dr. H. S. Garrett, in this house the 42nd President of the United States Bill Clinton spent the first four years of his life, having been born at Julia Chester Hospital in Hope on August 19, 1946. The house was owned by his grandparents, Edith Grisham and James Eldridge Cassidy, and they cared for him when his mother, Virginia, was away working as an anesthetist in New Orleans.
On May 19, 1994, the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Tours were offered by the Clinton Birthplace Foundation. In accordance with the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (Pub.L. 111-11§7002), the Secretary of the Interior accepted the property on December 14, 2010, establishing it as a national historic site and a unit of the National Park System. This change in status was originally proposed by Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas. Bill Clinton and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar formally dedicated the site on April 16, 2011.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presiden...)
The Friends of Bill (FOB) would become a political ally and a times, a liability. A FOB appears very early on in his life: Vince Foster.Foster committed suicide early in his term, so we will read more about him, I'm sure. Here is a bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Fo...
I believe Clinton mentions that he meets a brother from his dead father's previous relationship:http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/21/us/...
Mod
Indeed. The heart problems now makes sense, genetics.
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Bentley wrote: "Some things are hard to avoid if it is in your DNA and genes. However the way Clinton ate probably did not help him either; there were reports that he could never pass a donut shop without stoppin..."Lol, and McDonald's...I remember the parities on the evening comedy skit shows.
Some information on Hope, Arkansas, Clinton's birthplace. It still grows some of the best watermelon in the world. Population over just 10,000:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope,_Ar...
http://www.hopearkansas.net/
Mod
Bentley wrote: "Probably healthier for you than the China varieties which explode."Indeed
Some information on Hot Springs:National Park Service:
http://www.nps.gov/hosp/index.htm
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Natural springs
The city takes its name from the natural thermal water that flows from 47 springs on the western slope of Hot Springs Mountain in the historic downtown district of the city. About a million gallons of 143-degree water flow from the springs each day. The rate of flow is not affected by fluctuations in the rainfall in the area. Studies by National Park Service scientists have determined through carbon dating that the water that reaches the surface in Hot Springs fell as rainfall in an as-yet undetermined watershed 4,000 years earlier. The water percolates very slowly down through the earth’s surface until it reaches superheated areas deep in the crust and then rushes rapidly to the surface to emerge from the 47 hot springs.
A small channel of hot spring water known as Hot Springs Creek runs under ground from an area near Park Avenue to Bath House Row.
Discovery and settlement
Members of many Native American tribes had been gathering in the valley for untold numbers of years to enjoy the healing properties of the thermal springs.
In 1673, Father Marquette and Jolliet explored the area and claimed it for France. The Treaty of Paris 1763 ceded the land back to Spain; however, in 1800 control was returned to France until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
In December 1804, Dr. George Hunter[disambiguation needed] and William Dunbar made an expedition to the springs, finding a lone log cabin and a few rudimentary shelters used by people visiting the springs for their healing properties. In 1807, a man named Prudhomme became the first settler of modern Hot Springs, and he was soon joined by John Perciful and Isaac Cates.
On August 24, 1818, the Quapaw Indians ceded the land around the hot springs to the United States in a treaty. After Arkansas became its own territory in 1819, the Arkansas Territorial Legislature requested in 1820 that the springs and adjoining mountains be set aside as a federal reservation. Twelve years later, in 1832, the Hot Springs Reservation was created by the US Congress, granting federal protection of the thermal waters. The Reservation was renamed Hot Springs National Park in 1921.
Civil War
The outbreak of the American Civil War left Hot Springs with a declining bathing population. After the Confederate forces suffered defeat in the Battle of Pea Ridge in March 1862, the Union troops advanced toward the Confederate city of Little Rock. Confederate Governor Henry M. Rector moved his staff and state records to Hot Springs. Union forces did not attack Little Rock, and the government returned to the capital city on July 14, 1862.
Many residents of Hot Springs fled to Texas or Louisiana and remained there until the end of the war. In September 1863, Union forces occupied Little Rock. During this period, Hot Springs became the prey of guerrilla bands loosely associated with either Union or Confederate forces. They pillaged and burned the near-deserted town, leaving only a few buildings standing at the end of the Civil War.
Rebuilding
After the Civil War, an extensive rebuilding of bathhouses and hotels took place at Hot Springs. The year-round population soared to 1,200 inhabitants by 1870. By 1873 six bathhouses and 24 hotels and boardinghouses stood near the springs. In 1874, Joseph Reynolds announced his decision to construct a narrow gauge railroad from Malvern to Hot Springs; completion in 1875 resulted in the growth of visitation to the springs. Samuel W. Fordyce and two other entrepreneurs financed the construction of the first luxury hotel in the area, the first Arlington Hotel which opened in 1875.
During the Reconstruction period, several conflicting land claims reached the U.S. Congress and resulted in an April 24, 1876 United States Supreme Court ruling that the land title of Hot Springs belonged to the federal government. They couldnt do anything about the federal government so they tried protesting and fight for rights. To deal with the situation, Congress formed the Hot Springs Commission to lay out streets in the town of Hot Springs, deal with land claims, define property lines, condemn buildings illegally on the permanent reservation (now the national park) and define a process for claimants to purchase land. The commission surveyed and set aside 264.93 acres (1.0721 km2) encompassing the hot springs and Hot Springs Mountain to be a permanent government reservation. Another 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) became the Hot Springs townsite, with 700 acres (2.8 km2) awarded to claimants. The townsite consisted of 196 blocks and 50 miles (80 km) of streets and alleys. The remaining portion of the original four sections of government land consisted of hills and mountains which were mostly unoccupied, and Congress acted on the commission's recommendation in June 1880 by adding those lands to the permanent reservation.
The early 1900s
During the early 20th century, Hot Springs was known for baseball training camps. Many of the Major League clubs brought their teams to Hot Springs to get the players in shape for the coming season. Teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, and Boston Red Sox made Hot Springs their home base. Baseball great Babe Ruth could be seen walking the streets, visiting the bath spas, and gambling at the nearby horse track.
Gangsters and illegal gambling
Aerial view of Hot Springs after 1925 along Central Avenue. The base of Hot Springs Mountain is in top right, behind Bathhouse Row. Part of West Mountain is on the left. The southwest edge of North Mountain is behind the Arlington Hotel at top.
Illegal gambling became firmly established in Hot Springs during the decades following the Civil War, with two factions, the Flynns and the Dorans, fighting one another throughout the 1880s for control of the town. Frank Flynn, leader of the Flynn Faction, had effectively begun paying local law enforcement officers employed by both the Hot Springs Police Department and the Garland County Sheriff's Office to collect unpaid debts, as well as to intimidate gambling rivals. This contributed to the March 16th, 1899 Hot Springs Gunfight. Of the seven Hot Springs police officers that have been killed while in service of the department, three died during that gunfight, killed by deputies of the Garland County Sheriff's Office. One part-time deputy sheriff was killed also, by the Hot Springs officers.
