Bessie Coleman

"Because of Bessie Coleman, we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream". 

~ Lieutenant William J. Powell, Black Wings

Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926) was an American civil aviator. She was the first female pilot of African American descent and the first person of African American descent to hold an international pilot license.

Coleman was born on January 26, 1892 in Atlanta, Texas, the tenth of thirteen children to sharecroppers George, who was part Cherokee, and Susan Coleman. When Coleman was two years old, her family moved to Waxahachie, Texas, where she lived until age 23.

Coleman began attending school in Waxahachie at age six and had to walk four miles each day to her segregated, one-room school, where she loved to read and established herself as an outstanding math student. She completed all eight grades of her one-room school. Every year, Coleman's routine of school, chores, and church was interrupted by the cotton harvest.

In 1901, Coleman's life took a dramatic turn: George Coleman left his family. He became fed up with the racial barriers that existed in Texas. He returned to Oklahoma, or Indian Territory as it was then called, to find better opportunities, but Susan and the children did not go with him. At age 12, Bessie was accepted into the Missionary Baptist Church. When she turned eighteen, Coleman took her savings and enrolled in the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University (now called Langston University) in Langston, Oklahoma. She completed one term before her money ran out, and returned home.

In 1915, at the age of 23, she moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with her brothers and she worked at the White Sox Barber Shop as a manicurist, where she heard stories from pilots returning home from World War I about flying during the war. She could not gain admission to American flight schools because she was black and a woman. No black U.S. aviator would train her. Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender, encouraged her to study abroad. Coleman received financial backing from a banker named Jesse Binga and the Defender.

Coleman took a French language class at the Berlitz school in Chicago, and then traveled to Paris on November 20, 1920. Coleman learned to fly in a Nieuport Type 82 biplane, with "a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot's feet."

On June 15, 1921, Coleman became not only the first African-American woman to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, and the first American of any gender or ethnicity to do so, but the first African American woman to earn an aviation pilot's license.

Determined to polish her skills, Coleman spent the next two months taking lessons from a French ace pilot near Paris, and in September 1921, sailed for New York. She became a media sensation when she returned to the United States.

Coleman quickly realized that in order to make a living as a civilian aviator—the age of commercial flight was still a decade or more in the future—she would need to become a "barnstorming" stunt flier, and perform for paying audiences. But to succeed in this highly competitive arena, she would need advanced lessons and a more extensive repertoire. Returning to Chicago, Coleman could find no one willing to teach her, so in February 1922, she sailed again for Europe. She spent the next two months in France completing an advanced course in aviation, then left for the Netherlands to meet with Anthony Fokker, one of the world's most distinguished aircraft designers. She also traveled to Germany, where she visited the Fokker Corporation and received additional training from one of the company's chief pilots. She returned to the United States with the confidence and enthusiasm she needed to launch her career in exhibition flying.

"Queen Bess," as she was known was a highly popular draw for the next five years. Invited to important events and often interviewed by newspapers, she was admired by both blacks and whites. She primarily flew Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplanes and army surplus aircraft left over from the war. She made her first appearance in an American airshow on September 3, 1922, at an event honoring veterans of the all-black 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I. Held at Curtiss Field on Long Island near New York City and sponsored by her friend Abbott and the Chicago Defender newspaper, the show billed Coleman as "the world's greatest woman flier" and featured aerial displays by eight other American ace pilots, and a jump by black parachutist Hubert Julian. Six weeks later she returned to Chicago to deliver a stunning demonstration of daredevil maneuvers—including figure eights, loops, and near-ground dips—to a large and enthusiastic crowd at the Checkerboard Airdrome (now Chicago Midway Airport).

But the thrill of stunt flying and the admiration of cheering crowds were only part of Coleman's dream. Coleman never lost sight of her childhood vow to one day "amount to something." As a professional aviator, Coleman would often be criticized by the press for her opportunistic nature and the flamboyant style she brought to her exhibition flying. However, she also quickly gained a reputation as a skilled and daring pilot who would stop at nothing to complete a difficult stunt. In Los Angeles, she broke a leg and three ribs when her plane stalled and crashed on February 22, 1923.

Through her media contacts, she was offered a role in a feature-length film titled Shadow and Sunshine, to be financed by the African American Seminole Film Producing Company. She gladly accepted, hoping the publicity would help to advance her career and provide her with some of the money she needed to establish her own flying school. But upon learning that the first scene in the movie required her to appear in tattered clothes, with a walking stick and a pack on her back, she refused to proceed. "Clearly ... [Bessie's] walking off the movie set was a statement of principle. Opportunist though she was about her career, she was never an opportunist about race. She had no intention of perpetuating the derogatory image most whites had of most blacks", wrote Doris Rich.

Coleman would not live long enough to fulfill her dream of establishing a school for young black aviators, but her pioneering achievements served as an inspiration for a generation of African American men and women. "Because of Bessie Coleman," wrote Lieutenant William J. Powell in Black Wings 1934, dedicated to Coleman, "we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream". Powell served in a segregated unit during World War I, and tirelessly promoted the cause of black aviation through his book, his journals, and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club, which he founded in 1929.

On April 30, 1926 Coleman was in Jacksonville. She had recently purchased a Curtiss JN-4 (Jenny) in Dallas and had it flown to Jacksonville in preparation for an airshow. Her friends and family did not consider the aircraft safe and implored her not to fly it. Her mechanic and publicity agent, William Wills, was flying the plane with Coleman in the other seat. Coleman did not put on her seatbelt because she was planning a parachute jump for the next day and wanted to look over the cockpit sill to examine the terrain. About ten minutes into the flight, the plane did not pull out of a dive; instead it spun. Coleman was thrown from the plane at 2,000 ft (610 m) and died instantly when she hit the ground. William Wills was unable to gain control of the plane and it plummeted to the ground. Wills died upon impact and the plane burst into flames. Although the wreckage of the plane was badly burned, it was later discovered that a wrench used to service the engine had slid into the gearbox and jammed it.

She was 34 years old.

Clara Bow

Clara Gordon Bow (July 29, 1905 – September 27, 1965) was an American actress who rose to stardom in silent film during the 1920s. It was her appearance as a plucky shopgirl in the film It that brought her global fame and the nickname "The It Girl". Bow came to personify the Roaring Twenties and is described as its leading sex symbol.

She appeared in 46 silent films and 11 talkies, including hits such as Mantrap (1926), It (1927) and Wings (1927). She was named first box-office draw in 1928 and 1929 and second box-office draw in 1927 and 1930. Her presence in a motion picture was said to have ensured investors, by odds of almost 2-to-1, a "safe return".

At the apex of her stardom, she received more than 45,000 fan letters in a single month (January 1929). After marrying actor Rex Bell in 1931, Bow retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada. Her final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933. In September 1965, Bow died of a heart attack at the age of 60.

Maria Cosway

Maria Cosway (11 June 1760 – 5 January 1838) was an Italian-English artist, who exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. She also worked in France, where she cultivated a large circle of friends and clients, and later in Italy. She commissioned the first portrait of Napoleon to be seen in England.

