Frank Kellogg was born on December 22, 1856 in Potsdam, New York. As a young boy, the Kellogg family moved to a farm in Olmsted County, Minnesota. He received roughly 6 years of formal education. Through borrowed books and self-determination, Kellogg passed the bar exam in 1887.

Kellogg’s cousin, Cushman Kellogg Davis, gave him an opportunity to work for his law firm in St. Paul. Frank Kellogg represented some of America’s business titans, including John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and James J. Hill. Kellogg moved on to representing the federal government after he befriended President Theodore Roosevelt on a business trip to Washington D.C. He was promoted to Special Assistant Attorney General and would become known as the “trust buster” after prosecuting industries that held near-total monopolies in the United States, including the Union Pacific Railroad and the Standard Oil Company.

In 1912, Kellogg was elected president of the American Bar Association, and also began his political career. In 1916, he was elected to U.S. Congress as a Senator representing Minnesota, but lost his reelection in 1922. Kellogg spent time as the Ambassador to England before President Calvin Coolidge named him as Secretary of State, where Kellogg worked with Germany’s debts following WWI and aiding the country’s post-war recovery. In 1928, Kellogg created a treaty with France’s foreign minister, Aristide Briand, known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which renounced war as an instrument of national policy.

Kellogg died on December 21, 1937. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1929 for his work on the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

Nellie Davis Tayloe Ross was born November 29, 1876 to James Wynn Tayloe and Elizabeth Blair Green Tayloe in St. Joseph, Missouri. She married a young lawyer, William Bradford Ross, in 1902 and they moved to Wyoming so he could begin a private law practice. She had four sons, though the third died when he was 10 months old. Nellie Ross quickly settled into being a housewife and living a simple life, even as her husband entered politics and was elected Governor of Wyoming.

In 1922, Democratic Governor William Ross died while in office, thrusting his widow, Nellie, into a special election for his seat. Though she did not campaign, she handily won the race and became the first woman governor in the United States. She was active in office, pushing forward policies to reform banking, protect women workers and miners, and provide assistance to farmers despite going against a Republican-dominated State House. Ross was narrowly defeated in 1926, but remained active in her party, serving as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Ross created more history when appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to serve as director of the U.S. Mint in 1933, making her the first woman to hold that position. It took time for the Mint’s staff to warm up to her, thinking she was just another clueless appointee. Under Ross, however, the Mint recovered from the Depression era and modern techniques, such as automated processes, were implemented. It was not until Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected that Ross was replaced after nearly 20 years of service at the Mint.

Nellie Tayloe Ross died on December 19, 1977. She was 101 years old.

Mary Church Terrell was as rare as a person gets in her time. Born September 23, 1863 to former slaves of mixed-race, her family was part of the black elite in post-Civil War Memphis. Responding to her family’s emphasis on education, Terrell earned a master’s degree from Oberlin College in 1888.

A pioneer in education, she taught many places, including Howard University, and pushed the concept of kindergartens in Washington D.C. public schools. But Terrell was also well known for her activism. She was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a tireless worker for women’s suffrage, serving as the president of the National Association of Colored Women. Her words “Lifting as we climb” became the motto for the association and echoed her belief that racial discrimination could be ended through African-Americans advancing themselves and others through education, work, and community activism.

Less known were her efforts with the War Camp Community Service. The group provided recreation outlets for thousands of men during World War I. The organization addressed the needs of returning soldiers and even led a protest at the White House regarding limited job opportunities for African-American veterans.

Mary Church Terrell died July 24, 1954, two months after she saw the U.S. Supreme Court end segregation in schools via the Brown vs. Board of Education case. Her home in Washington D.C. has been named a National Historic Landmark.

Best remembered for his leadership of the NAACP, Johnson served as the executive secretary of that organization from 1920-1930. He was also a respected writer, lawyer, and composer for several Broadway shows.

James Weldon Johnson was born June 17, 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida. As a young man, Johnson moved to New York during the Great Migration, and along with his brother, he began writing and composing with moderate commercial success. In 1906, he helped with the successful presidential campaign of Theodore Roosevelt and was subsequently appointed as US Consul to Venezuela from 1906-1908 and Nicaragua from 1909-1913. Upon returning to New York, he continued his writing, specifically for the New York Age, an influential African-American newspaper based in the city.

By 1916 his gift for writing and diplomacy led him to a post as field secretary with the NAACP where he built and revived local chapters of the organization. In the course of this work, he opposed race riots in northern cities and engaged the NAACP in mass demonstrations. He organized a silent protest parade of more than 10,000 African Americans down New York City’s Fifth Avenue on July 28, 1917 to protest the still-frequent lynchings of blacks in the South.

The return of soldiers from WWI increased competition for work and housing to a fierce degree, sparking social tensions and white racial violence against blacks. In 1919 he organized peaceful protests of this violence in what would be known as the “Red Summer,” a term coined by Johnson himself. The following year he was chosen as the first black Executive Secretary of the NAACP, a post he would hold for the next 10 years. During his tenure with the NAACP Johnson was known for his involvement in the Harlem Renaissance – he had great admiration for black, musicians, and writers and sought to increase awareness of their talent throughout wider society.

He died in a car crash in 1938 and has since been posthumously honored many times.

William Randolph Hearst was born April 29, 1863. He was the only son of George Hearst, a gold mine owner and politician in California. As a child, William toured Europe with his mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst. He started his editing and publishing career at Harvard University, where he was the editor of the Harvard Lampoon before being expelled for misconduct.

Early in his career, Hearst took over his father’s struggling newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, and in two years began seeing profits. In 1895, he bought the unsuccessful New York Morning Journal. During the late 1890s, Hearst entered into a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. To increase sales, both papers indulged in “yellow journalism” — writing sensationalized stories with minimal fact checking. At his peak, Hearst owned 28 papers in major American cities, 18 magazines, and multiple radio stations and movie companies, creating the world’s largest media empire. It is approximated that one in four Americans read their news from a Hearst paper.

Hearst served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, and had unsuccessful bids for both Mayor of New York and Governor of the state. Given his editorial control and reach, Hearst held enormous political influence. After the end of World War I, he used his bully pulpit to call for an isolationist foreign policy to keep the U.S out of European issues. His life story was the inspiration for the Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane.

The Stock Market Crash and ensuing Great Depression hit his newspapers hard. Hearst fell into economic struggles and his reputation declined as he turned against President Franklin Roosevelt.

He died on August 14, 1951 at the age of 88. The Hearst Corporation has survived and continues to publish multiple forms of media, including television, newspapers, and magazines.

Frances Perkins was born Frannie Coralie Perkins in April 10, 1880. She was well educated, first attending the predominantly male Worcester Classical High School, then studied to be a teacher at Mount Holyoke College, sociology and economics at the University of Pennsylvania and later Columbia University, and did a fellowship studying malnutrition among school children in New York’s Hell Kitchen.

In 1911, Perkins witness the women jumping from the 8th and 9th story windows during the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. In response to the fire, the Committee of Safety was established and Perkins was hired as the group’s executive secretary at the recommendation of Theodore Roosevelt. This began her many years as a lobbyist fighting unsafe and terrible working conditions, such as limiting the work week to 54 hours for women and children.

Perkins once said, “Being a woman has only bothered me in climbing trees,” and went on to become the first woman to serve in the U.S. Cabinet. She used the post of U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which she held from 1933 to 1945, to create programs for the nation’s most vulnerable. She is known for her work on FDR’s New Deal, including oversight of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration and the labor portion of the National Industrial Recovery Act during the Great Depression. She then served under President Harry Truman as a member of the Federal Civil Service Commission until 1953.

Frances Perkins died May 14, 1965. She was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1982 and the U.S. Department of Labor Hall of Honor in 1988.

Jeannette Rankin was born June 11, 1880 near Missoula, Montana. Brought up on a ranch, Rankin helped in the house, but also outside. She performed the tasks of a ranch hand from farm chores to working on machinery and carpentry. These experiences formed her opinion that although women labored with men as equals, they did not have an equal political voice. She graduated from the University of Montana in 1902, studied at New York’s School of Philanthropy in 1908 and 1909, then worked as a social worker in Seattle, Washington. By 1910, Rankin was advocating women's suffrage in Washington, California, and Montana. Her main cause was to give women the right to vote, something she saw accomplished in her home state of Montana in 1914.

Rankin was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Montana from 1917-1919 and 1941-1943. She became a champion of the suffrage movement, continuing the fight to grant women the right to vote and paving the way for the 19th Amendment. Rankin also was a pacifist, and was one of fifty votes opposing the U.S. entry into World War I. During her second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rankin was to only member of Congress to vote against entering World War II.

Rankin would continue her work for social welfare and stay committed to pacifism until she died, even leading a march protesting the Vietnam War when she was 87 years old. She was active in many organizations, including the National Consumers League and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Jeannette Rankin died May 18, 1973. A statue of her resides in the United States Capitol’s Statuary Hall with the inscription “I Cannot Vote for War.”

Clarence Seward Darrow was born April 18, 1857, in Ohio. His father, Amirus Darrow, and mother, Emily Eddy Darrow, had eight children. Their house was a stop along the Underground Railroad, influencing a young Darrow to be a creative thinker who could change the world.

Clarence Darrow attended Allegheny University and the University of Michigan Law School. He passed the bar exam in 1878 and moved to Chicago to begin his legendary law career defending big names such as Eugene Debs, the head of the railroad union, Bill Haywood, one of the leaders of the Western Federation of Miners, and the murders of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold. After WWI he defended war protesters who were charged with violating state sedition laws.

Following the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in 1910, the trial that Darrow defended the accused McNamara brothers, Darrow himself is put on trial for attempting to bribe a juror. Though Darrow was most likely guilty, he is acquitted by the jury and is allowed to continue practicing law.