Along with its Bathhouse Row, one of downtown Hot Springs' most noted landmarks is the Arlington Hotel, a favored retreat for Al Capone.
Hot Springs eventually became a national gambling mecca, led by Owney Madden and his Hotel Arkansas casino. The period 1927-1947 was its wagering pinnacle, with no fewer than ten major casinos and numerous smaller houses running wide open, the largest such operation in the United States at the time. Hotels advertised the availability of prostitutes and off-track booking was available for virtually any horse race in North America.
Local law enforcement was controlled by a political machine run by long-serving mayor, Leo P. McLaughlin. The McLaughlin organization purchased hundreds of poll tax receipts, many in the names of deceased or fictitious persons, which would sometimes be voted in different precincts. A former sheriff, who attempted to have the state's anti-gambling laws enforced and to secure honest elections, was murdered in 1937. No one was ever charged with his killing. Machine domination of city and county government was abruptly ended in 1946 with the election of a "Government Improvement" slate of returning World War II veterans led by Marine Lt. Col. Sid McMath, who was elected prosecuting attorney. A 1947 grand jury indicted several owners and promoters, as well as McLaughlin, for public servant bribery. Although the former mayor and most of the others were acquitted, the machine's power was broken and gambling came to a halt as McMath led a statewide "GI Revolt" into the governor's office in 1948. Illegal casino gambling resumed, however, with the election of Orval Faubus as governor in 1954. Buoyed into 12 years in office by his popular defiance of federal court desegregation orders, Faubus turned a blind eye to gambling in Hot Springs.
Gambling was finally closed down permanently in 1967 by two Republican officeholders, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller and Circuit Judge Henry M. Britt. Rockefeller sent in a company of state troopers to shutter the casinos and burn their gaming equipment. Oaklawn Park, a thoroughbred horse racing track south of downtown, is the only remaining gambling establishment, and one of two legal gambling establishments in the state of Arkansas. The other is the Southland Greyhound Park dog track located in West Memphis, AR.
World War II
The military took over the enormous Eastman Hotel across the street from the Army and Navy Hospital in 1942 because the hospital was not nearly large enough to hold the sick and wounded coming in. In 1944, the Army began redeploying returning overseas soldiers; officials inspected hotels in 20 cities before selecting Hot Springs as a redistribution center for returning soldiers. In August 1944 the Army took over most of the hotels in Hot Springs. The soldiers from the west-central states received a 21-day furlough before reporting to the redistribution station. They spent 14 days updating their military records and obtaining physical and dental treatment. The soldiers had time to enjoy the baths at a reduced rate and other recreational activities. The redistribution center closed down in December 1945 after processing more than 32,000 members of the military. In 1946, after the war, the Eastman was demolished when the federal government no longer needed it.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Spri...)
Here is an image of the Ozark Bathhouse; I think it gives you an idea that there was and is some serious tourism at the springs:
Here are some basic information on Southern Baptists:The Scriptures
The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God's revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.
God
There is one and only one living and true God. …The eternal triune God reveals Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with distinct personal attributes, but without division of nature, essence, or being.
God the Father
God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. …God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
God the Son
Christ is the eternal Son of God. In His incarnation as Jesus Christ, He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. …He honored the divine law by His personal obedience, and in His substitutionary death on the cross, He made provision for the redemption of men from sin.
God the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. …He exalts Christ. He convicts men of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. …He enlightens and empowers the believer and the church in worship, evangelism, and service.
Man
Man is the special creation of God, in His own image. He created them male and female as the crowning work of His creation. …By his free choice man sinned against God and brought sin into the human race. … The sacredness of human personality is evident in that God created man in His own image, and in that Christ died for man; therefore every person of every race possesses dignity and is worthy of respect and Christian love.
Salvation
Salvation involves the redemption of the whole man, and is offered freely to all who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, who by His own blood obtained eternal redemption for the believer. In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification.
God's Purpose of Grace
Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners. …All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.
The Church
A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel, observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth. Each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ through democratic processes. In such a congregation each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord. Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.
Baptism & the Lord's Supper
Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water. …It is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer's faith in a crucified, buried, and risen Saviour, the believer's death to sin, the burial of the old life, and the resurrection to walk in newness of life in Christ Jesus.
The Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience whereby members … memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.
Evangelism & Missions
It is the duty and privelege of every follower of Christ and every church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations... to seek constantly to win the lost to Christ by verbal witness undergirded by a Christian lifestyle, and by other methods in harmony with the gospel of Christ.
The Lord's Day
The first day of the week is the Lord's Day. …It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should be employed in exercises of worship and spiritual devotion.
Last Things
God, in His own time and in His own way, will bring the world to its appropriate end. …Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly…the dead will be raised; and Christ will judge all men in righteousness. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell. …The righteous… will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord.
Education
The cause of education in the Kingdom of Christ is co-ordinate with the causes of missions and general benevolence … there should be a proper balance between academic freedom and academic responsibility. …The freedom of a teacher in a Christian school, college, or seminary is limited by the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ, by the authoritative nature of the Scriptures, and by the distinct purpose for which the school exists.
Stewardship
God is the source of all blessings, temporal and spiritual; all that we have and are we owe to Him. Christians have a spiritual debtorship to the whole world, a holy trusteeship in the gospel, and a binding stewardship in their possessions. They are therefore under obligation to serve Him with their time, talents, and material possessions.
Cooperation
Christ's people should … organize such associations and conventions as may best secure cooperation for the great objects of the Kingdom of God. Such organizations have no authority over one another or over the churches. …Cooperation is desirable between the various Christian denominations.
The Christian & the Social Order
All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society... in the spirit of Christ, Christians should oppose racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography. We should work to provide for the orphaned, the needy, the abused, the aged, the helpless, and the sick. We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death...
Religious Liberty
Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. …A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal.
Family
God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society. It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood or adoption.
Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. ... The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation... Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord. Parents are to demonstrate to their children God's pattern for marriage.
(Source: http://www.sbc.net/aboutus/basicbelie...)
And this:The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a United States-based, Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the US with over 16 million members. It is also the second largest Christian body in the United States, after the Catholic Church.
The word Southern in Southern Baptist Convention stems from its having been founded and rooted in the Southern United States. The SBC became a separate denomination in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia, following a regional split with northern Baptists over the issues of slavery. After the American Civil War, another split occurred: most black Baptists in the South separated from white churches and set up their own congregations.
Since the 1940s, the SBC has moved away from some of its regional identification. While still heavily concentrated in the US South, the SBC has member churches across the United States and 41 affiliated state conventions. Southern Baptists emphasize the significance of the individual conversion experience, affirmed by a total immersion in water for a believer's baptism, and rejection of infant baptism. SBC churches are evangelical in doctrine and practice. Specific beliefs based on biblical interpretation can vary somewhat due to the congregational governance system that gives autonomy to individual local Baptist churches.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern...)
Mod
Yeah, I am not a Baptist, so I can't say for sure, but I wonder if there is room for individual and local church interpretation on this one. It doesn't fit the Clintons at all.