Her paintings and engravings are held by the British Museum, the New York Public Library and the British Library. Her work was included in recent exhibits at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 1995-1996 and the Tate Britain in 2006.

Cosway was an accomplished composer, musician, and society hostess. She is notable for sharing a short romantic relationship with the American statesman Thomas Jefferson in 1786 while he served in Paris as the American envoy to France. They kept up a lifelong correspondence until his death in 1826.

Cosway founded a girls' school in Paris, which she directed from 1803 to 1809. Soon after it closed, she founded a Catholic convent and girls' school in Lodi, northern Italy, which she directed until her death.

John Muir

"We all flow from one fountain—Soul. All are expressions of one love. God does not appear, and flow out, only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races and places, but He flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and beasts, saturating all and fountainizing all."

~ John Muir

John Muir (21 April 1838 – 24 December 1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States.

His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. One of the most well-known hiking trails in the U.S., the 211-mile (340 km) John Muir Trail, was named in his honor. Other places named in his honor are Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, John Muir College, Mount Muir, Camp Muir and Muir Glacier.In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests. He petitioned the U.S. Congress for the National Park bill that was passed in 1890, establishing both Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks. Because of the spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings, he was able to inspire readers, including presidents and congressmen, to take action to help preserve large nature areas. He is today referred to as the "Father of the National Parks".

John Muir's birthplace was a three-story stone house in Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland. His parents were Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye. He was the third of eight children. In his autobiography, he described his boyhood pursuits, which included fighting, either by re-enacting romantic battles from the Wars of Scottish Independence or just scrapping on the playground, and hunting for birds' nests (ostensibly to one-up his fellows as they compared notes on who knew where the most were located). The family were members of the Presbyterian Church while in Scotland, but joined the Disciples of Christ in the United States.

In 1849, Muir's family emigrated to the United States, starting a farm near Portage, Wisconsin, called Fountain Lake Farm. By age 11, young Muir had learned to recite "by heart and by sore flesh" all of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament.

At age 22, Muir enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, paying his own way for several years. There, under a towering black locust tree beside North Hall, Muir took his first botany lesson. A fellow student plucked a flower from the tree and used it to explain how the grand locust is a member of the pea family, related to the straggling pea plant. Fifty years later, the naturalist Muir described the day in his autobiography. "This fine lesson charmed me and sent me flying to the woods and meadows in wild enthusiasm." As a freshman Muir studied chemistry with Professor Ezra Carr and his wife Jeanne; they became lifelong friends and Muir developed a lifelong interest in chemistry and the sciences. Muir took an eclectic approach to his studies, attending classes for two years but never being listed higher than a first-year student due to his unusual selection of courses. Records showed his class status as "irregular gent" and, even though he never graduated, he learned enough geology and botany to inform his later wanderings.

In 1863 his brother Dan left Wisconsin for Canada to avoid the draft. In 1864, Muir left school to go to Canada to avoid the military draft, spending the spring, summer, and fall wandering the woods and swamps around Lake Huron collecting plants. With his money running out and winter coming, he met up with his brother Dan in Ontario, where the two worked at a sawmill on the shore of Lake Huron until the summer of 1865.

Muir returned to the United States in March 1866, winding up in Indianapolis to work as a sawyer in a factory that made wagon wheels; he was paid $22 a week. He proved valuable to his employers because of his inventiveness in improving the machines and processes. In early March 1867, an accident changed the course of his life: a tool he was using slipped and struck him in the eye. He was confined to a darkened room for six weeks, worried whether he’d ever regain his sight. When he did, "he saw the world—and his purpose—in a new light," writes Marquis. Muir later wrote, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons." From that point on, he determined to "be true to myself" and follow his dream of exploration and study of plants,

In September 1867, Muir undertook a walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Indiana to Florida, which he recounted in his book A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf. He had no specific route chosen, except to go by the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find." Upon reaching Florida, he hoped to board a ship to South America and continue his wandering there. After contracting malaria on Florida's Gulf Coast, he abandoned his plans for South America. Instead, he sailed to New York and booked passage to California.

Arriving in San Francisco in March 1868, Muir immediately left for a week-long visit to Yosemite, a place he had only read about. Seeing it for the first time, Marquis notes that "he was overwhelmed by the landscape, scrambling down steep cliff faces to get a closer look at the waterfalls, whooping and howling at the vistas, jumping tirelessly from flower to flower." "We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us," Muir later wrote. . . . "No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite... The grandest of all special temples of Nature." He later returned to Yosemite and worked as a shepherd for a season. He climbed a number of mountains, including Cathedral Peak, Mount Dana and hiked the old Indian trail down Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake.

During these years in Yosemite, Muir was unmarried, often unemployed, with no prospects for a career, and had "periods of anguish," writes naturalist author John Tallmadge. He was sustained by not only the natural environment, but also by reading the essays of naturalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote about the very life that Muir was then living. On excursions into the back country of Yosemite, he traveled alone, carrying "only a tin cup, a handful of tea, a loaf of bread, and a copy of Emerson." He usually spent his evenings sitting by a campfire in his overcoat, reading Emerson under the stars. As the years passed, he became a "fixture in the valley," respected for his knowledge of natural history, his skill as a guide, and his vivid storytelling. Visitors to the valley often included scientists, artists, and celebrities, many of whom made a point of meeting with Muir.

Pursuit of his love of science, especially geology, often occupied his free time. Muir soon became convinced that glaciers had sculpted many of the features of the valley and surrounding area. This notion was in stark contradiction to the accepted contemporary theory, promulgated by Josiah Whitney (head of the California Geological Survey), which attributed the formation of the valley to a catastrophic earthquake. As Muir's ideas spread, Whitney tried to discredit Muir by branding him as an amateur. But Louis Agassiz, the premier geologist of the day, saw merit in Muir's ideas, and lauded him as "the first man I have ever found who has any adequate conception of glacial action."

Muir threw himself into the preservationist role with great vigor. He envisioned the Yosemite area and the Sierra as pristine lands. He thought the greatest threat to the Yosemite area and the Sierra was domesticated livestock—especially domestic sheep, which he referred to as "hoofed locusts". In June 1889, the influential associate editor of Century magazine, Robert Underwood Johnson, camped with Muir in Tuolumne Meadows and saw firsthand the damage a large flock of sheep had done to the grassland. Johnson agreed to publish any article Muir wrote on the subject of excluding livestock from the Sierra high country. He also agreed to use his influence to introduce a bill to Congress to make the Yosemite area into a national park, modeled after Yellowstone National Park.

In 1878, nearing the age of 40, Muir’s friends "pressured him to return to society." Soon after he returned to the Oakland area, he met Louisa Strentzel, daughter of a prominent physician and horticulturist with a 2,600-acre (11 km2) fruit orchard in Martinez, California, northeast of Oakland. In 1880, Muir and Strentzel married. Although Muir was a loyal, dedicated husband, and father of two daughters, "his heart remained wild," writes Marquis. His wife understood his needs, and after seeing his restlessness at the ranch would sometimes "shoo him back up" to the mountains. He sometimes took his daughters with him.