In 1925, when John Scopes found himself on trial for teaching evolution in school, he found himself being defended by America’s most famous lawyer: Clarence Darrow. Darrow used his skills on Scopes’ so-called “monkey trial” when putting William Jennings Bryan, three-time Presidential contender and later Secretary of State, on the stand. In front of a crowd of thousands, Darrow and Bryan argued over the literal interpretation of the Bible. So heated was the examination, the men were shaking fists at one another. The press concluded that Darrow had exposed Bryan’s beliefs as “mindless.”

Clarence Darrow retired in 1927 and died on March 13, 1938.

William Jennings Bryan was born on March 19, 1860 in Salem, Illinois to Silas Lillard Bryan and Mariah Elizabeth Jennings Bryan. Bryan started his career as an orator at the age of twelve when he delivered a campaign speech for his father.

He graduated from Illinois College in 1881, then the Union College of Law in 1883. His commitment to politics was such that he left his home state to seek more favorable odds for being elected to office in Nebraska during 1887. By the age of 30, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives representing the Populist party. In 1896, he’d won the Democratic presidential nomination with his fervent oratory style, delivering his famous “Cross of Gold” speech. During the next three election cycles, Bryan campaigned tirelessly only to be defeated by William McKinley, and then William Howard Taft.

However, he proved to be a better kingmaker than ruler. Bryan worked for the presidential nomination of Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Upon his victory, Wilson named Bryan his Secretary of State. When World War I broke out, Bryan was committed to pacifism and neutrality. When Germany sank the Lusitania, Bryan resigned rightly thinking Wilson would lead the country into war. Thereafter, Bryan worked for peace, woman suffrage and curbing the teaching of evolution, even involving himself in the famous Scopes trial.

William Jennings Bryan died on July 26, 1925.

Julia Lathrop was born on June 29, 1858 in Rockford, Illinois. Her work with civil service reform was rooted in her experience living and working at Hull House in Chicago, starting in 1890. Hull House was an example of the reformist philosophy that rich and poor ought to live and work more closely with each other. While at Hull House, Lathrop worked with other reformers and activists to provide daycare, education and healthcare to the poor living in the surrounding neighborhood.

Her work at Hull House led to Lathrop’s appointment as the first woman member of the Illinois State Board of Charities. In this role she helped introduce reforms such as the appointment of female doctors in state hospitals and the removal of the insane from state workhouses. Her work for the people of Illinois put her on the political map, and in 1912, President Taft appointed her the first director of the newly created Children’s Bureau, and the first woman to head a United States federal bureau.

As Director, Lathrop instituted and oversaw research into child labor, infant mortality, juvenile delinquency, mothers’ pensions, and more. In her final year as Director of the Children’s Bureau, and just two years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act became the first federally funded social welfare measure in the US. The law focused on federal matching grants to states for prenatal and child health clinics, and it stands importantly as the first venture of the federal government into social security legislation.

Following World War I, President Wilson sent Lathrop overseas to attend an international conference on child welfare. She was influential in creating a childcare bureau in the new country Czechoslovakia.

Julia Lathrop died April 15, 1932.

Eugene V. Debs was born November 5, 1855, in Terre Haute, Indiana. He left home at the age of 14 to work in the railroad shops, and later, as a locomotive fireman. This is where Debs first saw the conditions of the working class men and began advocating for an industrial union. He became the president of the newly established American Railway Union in 1893.

Debs was a labor organizer and founding member of both the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, which he later left due to the group’s radicalism. He was a presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. Outspoken in his resistance to American involvement in World War I and the Government’s suppression of anti-war activity, he delivered an anti-draft speech that violated the Sedition Act, an extension of the Espionage Act limiting speech. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where he was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison. Nevertheless, he was on the 1920 presidential ballot and received almost one million votes.

Debs was neither an intellectual nor a steadfast politician. Instead, he was an effective public speaker who won his support from his sincerity and integrity. He was published in many periodicals, and wrote the pamphlet Unionism and Socialism (1904) and the book Walls and Bars (1927). Eugene V. Debs died October 20, 1926.

Dorothy Day was born November 8, 1897, in New York City. She spent some time at the University of Illinois before returning to New York City to work as a journalist for multiple socialist and progressive publications. An activist at an early age, Day was jailed for picketing in front of the White House and then went on a hunger strike while serving out her sentence. This is one of several times she turned to civil disobedience to make an important point.

At the age of 30, the journalist and social justice advocate left a wild life in New York City to convert to Catholicism. She used her fervor to start a newspaper, The Catholic Worker, and eventually an entire social justice movement within the church known as the Catholic Worker Movement. Later in life she met Mother Teresa and worked alongside Cesar Chavez.

Day helped establish special homes to help those in need. The movement she created continues to thrive with more than 200 communities across the United States and another 28 communities abroad.

Several have called for Day to be put forward for sainthood for her social activism and commitment to her faith. In 2015, Pope Francis named her one of “four great Americans,” setting her alongside the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln.

Dorothy Day died on November 29, 1980 in Maryhouse, one of the Catholic settlement houses she helped establish.

Lillian Wald was an American nurse, author and well-known humanitarian. She was born March 10, 1867, in Cincinnati, Ohio. After attending various medical and nursing schools, Wald began in 1893 to teach a home class on nursing at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls. It was during this time that she also began to care for the sick of Manhattan’s Lower East Side as a visiting nurse. She coined the term “Public Health Nurse” to describe her method of medical care, which integrated nurses into the public community.

At this same time, Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement. By 1906, she had 27 nurses on staff to care for the poor immigrants on the Lower East Side, and by 1913 that staff had more than tripled to 92 people. The settlement eventually expanded into the Visiting Nurses Service of New York, which today serves more than 160,000 people annually in the five boroughs of New York; Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties; and parts of upstate New York.

In 1903, Wald helped found the Women’s Trade Union League and served on the executive committee of the League’s New York City chapter. By 1910, her involvement in humanitarian action, specifically focused on women’s and minorities rights and the labor movement, had expanded to an international level when she and several colleagues went on a tour of Hawaii, Japan, China and Russia. She also was an early leader in what would become the National Child Labor Council, and became a founding member of the NAACP in 1909. The organization held its first major public conference at Wald’s Henry Street Settlement.

Wald also organized New York City campaigns for suffrage, marched to protest the entry of the United States into World War I, joined the Woman’s Peace Party, and helped to establish the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1915, she was elected president of the newly formed American Union Against Militarism (AUAM). She remained involved with the AUAM’s daughter organizations, the Foreign Policy Organization and the American Civil Liberties Union, after the United States joined the war.

In 1922, she was named by the New York Times as one of the 12 greatest living American women, and in 1970, Wald was posthumously elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. Wald never married and valued independence in her private life. Her most intimate relationships were with women, particularly Mabel Hyde Kittredge and Helen Arthur. Lillian Wald died September 1, 1940.

Emma Goldman was born June 27, 1869 in Lithuania. She immigrated to the United States in 1885, and worked in a clothing factory in Rochester, New York. Goldman turned into a fiery, radical, anarchist activist and writer. Throughout her life she advocated for populist causes such as workers’ rights, peace, birth control, and free speech. She and her partner, Alexander Berman, edited their own anarchist newspaper, Mother Earth, until it was disbanded in 1917.

Her speeches attracted huge crowds — and controversy. She was imprisoned for the first time after starting a riot after giving a speech to a group of unemployed people. Goldman was jailed again in 1917 for speaking out against the draft. Upon her release, she was considered a communist operative during the 1919 communist hysteria spreading through the United States and deported to the Soviet Union. She then traveled throughout Europe and stayed active, continuing to write and lecture. She found herself in Spain multiple times during the Spanish Civil War fighting Facism and aiding displaced women and children.

Emma Goldman died May 14, 1940. The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed Goldman to be buried in Chicago, next to the Haymarket Rioters who inspired her.

Helen Keller was born June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When she was 19 months old, Keller suffered an illness that left her blind and deaf. Anne Sullivan, a teacher from the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, taught Keller how to read, write, and understand the world around her. The young teacher began by finger spelling words in Keller’s hand. Though it was a tantrum-filled, dramatic process, Keller eventually understood the relationship between words and objects. This event has been depicted in many movies, books and television programs. With personal perseverance and that of her instructors, Keller earned a college degree and became a noted humanitarian, co-founding the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

After college, Keller become an international speaker, authored 12 books and was an advocate for people with disabilities. Her efforts were successful in improving the treatment of the deaf and the blind by removing them from asylums. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 and elected into the Women’s Hall of Fame in 1965. Helen Keller died on June 1, 1968, only weeks before her 88th birthday.

Alice Paul was born to an affluent Quaker family in Mount Laurel, New Jersey on January 11, 1885. Paul’s Quaker upbringing steeped her in the ideals of equal rights for women. She attended women’s suffrage meetings with her mother, but it was in England when she was studying social work that influenced Paul’s new militant style of gaining rights for women.

When Paul returned to the United States in 1912, her right to vote demonstrations turned violent and enraged leaders like Carrie Chapman Catt. Paul broke off from the main movement by 1916, forming the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage aimed at creating change via politicians. They picketed President Wilson, calling him “Kaiser Wilson,” as the U.S. entered World War I, angering many who thought such acts were unpatriotic.

Paul eventually was arrested and officials tried to get her committed to a sanitarium. The press got wind of the treatment, and Americans were appalled. Wilson reacted, saying suffrage was part of what Americans were fighting for in Europe. The vote for women came shortly after the war, but Paul didn’t rest. She fought for an equal rights amendment for women, helping to push a bill introduced in Congress every year from 1923 to 1972. A vote went to the states to ratify in 1972 but the Equal Rights Amendment fell short by three states by 1982.

Alice Paul continued her work until she died on July 9, 1977, fighting for the equality of women around the world and advocating to include gender equality into the charter of the United Nations.

Carrie Chapman Catt was born January 9, 1859, in Ripon, Wisconsin. Her family relocated to Iowa, where she attended college at Iowa State Agricultural College, now Iowa State University, in 1880. She was the only female in her graduating class.