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Oh my....I guess the world wouldn't even be a better place if they'd stick to their own rules (especially the part with their Christian and Social Order) - which they obviously don't...
The more of these so-called "rules" I read about, the more I wish and hope these people first would start getting to love their fellow man, no matter what religion or preference he/she has. I'm sure Christ would be happy with that as a first step.
Accepting and trying to show love and compassion for others would be a good thing. But please - why can't they stop trying to convince others theirs is the only way...it won't get us anywhere.
Mod
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Sure, Bentley, some just take the converting part more serious than others. And yes, flock's the right word.
Meeehehehh!!
I also get the impression that Clinton does not follow every rule. We will know a little more as we go along.When I posted the information, I just felt it didn't seem to fit Clinton's personality so well. I could have misread it.
Mod
Very funny, Bryan!
Some information on Little Rock:Little Rock High School, now Central High School National Historic Site, is a national emblem of the often violent struggle over school desegregation. Parting the Waters author Taylor Branch calls the Little Rock crisis "the most severe test of the Constitution since the Civil War."
Three years after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, which officially ended public-school segregation, a federal court ordered Little Rock to comply. On September 4, 1957, Governor Orval Faubus defied the court, calling in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine African American students--"The Little Rock Nine"--from entering the building. Ten days later in a meeting with President Eisenhower, Faubus agreed to use the National Guard to protect the African American teenagers, but on returning to Little Rock, he dismissed the troops, leaving the African American students exposed to an angry white mob. Within hours, the jeering, brick-throwing mob had beaten several reporters and smashed many of the school's windows and doors. By noon, local police were forced to evacuate the nine students.
When Faubus did not restore order, President Eisenhower dispatched 101st Airborne Division paratroopers to Little Rock and put the Arkansas National Guard under federal command. By 3 a.m., soldiers surrounded the school, bayonets fixed.
Under federal protection, the "Little Rock Nine" finished out the school year. The following year, Faubus closed all the high schools, forcing the African American students to take correspondence courses or go to out-of-state schools. The school board reopened the schools in the fall of 1959, and despite more violence--for example, the bombing of one student's house--four of the nine students returned, this time protected by local police.
(Source: http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrig...)
Here is a good link to Gov. Faubus:http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/enc...
Little Rock Nine:
http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/enc...#
message 26:
by
Bentley, Group Founder, Leader, Chief
(last edited Jun 25, 2011 07:50PM)
(new)
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rated it 5 stars
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Clinton is talking about Kennedy and Kennedy's remarks about communism and the Berlin Wall:
"Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect; but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in."
Kennedy was a brilliant speaker.
Mod
Kennedy's remarks about communism and the Berlin Wall:
"Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect; but we never had to put a wall up to keep our people in..."
A terrific truth, Bentley.
Mod
It is a great one, isn't it? He and his writers had a great way for language.
Mod
Bentley wrote: "Yes, they did - but he was a great writer himself and had great delivery."One of the best in my book!
Some background on Senator Fulbright:a Representative and a Senator from Arkansas; born in Sumner, Chariton County, Mo., April 9, 1905; moved with his parents to Fayetteville, Ark., in 1906; attended the primary and secondary education teachers’ training schools of the University of Arkansas grades 1 through 12; graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 1925, as a Rhodes scholar from Oxford University, England, in 1928, and from the law department of George Washington University, Washington, D.C., in 1934; admitted to the District of Columbia bar in 1934; attorney, United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division 1934-1935; instructor in law, George Washington University 1935, and lecturer in law, University of Arkansas 1936-1939; president of the University of Arkansas 1939-1941; also engaged in the newspaper business, in the lumber business, in banking, and in farming; elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-eighth Congress (January 3, 1943-January 3, 1945); was not a candidate for renomination in 1944; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1944; reelected in 1950, 1956, 1962, and again in 1968, and served from January 3, 1945, until his resignation December 31, 1974; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1974; chairman, Committee on Banking and Currency (Eighty-fourth through Eighty-sixth Congresses), Committee on Foreign Relations (Eighty-sixth through Ninety-third Congresses); counsel to the law firm of Hogan and Hartson, Washington, D.C., until 1993; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 5, 1993; was a resident of Washington, D.C., until his death, February 9, 1995; cremated, ashes interred in Fulbright family plot, Evergreen Cemetery, Fayetteville, Ark.
(Source: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/...)
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Willi...
Arkansas Encyclopedia:
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net...
Some background on Senator McClellan:a Representative and a Senator from Arkansas; born in Sheridan, Grant County, Ark., February 25, 1896; studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1913, when he was seventeen; commenced practice in Sheridan, Ark.; during the First World War served in the United States Army as a first lieutenant in the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps 1917-1919; moved to Malvern, Ark., in 1919 and continued the practice of law; prosecuting attorney of the seventh judicial district of Arkansas 1927-1930; elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-fourth Congress; reelected to the Seventy-fifth Congress (January 3, 1935-January 3, 1939); was not a candidate in 1938 for reelection but was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the United States Senate; resumed the practice of law in Camden, Ark.; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1942; reelected in 1948, 1954, 1960, 1966 and 1972 and served from January 3, 1943, until his death; chairman, Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments (Eighty-first and Eighty-second Congresses); Committee on Government Operations (Eighty-fourth through Ninety-second Congresses), Select Committee on Labor Management Relations (Eighty-fifth and Eighty-sixth Congresses), Committee on Appropriations (Ninety-second through Ninety-fifth Congresses); died in Little Rock, Ark., November 28, 1977; interment in Roselawn Memorial Park.
(Source: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/...)
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lit...
Arkansas Encyclopedia:
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net...
I thought I would share some music information found in chapter 9, since music played a big role in his life.Mugwamps:
he Mugwumps were a 1960s rock band. The Mugwumps made some recordings in the mid-60s, but the short-lived New York group, formed in 1964, is principally remembered for what its members did after they split up.
The Band's name is taken from the
William S. BurroughsMembers Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty would become one-half of The Mamas & the Papas. John B. Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky would form The Lovin' Spoonful. Jim Hendricks formed The Lamp of Childhood, which recorded three singles for Dunhill Records.
Jim Hendricks (not to be confused with rock guitarist legend, Jimi Hendrix) was the odd man out, not achieving any notable subsequent fame, but still having considerable success as a performer and songwriter. He wrote the top 15 hit "Summer Rain" for Johnny Rivers, and the theme song "Long Lonesome Highway" for the TV show Then Came Bronson. His 1989 album Running in the Light is considered a classic of Christian music. Now living in Nashville, Tennessee, Hendricks has recorded over 50 albums of traditional American folk, Mountain, Gospel, and Western music.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mugw...)
Judy Collins:In 1961, Judy Collins released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, at the age of 22 and began a thirty-five year association with Jac Holzman and Elektra Records. She interpreted the songs of fellow artists - particularly the social poets of the time such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton. Judy was instrumental in bringing other singer-songwriters to a wider audience including poet/musician Leonard Cohen – and musicians Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman.
