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Benjamin A. Botkin
Benjamin Albert Botkin (February 7, 1901 – July 30, 1975) was an American folklorist and scholar. Early life Botkin was born on February 7, 1901, in East Boston, Massachusetts, to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. He attended the English High School of Boston and then studied at Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1920 with a B.A. in English. He earned his M.A. in English at Columbia University a year later in 1921, and his Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1931, where he studied under Louise Pound and William Duncan Strong. Career Botkin taught at the University of Oklahoma in the early 1920s and married Gertrude Fritz in 1925. He edited the annual ''Folk-Say'' from 1929 to 1932 and a "little magazine," ''Space'', from 1934 to 1935. Contributors to ''Folk-Say'' included Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Henry Roth, J. Frank Dobie, Louise Pound, Alexander Haggerty Krappe, Stanley Vestal, Alain Locke, Sterling Brown, Paul Horgan, and Mari Sandoz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
East Boston
East Boston, nicknamed Eastie, is a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts annexed by the city of Boston in 1637. Neighboring communities include Winthrop, Revere, and Chelsea. It is separated from the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown and downtown Boston by Boston Harbor. The footprint of the East Boston neighborhood as it is known today was created in the 1940s by connecting five of the inner harbor islands using land fill. Logan International Airport is located in East Boston, connecting Boston to domestic and international locations. East Boston has long provided homes for immigrants with Irish, Russian Jews and later, Italians. John F. Kennedy's great-grandfather was one of many Irish people to immigrate to East Boston, and the Kennedy family lived there for some time. From 1920 to 1954, East Boston was the site of the East Boston Immigration Station, which served as the regional immigration hub for Boston and the surrounding area. A once Italian dominated community, Eas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louise Pound
Louise Pound (June 30, 1872 – June 28, 1958) was an American folklorist, linguist, and college professor at the University of Nebraska. In 1955, Pound was the first woman elected president of the Modern Language Association, and in the same year, she was the first woman inducted into the Nebraska Sports Hall of Fame. Early life Pound was born in Lincoln, Nebraska to Stephen Bosworth Pound and Laura Pound. Alongside her older brother, noted legal professor Roscoe Pound, and her younger sister, Olivia Pound, Pound was instructed by her mother in various disciplines including the natural sciences, ancient and modern languages, and literature. Pound studied at a preparatory school, the Latin School, in the School of Fine Arts, transitioning in 1888 to the University of Nebraska (B.B. 1892 and M.A., 1895). Pound was an active student throughout the university. Along with her siblings and her colleague Willa Cather, she was a member of the University Union Literary Society at the U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Seeger
Charles Louis Seeger Jr. (December 14, 1886 – February 7, 1979) was an American musicologist, composer, teacher, and folklorist. He was the father of the American folk singers Pete Seeger (1919–2014), Peggy Seeger (b. 1935), and Mike Seeger (1933–2009); and brother of the World War I poet Alan Seeger (1888–1916). Life and career Seeger was born in Mexico City, Mexico, to American parents Elsie Simmons (née Adams) and Charles Louis Seeger. During the 1890s, the family lived in Staten Island, New York. Seeger graduated from Harvard University in 1908, then studied in Cologne, Germany and conducted with the Cologne Opera. Upon discovering a hearing impairment, he left Europe to take a position as Professor of Music at the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught from 1912 to 1916 before being dismissed for his public opposition to U.S. entry into World War I. His brother Alan Seeger was killed in action on July 4, 1916, while serving as a member of the French F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Writers' Project
The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It was one of a group of New Deal arts programs known collectively as Federal Project Number One or Federal One. The FWP employed thousands of people and produced hundreds of publications, including state guides, city guides, local histories, oral histories, ethnographies, and children's books. In addition to writers, the project provided jobs to unemployed librarians, clerks, researchers, editors, and historians. Background Funded under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, the FWP was established July 27, 1935, by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Henry Alsberg, a journalist, playwright, theatrical producer, and human-rights activist, directed the program from 1935 to 1939. In 1939, Alsberg was fired, federal funding was cut, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mari Sandoz
Mari Susette Sandoz (May 11, 1896 – March 10, 1966) was a Nebraska novelist, biographer, lecturer, and teacher. She became one of the West's foremost writers, and wrote extensively about pioneer life and the Plains Indians.Bristow, David L. - "The Enduring Mari Sandoz", ''Nebraska Life'', Jan/Feb 2001. Early life and education Marie Susette Sandoz was born on May 11, 1896 near Hay Springs, Nebraska, the eldest of six children born to Swiss immigrants, Jules and Mary Elizabeth (Fehr) Sandoz. Until the age of 9, she spoke only German. Her father was said to be a violent and domineering man, who disapproved of her writing and reading. Her childhood was spent in hard labor on the home farm, and she developed snow blindness in one eye after a day spent digging the family's cattle out of a snowdrift. She graduated from the eighth grade at the age of 17, secretly took the rural teachers' exam, and passed. She taught in nearby country schools without ever attending high school. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Horgan