Catt became involved in the suffrage movement in the late 1880s, joining the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association. She also joined the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), who recognized her as an incredible speaker and sent her to speak across the nation. In 1900, Catt succeeded Susan B. Anthony as the next president of NAWSA and managed to increase the organization’s memberships and funds. She resigned in 1904 due to her husband’s ailing health, but took the position again in 1915 when the organization was starting to struggle.

Catt’s coordination efforts are credited for Congress’ constitutional amendment granting women the vote. States signed on and by 1918 President Wilson backed the effort. In August 1920, the amendment passed. Chapman Catt went on to found the League of Women Voters shortly after the victory and was active in anti-war causes until her death on March 9, 1947.

Jane Addams was born September 6, 1880 in the small farming town of Cedarville, Illinois. Her father, John Huy Addams, was a wealthy man who owned a successful mill, a local politician, had fought in the Civil War, and considered Abraham Lincoln a friend. Jane Addams was raised on liberal Christian values and a desire to help others. She graduated from Rockford Female Seminary in 1881 at the top of her class.

By 1914, Addams was one of the most widely known and beloved women in America. A best-selling author and a tireless social reformer, she was the founder of Chicago’s Hull House, which provided social services to the poor and working classes. From 1909 to 1915, she was the first woman to serve as the president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections. But she was also an avid believer in peace and spoke out against the war in Europe and American involvement. After America entered the war in 1917, Addams was vilified for her views. Even the New York Times scolded her for being “unpatriotic,” and she was expelled from the prestigious Daughters of the American Revolution. After the war, she was a leading figure of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and in 1931 became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

“We believe in real defense against real dangers, but not in a preposterous ‘preparedness’ against hypothetical dangers,” wrote Jane Addams in a letter to President Wilson in 1915. “It has been the proud hope of American citizens ... that to the United States might be granted the unique privilege of helping the war-worn world to a lasting peace.”

Addams suffered a heart attack in 1926. She was never able to fully recover, and died May 21, 1935.

Woodrow Wilson was born December 28, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia. He developed interests in politics and literature. He attended Davidson College near Charlotte, North Carolin for a year before attending Princeton University in 1875. He did well at Princeton, engaging in debates, reading widely, editing the college newspaper, and began comparing the American Government to the Brithish Parliamentary System. After graduating from Princeton, Wilson studied law at the University of Virginia, hoping to enter politics. He went on to earn his doctorate degree from John Hopkins University. He spent time as a professional academic before working with the Democratic Party and being elected as the governor of New Jersey in 1910.

Wilson was elected the 28th President of the United States mostly due to a split in the Republican Party. He was sent to the Oval Office with just over 40 percent of the vote. With Democrats already controlling Congress, Wilson ushered in what is known as the Progressive Movement, passing a laundry list of liberal policies, including antitrust acts and farm loan laws. Wilson also is credited with averting a nationwide railroad strike, and its ensuing economic crisis, with the Adamson Act, making law an eight-hour workday for railroad employees. He warmed up to the Women’s Suffrage movement and pushed for the 19th Amendment.

Though he tried to stay neutral as World War I began in 1914, Wilson was drawn into the conflict as Germans engaged in unrestricted submarine warfare. After intelligence recovered the Zimmerman Telegram, revealing the German intention to form an alliance against the U.S. with Mexico. Wilson felt America needed to act.

After the war, Wilson traveled to Paris, promoting the formation of a League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, for which he was awarded the 1920 Nobel Peace Prize. He also proposed what would be known as Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” and helped create the Treaty of Versailles to ensure lasting peace.

Woodrow Wilson suffered from a stroke and died February 3, 1924. He was driven by an ideal his father had taught him, to leave the world a better place that you found it.

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, to a wealthy family in New York City. He was ill as a child, and was tutored privately because of it. However, by the time he was a teenager, Teddy was following a physical exercise program that built up his strong physique, love of the outdoors and vigorous activity. Teddy studied at both Harvard and Columbia Law School before turning to writing and politics as his career.

Roosevelt ventured briefly in New York City politics and was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President William McKinley. However, he left that life when war was declared against Spain in 1898 and joined the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, more commonly known as the Rough Riders, who were sent to fight in Cuba.

Upon his return, Rooselvelt reentered politics and eventually found himself as the Vice President alongside President McKinley. Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States following the assassiantion of President McKinley in September 1901. Rooselvelt became the 26th President and served from 1901-1909. He was the youngest person in history to serve as President of the United States, taking the office at the age of 42.

Roosevelt rushed in the Progressive Era with his “Square Deal” policies, which oversaw the break up of trusts, the regulation of railroads, and enacted laws aimed at controlling the purity of food and drugs. He also established a multitude of new national parks, forests, and monuments, setting aside roughly 194 million acres as national forests. A proponent of preparedness, Roosevelt worked to reorganize and modernize the U.S. Army and greatly expanded the U.S. Navy, sending his ‘“Great White Fleet” around the world. In 1906, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his successful mediation of the treaty which ended the Russo-Japanese War.

During WWI, Roosevelt opposed President Woodrow Wilson’s policy of neutrality and advocated for America to quickly enter the war. In fact, Roosevelt’s four sons volunteered to fight. His youngest son, Quentin Roosevelt, was killed while flying a mission over Germany when his plane was shot down.

Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep on January 6, 1919, at the age of 60.

John Calvin Coolidge Jr. was born on July 4, 1872 in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. He graduated from Amherst College and began practicing law in 1897, opening his own law firm a year later. Coolidge spent the next 20 years working on various wills and real estate cases.

Coolidge began his political career in 1898 when he was elected to the Northampton, Massachusetts city council. He worked in different offices as he rose up the political ladder. He was elected mayor in 1909, served in the Massachusetts Senate, lieutenant governor, and was finally elected governor in 1918. This prominent rise, as well as his strong stance against the Boston police strike, earned Coolidge his place on the Republican Party’s ticket for the 1920 election beside Warren Harding. Together, they won the election by a landslide. When Harding died in office on August 2, 1923, Calvin Coolidge became the 30th President of the United States.

Coolidge won another full term and continued bolstering American business and industry expansion. However, he is criticized for his lack of aid given to the agricultural business, as well as vetoing a bill that offered a bonus to World War I veterans. His focus was more internal, and the Coolidge administration showed little interest in foreign affairs, even standing against America’s membership in the League of Nations.

Coolidge opted to not run for another term in 1928. Instead, he retired in Northampton, Massachusttes. Calvin Coolidge died four years later, on January 5, 1933, from a heart attack.

John Foster Dulles was born February 25, 1888, and raised in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Princeton in 1908 and then attended George Washington University Law School. After passing the bar, Dulles worked at NYC law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, specializing in international law. At the outset of WWI, Dulles tried to enlist in the Army but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Instead, he received a commission on the War Industries Board, which coordinated the purchase of supplies during America’s military involvement in WWI.

In 1918, Dulles served as legal counsel to the US delegation at the Versailles Peace conference. He argued forcefully against imposing the crushing reparations on Germany that had been proposed by the allies. When the heavy reparations were imposed anyway, Dulles played a major role in designing the Dawes Plan which was a compromise intended to ease international economies out of the recession that followed WWI. Throughout the 1920s and ‘30s he continued his work in international law, focusing specifically on finance, loans and investment.

By 1944, Dulles was a prominent Republican, serving as Thomas Dewey’s chief foreign policy advisor during Dewey’s presidential candidacies in 1944 and 1948. In 1945 he helped draft the preamble to the United Nations Charter and served as a US delegate in 1946, 1947, and 1950.

In 1953, Dulles was appointed Secretary of State by President Eisenhower, and his overarching legacy in that role was to continue the US policy of “containment” of communism throughout the world. During his time in this role, Dulles concentrated on building up NATO and forming other alliances; opposing communism at every turn; and supporting military coups to overthrow unsympathetic leaders in countries such as Iran and Guatemala. He argued in 1955 that “neutrality has increasingly become obsolete and, except under very exceptional circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.”

He developed colon cancer in 1956 and was treated for it off and on until 1959 when he passed away at the age of 71. Among the many honors awarded to him, Dulles received the National Medal of Freedom. Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia is named in his honor. In 1954, he was named Time’s Man of the Year.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was born March 8, 1841, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father was the well known writer and physician, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes Jr. was sent to private schools and studied at Harvard University. He eventually enlisted into service during the Civil War, but his unit was not called to the front immediately, so he went back to school and completed his degree. He returned to Harvard to study law after the war and obtained his law degree in 1866.

Holmes Jr. was invited to speak at the Lowell Institute in Boston, which evolved into his published work, The Common Law. After that, he taught at Harvard University for one semester before he accepted his appointment to the Supreme Judicial Court of the State of Massachusetts. He stayed there for 20 years, becoming the Chief Justice in 1899. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Holmes Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now a Supreme Court Justice, Holmes Jr. coined the phrase “Clear and Present Danger” as the rationale for the government to limit free speech during wartime. In the Supreme Court Case Schenck v. United States, a case revolving around anti-draft leafleting during World War I, the defendants believed free speech protected their right to encourage men to buck military induction. Holmes ruled that when actions endanger American interests, they can be considered criminal. The controversial ruling continues to show up in cases involving draft card burning, terrorism and even the decision granting corporations the individual right to free speech. Subsequent Holmes arguments would become part of the American rhetoric, including his judgment that made the yelling of “fire” in a crowded theater illegal.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s service on the Supreme Court ran from 1902 to 1932 and Holmes remains one of the most quoted and respected members. He died March 6, 1935, at the age of 94.

Louis Brandeis was born on November 13, 1856 in Louisville, Kentucky. His parents were Bohemian Jews who had sought refuge after the Bohemian revolutionary movement in 1848. He graduated from high school at the age of fifteen, then spent the next three years studying in Europe. Brandeis entered Harvard Law School without a college degree at the age of eighteen. While at school, Brandeis tutored his fellow students to earn money. The Harvard Corporation passed a special resolution that granted him his bachelor of law degree under the age of twenty-one in 1877. He was required to study for another year, however, before he was allowed to practice law.