In early 1892, Professor Henry Senger, a philologist at the University of California, Berkeley, contacted Muir with the idea of forming a local 'alpine club' for mountain lovers. Senger and San Francisco attorney Warren Olney sent out invitations "for the purpose of forming a 'Sierra Club.' Mr. John Muir will preside." On May 28, 1892, the first meeting of the Sierra Club was held to write articles of incorporation. One week later Muir was elected president, Muir remained president until his death 22 years later.

With population growth continuing in San Francisco, political pressure increased to dam the Tuolumne River for use as a water reservoir. Muir passionately opposed the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley because he found Hetch Hetchy as stunning as Yosemite Valley. Muir, the Sierra Club and Robert Underwood Johnson fought against inundating the valley. Muir wrote to President Roosevelt pleading for him to scuttle the project. Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, suspended the Interior Department's approval for the Hetch Hetchy right-of-way. After years of national debate, Taft's successor Woodrow Wilson signed the bill authorizing the dam into law on December 19, 1913. Muir felt a great loss from the destruction of the valley, his last major battle.

John Muir died at California Hospital (now California Hospital Medical Center) in Los Angeles on 24 December 1914 of pneumonia at age 76, after a brief visit to Daggett, California, to see his daughter Helen Muir Funk. John Muir was survived by two daughters and ten grandchildren, two of whom are still living as of 2011.

Annie Oakley

Aim at a high mark and you will hit it. No, not the first time, not the second time and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect. 

~ Annie Oakley

Annie Oakley (August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926), born Phoebe Ann Moses, was an American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Oakley's amazing talent and timely rise to fame led to a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which propelled her to become the first American female superstar Oakley's perhaps most famous trick is being able to repeatedly split a playing card, edge-on, and put several more holes in it before it could touch the ground, while using a .22 caliber rifle, at 90 feet.

Phoebe Ann (Annie) Moses was born in "a cabin less than two miles northwest of Willowdell in Partentown North Star, Ohio", a rural western border county of Ohio. Her birthplace log cabin site is about five miles eastward of North Star. There is a stone-mounted plaque in the vicinity of the cabin site, which was placed by the Annie Oakley Committee in 1981, 121 years after her birth.

Annie's parents were Quakers of English descent from Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania: Susan Wise, age 18, and Jacob Moses (1860 U.S. Census shows his father's name as Mauzy, born 1799), age 49, married in 1848. They moved to a rented farm (later purchased with a mortgage) in Patterson Township, Darke County. The move occurred sometime between 1855 and her sister Sarah Ellen's Darke County birth in 1857.

Born in 1860, Annie was the sixth of Jacob and Susan's seven children but her mother also had another child named Emily. Her father, who had fought in the War of 1812, died in 1866 at age 65, from pneumonia and overexposure in freezing weather. Her mother married Daniel Brumbaugh, had a ninth child, Emily, and was widowed for the second time.

On March 15, 1870, at age nine, Annie was admitted to Darke County Infirmary, along with elder sister Sarah Ellen. According to her autobiography, she was put in the care of the Infirmary's superintendent, Samuel Crawford Edington and his wife Nancy, who taught her to sew and decorate. Beginning in the spring of 1870, she was "bound out" to a local family to help care for their infant son, on the false promise of fifty cents a week and an education. She spent about two years in near-slavery to them where she endured mental and physical abuse. She would often have to do boys' work. One time the wife put Annie out in the freezing cold, without shoes, as a punishment because she had fallen asleep over some darning. Annie referred to them as "the wolves". Even in her autobiography, she kindly never told the couple's real name. When, in the spring of 1872, she reunited with her family, her mother had married a third time, to Joseph Shaw.

Because of poverty following the death of her father, Annie did not regularly attend school. But later, she did receive some additional education. She rendered her surname as ending in "ee", while it appears as "Moses" on her father's gravestone[and in his military record; it is the official spelling by the Annie Oakley Foundation maintained by her living relatives. Variations in the accepted surname spelling ("Moses") have included "Mosey", "Mosie", and "Mauzy". .

Annie began trapping at a young age, and shooting and hunting by age eight to support her siblings and her widowed mother. She sold the hunted game for money to locals in Greenville, as well as restaurants and hotels in southern Ohio. Her skill eventually paid off the mortgage on her mother's farm when Annie was 15.

Annie soon became well known throughout the region. On Thanksgiving Day 1875, the Baughman and Butler shooting act was being performed in Cincinnati. Traveling show marksman and former dog trainer Francis E. Butler (1850–1926), an Irish immigrant, placed a $100 bet per side (roughly equivalent to modern US$2,000) with Cincinnati hotel owner Jack Frost, that he, Butler, could beat any local fancy shooter. The hotelier arranged a shooting match between Butler and the 15-year-old Annie saying, "The last opponent Butler expected was a five-foot-tall 15-year old girl named Annie." After missing on his 25th shot, Butler lost the match and the bet. He soon began courting Annie, and they married on August 23, 1876. They did not have children.

Annie and Frank Butler lived in Cincinnati, for a time, and the stage name, Oakley, which she adopted when she and Frank began performing together, is believed to have been taken from the city's neighborhood of Oakley, where they resided.

They joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1885. At 5 feet (1.5 m) tall, Oakley was given the nickname of "Watanya Cicilla" by fellow performer Sitting Bull, rendered "Little Sure Shot" in the public advertisements.

During her first engagement with Buffalo Bill's show, Oakley experienced a tense professional rivalry with rifle sharpshooter Lillian Smith. Being eleven years younger, Smith promoted herself as younger and therefore more billable than Oakley. Oakley temporarily left the Buffalo Bill's show, but returned after Smith departed.

In Europe, she performed for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, King Umberto I of Italy, Marie François Sadi Carnot (the President of France) and other crowned heads of state. Oakley had such good aim that, at his request, she knocked the ashes off a cigarette held by the newly crowned German Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Oakley promoted the service of women in combat operations for the United States armed forces. She wrote a letter to President William McKinley on April 5, 1898 "offering the government the services of a company of 50 'lady sharpshooters' who would provide their own arms and ammunition should the U.S. go to war with Spain." The Spanish-American War did occur, but Oakley's offer was not accepted. Theodore Roosevelt, did, however, name his volunteer cavalry the "Rough Riders" after the "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World" where Oakley was a major star.

The same year that McKinley was fatally shot by an assassin, 1901, Oakley was also badly injured in a train accident, but she recovered after temporary paralysis and five spinal operations. She left the Buffalo Bill show and in 1902 began a quieter acting career in a stage play written especially for her, The Western Girl. Oakley played the role of Nancy Berry and used a pistol, rifle and rope to outsmart a group of outlaws.

Throughout her career, it is believed that Oakley taught upwards of 15,000 women how to use a gun. Oakley believed strongly that it was crucial for women to learn how to use a gun, as not only a form of physical and mental exercise, but also to defend themselves. She said:"I would like to see every woman know how to handle [firearms] as naturally as they know how to handle babies." 

