September
2: Romare
Bearden, the African American painter,
collage artist, cartoonist, set and costume
designer, and more whose day job as
a social worker both informed his unique and
powerful works and makes his ability to produce them that much
more impressive still.
September 3: A tie between two talented,
unique,
and pioneering
American women
and writers,
Sarah Orne Jewett
and Marguerite
Higgins.
September
4: A tie between two hugely talented, impressive, innovative, and inspiring Americans, Lewis
Latimer and Richard
Wright.
September
5: Amy Beach, the pianist
and composer who is considered the first American woman to
create large-scale
artistic and symphonic music, and whose influence can still
be felt in American
music and culture.
September
6: Jane
Addams!
September
7: Jacob
Lawrence!
September
9: Otis Redding, who in
his tragically
short life created some of the most compelling and powerful American music of
the century.
September
10: A tie between two iconoclastic, influential, and impressive 20th
century American authors and voices, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) and Stephen Jay Gould.
September
11: Daniel Akaka, the longtime Hawaii Senator who was both the first Native
Hawaiian Senator and the chamber’s first Chinese American, and
whose life of
public service exemplified many of
America’s highest ideals.
September
12: A tie
between two ground-breaking, boundary-pushing, controversial and inspiring 20th
century cultural
icons, H.L.
Mencken and Jesse
Owens.
September
13: A tie between two turn of
the 20th century pioneers in their respective fields, Walter
Reed and Sherwood
Anderson.
September
14: Margaret
Sanger, the nurse, sex
educator, and birth control activist whose founding
of Planned Parenthood and radical views remain
controversial to this day, but who unquestionably helped
expand 20th century American women’s
options and futures.
September
15: A tie between two
American authors who couldn’t be more
different in identity and style, but who
both merit continued
reading, James Fenimore Cooper and Claude
McKay.
September
16: Francis
Parkman, the
pioneering historian who both catalogued and
helped create and
perpetuate many of America’s most significant
stories, histories, and narratives.
September
17: A tie between two iconic and iconoclastic 20th
century American authors, William
Carlos Williams and Ken Kesey.
September
18: Clark
Wissler, the pioneering psychologist and
anthropologist whose scientific work with
Native American cultures, support
for his peers, and ideas of
culture and personality paved the way for much future research and
analysis.
September
19: Sarah
Louise “Sadie” Delany, the legendary
educator and Civil
Rights pioneer, whose book Having Our Say (1993), co-authored with her sister
Bessie, is one of America’s most unique and
important autobiographies.
September
20: A tie between two 20th
century figures who impacted American
literature and society in profoundly
different but equally
significant ways, Upton
Sinclair and Maxwell Perkins.
September
22: James
Lawson, the minister, draft
resister, and Civil
Rights leader whose theories and practice
of nonviolence connect traditions of faith and
spirituality, social protest and activism, and many other American voices and ideals.
September
23: A tie between two very talented and very
American musicians, songwriters, artists, and legends, Ray Charles and Bruce
Springsteen.
September
24: A tie between
three very different but all equally influential and impressive Americans, John Marshall, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
September 26: A tie between two American folk heroes, one the source of founding myths and one who sought to create a new such mythos, Johnny Appleseed and Gloria Anzaldúa.
September
27: A tie between two fiery, controversial, and very inspiring American revolutionaries, Samuel Adams and David Walker.
September 28: A tie between two pioneering 20th century cultural and artistic legends whose careers and influences have been almost entirely opposed but equally significant, Ed Sullivan and John Sayles.
September
29: Mercator Cooper, the whaling captain who became known as the first American to formally take his
ships to both Japan and the mainland of East Antarctica, and helped open up the world in the process.
September
30: Ann Jarvis, the Methodist social worker and activist whose Civil War Mother’s Day Work Clubs and post-war Mothers’ Friendship Day became the inspiration for a nationally recognized, controversial Mother’s Day holiday (created at the urging of her daughter Anna).
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