President Woodrow Wilson admired his work and offered Brandeis a position in cabinet in 1913, but Brandeis declined. President Wilson came knocking again in 1916, this time with a nomination to the Supreme Court. After hard-fought confirmation hearings, Brandeis’ nomination overcame the influence of anti-Semites and he became the first Jew to sit on the Supreme Court.

Brandeis was known for fighting for workers’ rights, free speech and breaking up monopolies by defending the constitutionality of laws that oversaw worker hours and workplace conditions. In what has become known as the “Brandeis Brief,” he pioneered the use of sociological and scientific data, historical experiences, and expert opinions to support a case. It’s credited for changing the direction of American laws and became the model for future Supreme Court cases. He retired from the Supreme Court in 1939, after serving for 23 years.

Louis Brandeis died October 5, 1941, at the age of 85. Brandeis University in Massachusetts is named in his honor.

Herbert Hoover was born on August 10, 1874 in West Branch, Iowa. His father died when he was 6 years old, and his mother died only three years later. He was raised by his aunt and uncle in Oregon, but kept the Quaker beliefs of his mother for the rest of his life. He attended Stanford University in 1891, and graduated with a degree in geology. He became a mining engineer and did work on four continents.

Hoover began his life’s work as a humanitarian when he was caught in China during the Boxer Rebellion and aided in rescuing trapped foreigners. He did the same work, helping American tourists in Europe, when WWI began. During the war, Hoover was in charge of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which feed the starving families in German-occupied Belgium. President Woodrow Wilson appointed Hoover as the head of the Food Administration, tasking Hoover with diverting American agricultural products overseas to feed American troops. He pushed for ‘Wheatless’ and ‘Meatless’ days to encourage Americans to help save food that could be sent to the frontlines.

Following WWI, Hoover headed the American Relief Administration, which sent food and other supplies to a war-devastated Europe. His work got the attention of President Warren G. Harding, who appointed him as secretary of commerce. Hoover continued to serve in this position under President Calvin Coolidge, where he pushed projects such as the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Hoover Dam.

Herbert Hoover ran for and won the presidency in 1928. However, less than a year into his term, the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression. Hoover urged business to not lay off their workers, and also cut taxes and created public works projects, in an effort to help struggling Americans, but business closed and the country sank into poverty. Hoover was criticised for being able to aid other countries, but doing nothing to help his own.

After his presidency, Herbert Hoover protested the New Deal, as well as American involvement in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. He died on October 20, 1964, in New York. He was 90 years old.

John Edgar Hoover was born on January 1, 1895. Both of his parents were civil servants who worked for the U.S. Government in Washington D.C. After high school, Hoover wanted to enter politics. He took a job with Library of Congress to put himself through night school at George Washington University Law School, where he obtained both his Bachelor’s and Master’s of Law degrees.

Hoover’s first job with the Department of Justice was as a file reviewer in 1917. However, only two years after starting there, he was promoted to Special Assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. As the Special Assistant, Hoover oversaw raids on suspected radical groups and communists, known later as the “Palmer Raids.”

At the age of 29, Hoover was appointed the director of the Bureau of Investigation by President Calvin Coolidge. Under Hoover, the Bureau would move away from politics and report only to the attorney general. He also implemented numerous institutional changes within the Bureau, including background checks of all employees, physical standards of agents, and the creation of a technical laboratory that utilized scientific methods for processing evidence, including a centralized fingerprint system. In 1935, Congress created the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and kept Hoover as its director. The FBI would go head to head against gangsters in the 1930s, defended the country against Nazi and Communist espionage during and following WWII, while continuing its work investigating bank robberies, kidnappings, and other crimes that crossed state lines.

As the FBI continued to develop new surveillance and information-gathering techniques, Hoover would utilize them to collect information on political leaders, and anyone considered radical or potentially connected with communism. This sparked a lot of criticism for both Hoover and the FBI. President Harry Truman asserted that Hoover wielded the FBI as his private secret police force. However, Hoover would remain the FBI’s director until his death on May 2, 1972.

Samuel Gompers was born in London, England on January 27, 1850. As a young teenager, his family immigrated to New York City. It was there that a young Gompers took up his father’s practice of cigar making.

In 1881, Gompers teamed up with other union leaders to set up an organization of unions. In 1886, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was born, and Gompers would spend 37 years as its president. The AFL competed with the Knights of Labor, an older and more established labor organization. While the Knights of Labor fought to nourish a healthy economy, the AFL pushed to improve the day-to-day life of its members, including higher wages, added benefits, better hours, and improved working conditions.

Under Gompers, the AFL supported World War I by avoiding strikes and attempting to boost morale. President Wilson appointed Gompers to chair the Labor Advisory Board on the Council of National Defense. As such, he traveled to France for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as an official advisor on labor issues.

Samuel Gompers died on December 13, 1924. He was 74 years old.

William Edward Burghardt (“W.E.B.”) Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois attended the historically black college, Fisk University, before he’d become the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard.

After finishing school, Du Bois began his work as an activist. He co-founded the NAACP in 1909 and served as the director and editor of the organization’s magazine, The Crisis. Later, he leaves the NAACP because of conflicts with it’s other leaders, and pursue a life of academics. He briefly taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvania before moving to Atlanta University, where he taught economics and history. Among his many publications, Du Bois conducted a case study on African Americans in Philadelphia. In 1950, Du Bois ran for the Senate with the American Labor Party.

Du Bois was an avid believer in Pan-Africanism and worked to improve the lives of African descendents, no matter where they lived. He organized five Pan-African conferences around the world from 1919 to 1945, where delegations from Africa, the West Indies, and America, came together to demand an end to colonialism and to end African oppression. Du Bois became a citizen of Ghana in 1961, where he began his work as the director of the Encyclopedia Africana.

W.E.B. Du Bois died on August 27, 1963 in Ghana. The next day, August 28, Martin Luther King Jr. would deliver his famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” and continue the fight for equal rights the Du Bois helped start.

Andrew W. Mellon was born on March 24, 1855 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After he completed his studies at Western University, now the University of Pittsburgh, Mellon worked for his father at the family’s bank in 1874. By 1882, at the age of 27, his father gave Mellon ownership of the bank. Over the next 30 years, Mellon would build a financial and industrial empire. He helped found many companies, including ALCOA, Carborundum, Koppers, and Gulf Oil. By 1914, he was considered one of the richest men in America.

Impressed by the financial genius, President Harding appointed Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury in 1921, and Mellon would continue to serve under Presidents Coolidge and Hoover. He focused on reducing the country’s huge federal debt from World War I, which totaled roughly $26 Billion in the early 1920s. The Mellon Plan, Mellon’s proposed and supported plan to alleviate the debt focused on cutting taxes and encouraging business expansion. By 1928, The nation’s debts were cut nearly in half. However, with the turn of the century, the Great Depression swept through the country and Andrew Mellon resigned from the Treasury.

Mellon spent a breig period as the American Ambassador in Britain before retiring from politics. He expanded his art collection, which was valued at approximately $25 million in 1937 and contained names such as Raphael, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. Mellon donated his collection to the U.S. government, as well as $15 million, to build the National Gallery of Art to house the collection.

Andrew Mello died August 26, 1937, in Southampton New York. He was 82 years old.

Ellard Walsh was born on October 3, 1887, in Ontario, Canada. As a child, his family moved to North Minneapolis. Walsh started his military career on November 7, 1905 when he enlisted in the First Minnesota Regiment of the Minnesota National Guard.

Walsh was federalized the first time in 1916 and sent to patrol the Mexican border. When he returned in March 1917, he was a First Sergeant. He was federalized two weeks after his return, this time for World War I. He was commissioned with the 135th Infantry as a Second Lieutenant and sent to train at Camp Cody, New Mexico with the 34th Infantry Division. After training, he was sent to France in October 1918, but was too late to take part in any action as the war would end only a month later. Upon his arrival home again, he quickly moved up the ranks of the Minnesota National Guard. In 1921, he was offered a job on the staff as Assistant Adjunct General and was promoted to Lt. Colonel. A few years later, he would become Chief of Staff for the 34th Division and be promoted to Colonel.

In 1925, Walsh assumed to role of Acting Adjunct General for the ailing Adjunct General, Walter Rhinow. Two years later, Walsh earned his first star and assumed the role of Adjunct General, taking only 10 years to rise from First Sergeant to Brigadier General. His first priority was to find a replacement location for the Minnesota National Guard training camp in Lake City, Camp Lakeview. Aided by Senator Christian Rosenmeir, Walsh acquired 12,000 acres along the Mississippi River North of Little Falls. The land included the remains of Fort Ripley, giving the new training camp it’s name, Camp Ripley.

Walsh’s most challenging battle came during World War II, but on the home front. The Guard’s future was under attack from multiple Bills, Congressional Committees, magazines and newspapers, and the strong opinion of Lesley McNair. Walsh’s career turned toward counterattacking McNair’s arguments to “dispense with [the National Guard] as a component of the Army.” Walsh found allies, including Geroge Marshall, and became the president of the National Guard Association of the United States. Through negotiations and persuasion, Walsh was able to secure a future for the National Guard, earning him the nickname Mr. National Guard.

Walsh spent 14 years as president of the National Guard Association of the United States, and retired after 22 years of serving as Minnesota’s Adjunct General. He died August 19, 1975 and was buried at Camp Ripley’s Pioneer Cemetery.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884 in New York City. Both of her parents died when she was young, so she was raised mostly by her maternal grandmother. At the age of 15, Elenor was sent to Allenswood Academy, a boarding school in London. It was there that she became more outgoing.

When Eleanor was 18, she was brought back to the United States and began a relationship with her fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Much to Franklin’s mother’s demise, the two were married in 1905. While Franklin began his political career, Eleanor started her life as a politician’s wife, attending parties and making social calls. She found this life tedious and was anxious to resume her volunteer work. When the United States entered World War I, Eleanor visited wounded soldiers and worked for the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society and the Red Cross.