Judy Collins is also noted for her rendition of Joni Mitchell's “Both Sides Now” on her 1967 album, Wildflowers which has since been entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Winning "Song of the Year” at the 1975 Grammy Awards was Judy's version of “Send in the Clowns,” a ballad written by Stephen Sondheim for the Broadway musical “A Little Night Music.”
(Source: http://judycollins.com/biography.php)
http://judycollins.com/index1.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Col...
Background on Win Rockefeller:As governor, Winthrop Rockefeller brought economic, cultural, and political change to Arkansas. “W. R.” or “Win,” as he was known, brought an end to the political organization of former Governor Orval E. Faubus and created a political environment that produced moderate leaders like Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, and Bill Clinton. Rockefeller’s personal belief in racial equality became well known, and he ushered in an era that saw large numbers of African Americans elevated to high positions in state government. Rockefeller was a “transitional leader” in the sense that he helped discredit the “Old Guard” domination of the Faubus years and, in so doing, made Arkansans more receptive to political and social change.
Winthrop Rockefeller was born on May 1, 1912, in New York City to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. The fifth of six children, Winthrop was not given a middle name. Winthrop’s grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, was the founder of Standard Oil Company—and a very rich man by the time his grandson was born.
Winthrop grew up a privileged child, with private tutors and attendance at Lincoln School at Columbia University Teachers College. He also attended Loomis School, another private preparatory school in Windsor, Connecticut. Rockefeller’s ease with the French language, which came in handy from time to time during his administration, betrayed his prep school education. Although popular with his classmates, Rockefeller withdrew from Yale University (where he had studied from 1931 to 1934) during his third year without taking a degree.
Rockefeller was unwilling to take a position at the top of the family oil empire immediately, so he took a job as an apprentice roughneck in the oil fields. Rockefeller later considered this to be the happiest years of his life. In 1937, he abandoned his independence and took a position with Socony-Vacuum, an oil company that grew out of the family’s Standard Oil of New York.
Rockefeller’s insistence on leading a lifestyle different from the family model continued during the World War II years, when he enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army on January 22, 1941, nearly a year before hostilities began. After completing Officer Candidate School, Rockefeller was given the rank of second lieutenant and became a machinegun instructor at Fort Benning, Georgia. In August 1942, Rockefeller was named commander of H Company, 305th Infantry Regiment, Seventy-seventh Division, Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He was promoted to captain in December 1942 and to major in November 1943.
A swashbuckling commander with a handlebar mustache, Rockefeller loved his World War II career. He saw considerable action in the south Pacific, including participating in the Battle of Guam and the invasion of Okinawa, where he suffered burns when his transport was hit by a kamikaze. He left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel, having received the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Purple Heart.
Rockefeller’s years after World War II were not happy ones. Still working at Socony-Vacuum, he chaffed at the restrictive lifestyle expected of him and his siblings. A heavy drinker known for his playboy lifestyle, Rockefeller often frequented chic cafes late at night with a movie star on his arm. He abruptly married an attractive blonde divorcee named Barbara “Bobo” Sears on Valentine’s Day in 1948. Soon they were the parents of a son, Winthrop Paul Rockefeller, but the marriage dissolved within a year.
Rockefeller fled to the very antithesis of New York chic society in early 1953, visiting an old army friend from Little Rock (Pulaski County), businessman Frank Newell. In less than a year, Rockefeller bought a large amount of land atop Petit Jean Mountain near Morrilton (Conway County), which he named Winrock Farms and developed into a showplace home.
Arkansans welcomed Rockefeller, and he quickly developed deep roots. He and his second wife, Jeannette Edris Rockefeller, were especially supportive of the Arkansas Arts Center. The Rockwin Fund provided support for worthy causes across the state.
It did not take long for Rockefeller to attract the attention of Governor Orval Faubus. Desperate to build Arkansas’s stagnant economy, Faubus named Rockefeller to the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission (now the Arkansas Department of Economic Development) in 1955. Rockefeller took this work seriously, and by the time he left the commission after nine years, Arkansas had undergone a remarkable economic transformation. He claimed credit for bringing more than 600 new industrial plants to Arkansas, providing 90,000 new jobs. Industrial employment grew by 47.5 percent, and manufacturing wages grew by eighty-eight percent, compared to a national rise of thirty-six percent.
Rockefeller’s success with economic development, not to mention his famous name and vast fortune, brought him into politics. A Republican by family tradition, Rockefeller was appalled at the political climate in Arkansas. State government was controlled by the Democratic Party, but most of the real power rested in the hands of Governor Faubus. Having been in office for a decade by 1964, Faubus had used his appointive and patronage powers to build a seemingly invincible political empire.
Rockefeller mounted a strong campaign against Faubus in 1964, but Arkansas stayed with the Democratic Party that year by a vote of fifty-six percent for Faubus. Rockefeller quickly announced that he would be a candidate again in 1966.
The election of 1966 was a watershed in Arkansas political history, for it not only saw the election of the state’s first Republican governor since 1872, as well as a Republican U.S. congressman in northwest Arkansas, but it was an election in which black voters cast the deciding vote. The segregationist wing of the state Democratic Party mustered a final victory by nominating former Supreme Court justice James D. (Jim) Johnson, a protégé of segregationist presidential candidate and Alabama governor, George C. Wallace. While Rockefeller welcomed black votes, Johnson refused to shake hands with black citizens. In the end, Rockefeller won with fifty-four percent of the vote.
Promising an “Era of Excellence,” Rockefeller submitted considerable reform legislation, but the results were mixed. Rockefeller’s major achievements as governor include several laws enacted during the 1967 legislature: adopting the state’s first minimum wage, tightening lax insurance regulation, and adopting a law to guarantee freedom of information. He ordered the Arkansas State Police to close illegal gambling operations in Hot Springs (Garland County). Black Arkansans found state government more accepting under Rockefeller, with the integration of the State Police being a signal accomplishment.
One of the legacies inherited from the Faubus administration was the unbelievably cruel Arkansas penitentiary system. Rockefeller hired a professional criminologist, Thomas Murton, to bring reform to the dismal scene. Murton turned out to be an impatient administrator, and he eventually exhumed graves that he claimed contained the remains of murdered convicts. When Murton refused to back down, Rockefeller fired him, which resulted in Murton charging that the governor was permitting abuse to continue at the prisons. It turned out that the skeletal remains exhumed at Tucker Prison were those of prisoners who died of natural causes years earlier but whose bodies were not claimed by relatives. (The film Brubaker is very loosely based on Murton’s 1969 book, Accomplices to the Crime.) Nonetheless, Rockefeller achieved substantial prison reform during his tenure, including medical care, better food, an educational program, and staffing by hired guards rather than “trusties.”
On April 7, 1968, Rockefeller held a public ceremony of mourning for the death of Martin Luther King Jr. He was the only Southern governor to do so, which likely helped Little Rock escape some of the rioting that broke out elsewhere after King’s assassination.