Sophie Scholl

"Everything is so beautiful . . . in spite of all the terrible things that are going on."

~ Sophie Scholl

"Of course, the terrible things I heard from the Nuremberg Trials, about the six million Jews and the people from other races who were killed, were facts that shocked me deeply. But I wasn't able to see the connection with my own past. I was satisfied that I wasn't personally to blame and that I hadn't known about those things. I wasn't aware of the extent. But one day I went past the memorial plaque which had been put up for Sophie Scholl in Franz Josef Strasse, and I saw that she was born the same year as me, and she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. And at that moment I actually sensed that it was no excuse to be young, and that it would have been possible to find things out."

~ Traudl Junge, Hitler's personal secretary, in Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin (2002) [Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary]

Sophia Magdalena Scholl</a> <i> (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and revolutionary, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany.

She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich with her brother Hans. As a result, they were both executed by guillotine.

Since the 1970s, Scholl has been celebrated as one of the great German heroes who actively opposed the Third Reich during the Second World War.

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman

"When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven."

Madam C.J. Walker

“I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations….I have built my own factory on my own ground.”

~ Madam Walker, National Negro Business League Convention, July 1912

“Right here let me correct the erroneous impression held by some that I claim to straighten the hair. I deplore such impression because I have always held myself out as a hair culturist. I grow hair…I want the great masses of my people to take a greater pride in their personal appearance and to give their hair proper attention.”

~ Madame. C.J. Walker

Madam C.J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, (December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919), was an American businesswoman and philanthropist, commonly regarded as the first female self made millionaire in America.

She made her fortune by developing and marketing a successful line of beauty and hair products for black women under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

Walker was born in Delta, Louisiana to Owen and Minerva Breedlove. She was one of six children; she had a sister Louvenia and four brothers: Alexander, James, Solomon, and Owen, Jr.   Her parents and elder siblings were slaves on Madison Parish plantation owned by Robert W. Burney . She was the first child in her family born into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Her mother died, possibly from cholera, in 1872. Her father remarried and died shortly afterward.

Madam C. J. Walker moved in with her older sister and brother-in-law, Willie Powell. At the age of 14, she married Moses McWilliams to escape Powell's abuse and three years later her daughter, Lelia McWilliams (A'Lelia Walker) was born. When Sarah was 20, her husband died, Lelia was just 2 years old. Shortly afterward she moved to St. Louis where three of her brothers lived; her brothers were all barbers at a local barbershop. In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman.

Like many women of her era, Sarah experienced hair loss. Because most Americans lacked indoor plumbing, central heating and electricity, they bathed and washed their hair infrequently. The result was scalp disease.

Sarah experimented with home remedies and products already on the market until she finally developed her own shampoo and an ointment that contained sulfur to make her scalp healthier for hair growth.

Sarah, now known as Madam C. J. Walker, was selling her products throughout the United States. While her daughter Lelia (later known as A'Lelia Walker) ran a mail order business from Denver, Madam Walker and her husband traveled throughout the southern and eastern states. They settled in Pittsburgh in 1908 and opened Lelia College to train "hair culturists." In 1910 Walker moved to Indianapolis, Indiana where she established her headquarters and built a factory.

She began to teach and train other black women in order to help them build their own businesses. She also gave other lectures on political, economic and social issues at conventions sponsored by powerful black institutions.

After the East St. Louis Race Riot, she joined leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in their efforts to support legislation to make lynching a federal crime. In 1918 at the biennial convention of the National Association Of Colored Woman (NACW) she was acknowledged for making the largest contribution to save the Anacostia (Washington, DC) house of abolitionist Frederick Douglass. She continued to donate money throughout her career to the NAACP, the YMCA, and to black schools, organizations, individuals, orphanages, and retirement homes.

In 1917, she moved to her Irvington-on-Hudson, New York estate, Villa Lewaro, which had been designed by Vertner Tandy, the first licensed black architect in New York State and a founding member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. The house cost $250,000 to build. Madam C.J. Walker died at Villa Lewaro on Sunday, May 25, 1919 from complications of hypertension. She was 51. At her death she was considered to be the wealthiest African-American woman in America and known to be the first self-made female American millionaire. Her daughter, A'Lelia Walker, became the president of the Madam C.J Walker Manufacturing Company.

Frances Wright

Frances Wright had been living in Cincinnati for nearly twenty years when she died in 1852.  

Walt Whitman described her as "a brilliant woman, of beauty and estate, who was never satisfied unless she was busy doing good -- public good, private good." [much of the public criticized her morals but] "we all loved her; fell down before her; her very appearance seemed to enthrall us. [she was] the noblest Roman of them all ... a woman of the noblest make-up whose orbit was a great deal larger than theirs -- too large to be tolerated long by them: a most maligned, lied-about character -- one of the best in history though also one of the least understood."

Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton all refer to Frances Wright as a pioneer in women's rights. 

Frances "Fanny" Wright (September 6,1795-December 13,1852), born in Scotland and orphaned at the age of two, rose from rather inauspicious beginnings to fame as a writer and reformer. 

She and her only surviving sibling Camilla lived with various relatives in England until 1816 when they returned to Scotland to live with their great-uncle James Mylne, a professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow College. Frances gained access to the college library and thrived in this new environment. She read everything she could about America, including Carlo Botta's history of the American Revolution (Storia della guerra dell' Independenza degli Stati Uniti d'America, 1809), a work that Jefferson highly valued. Much to her uncle's disappointment, she became determined to travel to America to see how the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence were working out in practice.

In 1818 Frances and Camilla Wright left for New York. There Frances Wright anonymously produced and published Altorf, a play about the struggle for Swiss independence. The two sisters then traveled unchaperoned several thousand miles through many cities and the backwoods frontier. 

Upon her return to Britain in 1820, she received a letter from Thomas Jefferson thanking her for sending him a copy of her play. He praised the play for giving "dignity and usefulness to poetry," and she responded in turn, expressing her reverence for Jefferson's "enlightened, active and disinterested patriotism. " 

She published her correspondence with Mrs. Rahbina Craig Millar in book form. Views of Society and Manners in America has become one of the most celebrated travel memoirs of the early nineteenth century. Wright was unabashedly enthusiastic about a nation she considers a guarantor of freedom and equality: "The prejudices still to be found in Europe, though now indeed somewhat antiquated, which would confine the female library to romances, poetry, and belles-lettres, and female conversation to the last new publication, new bonnet, and pas seul are entirely unknown here. The women are assuming their place as thinking beings, not in despite of the men, but chiefly in consequence of their enlarged views and exertions as fathers and legislators."

In Paris in 1821, Frances Wright met the Marquis de Lafayette. He too praised her work, and she became a participant in Lafayette's clandestine intrigues in support of various revolutionary movements. At his insistence, she published her fictionalized treatise on the philosophy of Epicurus, A Few Days in Athens (1822). Jefferson said the work was a "treat to me of the highest order," and he filled seven pages of his commonplace book with excerpts from it. 