Eleanor became much more active in politics after Franklin became sick with polio in 1921. She joined the Women’s Trade Union League, the New York state Democratic Party, and the League of Women Voters. During her 12 years as the First Lady, she advocated more liberal causes. Elenor would host White House press conferences for women correspondents, wrote a newspaper column, and spoke in favor of child welfare, housing reform, and equal rights for women and racial minorities. She also became her husband’s eyes and ears, going on tours around the nation and reporting back to Franklin about the well-being of the nation.

After Franklin died, Elenor continued her work and advocated for the United States’ entry into the United Nations. President Truman appointed Elenor as a delegate and chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights. She continued working with the Democratic Party and, in 1961, President Kennedy appointed her as chair of his Commission on the Status of Women.

Eleanor Roosevelt died on November 7, 1962. After a long life of activism, Eleanor redefined what it meant to be the First Lady of the United States.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the only president to have served four terms. His tenure, from 1933 to 1945, took the nation through the harrowing times of the Great Depression and World War II. As a young man, FDR was stricken with polio, often putting him in a wheelchair — and his future political career in jeopardy. However, it did not hold him back from a successful run for Governor of New York in 1928. There he enacted programs to combat the Great Depression on a statewide level.

As president, FDR expanded his ideas into the New Deal — multiple programs focusing on the “3 Rs,” Relief, Recovery, and Reform. These acts forever changed the lives of the urban unemployed, the rural poor, farmers and saved a generation of artists through work.

On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Roosevelt called it “a date which will live in infamy,” and received approval from Congress to declare war. The U.S. economy was mobilized for the conflict and FDR ordered the internment of 100,000 Japanese-American civilians, an act the government later apologized for in 2013.

Roosevelt navigated a two-front war strategy that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers. FDR has been rated by scholars as one of the top three U.S. Presidents, along with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Edwin Hubble was born to Virginia Lee Hubble and John Powell Hubble on November 20, 1889 in Marshfield, Missouri and moved to Wheaton, Illinois in 1900. As a child he was a well rounded kid, getting good grades and playing sports well.

After the US declared war on Germany in 1917, Hubble rushed to finish his Ph.D. so he could join the US Army where he was assigned to the newly created 86th Division and raised to the rank of lieutenant colonel but never saw combat.

If you like the show, “The Big Bang Theory” you indirectly have Edwin P. Hubble to thank. He was a lawyer who, after serving in World War I, bravely chose to “chuck law for astronomy” — and in doing so made some of the most important discoveries in modern astronomy.

While at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in the 1920s, Dr. Hubble proved that those clouds of light seen through telescopes were actually entire galaxies. This discovery that our own Milky Way was not alone in the universe shifted thinking in astronomy forever.

And that Big Bang Theory? That came in 1929, when Dr. Hubble showed that the farther out a galaxy is from our planet, the faster it appears to move away. This became the foundation of the expanding universe principle, which theorizes that a long ago explosion — or Big Bang — has been propelling all matter away from the core of the universe.

In July 1949, while on vacation in Colorado, Hubble suffered a heart attack and was taken care of by his wife at his home until he suffered and died of cerebral thrombosis a few years later on September 28, 1953. There was no funeral and his wife never revealed where he was buried.

The Hubble Space Telescope was named after the scientist in 1990. On March 6, 2008, the United States Postal Service released a 41 cent stamp in honor of Hubble.

Nora Bayes was born on October 3, 1880 in Joliet, Illinois. She was already a professional actress and singer in Chicago’s vaudeville at 18 years old. She toured the country and even performed on Broadway, notably performing in the Ziegfeld Follies. Later, she married singer-songwriter Jack Norworth and the pair created many hits including “Shine On, Harvest Moon.” Bayes participated in morale boosting during World War I by recording the patriotic song, “Over There.” The song became an international hit, which she graciously performed for soldiers on tour.

Nora Bayes died on March 19, 1928 from cancer. A theater in New York was named in her honor.

War broke out in Europe just as the feature-length film “The Little Tramp,” starring Charlie Chaplin was gaining fame. By then, his silent movie antics were creating laughter on both sides of the ocean.

However, Chaplin endured criticism from both his home countrymen in England and Americans for not joining the armed forces. Few knew that the film star had tried to sign up with the U.S. Army, but was deemed underweight for the fight.

Instead Chaplin threw himself into war bond tours and made a film that poked at militarism, called “Shoulder Arms.” He was warned by officials not to make light of the war, but in the end soldiers were happy to have a laugh and enjoy a movie understanding of their plight. Chaplin films were shown to injured men, while soldiers in the trenches posted cutouts of the Little Tramp, hoping the enemy would “die laughing.”

Despite the beloved characters he created, the entertainer was undermined by the Red Scare of the 1950's and eventually exiled to Europe.

D.W. Griffith was an innovator in film bringing us many techniques audiences are familiar with today, including the “close up.”

In 1918, his movie “Hearts of the World” was an attempt to pull the American spirit into the war abroad. It was controversial in its graphic depiction of the war’s cruelty in Europe. His landmark movie, “Birth of a Nation,” was the first ever feature-length film. Griffith stunned viewers with his location shots and camera mastery in this film about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

While the techniques were historic, the accuracy wasn’t. Scholars praise the filmmaking craft, but the subject matter was racist and rightly protested. The controversy likely helped at the box office and the film remains one of the highest grossing in history when figures are adjusted for inflation.

Griffith’s other legacy? He formed United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

Nothing says success like getting more Americans to smoke and eat bacon. Dubious as that sounds, those were just two highlights of the career of Edward Bernays. He coined the term “public relations” after working for the U.S. government’s Committee on Public Information during World War I, an effort to sway public opinion for the war. Bernays (the nephew of Sigmund Freud) saw the power of messaging and was eager to put what he had practiced to use on a peacetime public. He employed a new tool called the press release to generate buzz around ideas and products.

In the 1920's, he created a campaign for a tobacco company to make female smoking more socially acceptable, calling Lucky Strikes “torches of freedom” for women. He did more of the same when nationally promoting a more hearty “All-American” breakfast habit that included bacon and eggs. (Yes, he was working for a bacon distributor.)

In his retirement, perhaps out of guilt, one of his final projects was for anti-smoking campaigns. There was no stopping bacon, apparently. In his obituary, Bernays was referred to as the “father of public relations,” no doubt for his pioneering strategies and his own self-promotion.

Born Israel Baline, Irving Berlin was born in Russia on May 11, 1888. His family immigrated to New York City, but his father died shortly after while Berlin was still a child. Berlin took work as a street singer and as a singing waiter in Chinatown. Berlin’s luck changed when, in 1907, he published his first tune, “ Marie from Sunny Italy.”

Despite never learning to read music, Berlin is estimated to have written 1,500 songs, and was nominated 8 times for an Academy Award, and winning one in 1943 for the song “White Christmas.” He wrote scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 motion pictures, some of the most popular being Annie Get Your Gun and Mr. President. Other popular songs of his include “Always,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Easter Parade,” “Blue Skies,” and “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” In 1938, Berlin released his song “God Bless America,” which quickly became an unofficial anthem of the United States.

Berlin’s musical style was unique, using simple and straightforward American everyday speech, especially the slang of the time. His songs resonated greatly with people and made him a legend by the time he was 30 years old. As stated by Jerome Kern, “Irving Berlin has no place in American music - he is American music.”

Irving Berlin died in his sleep on September 22, 1989. He was 101 years old.

Known as “America’s Sweetheart” and the “Queen of the Movies,” Mary Pickford was a prolific actress in the early film industry. Pickford co-founded the film studio United Artists, was a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a progressive philanthropist.

During WWI, she toured the country drumming up support and selling Liberty Bonds. Her stop on Wall Street had some 50,000 spectators, though she raised more — an estimated $5 million dollars in bonds— in Chicago. The Army made her an honorary colonel. Not bad for a Canadian!

At war’s end, Pickford started the Motion Picture Relief Fund (MPRF) to help needy actors. She spearheaded a fundraising plan, the Payroll Pledge Program. This payroll-deduction for studio workers gave one half of one percent of their earnings to the MPRF. By 1940, the organization was able to build The Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital. This unique retirement community provides services for members of the motion picture and television industry.

Charles Alexander Eastman, also known as Hakadah and Ohiyesa, was born in Redwood Falls, Minnesota in 1858. After the US-Dakota War of 1862, he left the state and spent his early childhood in Canada, learning traditional Dakota lifeways from his grandmother and uncle. His family thought his father had died in the US-Dakota War, but discovered in 1873 that he had survived when he requested that his son come back to the United States with him and adopt white ways, including changing his name to Charles Alexander Eastman. Throughout the rest of his life, Eastman moved between American Indian and white American worlds while becoming a renowned author and lecturer. He took up the cause of granting citizenship to American Indians after WWI, arguing that their involvement in the war and the goals of peace after the war should be taken into account, saying “We ask nothing unreasonable - only the freedom and privileges for which your boy and mine have fought.”

Zora Neale Hurston was an author and folklorist. She was born in the all-African American town of Eatonville, Florida, and both of her parents were formerly enslaved. Hurston traveled the country with a theater company during her teenage years, and eventually ended up at Howard University near the end of WWI. At Howard, Hurston co-founded the school’s student newspaper and graduated with an Associate’s Degree in 1920.

In 1924, she received a scholarship to Barnard College at Columbia University in New York. She was the only African American student at the college. It was during this time that she befriended the likes of Langston Hughes, among others, and it was said that her home was a popular spot for social gatherings. Hurston quickly became a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, writing about the rural South.

In 1937, Hurston conducted ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti after being awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. It was during this time that she penned her masterwork, the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Though poorly received initially, Hurston’s novel is now regarded as a seminal work in both African-American and women’s literature. Through her writings Hurston “helped to remind the [Harlem] Renaissance–especially its more bourgeois members–of the richness in the racial heritage.”

Claude McKay was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a social and artistic movement of the 1920s.