Rockefeller went into the 1968 gubernatorial campaign with a strong organization and a solid list of accomplishments. Nevertheless, there was no guarantee he would triumph. Arkansas Democrats were presented with an unusual array of characters, with Justice Jim Johnson taking on U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, while his wife, Virginia Johnson, ran for governor. Ultimately, state representative Marion Crank received the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, though Crank was badly tainted by his long association with Governor Faubus.
In November 1968, Arkansas voters cast votes in ways that defy easy explanation. Rockefeller, a Republican, was reelected as governor—again with a huge black majority compensating for a lukewarm reception among white voters. A Democrat retained the U.S. Senate seat, with Fulbright leading the ticket in Arkansas. George Wallace, an Independent, won the presidential vote in Arkansas. No political party, it seemed, could take Arkansas for granted. Also in 1968, Rockefeller garnered eighteen votes at the Republican National Convention, but the Republican presidential nomination went to Richard Nixon. Rockefeller's brother Nelson had made a more serious presidential run but was also unsuccessful.
Rockefeller’s second term as governor was filled with conflict with the Democrat-dominated legislature. Conflict was most severe on the issue of implementing tax reform and raising tax rates. Rockefeller mounted a campaign under the name “Arkansas is Worth Paying For,” but he accomplished little.
Along with growing unhappiness with Rockefeller’s political agenda was a rise in public realization that Rockefeller had a drinking problem. Even the dissolution of the Rockefeller marriage took place in public, with Jeannette Rockefeller slapping her husband in public on one occasion.
Still, Rockefeller filed for another term as governor, despite his traditional promise not to serve more than two terms. Rockefeller had little opposition in the Republican primary, but a raft of well-known Democrats filed for the office—including Attorney General Joe Purcell, former governor Faubus, and a little-known lawyer from Franklin County, Dale Bumpers. Untainted by previous political experience and blessed by a bright smile and a fresh vitality, Bumpers won the Democratic nomination in a runoff. In November, Bumpers defeated Rockefeller in a landslide: 375,648 to 197,418. Rockefeller was badly hurt by his defeat, and he gradually withdrew from politics. He divorced his second wife in 1971.
Much of Rockefeller’s legislative agenda was adopted by Bumpers, including the plan to reorganize state government management from hundreds of disparate agencies into a small group of departments.
Rockefeller died of pancreatic cancer on February 22, 1973, in Palm Springs, California, where he had gone to escape the cold weather at Winrock. His ashes were buried atop Petit Jean Mountain. In death, Winthrop Rockefeller continues to have an impact on Arkansas. His great wealth was divided between a charitable trust and the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, which concentrates on economic development, education, as well as economic, racial, and social justice. His son, Winthrop Paul Rockefeller, was first elected Arkansas lieutenant governor in 1996.
(Source: http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/enc...)
Justice Jim Johnson:Johnson was a native of Crossett, the seat of Ashley County in southern Arkansas, near the Louisiana line. Johnson was said to have admired the political style of Huey Pierce Long, Jr., but was to Long's political right. In 1950. Johnson was elected to the Arkansas State Senate and served until January 1957. In 1956, he did not run again for the legislature because he challenged Governor Orval Eugene Faubus in the Democratic Party primary. Johnson accused the segregationist Faubus of working behind the scenes for racial integration. Johnson finished second in the pivotal Democratic primary with 83,856 votes (26.9 percent). Faubus then defeated the Republican Roy Mitchell to win a second consecutive two-year term as governor.
Being a lifelong staunch segregationist Johnson also played a role in the Little Rock Nine crisis. He was elected to the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1958 and served until 1966, when he resigned to run again for governor. During his legal career, his wife, Virginia Lillian Morris Johnson (January 21, 1928 – June 27, 2007), a Conway native whom he married in 1947, served as his legal secretary.
Campaigns of 1966 and 1968
In 1966, Johnson entered the Democratic gubernatorial primary and led the six-candidate field with 105,607 votes (25.1 percent). He went into a runoff election with fellow former Justice J. Frank Holt (born ca. 1910), who polled 92,711 votes (22.1 percent). Liberal former U.S. Representative Brooks Hays of Little Rock finished third with 64,814 (15.4 percent). Another former U.S. representative, Dale Alford, who had unseated Hays as a write-in candidate in 1958, ran fourth with 53,531 votes (12.7 percent). Prosecuting attorney Sam Boyce of Newport ran fifth with 49,744 (11.8 percent), and Raymond Rebasen finished last with 35,607 votes (8.5 percent). In the runoff primary, Johnson prevailed with 210,543 ballots (51.9 percent) to Holt's 195,442 votes (48.1 percent). However, Johnson then lost the general election, 257,203 votes (45.6 percent) to the moderate Republican Winthrop Rockefeller, who polled 306,324 ballots (54.4 percent). Rockefeller was a younger brother of New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, later a Vice President of the United States. Jim Johnson won majorities in forty counties to Rockefeller's thirty-five counties. Every major population center supported Rockefeller, who prevailed in the northwestern counties, in Little Rock, and in many eastern counties with large African American populations. Black voters provided Rockefeller's margin of victory.
Johnson then ran against incumbent J. William Fulbright in the 1968 Democratic primary for the Senate but was again defeated, 132,038 (31.7 percent) to 220,684 (52.5 percent); a third candidate, Bobby K. Hays, received the remaining 12.7 percent. Fulbright then defeated the Republican nominee, Charles T. Bernard, a farmer and businessman from Earle in Crittenden County in eastern Arkansas, who is believed to have drawn considerable support from Johnson's former primary voters.
Johnson's then 40-year-old wife, Virginia, meanwhile, ran for the governorship in the same primary election, making her the first woman in Arkansas to run for governor. She lost the nomination by a wide margin in a runoff with State Representative Marion H. Crank (1915–1994) of Foreman in Little River County, who was in turn narrowly defeated by Rockefeller in the general election. Another candidate in the primary was former Arkansas Attorney General Bruce Bennett of El Dorado, who was first elected in 1956, the year that Johnson challenged Faubus. Bennett himself unsuccessfully opposed Faubus in the 1960 gubernatorial primary.
Later years
The Johnsons resided in Conway until their deaths, three years apart. Virginia was Jim Johnson's legal secretary for his entire law career. She died of cancer in 2007, and Johnson himself was stricken with the same disease. Ironically, their old intraparty rival, Faubus, also spent his last years in Conway.
In the 1980s, Jim and Virginia Johnson supported the reelection of Governor Frank D. White, only Arkansas' second Republican governor since Reconstruction. White, however, was unseated after one two-year term by Bill Clinton, with whom Johnson had a long-standing enmity. While he had been a student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Clinton was a campaign aide for Johnson's 1966 runoff opponent, Judge Frank Holt. Twelve years later, Clinton would win the governorship. In reference to Johnson's overtly racist views and dirty campaign tactics Clinton once told Johnson, "You make me ashamed to be from Arkansas."
During the Whitewater scandal, Johnson made accusations against Clinton based on a continuing opposition research campaign conducted by Republican political consultants, Floyd Brown and David Bossie. A client of Johnson's, David Hale, a former municipal court judge, was the special prosecutor's chief witness attempting to link Clinton to the Whitewater scandal. Hale's testimony was deemed to have been of no import, as he had agreed to testify under plea bargaining to secure a better deal on his own indictment for fraud.
