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  • 1929–1940: The Great Depression and the New Deal x
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Baker, LaVern  

Barry Marshall

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

singer, was born in Chicago as Delores Williams. Nothing is known about her parents. Raised by her aunt, Merline Baker, also known as the blues singer Memphis Minnie, Baker started singing almost as soon as she could walk, both in her Baptist church and in the street. She grew up in poverty and sang for change on the downtown Chicago streets from the age of three. She started singing professionally as a teenager at the Club Delisa, decked out in down-home clothes and billed as “Little Miss Sharecropper.” The “Sharecropper” sobriquet was a takeoff on the popular blues shouter “Little Miss Cornshucks,” and although it garnered her attention at the time, she was embarrassed by it later in her life. She also appeared at different venues as Bea Baker.

At the age of seventeen, Baker moved to Detroit. By 1947 she was appearing regularly at ...

Article

Grier, Rosey  

John Hanners

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

football player, social activist, author, singer-actor, and ordained minister, was born Roosevelt Grier on a farm in Cuthbert, Georgia, the seventh of Joseph and Ruth Grier's eleven children. At age thirteen he moved with his family to Roselle, New Jersey. Offered an athletic scholarship to Penn State University, he enrolled in 1950 and studied psychology, music, and education. His college athletic career was exceptional. Not only did he receive first-team All-American football honors in 1955, but he also set an Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletics of America shot-put record (fifty-eight feet) in track and field.

In 1965 Grier signed with the National Football League's New York Giants for a $500 bonus and a yearly salary of $6,500. During a long career that lasted from 1955 through 1968 Grier was a dominant defensive tackle in an era known for excellent defensive players His size ...

Article

Jordan, Michael  

David F. Smydra

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

basketball player, was born Michael Jeffrey Jordan in Brooklyn, New York, the fourth of five children of James Jordan and Deloris Peoples. The family soon relocated to Wilmington in the parents' home state, North Carolina, where Jordan's father rose to supervisor in a General Electric plant and his mother worked as a bank teller. James Jordan's air force pension boosted the family into the middle class, and they instilled in their children a solid work ethic with an emphasis on loyalty and commitment.

Like his brothers and sisters Jordan was a relatively short child but exceptionally quick He preferred baseball to basketball and pitched several no hitters in Little League Although he was initially a lazy child who bribed his siblings to do his chores Jordan was invigorated by athletic competition Regular one on one basketball games against his older brother Larry fueled a fiery competitiveness in him since ...

Article

King, Rodney Glenn  

Shana L. Redmond

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

taxi driver whose videotaped beating by police officers in March 1991 provoked international outrage, was born in Sacramento, California, to working-class parents. His father was a construction worker and cleaner, and as a child Rodney worked long hours as a cleaner along with his father. His work schedule along with a learning disability contributed to his lack of academic success, and despite considerable athletic ability, he dropped out in 1984 during his senior year of high school. Afterward King found work in construction. During his early adulthood he had two daughters and married Crystal Waters, a woman with two children of her own. Prior to 1991 King was in and out of jail for crimes ranging from robbery to intoxication.King became an international celebrity and emblem of police abuse in 1991, when a videotape, shot by the amateur cameraman George Holliday was broadcast by Los Angeles ...

Article

LL Cool J  

Charles L. Hughes

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

hip-hop performer, songwriter, and actor, was born James Todd Smith in New York City. Raised in the St. Albans district of Queens, Smith was the only child of James Smith Jr. and Ondrea Smith, whose turbulent, abusive relationship led to their split when Smith was four years old; the boy and his mother moved in with her parents. Unfortunately, the trouble did not end there: when Smith was four, James Smith Jr. shot his ex-wife in the back and legs as she returned to her parents' house after work, wounding her father in the attack as well. Though both survived, this escalation of violence in his family marked the young James Smith throughout his life, and—according to his 1998 autobiography he credited this early turmoil and a later unfortunate reprise when his mother became the victim of further abuse by a later boyfriend with helping ...