Born in rural Jamaica, he was raised to be proud of his black heritage. It wasn’t until he was a young man in Kingston, Jamaica, and later in America that he experienced prejudice. This became a favorite subject of his work. McKay’s writing also explored themes of homosexuality. He took part in the African American LGBTQ subculture that flourished in Harlem.

While he authored four novels, including a best-seller that won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, McKay is known for his collections of poetry. His most famous poem, “If We Must Die,” was a powerful defense of black rights, even if that meant violence. “Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,” McKay wrote, “Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!” It was published in a magazine McKay co-edited, The Liberator, during a racially tense period in 1919 called the Red Summer — so named for the hundreds of African Americans who were killed in race riots. Winston Churchill is said to have quoted the poem in the Second World War.

Though born in the U.S., writer Thomas Stearns Eliot moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25, just as World War I was breaking out in Europe. Eliot wasn’t involved in the conflict, instead spending those years teaching and writing.

That writing turned into his first collection of poems, published in 1917, just as he took a position in finance with Lloyds Bank. The job sent him to Paris in 1920, where he met author James Joyce. Eventually, Eliot became the director of the publishing firm Faber and Faber and he remained there for the rest of his career, working with many young poets.

Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948 for his “outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.” Eliot died in 1965 and was commemorated two years later by the installation of a stone in Poets Corner at Westminster Abbey.

Best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes, Georgia O’Keeffe is frequently called the “Mother of American modernism.” By the age of 10, O’Keeffe decided she wanted to be an artist, and at the age of 21 she received her first accolade for her work; the William Merritt Chase still-life prize for her oil painting Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot. Just one year after this, however, O’Keeffe gave up the idea of a career as an artist because she felt she would never distinguish herself through the traditions which were the basis of her formal art education. She worked in various commercial and educational capacities for the next ten years.

In 1916, renowned photographer Alfred Stieglitz was introduced by a mutual friend to several innovative charcoal drawings which O’Keeffe had made the year prior. He put them on exhibition as soon as he could, and came into frequent communication with O’Keeffe as a result. By 1918, Georgia moved to New York to focus full-time once again on her artwork. It was during her time in New York that O’Keeffe began working predominantly in oils, the medium in which her impressionistic work is most widely recognized.

Also during this time, Stieglitz, with whom O’Keeffe was by now living and deeply in love, organized annual exhibitions of her work, introducing her to many important early American modernists. By the mid-1920s it was O’Keeffe, however, who became known as one of the most important artists of the time. Her work influenced many and was highly regarded by the public as well, as evidenced by the high prices her paintings commanded at sale.

After more than ten years living in New York, O’Keeffe began searching for new inspiration for her artwork. She found it in the rugged landscapes of New Mexico on a summer vacation there in 1929. Throughout the next twenty years she made frequent visits to the state, inspired by its varicolored terrain and rugged way of life. She moved there permanently in 1949 after the death of Stieglitz in 1946. Throughout this period her reputation continued to grow, and she earned numerous commissions from across the country.

Her work was widely respected, and O’Keeffe continued painting until macular degeneration took all but her peripheral eyesight in 1972. In 1977, President Gerald R. Ford presented O’Keeffe with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor awarded to American civilians. In 1985, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. O’Keeffe passed away at the age of 98, widely regarded as one of the most important artists of the 20th century.

Sometimes called the Czar of Black Hollywood, Oscar Micheaux directed and produced more than 44 films. Micheaux started out shining shoes and worked as a railway porter. By the time he was a young man, he had homesteaded a farm in South Dakota — no small feat in an all white area — and began writing stories. Unable to find a publisher willing to work with a black man, Micheaux formed his own publishing company.

Soon motion pictures were all the rage and Micheaux was intrigued with this new storytelling medium. He formed his own movie production company and in 1919 became the first African-American to make a film.

His films stepped away from “Negro” stereotypes portrayed in movies of the day. Additionally, he was lauded for the movie, “Within Our Gates,” which was seen as a response to the racism depicted in D.W. Griffith’s film, “The Birth of a Nation,” and the widespread social instability following World War I.

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was a prolific American architect, designing more than 1,000 structures. Besides his eccentrics of wearing a cape and creating fodder for the papers with his notorious love triangle, Wright is known for the design philosophy called organic architecture. His idea was that a structure should look as though it naturally grew from the construction site.

Often when he’d design a home for clients, Wright would also draw up its furnishings. Displaying the pieces in their intended rooms did not feel optional to homeowners.

Wright’s influence was felt across oceans, not just in his popular lectures, but in the honoring of his style. Post-World War I European architects have referred to Wright’s Robie House, with its 110-foot cantilevered rooflines, as the cornerstone of modernism and incorporated its character into their own design work.

Zitkala-Sa, whose name translates to “Red Bird” in Dakota, was a writer, editor, political activist, teacher and musician of the Yankton Dakota tribe. Zitkala-Sa struggled frequently throughout her life between assimilation and tradition, themes which are evident in much of her writing. These tensions also informed her early life, which was split between education at white boarding schools and universities and visits to her home on the Yankton Dakota Reservation. Zitkala-Sa identified these tensions as being one of the driving forces behind the dynamic quality of her work.

Her writing career was quite successful, with two major creative periods: 1900-1904 and 1916-1924. The first period was characterized by her publication of legends collected from Native American culture. This also included autobiographical narratives, many of which were featured in acclaimed publications such as Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Monthly. For most readers, Zitkala-Sa’s work was the first time they had encountered the Native American vs. White American narrative as experienced and related directly by a Native American. The majority of these readers were white and of the classes which had caused so much of the misery about which Zitkala-Sa wrote.

Her second fruitful period of writing coincided with the political activism undertaken by Zitkala-Sa after moving to Washington, D.C. in 1916. Her husband, a member of the Ute tribe of Utah and Colorado, had just been dismissed from his post with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Utah in response to his and Zitkala-Sa’s criticism of the bureau’s practices. During their time in Washington, Zitkala-Sa began lecturing to promote the cultural and tribal identities of Native Americans.

In 1924 the Indian Citizenship Act was passed, and in 1926 she and her husband founded the National Council of American Indians to further promote citizenship for all Native Americans that the legislation in 1924 had disregarded. From this point until her death in 1938, Zitkala-Sa would serve as president, major fundraiser, and speaker for the NCAI and was the major figure in those years. Her influence yielded improvements in the US government’s treatment of Native Americans, including the Indian Reorganization Act which was supported by the administration of FDR and passed by congress in 1934. Though her early work for the NCAI was largely disregarded when the organization was revived in 1944 under male leadership, the writings and publications by Zitkala-Sa had a lasting effect on the reception and preservation of Native American culture and ways of life.

As a journalist, civil rights worker, and political activist, Jovita Idar fought for the rights of Mexican-Americans. Idar worked for La Chronica, a newspaper in Laredo, Texas, along with her two brothers. She wrote articles using a pseudonym, often highlighting the poor living conditions of Mexican-American workers. Idar also reported the Mexican Revolution in her articles, voicing support especially for the agrarian revolutionaries.

Idar served as the president of the League of Mexican Women which was founded to offer free education to Mexican children. Founded in 1911, the League also sought to “unify the Mexican intellectuals of Texas around the issues of protection of civil rights, bilingual education, lynching of Mexicans, labor organizations, and women’s rights.” Her efforts helped to educate, provide for, and organize vulnerable Mexican-Americans throughout Texas.

Margaret Higgins Sanger’s work as a women’s reproductive rights activist may have been inspired by what she saw and experienced in her personal life. She witnessed her mother, Anne Higgins, endure 18 pregnancies with 11 live births before her death at 49. As a nurse, she cared for many working-class immigrant women who bore numerous children or died from self-induced abortions.

Whatever coaxed the flame, Margaret became America’s first sex educator by writing about birth control — a term she popularized. Her writings in the monthly magazine, The Woman Rebel, didn’t just raise eyebrows; it was unlawful to send out information about contraception through the mail.

Sanger went to Europe to avoid going to prison, but eventually returned and in 1916 she opened the first birth control clinic in the United States. Not surprisingly, she was arrested and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse. In the appeals process, her verdict was not overturned but the court made an exception in the law that allowed doctors to prescribe contraception for medical reasons. Her arrest and its aftermath served as a catalyst for birth control activism across the United States.

Rosa Parks was not the first black woman to cause an uproar over public transportation. Some 71 years earlier, in 1884, journalist and activist Ida B. Wells was pulled from the first class seat she had purchased and made to go into a crowded smoking car. Although she won her court case against the railroad company, it was later overturned and Wells was ordered to pay court costs, fueling a lifelong quest for racial justice.

Wells turned to writing and became known for her investigative journalism into the lynchings of black citizens. She often debunked charges justifying these murders and sparked a national anti-lynching campaign.

Speaking passionately on this issue, she raised money to continue to explore these mob-style executions and published her results. Wells found that while officially charged with rape, many blacks were killed for reasons such as failing to “give way” or competing economically with white persons.

Death threats caused Wells to flee from her home in Memphis and relocate to Chicago. She married Ferdinand L. Barnett there in 1895 and had four children, but continued to travel, write, and encourage organizing efforts. In 1913, she established the first black women’s suffrage club, called the Alpha Suffrage Club. During the years following WWI, she covered various race riots and published her reports in pamphlets and newspapers, including her own, the Conservator.

Bessie Smith was a championship roller skater in her home state of Tennessee, but her fame came from her extraordinary singing voice. The public would crown her the “Empress of the Blues.”

When her parents died, she and her brother turned to street busking. This led to work in various tent shows. The singer/dancer married young, and her husband died in action while serving in World War I. Throughout her life, Smith pursued love affairs with both men and women.

In the decades after WWI, Smith would become the nation’s most popular female blues singer, recording hits such as “Downhearted Blues.” She is credited for popularizing the blues and jazz genres. While preparing to record songs in the newly-popular swing style in 1937, she was killed in a car accident.

During World War I, Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was a high school musician. By 1917, he organized groups to play for dances, using his day job as a freelance sign painter to build his music business. When a customer asked him to paint a sign for a dance party, Duke would offer to play.