Death
Lt. Matt Rice of the Faulkner County Sheriff's Office reported that Johnson was found dead about 10 a.m. Saturday, February 13, 2010, at his home off Beaverfork Lake with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Rice said a rifle was found, and authorities had no reason to suspect foul play. Johnson reportedly had ongoing medical problems. The Johnsons had three sons, Mark of Little Rock, John David of Fayetteville, and Joseph Daniel of Conway.
Johnson's life story and death were remarkably similar to that of an unrepentant segregationist leader in Louisiana, William M. Rainach of Claiborne Parish, a state legislator and an unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate in his state's 1959 primary election.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_D....)
A little bit on the National Student Association and the CIA money:http://www.cia-on-campus.org/nsa/nsa2...
Some information on the 1967 riots:http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/introd...
Detroit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Det...
Newark:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_New...
http://www.thirteen.org/newark/histor...
Info on Allard Lowenstein:Allard K. Lowenstein was a relentless opponent of injustice in the United States and throughout the world. His passionate leadership played a crucial role in the civil rights, anti-apartheid, anti-war, and human rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Allard Lowenstein was born on January 16, 1929. As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina, he was president of the National Students Association. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1954, he served two years in the U.S. Army and then went on to teach at Stanford University, North Carolina State University, and the City College of New York.
Lowenstein worked with Eleanor Roosevelt in 1957 at the American Association for the United Nations and in 1959 became foreign policy assistant to Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 1960, 1964, and 1968. He was a Democratic representative to the U.S. Congress from New York from 1969 until 1971, when he became chairman of Americans for Democratic Action.
In 1977, Lowenstein was appointed head of the U.S. delegation to the 33rd annual session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. From August 1977 to June 1978, he was the alternate U.S. Representative for Special Political Affairs to the United Nations, with the rank of Ambassador.
Lowenstein’s unwavering dedication to fighting racism began with his opposition to the apartheid regime in South Africa. He went to South Africa several times and, in 1962, wrote Brutal Mandate, which made him one of the first Americans to publicly and forcefully protest apartheid. In 1963 and 1964, Lowenstein mobilized white college students at Yale and Stanford to volunteer for the “Freedom Summer” in Mississippi where they joined African Americans fighting for the right to vote.
Lowenstein again galvanized students in a campaign to end the Vietnam War and was a principal organizer of the movement that forced President Lyndon Johnson not to seek reelection in 1968. Thoroughly convinced that the idealistic young generation could revitalize the Democratic Party and bring about progressive reform in the United States, Lowenstein became known for his ability to inspire young people to commit themselves to lives of activism and the pursuit of justice. “It is beyond dispute,” David Broder wrote, “that he brought more young people into American politics than any individual of our time.”
Allard Lowenstein was assassinated on March 14, 1980. The inscription on his headstone is from a note Robert F. Kennedy once sent him, quoting Emerson: “If a single man plants himself on his convictions and there abide, the huge world will come around to him.”
After Lowenstein’s death, a group of Yale law students established the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Project in his honor. The Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic grew out of the Lowenstein Project and was established in 1989.
(Source: http://www.law.yale.edu/intellectuall...)
The Rhodes Scholarship:Known as the "world's oldest and most prestigious international graduate scholarship", the Rhodes Scholarships are administered and awarded by the Rhodes Trust, which was established in 1902 under the terms and conditions of the will of Cecil John Rhodes, and funded by his estate under the administration of Nathan Rothschild. Scholarships have been awarded to applicants annually since 1902 on the basis of academic achievement and strength of character. There have been more than 7,000 Rhodes Scholars since the inception of the Trust. More than 4,000 are still living.
In 1925, the Commonwealth Fund Fellowships (later renamed the Harkness Fellowships) were established to reciprocate the Rhodes Scholarships by enabling British graduates to study in the United States. The Kennedy Scholarship program, created in 1966 as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy, adopts a comparable selection process to the Rhodes Scholarships to allow 10 British post-graduate students per year to study at either Harvard or MIT.
Standards
Rhodes' legacy specified four standards by which applicants were to be judged:
* Literary and scholastic attainments;
* Energy to use one's talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for and success in sports;
* Truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship;
* Moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one's fellow beings.
This legacy originally provided for scholarships for the British colonies, the United States, and Germany. These three were chosen because it was thought that " ... a good understanding between England, Germany and the United States of America will secure the peace of the world ... "[12]
Rhodes, who attended Oxford University (as a member of Oriel College), chose his alma mater as the site of his great experiment because he believed its residential colleges provided the ideal environment for intellectual contemplation and personal development.
Rhodes' original aim with the Scholarship, and subsequent changes
An early change was the elimination of the scholarships for Germany during World Wars I and II. No German scholars were chosen from 1914 to 1929, nor from 1940 to 1969.[17] Also, between the wars, for political and propaganda reasons Erich Vermehren was prevented by the German government from taking up a Rhodes Scholarship.
Rhodes' bequest was whittled down considerably in the first decades after his death, as various scholarship trustees were forced to pay taxes upon their own deaths. A change occurred in 1929, when an Act of Parliament established a fund separate from the original proceeds of Rhodes' will.[citation needed] This made it possible to expand the number of scholarships. For example, between 1993 and 1995, scholarships were extended to other countries in the European Community.
Because the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 in the United Kingdom did not affect wills, it took another Act of Parliament to change the Rhodes' will to extend selection criteria in 1977 to include women.
For at least its first 75 years, scholars usually studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree. While that remains an option, more recent scholars usually study for an advanced degree.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes_S...)
Website:
http://www.rhodesscholar.org/
Eugene McCarthy:In 1968, McCarthy ran against incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, with the intention of influencing the federal government — then controlled by Democrats — to curtail its involvement in the Vietnam War. A number of anti-war college students and other activists from around the country traveled to New Hampshire to support McCarthy's campaign. Some anti-war students who had the long-haired appearance of hippies chose to cut their long hair and shave off their beards, in order to campaign for McCarthy door-to-door, a phenomenon that led to the informal slogan "Get clean for Gene."
McCarthy's decision to run was partly an outcome of opposition to the war by Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Morse gave speeches denouncing the war before it had entered the consciousness of most Americans. Following that, several politically active Oregon Democrats asked Robert Kennedy to run as an anti-war candidate. Initially Kennedy refused, so the group asked McCarthy to run, and he responded favorably.
McCarthy declared his candidacy on November 30, 1967 saying, "I am concerned that the Administration seems to have set no limit to the price it is willing to pay for a military victory." His candidacy was dismissed by political experts and the news media, and given little chance of making any impact against Johnson in the primaries. But public perception of him changed following the Tet Offensive (January 30 - September 23, 1968), the aftermath of which saw many Democrats grow disillusioned by the war, and quite a few interested in an alternative to LBJ. McCarthy said "My decision to challenge the President's position and the administration's position has been strengthened by recent announcements out of the administration. The evident intention to escalate and to intensify the war in Vietnam, and on the other hand, the absence of any positive indication or suggestion for a compromise or for a negotiated political settlement."