After an extended stay at Lafayette's family estate La Grange during which Wright worked on a biography of Lafayette, Lafayette persuaded Wright to accompany him on his farewell visit to America in 1824. Lafayette referred to their relationship in father-daughter terms. She realized the anomaly of her position in the masculine world of politics: "I dare say you marvel sometimes at my independent way of walking through the world just as if nature had made me of your sex instead of poor Eve's," she wrote to Lafayette. "Trust me, my beloved friend, the mind has no sex but what habit and education give it, and I who was thrown in infancy upon the world like a wreck upon the waters have learned, as well to struggle with the elements as any male child of Adam." 

The Wrights arrived at Jefferson's home, Monticello a day or two after Lafayette. Frances Wright remarked that she enjoyed "one of the finest prospects I ever remember to have seen" from a mountain "consecrated by the residence of the greatest of America's surviving veterans." 

Later, when Lafayette headed South in late February, Wright decided to proceed across the Midwest and down the Mississippi River. Before rejoining Lafayette in New Orleans in April, she visited Robert Owen and the community he had established at New Harmony, Indiana. 

Wright became more interested in the cause of emancipation. In Views of Society, Wright noticed slaveholders' humanity to their slaves, in which they took such pride, as being mere "gilding" on the chains of bondage. 

By the time Lafayette left for France in 1825, Wright had decided to stay in America to promote social reforms. Wright implemented a practical plan to demonstrate to Americans the possibility of eradicating slavery. Slaves would be trained for a vocation while working out the cost of their purchase, their keep, and their eventual colonization abroad. 

After meeting Robert Owen and observing his utopian community New Harmony, Wright began an experimental community on the site of present-day Germantown, Tennessee. She rode horseback to Memphis, arriving late in October 1825, inspecting land along the Wolf River near the site of present-day Germantown. She then rode to Nashville, bought eleven slaves including five men (Willis, Jacob, Gradison, Redick and Henry), three women (Nelly, Peggy and Kitty), for $400 to $500 each, and three of their children. She called her 2,400 acre farm "Nashoba", the Chickasaw word for "wolf," and about thirty slaves were employed.

Some of the men who played an important role in the experiment were Richeson Whitby, a Quaker from New Harmony; and a Scotsman by the name of James Richardson, who lived in Memphis and had strong convictions of moral freedom.  Another was George Flowers who was an emancipationist with experience in utopian community living.

Wright became seriously ill with malaria and was encouraged to seek the milder climate of Ohio in May 1827.  Camilla and Whitby were left in charge with Richardson to help.  While Frances was away, Camilla and Whitby fell in love and married, and passed the sterner tasks of leadership onto Richardson who took control of Nashoba’s policies.  

Wright had gone on to Europe for her health, and there she recruited Frances Trollope, an English travel writer.  They returned through New Orleans and journeyed up the river to Memphis arriving in Nashoba on January 1828. Mrs. Trollope was shocked by manners in Memphis, dismayed by desolation at Neshoba and appalled by the primitive rooms.  She noticed the diet of pork and rice, without any other meat or vegetable, the absence of milk, butter and cheese and the fact that rain water was the only liquid.  She remained a few days and then hurried to Cincinnati.  Whitby’s health broke and he moved with Camilla to Ohio.  

Wright eventually merged the idea of separate colonization of freed slaves with the advocation of a biracial cooperative community as the way toward a solution, but the project never prospered. In addition to crop failure and bad luck, James Richardson published extracts from the plantation's journal that publicized his relationship with a slave woman, an indiscretion that scandalized the public. Wright eventually responded to attacks of "free love" in the wilds with an article in which she boldly claimed that miscegenation might offer a solution for racial injustices in America; she restated her emancipation plan and attacked racially segregated schools, organized religion, and marriage. Nevertheless, the sexual issue only became more explosive and it frightened away most of her prominent American friends. 

In 1830 Wright abandoned the plan, a venture that cost her more than half her fortune and drove her to the fringes of American life. The slaves were transported to Haiti, where she made arrangements for their housing and employment.

Wright became the first woman in America to edit a journal, initially the Harmony Gazette, and later, The Free Enquirer. 

She also became the first American woman to give a popular lecture series before an audience of men and women. Little escaped her attention: she condemned capital punishment, cited the dangers of intolerant religion, demanded improvements in the status of women, including equal education, legal rights for married women, liberal divorce laws, and birth control. She traveled to most of the major cities of the East and Midwest, making an impressive appearance as "noble" or "masculine" depending on the observer, and sometimes wielding her sole text, a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Condemned by the press and the clergy as "the great Red Harlot of Infidelity" and the "whore of Babylon," and often in need of a bodyguard, Wright nevertheless captivated large audiences with her commanding presence. 

She believed in universal equality in education, and feminism. She attacked organized religion, greed, and capitalism. Along with Robert Owen, She was a fighter for the emancipation of slaves and for birth control and sexual freedom for women. She wanted free public education for all children over two years of age in state-supported boarding schools. She expressed through her projects in America what the utopian socialist Charles Fourier had said in France, "that the progress of civilization depended on the progress of women."

As an activist in the American Popular Health Movement between 1830 and 1840, Wright advocated for women being involved in health and medicine.  Wright also developed her own dress code for women. This included bodices, ankle-length pantaloons and a dress cut to above the knee. This style was later promoted by feminists such as Amelia Bloomer.

In  1830, Frances and her sister Camilla returned to Europe. Camilla died a short time after their return.  In July 1831, Wright married a French physician, Guillaume Sylvan Casimir Phiquepal D’Arusmont, whom she had first met when he was teaching at New Harmony. They had one child, a daughter, Frances Sylva D'Arusmont, in 1832.

Wright and her husband returned to America in 1835 to settle in Cincinnati, and once again, she began to give speeches. She became a convincing supporter of President Jackson and attacked the Second Bank of the U. S. as a public menace that bound the U.S. to the wealth of England. Her suggestions for gradual emancipation and the eventual assimilation of free blacks aroused much opposition, and her public appearances provoked demonstrations, even violence.

Wright traveled back and forth between the United States and Europe several times in a vain effort to untangle personal and financial affairs.  In 1848 she published her final book, England, the Civilizer, a utopian forecast of a global federation justly governed and united in peace. 

By this time, however, Wright had moved from a largely uncritical view of America to a jaundiced attitude toward all society as a "complicated system of errors." Her views on America had been tempered, enabling her "to see things under the sober light of truth, and to estimate both the excellences that are, and those that are wanting." 

D'Arusmont had objected to her return to public life, and frequent separations eventually led to their divorce in 1850. Her only child, Frances Sylva, remained in her father's custody. 

Wright's divorce was granted by a judge in Shelby County, Tennessee, while she was living on her Nashoba estate.

As her husband had managed to gain control over her entire property, including her earnings from lectures and the royalties from her books. Wright was involved in a legal struggle with him, and it made legal history. A judge in Cincinnati granted her petition for receiving $800 from her own property while the chancery court suit over control of her property was being decided.