In 1923, Ellington got his big break at the Hollywood Club in New York City that would end up lasting four years. His success was slowed during the 1940s and the early 1950s with legislative restrictions such as club owners having to pay for a permit to allow dancing. In 1956, however, Duke and his orchestra met resounding success following their appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival. This festival introduced him to a new generation of fans and helped to spur Ellington’s popularity. Duke Ellington is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the 20th Century.

It was not at all certain that Owen D. Young would ever go to high school, much less law school. It took the mortgaging of his grandfather’s farm (and the needling of a university president) for Owen to complete his education.

It proved a good investment. Owen’s skill at litigation got the attention of General Electric where he became their chief counsel. Within ten years he was president of the company and moving the manufacturing giant into a leader in home electrical appliances.

In 1919, Uncle Sam called on him to help the country’s flagging radio communication industry. Young brought America to the radio technology forefront.

Following World War I, he was again called to serve. This time it was on the Second Industrial Conference by President Woodrow Wilson. He coauthored a plan to help Germany avoid default on reparations (and international unrest), earning him Time magazine’s Man of the Year award. Young would go on to counsel five U.S. presidents in matters of technology and international

Like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, William E. Boeing was an ivy league school drop out. He left Yale University in 1903 for a risky venture in the Northwest timber industry. Boeing was fortunate and made enough money to start another business — aviation.

By the time of World War I, Boeing’s company made one airplane model. The fledgling business got an order to build 50 planes for the United States Navy and by war’s end, Boeing had entered the commercial aviation business by creating mail service planes and later a passenger airline called United Airlines.

Though Boeing later sold his business, he never lost his love for flight. He returned to serve as an aviation consultant during World War II for his former company.

Henry Ford may be the founder of the Ford Motor Company, but he did not invent the automobile or the assembly line. He figured out ways to make them more efficient. Ford’s excellence at mass production made it so middle class Americans could afford their first cars. Taking vehicles out of the realm of extreme luxury items to everyday conveyance greatly impacted the 20th century.

During World War I, his focus went from the road to the open sky and ocean. Ford converted his automobile manufacturing to building engines for planes and anti-submarine boats. Plants in the United Kingdom were re-tooled to produce tractors to help with the British food supply.

Ford was a great supporter of the League of Nations, a proposed coalition to prevent wars through disarmament and diplomacy. When President Wilson toured the country to promote its creation, Ford helped fund a publicity campaign. In January 1920, the league was founded as part of the Paris Peace Conference.

Sarah Breedlove was the first child in her family to be born free on a Louisiana cotton plantation. Orphaned by age eight and picking cotton, this girl would storm the world as Madam CJ Walker: first self-made woman millionaire. It was working as a washerwoman in St. Louis that Sarah met advertising man Charles J. Walker. He would become her second husband, and promoter of her future enterprise.

Sarah’s own hair loss led to a business opportunity; she worked on a home remedy, which she perfected into a line of hair care products for African Americans. Her husband developed an advertisement campaign featuring the hair products of “Madam CJ Walker,” a persona Sarah embraced. Her savvy business acumen led her to wealth and philanthropy. She made large donations to the NAACP and other organizations improving the lives of African-Americans.

Mary Jane McLeod Bethune started working in the field with her parents, freed-slaves, when she was a small child. Perhaps wanting more from life than the next row of cotton, she expressed interest in education. It took the help of a sponsor, but Bethune graduated from college.

Instead of following her plan to become a missionary, Bethune started a private school for African-American girls. It would later merge with an African-American boys school and become Bethune-Cookman University.

With Bethune as college president, high standards were maintained in order to attract donors, but also to demonstrate to the greater society what educated African Americans could do.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought out Bethune to be a member of his Black Cabinet. She advised the president on concerns of black people and in turn shared his message and positive achievements with blacks. Bethune’s commitment to bettering the lives of African Americans earned her the honorable moniker, “The First Lady of The Struggle.”

At the age of seven, George Herman Ruth Jr. was sent to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Orphans, Delinquent, Incorrigible and Wayward Boys in Baltimore — but the boy called Babe wasn’t an orphan. Rather he was just delinquent, incorrigible and wayward. It was at the Catholic school that he learned to love baseball. Brother Matthias Boutlier, the school’s disciplinarian, coached the young player who was soon signed to play professional baseball.

While Ruth is well known for his 714 home runs and impressive .690 slugging average (still a major-league record), he also won 89 games and helped bring the Boston Red Sox to three World Series…as a left-handed pitcher.

After breaking the single-season home run record in 1919, the Red Sox sold Ruth to the Yankees. Babe Ruth led the New York team to four World Series wins, but the Boston Red Sox did not win a World Series for 86 years, leading some to believe the Sox were cursed.

He would be called the greatest athlete of the 20th century. Born of European and Native American descent, Jim Thorpe frequently ran away from his Indian boarding school. Thorpe later attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania where his football prowess was recognized. A West Point cadet succinctly recalled watching Thorpe tear up the Army team, it was a performance Dwight Eisenhower never forgot.

But it was at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm that Thorpe’s gifts were seen by the world. He brought home gold for his decathlon and pentathlon events.

Prior to the Olympics, Thorpe also had been a baseball barnstormer, traveling city-to-city for games. He had taken the small customary payments for playing. However, this was a violation of the Games’ amateur status rules and he was stripped of his medals — though some feel it was his ethnicity rather than a rule violation that led to this humbling event. Thorpe went on to play professional baseball and football during the WWI years, and into the 1920s. Thorpe’s medals were restored to him posthumously in 1982.

Charles Bender was the “greatest money pitcher of all time,” according to his Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack. The future Baseball Hall of Famer was a member of the Ojibwe tribe and grew up in Minnesota’s Crow Wing County. He was discovered in 1900 at age 16, studying at Pennsylvania’s Carlisle Indian School.

By 1903, he was in the major leagues and compiled a record at age 19 that has yet to be broken. That was the same year in which he bested Cy Young in a pitching duel ending with a score of 2-1, often called one of the best-pitched games in MLB history. The young man called “Chief” had five wins in three World Series and in 1910 earned a spectacular 23-5 record. He is credited with inventing the nickel curve, also known as the slider. In 1918, he put baseball on hold to work in a shipyard as part of the American war effort. After several seasons of decreased effectiveness as a pitcher, Bender retired in 1925. He remained in baseball, however, and went on to manage, coach and scout in various leagues. His career 212-127 record helped launch him into the hall of fame in 1953. Despite the discrimination facing Native Americans in his era, teammates said he was one of the kindest men they’d ever played with. In 1981 he was named to a book chronicling the 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time.

Known as the “Father of Black Baseball,” Andrew “Rube” Foster was an American player and pioneer of the Negro Leagues. Rube pitched in the Negro leagues for 15 years, until 1917 when at age 35 he arrived at his best career: baseball manager and executive.

He created the New Negro League team in Detroit, luring many of his veteran players to join. The NNL was the first long-lasting league for African-American baseball players from 1920 to 1931. In 1926 Rube was hospitalized from effects of near asphyxiation from a gas leak. The NNL withered without his leadership, and just one year after he passed away in 1930, the league officially disbanded.

Foster was the first representative from the Negro Leagues to be elected an executive to the baseball Hall of Fame. The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum hosts the Andrew “Rube” Foster Lecture annually each September.

Grace Humiston reigned as the probably most famous investigator in early 20th-century America. A graduate of the Law School of New York University, she worked as a lawyer and investigator and was the woman to attain a senior position in the Department of Justice in 1907.

In 1917, the disappearance of 18-year-old Ruth Cruger in Harlem had gained front page coverage in many newspapers. After a police investigation had gone cold, the girl’s father hired Humiston to investigate. Following several interviews and her deciphering of a blurred message on a blotter, Humiston led NYPD to the basement of Alfredo Cocci. Cocci had been an early suspect in the case but was not investigated deeply. After the police found the body of Ruth Cruger in his basement, Ruth’s father accused the NYPD of negligence. An inquiry soon followed and unearthed a kickback scheme between Cocci and the local police. Humiston was subsequently named special investigator to the NYPD in charge of tracing missing girls. As a result of her investigative skill – and the massive interest in the Cruger case – Humiston quickly became known as ‘Mrs. Sherlock Holmes.’

Robert Yerkes pioneered modern intelligence testing and theories in comparative psychology. During World War I, Yerkes’ team designed the famous Army Alpha and Army Beta tests in which the results determined suitability for special positions. By the time the war ended, some two million men had been tested. Although Yerkes believed that the test measured native intelligence, later findings found that education, training, and acculturation played an important role in performance.

The first primate research laboratory in the United States was founded by Yerkes, adding to the body of research of comparative psychology. He was the lab’s director from 1929 until 1941.

Later as a proponent of the eugenics movement, Yerkes sought immigration restrictions to prevent what he saw as “race deterioration.”

Lesley McNair was born May 25, 1883, in the small town of Verdale, Minnesota. He excelled academically at the local school until 9th grade, the highest grade offered. His parents, James and Clara McNair, moved to Minneapolis so their four children could finish high school. After high school, McNair pursued a degree in mechanical engineering from the Minnesota School of Business in Minneapolis while on the waitlist to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. Frustrated by the waitlist, he applied and was accepted to the United States Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1904 and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the field artillery.

McNair had reached the rank of Captain when, on the eve of the U.S. joining World War I, he was given the opportunity to lead by John Pershing, who was replacing older army leaders with younger junior officers. After only three months, McNair was promoted to Major and reassigned to the General Staff Corps. He was sent to France, where he first met George C. Marshall, and was quickly promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and was reassigned to the General Headquarters training division as the chief of artillery training. He impressed Pershing, who promoted him to Colonel in June 1918, and then Brigadier General in October 1918, at the age of 35. During World War I, McNair observed the differences between the theories at the core of army doctrine and the reality of open warfare.