Paul George Vincent O'Shaughnessy Horgan (August 1, 1903 – March 8, 1995) was an American writer of historical fiction and non-fiction who mainly wrote about the Southwestern United States. He was the recipient of two Pulitzer Prizes for History. Historian David McCullough wrote of Horgan in 1989: "With the exception of Wallace Stegner, no living American has so distinguished himself in both fiction and history." Biography Paul Horgan was born in Buffalo, New York on August 1, 1903. After his father contracted tuberculosis, the family moved in 1915 to Albuquerque, New Mexico for health reasons. Horgan attended New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, New Mexico, where he formed a lifelong friendship with classmate and future artist Peter Hurd. In 1922, Horgan befriended physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in 1922 during a visit to New Mexico. After finishing high school, Horgan spent a year working for a local newspaper. In 1923, Horgan enrolled in the Eastman School of Music ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sterling Allen Brown
Sterling Allen Brown (May 1, 1901 – January 13, 1989) was an American professor, folklorist, poet, and literary critic. He chiefly studied black culture of the Southern United States and was a professor at Howard University for most of his career. Brown was the first Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia. Early life and education Brown was born May 1, 1901 on the campus of Howard University in Washington D.C., where his father, Sterling N. Brown, a former slave, was a prominent minister and professor at Howard University Divinity School. His mother Grace Adelaide Brown, who had been the valedictorian of her class at Fisk University, taught in D.C. public schools for more than 50 years. Both his parents grew up in Tennessee and often shared stories with Brown and his sister Mary Edna Brown (a founder of Delta Sigma Theta sorority) about famous leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Brown's early childhood was spent on a farm on Whiskey Bottom Road in H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alain Locke
Alain LeRoy Locke (September 13, 1885 – June 9, 1954) was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. Distinguished in 1907 as the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, Locke became known as the philosophical architect —the acknowledged "Dean"— of the Harlem Renaissance. review of Jeffrey C. Stewart, ''The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke'' (Oxford University Press, 2018) He is frequently included in listings of influential African Americans. On March 19, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed: "We're going to let our children know that the only philosophers that lived were not Plato and Aristotle, but W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe." Early life and education He was born Arthur Leroy Locke in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 13, 1885,Note: Locke always gave his year of birth as "1886", and many sources give 1886. He was, however, born in 1885. A note by Locke in the Alain Locke Papers (archived at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanley Vestal
Stanley Vestal (August 15, 1887 – December 25, 1957) was an American writer, poet, biographer, and historian, perhaps best known for his books on the American Old West, including ''Sitting Bull, Champion of the Sioux''. Biography Vestal was born Walter Stanley Vestal to Walter Mallory Vestal and the former Isabella "Daisy" Wood near Severy in Greenwood County in southeastern Kansas. Vestal's father died when he was young. His mother remarried, and Vestal took the legal surname Campbell from his stepfather, James Robert Campbell. About 1889, the Campbell family relocated to Guthrie in the newly established Oklahoma Territory, where he learned Native American customs from his boyhood playmates, knowledge which would later be useful in his writing career. In 1903, Vestal graduated from the new institution, Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford. His stepfather was the first president of the college. Vestal was Oklahoma's first Rhodes Scholar. He earned a Bachelo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Haggerty Krappe
Alexander Haggerty Krappe (6 July 1894 – 30 November 1947) was a folklorist and writer. Along with Francis Peabody Magoun, he was the first translator of folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm into the English language. He was also a linguist, teacher, translator of scientific and other materials, a Roman philologist, a comparative mythologist, a classicist and Scandinavianist. Despite his contributions and academic writing, his work has been overlooked in the modern Folklore discipline as he staunchly denied the existence of American Folklore. Biography Alexander Haggerty Krappe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1884. His childhood was said to be unhappy, and after his parents divorced, he was taken back to Europe by his German-born father. Krappe received his education in the Leibniz und Siemen's Oberealschuel in Charlottenberg, Berlin. An accomplished student, he remained at the university until 1915 upon his decision to study modern languages. Thus Krappe spent 191 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the Negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue." Growing up in a series of Midwestern towns, Hughes became a prolific writer at an early age. He moved to New York City as a young man, where he made his career. He graduated from high school in Cleveland, Ohio, and soon began studies at Columbia University in New York City. Although he dropped out, he gained notice from New York publishers, first in ''The Crisis'' magazine and then from book publishers, and became known in the creative community in Harlem. He eventually graduated from Lincoln University. In addition to poetry, Hughes wrote plays and short sto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