Article

Loving, Mildred Delores Jeter  

Robert A. Pratt

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

a housewife, whose marriage in 1958 to Richard Loving sparked one of the nation's most important civil rights cases, was born Mildred Delores Jeter, of African American and Native American ancestry. Loving was one of five children born to Theoliver Jeter, a sharecropper, and Musiel Byrd, a homemaker. She also had four half brothers. She graduated from Union High School in Bowling Green, Virginia in 1957. In 1958 she married her childhood sweetheart who was white Both Jeter and Loving were born in Caroline County Virginia an area with a well known history of black white interracial sexual liaisons As was the local custom however and true for most of the South these unions occurred under cover of darkness and without legal sanction Many states had laws prohibiting interracial marriages some with restrictions dating back to the nineteenth century While enforcement of these laws ...

Article

Malone, Vivian Juanita  

Janelle Harris

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

civil rights activist, was born the eldest daughter in a family of eight children and reared in a tight-knit, segregated community near downtown Mobile, Alabama. From early in her childhood, her father, Willie Malone, a carpenter and maintenance man, and her mother, Bertha Malone, a maid at Brookley Air Force Base, impressed upon Malone and her siblings two basic but lasting principles: love God and value education.

As a student at Central High School in Mobile Malone excelled academically and blossomed socially As graduation approached Malone turned her attention to the future and began making plans for a college education Her first choice was the University of Alabama UA the state s oldest university a sprawling picturesque campus in Tuscaloosa more than 200 miles away from her home To the frustration of many would be students and the chagrin of white empathizers the University of Alabama was ...

Article

RuPaul  

Monica Hairston

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

drag performer, singer, songwriter, and actor, was born RuPaul Andre Charles in San Diego, California, the only son of four children to Ernestine “Toni” Fontenette (a registrar) and Irving Andrew Charles (an electrician). RuPaul was close to his sisters Renae, Renatta, and Rosalind, and to his mother, particularly after his parents' bitter 1967 divorce. Shortly afterward, RuPaul moved in with Renatta and her husband in El Cajon, California, and then moved with them to Atlanta in the summer of 1976 While there RuPaul worked with his brother in law as a used car salesman but also attended the Northside School of the Performing Arts RuPaul s experiences as a drama major at Northside as well as his exposure to the liberating and bohemian climate in Atlanta fueled his desire to succeed as a performing artist RuPaul experienced his first drag queen performance ...

Article

Simpson, O. J.  

Steven J. Niven

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

football player, sportscaster, and actor, was born Orenthal James Simpson in San Francisco, California, to Jimmie Simpson, a cook, and Eunice Durden, a nurse's aide. The child disliked his unusual first name, which was-given to him by an aunt who had heard of a French actor named Orenthal. Sometime during his childhood—accounts differ as to when—he began using his initials “O. J.,” which friends later adapted to “Orange Juice” and, later, to “Juice.” When O. J. was four, Jimmie Simpson abandoned his wife and family, leaving Eunice to raise four children in a two-bedroom apartment in the run-down Potrero Hill public housing projects near San Francisco's Chinatown. Eunice Simpson worked long hours to provide for her children but it was often a hard struggle When O J contracted rickets as an infant for example he was left bowlegged and in need of leg braces that his ...

Article

Yarbrough, Manny  

Jahaan Martin

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

sumo wrestler, judo and mixed martial arts competitor, and football player, was born Emmanuel Yarbrough in Rahway, New Jersey, and holds the Guinness record as the largest living athlete in the world Affectionately known as Tiny a nickname he earned at Morgan State University because of his large size he stood six feet seven inches and at one point tipped the scale at well over eight hundred pounds In sixth grade Manny was already five feet eleven inches and 260 pounds Coaches and school administrators wanted him to play football but at age eleven he was not ready for the intensity of the game and refused to play However by the time he entered high school his confidence had grown and so too had his body in ninth grade Manny was six feet four inches and weighed 320 pounds As a high school senior starting tackle ...