During the army’s transformative years (1919-1939), McNair was able to apply his observations as he stepped into the role of organizer and trainer of the U.S. Army’s ground forces. Marshall selected him by name to be a leader from 1939 to 1944 because McNair had a broad understanding of mechanized combined arms operations, procurement, organization, war economy, and many other issues related to mobilization for war. McNair did studies and testing of new weapon systems, organizational changes, and doctrinal concepts. He also played an important role of the development of World War II’s army antitank doctrine. He received his promotion to Major General in September 1940, and Lieutenant General in June 1941. McNair served on the General Staff College from 1939 to 1940, was the chief of staff at the General Headquarters from 1940 to 1942, and was commander of the Army Ground Forces from 1942 to 1944.

Lesley McNair was killed in a friendly fire incident during Operation Cobra on July 25, 1944, as part of America’s invasion of France during World War II. He is buried in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Normandy, France.

Elijah Muhammad was born Elijah Poole in 1897 in Sandersville, Georgia. Forced to quit school in the third grade in order to help his family financially, Poole’s sister taught him to read in lieu of a formal education. After spending his youth working in brickyards he became a preacher for rural Baptist churches in Georgia. In 1917 he married Clara Evans, and by 1923 he and his family joined thousands of other black families in The Great Migration. He recounted years later that by the age of 20 he had “seen enough of the white man’s brutality to last 26,000 years.”

Much like the estimated 1.6 million other black families that made up the First Great Migration, Poole left his rural environs in the South for the industrial, upwardly-mobile cities in the North. He soon found work at an automobile plant in Detroit, MI. There he became involved in various Black Nationalist movements within the city, most prominent of which was the Universal Negro Improvement Association started by Marcus Garvey. Following Garvey’s deportation and the decline of the UNIA, Poole attended a speech in 1931 by Wallace Fard. Fard’s conviction that Islam was the most powerful means toward black empowerment enraptured Poole, and Fard soon gave his new follower the name Muhammad.

Upon Fard’s disappearance in 1934, the leadership of the Nation of Islam (which Fard had founded on July 4, 1930) was left in question. This highly contentious power vacuum within the organization resulted in several threats on Muhammad’s life. To escape potential danger he moved his family to Chicago, IL in 1935, and later Milwaukee, WI and Washington, D.C.

Through each of these moves Muhammad established new temples and expanded membership in the NOI. Some of his most influential recruits included Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. Though often embroiled in controversy because of his black separatist beliefs and political dissent, Elijah Muhammad nevertheless demonstrated that African-Americans were capable of self-support to break the cycle of poverty and racial violence which plagued much of their population. Under Muhammad’s leadership the NOI established a newspaper; set up businesses such as grocery stores, barber shops and bakeries; founded schools in 47 cities; and purchased thousands of agricultural land – all for the improvement of the lives of its African-American membership.

Two of five children born to Dr. William Warrall Mayo and Louise Abigail Wright Mayo, William James Mayo was born June 29, 1861 in Le Sueur, Minnesota, while Charles Horace Mayo was born July 19, 1865 in Rochester, Minnesota. Their parents sent them to study Latin, art, and the classics at the Rochester Training School. At home, their mother taught them botany and astronomy, their father instructed them in chemistry, anatomy, and laboratory methods, while keeping up with their chores around the house and accompanying their father on professional visits with his patients. William graduated from University of Michigan Medical School in 1883, while Charles graduated from the Chicago Medical School (later Northwestern University Medical School) in 1888.

In 1889, the Sisters of St. Francis opened a hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, and asked the three Mayo doctors to aid in the hospital’s planning and attracting skilled doctors to work there. By 1915, the Mayo Clinic had grown from a surgical clinic to a full medical center as famous physicians came from all over the world to work there. The Mayo brothers also started the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research with the University of Minnesota.

During World War I, the Mayo clinic was busy examining draftees and running training courses for new members of the medical corps. Both William and Charles would rise to the rank of Colonel in the army medical reserve. William served as the chief advisor for the surgical services in the army’s surgeon general’s office. Charles served as the associate chief advisor under his brother. William and Charles were tasked with teaching the newest surgical developments and aiding in the transition from German-made medical equipment to the poorer quality American-made supplies during the war. In 1918, the Mayo Clinic felt pressure to respond to the flu epidemic. They utilized the hotel next door to handle the overflow of patients. Despite their duties in Washington, D.C., the Mayo brothers wanted to remain in Rochester to run their clinic. They divided their time and rotated back and forth so one would be in Washington, D.C., while the other was back home in Rochester.

Both brothers continued to perform surgeries into their sixties, with William retiring in 1928 and Charles retiring a year later due to a series of strokes. Charles Mayo died May 26, 1939, and William Mayo died only a few months later on July 28, 1939. Both brothers received the U.S. Distinguished Service Medal for their work done during World War I. William received his in 1919, while Charles received his in 1920.

Born into the German Empire in 1879, Einstein was not much of a student. In fact, he loathed school and dropped out of high school. However, due to his excellent entrance exams, he was admitted into the renowned Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich.

By 1905, Einstein was a graduate, working as a third class technician at a Swiss Patent office. In his spare time, he wrote scientific papers which “radically changed human understanding of the universe” and earned him a PhD. He was 26.

During WWI, Einstein supported the anti-war movement and campaigned for a German democracy. He was certain he could get German rulers to see reason; he was wrong.

By 1919, the young physicist had made a name for himself with his theory of relativity. Einstein was visiting the US in 1933, just as Hitler took over Germany, so he remained stateside until becoming a United States citizen in the 1940s. On the brink of WWII, Einstein contacted President Roosevelt about a “powerful bomb of a new type” that the Germans were developing. This was the beginning of the Manhattan Project and the era of nuclear weapons.

Robert Hutchings Goddard (October 5, 1882 – August 10, 1945) was to rockets and space as the Wright brothers were to airplanes and flight. Goddard was said to have “ushered in the Space Age” with the first liquid-fueled rocket.

Despite the importance of this work, Goddard was not made rich by it — nor did the public respect him. The press made a game of ridiculing his “foolish” ideas of spaceflight. He received modest grants from the Smithsonian, but often self-funded his work from his pay as a professor.

While many academics supported World War l with their expertise, Goddard looked for military applications of his rocketry. The Signal Corps eventually sponsored the scientist’s work by helping to fund the development of a tube-based rocket launcher for light infantry use.

A successful demonstration of the rocket occurred on November 6, 1918, just days before the Compiègne Armistice was signed. The research was not wasted. It was applied in WWII and used to further the dream of a successful rocket to the moon.

The man often praised for saving the economy of the South was born into slavery in 1865. As a child, George Washington Carver worked in the garden, and his knack for it led him to be called the “plant doctor.”

Carver left home to pursue an education, becoming the first African American to graduate from present-day Iowa State University — and later became faculty.

Booker T. Washington, the president of the Tuskegee Institute, recruited Carver to head its Agriculture Department. Carver taught there for 47 years and did critical research on innovative farm methods, including soil conservation and crop diversification.

When pests destroyed the cotton crop, he encouraged farmers to try peanuts. Carver wrote a booklet, “How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it For Human Consumption.” These breakthrough ideas saved many farms, while also promoting environmentally sound practices.

Time magazine praised Carver in 1941 for his inventiveness, calling him the “Black Leonardo.”

Anna Williams’s sister, Millie, had a harrowing childbirth in which she lost her baby and nearly died. Anna felt it was the inexperienced caregiver that resulted in the sad outcome. Just months later, in 1887, she enrolled in the Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary.

As a physician, Williams came to work at the first diagnostic lab in the country for the New York Department of Health. There she was able to isolate a crucial strain of diphtheria, which led to the creation of its antitoxin. She graciously shared credit with her colleagues and was known for her collaborative nature. In 1914 Williams was elected president of the Woman’s Medical Society of New York. During WWI she headed a commission on the influenza outbreak and taught classes at NYU on how to handle local outbreaks of the pandemic.

Williams led efforts to discover a treatment for the pathogen responsible for the devastating illness that killed an estimated 50 million people across the globe in the years of 1918 and 1919. While the efforts of Williams and her teams didn’t isolate the pathogen, her work to understand the illness helped slow transmission of it, potentially saving tens of thousands of Americans from the deadly virus.

Lindbergh’s interest in aviation tempted him away from his mechanical engineering studies at the University of Wisconsin. He mastered solo flight and took off as a wild barnstormer, performing at public events.

As a publicity stunt in 1919, a hotel owner offered $25,000 to the first person to fly nonstop between New York and Paris. By 1927, after multiple deaths, it had still not been won. On May 20th of that year, Lindbergh lifted off from Long Island, New York, traveling 33.5 hours to Le Bourguet Field, Paris. More than 100,000 people came out to witness the historic landing of this daring pilot.

Lindbergh was so beloved in Paris that US Ambassador Myron Herrick brought the young man to as many meetings and events as he could in attempts to garner goodwill from crowds and state leaders alike. Rather than continue around the world as he had hoped in his now iconic Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh was asked to return home to the United States. Upon his arrival, Lindbergh was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross medal from President Calvin Coolidge.

Throughout his life, “Lucky Lindy” used his international renown to promote the field of aviation. He dedicated his days to the continued development of aircraft and the promotion of science and technology. Most of all, Lindbergh is credited with helping to usher in the age of commercial aviation and world travel.

Long before televangelists graced cable stations, Aimee Semple McPherson — better known as Sister Aimee — rocked the then-modern medium of radio. She was the most popular Christian preacher in America, overflowing lecture halls for her faith healing sessions. McPherson’s preaching style was said to put people in “near hysteria” with audiences sometimes numbering in the tens of thousands.

After World War I, another battle emerged between the fundamentalists and what were known as modernists, people seeking less conservative religious faiths. Sister Aimee was a staunch fundamentalist and believed that faith should be infused into every aspect of one’s life. She saw modernism and secularism as the true enemy.

In 1926, the country became obsessed with her alleged kidnapping which made headlines for months — as did the accusations that it was faked to create sympathy and momentum for the fundamentalist cause. The case was investigated and almost went to trial, but in the end it was determined that there was a lack of evidence.