As his volunteers led by youth coordinator Sam Brown went door to door in New Hampshire, and as the media began paying more serious attention to the Senator, McCarthy began to rise in the opinion polls. When McCarthy scored 42% to Johnson's 49% in the popular vote (and 20 of the 24 N.H. delegates to the Democratic national nominating convention) in New Hampshire on March 12 it was clear that deep division existed among Democrats on the war issue. By this time, Johnson had become inextricably defined by Vietnam, and this demonstration of divided support within his party meant his reelection (only four years after winning the highest percentage of the popular vote in modern history) was unlikely. On March 16 Kennedy announced that he would run, and was seen by many Democrats as a stronger candidate than McCarthy.
On March 31, in a surprise move, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. Following that McCarthy won in Wisconsin where the Kennedy campaign was still getting organized. Although it was largely forgotten following subsequent events, McCarthy also won in Oregon against a well-organized Kennedy effort.
Even as McCarthy styled himself the clean politician, however, he dished it out, too. He mocked Robert Kennedy and his supporters. A major gaffe occurred in Oregon, when McCarthy sniffed that Kennedy supporters were "less intelligent" than his own and belittled Indiana (which had by then gone for Kennedy) for lacking a poet of the stature of Robert Lowell—a friend of McCarthy's who often traveled with him.
Quite a few of the people who had joined McCarthy's effort early on were Kennedy loyalists. Now that Kennedy was in the race, many jumped ship to his campaign, and they urged McCarthy to drop out and support Kennedy for the nomination. However, McCarthy resented the fact that Bobby had let him do the "dirty work" of challenging Johnson, and then only entered the race once it was apparent that the President was vulnerable. As a result, while he initially entered the campaign with few illusions of winning, McCarthy now devoted himself to beating Kennedy (and Hubert Humphrey, who entered the race after LBJ removed himself) and gaining the nomination.
Vice President Hubert Humphrey, long a champion of labor unions and civil rights, entered the race with the support of the party "establishment," including most members of Congress, mayors, governors and labor unions. He entered the race too late to enter any primaries, but had the support of the president and many Democratic insiders. Robert Kennedy, like his brother before him, planned to win the nomination through popular support in the primaries. McCarthy and Kennedy squared off in California, each knowing that the state would be the make or break for them. They both campaigned vigorously up and down the state, with many polls showing them neck-and-neck, and a few even predicting a McCarthy victory.
However, a televised debate between them began to tilt undecided voters away from the Minnesota Senator. McCarthy made two ill-considered statements: that he would accept a coalition government that included Communists in Saigon and that only the relocation of inner-city blacks would solve the urban problem. Kennedy pounced, portraying the former idea as soft on communism and the latter diagnosis as a scheme to bus tens of thousands of ghetto residents into white, conservative Orange County.[8] In the end, McCarthy came off as both remote on the issues and ill-tempered toward his opponent. Kennedy took the crucial California primary on June 4, but was shot after his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles and died soon afterwards.
In response McCarthy refrained from political action for several days, but did not remove himself from the race. One aide recalled him sneering about his fallen rival, "Demagoguing to the last." Another heard him say that Kennedy "brought it on himself"—implying that because Kennedy had promised military support to the state of Israel, he had somehow provoked Sirhan Sirhan, the Arab-American gunman who killed him.
Despite strong showings in several primaries — indeed, he won more votes than any other Democratic candidate — McCarthy garnered only 23 percent of the delegates at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, largely due to the control of state party organizations over the delegate selection process. After the Kennedy assassination, many delegates for Kennedy chose to support George McGovern rather than McCarthy. Moreover, although the eventual nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was not clearly an anti-war candidate, there was hope among some anti-war Democrats that Humphrey as President might succeed where Johnson had failed — in extricating the United States from Vietnam. McCarthy eventually gave a lukewarm endorsement of Humphrey.
Although McCarthy did not win the Democratic nomination, the anti-war "New Party", which ran several candidates for President that year, listed him as their nominee on the ballot in Arizona, where he received 2,751 votes. He also received 20,721 votes as a write-in candidate in California.
Following the 1968 election, McCarthy returned to the Senate, but announced that he would not be running for reelection in 1970, to the disappointment of many Minnesotans. He disappointed many more people nationwide by declining to take a leadership role in Congress against the war. Indeed, he almost seemed to take a turn to the political Right during his final two years in the Senate, as witnessed by his opposition to President Richard Nixon's Family Assistance Plan, a form of "reverse income tax" to help the poor get off of welfare and a program similar to a plan he had proposed several years earlier.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_M...)
An interesting interview:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/...
Richard Nixon:Schoolchildren absorb at least one fact about Richard Milhous Nixon: He was the first and (so far) the only President of the United States to resign the office. Before the spectacular fall, there was an equally spectacular rise. In a half-dozen years, he went from obscurity to a heartbeat from the presidency, winning a congressional race (1946), national prominence in the Alger Hiss spy case (1948), a Senate seat (1950), and the vice presidency (1952). John F. Kennedy interrupted Nixon's assent in 1960, winning the presidency by the narrowest margin of the twentieth century.
After losing a 1962 race for governor of California and holding his "last press conference," Nixon patiently laid the groundwork for a comeback. In 1964, he campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater at a time when other prominent Republicans were keeping their distance from the leader of the budding conservative movement. The Republican Party lost in a landslide that year but Nixon won the gratitude of conservatives, the growing power within the party. The GOP's huge losses in 1964 were offset in 1966 when two years of the Vietnam War and urban riots led to huge Republican gains in congressional elections. In 1968, Nixon won a presidential election almost as narrow as the one he had lost in 1960. He was then reelected in 1972 with a larger percentage of the votes than any other Republican during the Cold War.
Until the Watergate scandal led to his near impeachment by the House of Representatives and resignation in 1974, he was the dominant politician of the Cold War. As a Washington pundit once said, hers was not the Pepsi generation but the Nixon generation.
(Source: http://millercenter.org/president/nix...)
Taylor Branch:Taylor Branch is an American author and public speaker best known for his landmark narrative history of the civil rights era, America in the King Years. The trilogy’s first book, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, won the Pulitzer Prize and numerous other awards in 1989. Two successive volumes also gained critical and popular success: Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65, and At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968. Decades later, all three books remain in demand. Some reviewers have compared the King-era trilogy, which required more than twenty-four years of intensive research, with epic histories such as Shelby Foote’s The Civil War and Robert Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson.
In 2009, Simon and Schuster published The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President. Far more personal than Branch’s previous books, this memoir tells of an unprecedented eight-year project to gather a sitting president’s comprehensive oral history on tape. The collaboration is a story in itself, born of mutual concern over the declining quality of raw material for presidential history. At the initiative of President Bill Clinton, Branch suspended work on the King books about once a month to meet secretly in the White House residence, nearly always late at night. There he prompted Clinton to record candid observations for posterity. The book reveals a president up close and unguarded, perceived by an author struggling to balance many roles.