She died in 1852 in Cincinnati, Ohio, from complications resulting from a fall on an icy staircase.

She was buried in the Cincinnati Spring Grove Cemetery.

After her mother's death, Sylva lived in the family of Dr. Eugene DeLagertrie (or Guthrie) in Cincinnati. For convenience in handling her property, she deeded the Nashoba lands to Dr. Guthrie, who in turn contracted to furnish her a $5,000 annuity from them. 

After a time, Dr. Guthrie’s wife went to France to visit her family. When she had been gone some time, there came the report of her death. Dr. Guthrie and Sylva were married in 1865 in New Jersey and had three children.

In 1878, they also learned that the first Madame Guthrie was still alive. Dr. Guthrie’s health became worse, and he and Sylva went to Italy hoping that the climate would help, but he died there.

“Memoir of Fanny Wright, the Pioneer Woman in the Cause of Women's Rights,” by Amos Gilbert was published inCincinnati in 1855.

Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen

Susan B. Anthony

Susan Brownell Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. 

She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President. She also co-founded the women's rights journal, The Revolution. She traveled the United States and Europe, and averaged 75 to 100 speeches per year. She was one of the important advocates in leading the way for women's rights to be acknowledged and instituted in the American government.

Susan B. Anthony was born to Daniel Anthony (1794–1862) and Lucy Read (1793–1880) and raised in West Grove, Adams, Massachusetts. She was the second oldest of seven children. One brother, publisher Daniel Read Anthony, would become active in the anti-slavery movement in Kansas, while a sister, Mary Stafford Anthony, became a teacher and a woman's rights activist. Anthony remained close to her sisters throughout her life.

Anthony's father Daniel was a cotton manufacturer and abolitionist, a stern but open-minded man who was born into the Quaker religion.  He did not allow toys or amusements into the household, claiming that they would distract the soul from the "inner light." Her mother, Lucy, was a student in Daniel's school; the two fell in love and agreed to marry in 1817, but Lucy was less sure about marrying into the Society of Friends (Quakers). Lucy attended the Rochester women’s rights convention held in August 1848, two weeks after the historic Seneca Falls Convention, and signed the Rochester convention’s Declaration of Sentiments. Lucy and Daniel Anthony enforced self-discipline, principled convictions, and belief in one's own self-worth.

Anthony was forced to end her formal studies because her family, like many others, was financially ruined during the Panic of 1837. Their losses were so great that they attempted to sell everything in an auction, even their most personal belongings, which were saved at the last minute when Susan's uncle, Joshua Read, stepped up and bid for them in order to restore them to the family.

In 1839, the family moved to Hardscrabble, New York, in the wake of the panic and economic depression that followed. That same year, Anthony left home to teach and pay off her father's debts. She taught first at Eunice Kenyon's Friends' Seminary, and then at the Canajoharie Academy in 1846, where she rose to become headmistress of the Female Department. Anthony's first occupation inspired her to fight for wages equivalent to those of male teachers, since men earned roughly four times more than women for the same duties.

In 1849, at age 29, Anthony quit teaching and moved to the family farm in Rochester, New York. She began to take part in conventions and gatherings related to the temperance movement. In Rochester, she attended the local Unitarian Church and began to distance herself from the Quakers, in part because she had frequently witnessed instances of hypocritical behavior such as the use of alcohol amongst Quaker preachers. As she got older, Anthony continued to move further away from organized religion in general, and she was later chastised by various Christian religious groups for displaying irreligious tendencies. By the 1880s, Anthony had become agnostic.

In the era before the American Civil War, Anthony took a prominent role in the New York anti-slavery and temperance movements. In 1836, at age 16, Susan collected two boxes of petitions opposing slavery, in response to the gag rule prohibiting such petitions in the House of Representatives. In 1849, at age 29, she became secretary for the Daughters of Temperance, which gave her a forum to speak out against alcohol abuse, and served as the beginning of Anthony's movement towards the public limelight.

In late 1850, Anthony read a detailed account in the New York Tribune of the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. In the article, Horace Greeley wrote an especially admiring description of the final speech, one given by Lucy Stone. Stone's words catalyzed Anthony to devote her life to women's rights. In the summer of 1852, Anthony met both Greeley and Stone in Seneca Falls. In 1851, on a street in Seneca Falls, Anthony was introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton by a mutual acquaintance, as well as fellow feminist Amelia Bloomer. Anthony joined with Stanton in organizing the first women's state temperance society in America after being refused admission to a previous convention on account of her sex, in 1851. Stanton remained a close friend and colleague of Anthony's for the remainder of their lives, but Stanton longed for a broader, more radical women's rights platform. Together, the two women traversed the United States giving speeches and attempting to persuade the government that society should treat men and women equally.

Anthony was invited to speak at the third annual National Women's Rights Convention held in Syracuse, New York in September 1852. She and Matilda Joslyn Gage both made their first public speeches for women's rights at the convention.

In 1856, Anthony further attempted to unify the African-American and women's rights movements when, recruited by abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster, she became an agent for William Lloyd Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society of New York. Speaking at the Ninth National Women’s Rights Convention on May 12, 1859, Anthony asked "Where, under our Declaration of Independence, does the Saxon man get his power to deprive all women and Negroes of their inalienable rights?"

On January 8, 1868, Anthony first published the women's rights weekly journal The Revolution. Printed in New York City, its motto was: "The true republic—men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less." 

On November 18, 1872, Anthony was arrested by a U.S. Deputy Marshal for voting in the 1872 Presidential Election two weeks earlier. She was tried and convicted seven months later, despite the stirring and eloquent presentation of her arguments that the recently adopted Fourteenth Amendment, which guaranteed to "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." 

The privileges of citizenship, which contained no gender qualification, gave women the constitutional right to vote in federal elections. Her trial took place at the Ontario County courthouse in Canandaigua, New York, before Supreme Court Associate Justice Ward Hunt. Justice Hunt refused to allow Anthony to testify on her own behalf, explicitly ordered the jury to return a guilty verdict, refused to poll the jury afterwards, and read an opinion he had written before the trial even started. 

Before retiring, Anthony was asked if all women in the United States would ever be given the right to vote. She replied by stating, "it will come, but I shall not see it...It is inevitable. We can no more deny forever the right of self-government to one-half our people than we could keep the Negro forever in bondage. It will not be wrought by the same disrupting forces that freed the slave, but come it will, and I believe within a generation." "Failure is impossible" were the words she left with her "girls" to encourage them on in the long discouraging struggle ahead. Fourteen years after Anthony's death, following assiduous campaigning, women were given the right to vote on August 26, 1920, by the nineteenth amendment to the constitution.

Adah Isaacs Menken

Adah Isaacs Menken

Theda Bara

To be good is to be forgotten.  

I'm going to be so bad I'll always be remembered.

Theda Bara (July 29, 1885 – April 7, 1955) was an American silent film and stage actress.

