April 2: Marvin Gaye, the Motown
pioneer, producer, and legend who remains one of the few
American popular artists able to create, with equal ease
and complete success, socially conscious, lastingly catchy, and irresistibly sexy music.
April 3: Washington
Irving, one of America’s
first professional writers, a hugely talented
satirist, travel
writer, and biographer, and, in
his creation of distinctly American folk
tales, one of the most enduring contributors to our national
mythology.
April 4: A tie between Dorothea
Dix, for more on whose amazing and inspiring life and work see the
post at that link; and Maya Angelou, one of America's most talented & influential poets, autobiographers, and cultural icons.
April 5: Booker T. Washington, the former slave turned political
and social leader who is perhaps best known today for his moderate approach to racial
equality (particularly when compared
to a contemporary like Du Bois), but whose hugely significant legacies
in the fields of education, government
and policy, and life
writing (among others) should never be forgotten.
April 6: Ram Dass, for his many philosophical, charitable, and personal innovations and influences.
April 7: Marjory
Stoneman Douglas, whose 20th century spanning life
included activism in virtually every significant
social movement, but whose environmental
advocacy for Florida’s Everglades, exemplified by the book The Everglades: River of Grass (1947), led
directly to the preservation
of that amazing American space.
April 8: Oscar Zeta Acosta, the
Chicano writer, lawyer, and activist whose connections to Hunter Thompson and mysterious
1970s disappearance shouldn’t overshadow his unique,
ground-breaking, and compelling works of
autoethnographic fiction.
April 9: A
tie between Paul
Robeson, whose diverse and singular
talents and achievements were for
a while overshadowed, but
should instead only be amplified, by his political and social
passions and risks; and Paule Marshall, the
daughter of Barbadian American immigrants whose powerful
and inspring novels and stories explore Caribbean
American identity, race, culture,
and gender in America, city life, and universal
human themes with equal sensitivity and skill.
April 10: A tie between William
Apess, one of my favorite Americans, about whose tragically brief but inspiring and critical patriotic life, and impassioned and eloquent
voice and activism, see the posts included at that link; Frances Perkins, perhaps the single most influential Cabinet Secretary of all time; and the badass and inspirational Dolores Huerta.
April 11: Jane Bolin, whose pioneering life of firsts culminated with her
appointment as the first
African American woman judge, and whose critical
and impassioned perspectives on the core historical issues of the 20th
century are just as inspiring as her professional trailblazing.
April 12: Ronald
Takaki, the pioneering scholar of ethnic studies, Asian
American Studies, and multicultural
American history who really represents, quite simply, the ideal for which
American history-writing, scholarship, and education should continually strive.
April 13: Thomas
Jefferson and Nella
Larsen—not just as a tie, but as a very complicatedly and appropriately
matched American pair.
April 14: A tie between Anne Sullivan, the titular “Miracle Worker” without
whose impressive perserverance
and educational efforts Helen Keller might
never have become the
inspiring American she did; and the creator of one of my favorite American spaces, Isabella Stuart Gardner!
April 15:
A tie between three very distinct and equally interesting and significant
American men: Charles
Willson Peale, Henry
James, and A. Philip
Randolph.
April 16: Wilbur
Wright, who with his brother
Orville achieved one of the most significant
breakthroughs in the histories of American and world technology,
invention,
and culture,
and did it with style.
April 17:
Two American mythmakers: Alexander Cartwright (one of a
few
possible fathers of baseball, but certainly a pioneer of that defining American sport in any
case); and Thornton
Wilder (for his beautiful
and bittersweet Our Town, his biting The Skin of Our Teeth, and much else besides).
April 18:
Two Americans ahead of their time: James
McCune Smith (the first
African American doctor but equally a pioneer in
his activism, writings, and community leadership); and Clarence
Darrow (the titanic
legal mind whose arguments
and voice advanced American
society just as much as they did its legal debates).
April 19: Eliot Ness, not only
for his literally
legendary work and ethic, but also for how much he reveals about
America in the 1920s and 30s: Prohibition and organized crime, the rise
of the FBI, changes in
urban life and worlds, and more. (Here endeth the lesson.)
April 20: Daniel
Chester French, the supremely
talented sculptor whose work on the statue of
Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial is only the most famous of his many
contributions to American
art, culture, mythology, and identity.
April 21:
A tie between John Muir, to my
mind the single most inspiring and significant American naturalist (if one who needs continued analysis as all our historical figures do); and Sister Helen Prejean, the Catholic
nun and anti-death
penalty activist whose inspiring
life and work was captured so well by Susan Sarandon.
April 22:
Two complex and talented American writers: Ellen
Glasgow (whose portrayals of late 19th and early 20th
century Southern society rival, in complexity, ambition, and
power, those of her contemporary Wharton and her successor Faulkner); and Vladimir Nabokov (the Soviet
exile turned scholar, translator, and hugely gifted creative writer who is so
much more than just the author
of Lolita).
April 23: Avram Davidson, one of
the pioneering
American science fiction and fantasy authors, and one who integrated his Orthodox
Judaism, his World War
II naval service, his lifelong
connection to New York City, and his interests in American history and community into his huge and rich body of works.
April 24: Robert
Penn Warren, for his great
American novel, his rich and
evocative poetry, his pioneering literary scholarship, but most
of all for his willingness to grow and deepen as an American
historian and Studier (as I discuss in the blog post linked at his
name).
April 27: A
tie between Ulysses S.
Grant, not so much for his scandal-ridden
and controversial presidency (although it was better than we tend to remember), but for his crucial military savvy, his
highly readable
and powerful memoirs, and his impressive honesty and candor on
complex national issues; and Coretta
Scott King, whose work with her husband Martin Luther King, Jr., was
only the beginning of her inspiring
American life.
April 28: Harper Lee, whose two published novels are both complex & at times over-emphasized, but who remains a singular & influential 20th century American author & voice.
April 29: A tie between Iwao Takamoto, the Japanese
American animator who went from a childhood
in the Manzanar internment camp to designing Scooby-Doo and Fred Flintstone,
directing Charlotte’s Web, and positively
influencing the lives and imaginations of countless millions of American
children; and the legendary Duke Ellington!
April 30: Muddy Waters, the blues and rhythm
& blues guitarist and legend without
whom rock and
roll, popular
music, and 20th century American
culture would likely have been very different, and much less interesting.
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