Aside from writing, Taylor Branch speaks before a variety of audiences—colleges, high schools, churches, synagogues, mosques, political and professional groups. He has discussed doctrines of nonviolence with prisoners at San Quentin as well as officers at the National War College. He has presented seminars on civil rights at Oxford University and in sixth-grade classrooms. His 2008 speech at the National Cathedral commemorated the anniversary of Dr. King’s last Sunday sermon from that pulpit. In 2009, he gave the Theodore H. White Lecture on the Press and Politics at Harvard.
His musical sidelights have spanned the Atlanta Boy Choir in the 1950s, a high-school folk trio, and a contemporary octet for spirituals. In 2006, he and two friends reconstituted their 1960s college band as the cover group Off Our Rocker, which has recorded and released two CDs in playful tribute to the Beatles.
(Source: http://taylorbranch.com/)
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_B...
Some titles:
by
Taylor Branch
Here is a link to Strobe's book that he was working on while in Oxford:
Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev
Some information on Don Tyson of Tyson Foods:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/bus...
Tyson Food:
Founded in 1935 in Springdale (Washington County), Tyson Foods has emerged as one of Arkansas’s most prominent companies, employing more than 100,000 workers. By the end of the twentieth century, it had become one of the largest meat-processing companies in the world, with millions of customers in the United States and in more than eighty countries worldwide. Forbes magazine currently lists it as one of America’s 100 largest companies, and it continues to play a pivotal role in the state’s economy.
Following the collapse of the fruit industry in northwest Arkansas in the late 1920s, many farmers turned to raising poultry as a source of income. The connection of Highway 71 to Midwest markets such as Kansas City, Missouri, allowed John Tyson, among others, to begin shipping goods northward. Tyson had moved to Springdale (Washington County) in 1931 with his wife, Helen, and one-year-old son, Don, and earned his living hauling hay, fruit, and chickens for local farmers. In 1935, after borrowing the necessary start-up funds, Tyson made his first long-distance load, hauling chickens to Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri. The following year, he began hauling birds to the more lucrative Chicago, Illinois, market. On his first journey there, he turned a profit of $235, encouraging him to start shipping poultry to Midwest markets on a full-time basis.
Tyson soon expanded his poultry-shipping business to Cincinnati, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; and beyond, but when a shortage of baby chicks threatened his trucking business, he established his own hatchery and, later, a commercial feed business. World War II proved to be a boon for Tyson, as wartime rationing of beef and government subsidization of poultry made many northwest Arkansas chicken producers—particularly John Tyson—enormous profits. In 1943, he invested in a poultry-growing operation, and accordingly, the process of vertical integration—in which a poultry firm owns virtually every step of the production process from feed to distribution.
The end of the war marked the beginning a new period for Tyson, as the industry faced increasing uncertainty: diseases ravaged many poultry farms, and the postwar adjustment of the economy caused drastic price fluctuations, which forced many poultry growers into bankruptcy. Fending off potential buyouts from larger firms such as the Swanson Company, Tyson, with his son Don now working for his father, instead began to buy up local competitors. By 1957, the Tyson firm built its first poultry-processing plant on the north side of Springdale. The company had thus developed from a trucking firm into a poultry company that controlled nearly every aspect of production. Most of the actual raising of birds was undertaken by contract growers who were nominally independent contractors. But as a 1967 U.S. Department of Agriculture report noted, such growers were essentially employees of Tyson.
Throughout the 1960s, Tyson continued to expand, buying up competing firms and even dabbling in the retail sale of chickens with its short-lived “Chicken Huts.” In 1967, Don Tyson suddenly took the helm of the company after John Tyson and his wife were killed when their car was struck by a train. Over the next three decades, Don Tyson would oversee the company’s growth into one of the world’s leading food producers.
The 1970s and 1980s saw the company, known as Tyson Foods, Inc., after 1971, continuing its expansion into new markets. In 1977, Tyson purchased major hog-producing facilities in North Carolina. In 1982, the firm made the Fortune 500 list as one of America’s largest companies, and it also secured lucrative contracts to supply chicken nuggets to restaurants such as fast-food giant McDonald’s. Seven years later, the company purchased Holly Farms. This acquisition nearly doubled its market share which, prior to the buyout, had stood at 13.5 percent. The following decade saw even more growth as Tyson bought Hudson Foods and, in 2001, Iowa Beef Producers.
By the early twenty-first century, Tyson Foods stood as the world’s largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork. Yet along the way, the company has drawn considerable controversy for its business practices. Labor union advocates have charged Tyson with taking a strident anti-union stance, and the company withstood major strikes at processing plants in, for example, Pasco, Washington, and Jefferson, Wisconsin. Environmentalists have charged that the company consistently flouts environmental and safety standards. In 2001, a trial was held in Shelbyville, Tennessee, in which Tyson managers were accused of smuggling illegal aliens into the country to work in poultry-processing plants. The trial ended in acquittal but nevertheless tarnished Tyson’s image as a corporate citizen.
In 2006, the company underwent a major reshuffling of its leadership, as Don Tyson’s son, John, stepped down as CEO (a position he had held since 2000) and was replaced by Richard Bond. This came in the midst of mounting problems: late in 2006, the company reported losses in excess of $196 million for the year. Despite recent struggles, the company remains one of the most successful businesses in Arkansas history, rivaling only Wal-Mart and Stephens, Inc. in terms of its size and influence.
(Source: http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net...)
Moral Majority:The Moral Majority was a political organization of the United States which had an agenda of evangelical Christian-oriented political lobbying. It was founded in 1979 and dissolved in the late 1980s. The term "Majority" was chosen for the purpose of arguments of equivocation where most people think it means the majority of people. In fact it means "adult" as in "a child is a minor" and "an adult is a child who has reached the 'age of majority'".
(Source: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...)
Cuban boatlift:The Mariel boatlift was a mass exodus of Cubans who departed from Cuba's Mariel Harbor for the United States between April 15 and October 31, 1980.
The event was precipitated by a sharp downturn in the Cuban economy which led to internal tensions on the island and a bid by up to 10,000 Cubans to gain asylum in the Peruvian embassy.
The Cuban government subsequently announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so, and an exodus by boat started shortly afterward. The exodus was organized by Cuban-Americans with the agreement of Cuban president Fidel Castro. The exodus started to have negative political implications for U.S. president Jimmy Carter when it was discovered that a number of the exiles had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments involved in October 1980. By that point, as many as 125,000 Cubans had made the journey to Florida.
(Source: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...)
More info:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/militar...
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Midnight Diaries (other topics)One Hundred Years of Solitude (other topics)
My Life (other topics)
A Nation At Risk: The Full Account (other topics)
Presidential Decision Making Adrift: The Carter Administration and the Mariel Boatlift (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Boris Yeltsin (other topics)Bill Clinton (other topics)
Gabriel García Márquez (other topics)
David W. Engstrom (other topics)
Nikita Khrushchev (other topics)
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