Bara was one of the most popular actresses of the silent era, and one of cinema's earliest sex symbols. Her femme fatale roles earned her the nickname The Vamp (short for vampire). Bara made more than 40 films between 1914 and 1926, but most are now lost due to a fire that destroyed the majority of her films in 1937. After her marriage to Charles Brabin in 1921, she made two more feature films and retired from acting in 1926. Bara never appeared in a sound film.

She was born Theodosia Burr Goodman in the Avondale section of Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father was Bernard Goodman (1853–1936),[2] a prosperous Jewish tailor born in Poland. Her mother, Pauline Louise de Coppett (1861–1957), was born in Switzerland.

Bara attended Walnut Hills High School, graduating in 1903. After attending the University of Cincinnati for two years, she moved to New York City in 1908. She made her Broadway debut in The Devil (1908).

Saint Harold, Patron Saint of Freaking Out

On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express creatively his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole.

~ Frank Zappa

After a week coping with invading stinkbugs and printer problems, I am grateful for my new necklace -

Robert Ingersoll

Robert Ingersoll

Robert Green Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York, the youngest of five children of John and Mary Livingston Ingersoll: Ruth, John, Mary Jane, Ebon Clark and Robert. Shortly before Robert's birth, Mary Ingersoll circulated a petition to Congress that slavery be abolished in Washington, D.C. Robert's middle name, "Green", was in honor of Reverend Beriah Green, a reformer and abolitionist. The family called him "Bob". 

The family moved to Illinois in the late 1840s. Bob had very little formal education. He last saw the inside of a conventional schoolroom as a youth of fifteen while his family was residing in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Later, he would say that his real education began while he was waiting at a cobbler’s shop, when he chanced to pick up a book of the poetry of Robert Burns. At 19, Bob began teaching school, working primarily at schools in Illinois, although he also had jobs in Pennsylvania and Tennessee. While teaching in Waverly, Tennessee, he witnessed the sale of slaves. In a letter to his family he wrote: "People here ask me if I think slavery wrong and I tell them I do and that I believe it is wrong enough to damn the whole of them, and they take it in good part. "

At one time, several Baptist ministers and elders who were conducting a revival in the neighborhood were also staying at Bob's boardinghouse.  They were discussing religion at table; the young teacher took no part in their discussions.  One day he was pointedly asked what he thought about baptism. He hesitated to speak, but they insisted. He said: 

"Well, I'll give you my opinion: with soap, baptism is a good thing."

The brethren were shocked, and his remark went from gossip to gossip.  The feeling against him became so strong that he was obliged to abandon his position at the school.

Ingersoll joined the Union Army on September 16, 1861 and with Colonel Basil D. Meek, a Peoria judge, began to help recruit volunteers from Peoria to serve in a cavalry regiment. He was commissioned Colonel of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry Regiment. 

Nine days after his wedding, he returned to duty with his regiment; less than two months later, the Eleventh Illinois fought in the Battle of  Shiloh. Colonel Ingersoll's regiment was under the direction of General Prentiss at Pittsburgh Landing; they were engaged in the fight on April 6 & 7.  Ingersoll wrote to his brother Ebon Clark, 

“The Rebels rushed us with the fury of Hell and our soldiers disputed every bloody inch with more courage and more dauntless desperate heroism than I before imagined possessed by men. . . .The rain fell all night, slowly and sadly, as though the heavens were weeping for the dead. All night long I stood with my blanket around me, drearily by the side of a dead tree watching the shells of the gunboats. Every fifteen minutes would come a flash like heat lightning—then the boom—then the bluish line bending over the distant wood—then the roar of the bursting, and then last of all the double echo dying over the far hills.”

On December 2, 1862, Ingersoll was appointed Chief of Cavalry on the staff of General Jeremy C. Sullivan. His regiment was stationed at Jackson, Tennessee. Sullivan, having been advised that Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, was crossing the Tennessee River at Clifton with a large force, ordered Ingersoll to proceed toward the river. Ingersoll left Jackson on the evening of December 16th, taking with him two hundred of his own regiment and two guns of the Fourteenth Indiana Battery. About daybreak of the 18th, a few miles east of Lexington, the advance pickets of the enemy were sighted. Forrest's two thousand men began pouring in from all directions. Ingersoll dismounted and stood by the guns, encouraging his men, and personally directing their fire, until the cavalry charge was transformed into a hand-to-hand encounter. Twenty-two Union officers and men were either killed or wounded, and one hundred and forty-eight others, including Ingersoll, were taken prisoners.

Three days after his capture, Ingersoll was paroled by General Forrest, and sent to St. Louis to command a camp of other paroled prisoners. He waited months be be exchanged so he could re-enter active service, but eventually resigned his commission and was discharged in June 1863. He was released on his promise that he would not fight again, which was common practice early in the war.

“War is horrid beyond the comprehension of man. It is enough to break the heart to go through the hospitals and see gray-haired veterans with lips whitening under the kiss of death—hundreds of mere boys with thoughts of home—of sister and brother—meeting the dark angel alone, nothing but pain, misery, neglect, and death. ...to see death around you, everywhere nothing but death—to think of the ones far away expecting the dead to return and hoping for one more embrace—listening for footsteps that never will be heard on earth—it makes one tired—tired of war.” 

~ Robert Ingersoll

On May 14th, 1866, at the age of 33, that Ingersoll gave his first iconoclastic speech, "Progress" in Peoria. He spoke of his budding abhorrence of superstition and concluded with a plea for the continuation of progress in thought.

"The Golden Age of Freethought," which stretched roughly from 1875 until the beginning of the First World War, divided Americans in much the same fashion, and over many of the same issues, as have the culture wars of the present. The argument over the proper role of religion in civil government was a subsidiary of the larger question of whether the claims of supposedly revealed religion deserve any particular respect or deference in a pluralistic society. The other cultural issues that divided Americans in Ingersoll’s time are equally familiar and include evolution, race, immigration, women’s rights, sexual behavior, freedom of artistic expression, and vast disparities in wealth. In the 19th century, however, the issues were newer, as was the science bolstering the secular side of the arguments, and the forces of religious orthodoxy were stronger.

To the question that retains its politically divisive power to this day—whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation—Ingersoll answered an emphatic no. The marvel of the Framers, he argued in an oration delivered on July 4, 1876, in his hometown of Peoria, was that they established “the first secular government that was ever founded in this world” at a time when every government in Europe was still based on union between church and state. “Recollect that,” Ingersoll admonished his audience.  A government that had “retired the gods from politics,” Ingersoll declared the United States' 100th birthday, was a necessary condition of progress.

“The first secular government; the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more. In other words, our fathers were the first men who had the sense, had the genius, to know that no church should be allowed to have a sword.” 

In 1878, Ingersoll moved his family to Washington, D.C., where he again created a law practice with his brother, Ebon Clark. His brother had been living in Washington since he was elected to Congress in 1864. When Robert Ingersoll moved to Washington, D. C, at age forty-five, his reputation as a trial lawyer, lecturer, and political speaker was well established.

Though dubbed"The Great Agnostic", Ingersoll himself made no distinction between atheists and agnostics. In 1885, he was asked by an interviewer for a Philadelphia newspaper, “Don’t you think the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer that that of the Atheist?” He replied succinctly,

The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: “I do not know, but I do not believe there is any god.” The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a God, but we know that he does not know. The Atheist [too] cannot know that God does not exist.

Ingersoll also pointed out that the labels “atheist” and “infidel” had generally been applied as epithets to anyone, religious or not, who refused to accept biblical stories that were scientifically impossible. Among those included were the devout Quaker, suffragist, and abolitionist Lucretia Mott, and Thomas Paine, who was also called a Judas, reptile, hog, mad dog, souse, louse, and arch-beast by his religiously orthodox contemporaries.  Ingersoll subtitled his standard lecture about Paine, “With His Name Left Out, the History of Liberty Cannot Be Written.” He made it one of his missions not only to remind citizens in America’s second century of Paine’s indispensable rhetorical contributions to the revolutionary cause, but also to link those ideals to Paine’s fierce defense of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.

In tour after tour, Ingersoll crisscrossed the country and spoke before packed houses on topics ranging from Shakespeare to Reconstruction, from science to religion. In an age when oratory was the dominant form of public entertainment, Ingersoll was the unchallenged king of American orators.  Ingersoll delivered more than 1,300 lectures and was heard by more Americans than any other person before the invention of the radio.  At the height of Ingersoll's fame, audiences would pay $1 or more to hear him speak, a high sum for his day. “Standing Room Only” was often displayed at the entrance of the hall or theater where he was to speak. In a trip West at one time his fees for speaking amounted to more than fifty thousand dollars in one month. Two or three thousand dollars for a single lecture was not an unusual sum; one assembly in Chicago yielded seven thousand and one dollars. Ingersoll spoke in every state except Mississippi, North Carolina, and Oklahoma.

He influenced Americans of his own generation with his arguments and young admirers who lived into the 20th century, making critical contributions to American politics, science, business, and law and becoming leaders on behalf of civil liberties and international human rights.  The list of his admirers includes Mark Twain, Clara Barton, Luther Burbank, Eugene V. Debs, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Walt Whitman and Thomas Edison.  

Robert Ingersoll died on Friday, July 21, 1899 from congestive heart failure.  He was 65 years old.

While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself; and my creed is this. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy to be here. The way to be happy is to make others so. This creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life, strong enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed. But this creed certainly will do for this life. 

~ Robert Ingersoll, 1882

'

Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione (22 March 1837 – 28 November 1899), better known as La Castiglione, was an Italian aristocrat who achieved notoriety as a mistress of Emperor Napoleon III of France. She was also a significant figure in the early history of photography.

Born Virginia Elisabetta Luisa Carlotta Antonietta Teresa Maria Oldoïni, (French: Virginie Élisabeth Louise Charlotte Antoinette Thérèse Marie Oldoïni) in Florence, Tuscany to Marquis Filippo Oldoini and Marquise Isabella Lamporecchi, members of the minor Tuscan nobility, she was often known by her nickname of "Nicchia". 

She married Francesco Verasis, conte di Castiglione, at the age of 17. He was twelve years her senior. They had a son, Giorgio.

Her cousin, Camillo, conte di Cavour, was a minister to Victor Emmanuel II, king of Sardinia(that included Piedmont and Savoy). When the Count and Countess traveled to Paris in 1855, the Countess was under her cousin's instructions to plead the cause of Italian unity with Napoleon III of France. 

She achieved notoriety by becoming Napoleon III's mistress, a scandal that led her husband to demand a marital separation. 

During her relationship with the French emperor in 1856 and 1857, she entered the social circle of European royalty. She met Augusta of Saxe-Weimar, Otto von Bismarck and Adolphe Thiers, among others.

The Countess was known for her beauty and her flamboyant entrances in elaborate dress at the imperial court. One of her most infamous outfits was a "Queen of Hearts" costume. George Frederic Watts painted her portrait in 1857. 

She was described as having long, wavy blonde hair, pale skin, a delicate oval face, and eyes that constantly changed colour from green to an extraordinary blue-violet.

The Countess returned to Italy in 1857 when her affair with Napoleon III was over. Four years later, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed, conceivably in part due to the influence that the Countess had exerted on Napoleon III. That same year, she returned to France and settled in Passy.

In 1856 she began sitting for Mayer and Pierson, photographers favored by the imperial court.  Over the next four decades she directed Pierre-Louis Pierson to help her create 700 different photographs in which she re-created the signature moments of her life for the camera. She spent a large part of her personal fortune and even went into debt to execute this project. Most of the photographs depict the Countess in her theatrical outfits, such as the Queen of Hearts dress. 

A number of photographs depict her in poses risqué for the era—notably, images that expose her bare legs and feet. 

Virginia spent her declining years in an apartment in the Place Vendôme, where she had the rooms decorated in funereal black, the blinds kept drawn, and mirrors banished—apparently so she would not have to confront her advancing age and loss of beauty. She would only leave the apartment at night. 

In November 28, 1899, she died at age sixty-two, and was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Robert de Montesquiou, a Symbolist poet, dandy, and avid art collector, was fascinated by the Countess di Castiglione. He spent thirteen years writing a biography, La Divine Comtesse, which appeared in 1913. After her death, he collected 433 of her photographs, all of which entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A Goddess of Self-Love Who Did Not Sit Quietly

By SARAH BOXERPublished: October 13, 2000

The countess had herself photographed as a frowning nun, as Medea with a knife, as the tragic heroine Beatrix, as Judith entering the tent of Holofernes, as a drowned virgin, as Lady Macbeth sleepwalking, as a courtesan flaunting her legs, as Anne Boleyn, as Goya's ''Maja,'' as a nurse to her dying dog and as a corpse in a coffin.

She used mirrors to fragment and multiply images. And she had an obsession with eyes and detached body parts.

''She would appear at gatherings like a goddess descended from the clouds,'' a contemporary noted, and she would ''allow people to admire her as if she were a shrine.'' The Princess Metternich oohed about her: ''Wonderful hair, the waist of a nymph, and a complexion the color of pink marble! In a word, Venus descended from Olympus!'' But, the princess added, ''after a few moments she began to get on your nerves.''

Her vanity was as famous as her beauty. She sent albums of her portraits to friends and admirers. She would not speak to women. She was endlessly enraptured with herself and assumed that others were as well.

In ''The Eyes,'' she holds a pocket mirror away from her face so that her eye is the only thing showing in it. Then she fixes this eye on the photographer. In ''The Opera Ball,'' all you can see is her back. She appears to be diving headfirst into a full-length mirror while a tiny pocket mirror watches from a chair.

When the countess's husband tried to take their son away from her, she responded by sending him a Medea-like portrait of herself titled ''Vengeance.'' She has a murderous look. She has a knife dripping with blood painted into her hand. Apparently, she made her point; she kept Giorgio.