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LIBRARY PRESENTATIONS
During library presentations, audience members bring up interesting points and ask intriguing questions. Here are responses to some of those inquiries along with additional background materials, with the most recent presentation at the top.
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FREEDOM SUMMER
1. FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT of the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION:
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
2. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C. §§ 1973–1973aa-6) is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S.
Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color." Specifically, Congress intended the Act to outlaw the practice of requiring otherwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests in order to register to vote, a principal means by which Southern states had prevented African-Americans from exercising the franchise. The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, who had earlier signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.
The Act established extensive federal oversight of elections administration, providing that states with a history of discriminatory voting practices (so-called "covered jurisdictions") could not implement any change affecting voting without first obtaining the approval of the Department of Justice, a process known as preclearance. These enforcement provisions applied to states and political subdivisions (mostly in the South) that had used a "device" to limit voting and in which less than 50 percent of the population was registered to vote in 1964. The Act has been renewed and amended by Congress four times, the most recent being a 25-year extension signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006.
The Act is widely considered a landmark in civil-rights legislation, though some of its provisions have sparked political controversy. During the debate over the 2006 extension, some Republican members of Congress objected to renewing the preclearance requirement (the Act's primary enforcement provision), arguing that it represents an overreach of federal power and places unwarranted bureaucratic demands on Southern states that have long since abandoned the discriminatory practices the Act was meant to eradicate. Conservative legislators also opposed requiring states with large Spanish-speaking populations to provide bilingual ballots. Congress nonetheless voted to extend the Act for twenty-five years with its original enforcement provisions left intact.
Some jurisdictions singled out in the Act for their practices in the 1960s, are still required by law to receive federal permission for certain changes to election law or changes in venue. These nine Southern states and mostly Southern counties have complained that the practices banned by the Act disappeared long ago and that further compliance with the mandates of the Act are a costly nuisance and an "unfair stigma" to their towns. As an example of the federal bureaucracy involved, Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston said, "If you move a polling place from the Baptist church to the Methodist church, you've got to go through the Justice Department." Some who think that this federal oversight is discriminatory to these particular states have proposed that the oversight be extended to all 50 states or eliminated entirely.
REFERENCES
1. "United States Department of Justice - Voting Rights Act of 1965". U.S. Department of Justice. 2006-03-20. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
2. "The Voting Rights Act of 1965". United States Department of Justice. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
3. "The Voting Rights Act of 1965". U.S. National Archives. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
4. "Our Documents - Civil Rights Act (1964)". United States Department of Justice. Retrieved 2010-07-28.
5. "About Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act". U.S. Department of Justice. Retrieved 2010-07-28.
6. "Bush signs Voting Rights Act extension: Historic 1965 law renewed for 25 years". Associated Press. 2006-07-21. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
7. "Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964". United States Department of Justice. Retrieved 2010-07-28.
8. Hulse, Carl (2006-06-22). "Rebellion Stalls Extension of Voting Rights Act". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
9. Babington, Charles (2006-06-22). "GOP Rebellion Stops Voting Rights Act". Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
10. Hulse, Carl (2006-07-21). "By a Vote of 98-0, Senate Approves 25-year Extension of Voting Rights Act". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-29.
3.
THE HISTORY CHANNEL: http://www.history.com/topics/freedom-summer
SPARTACUS (a UK educational website): http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfreedomS.htm
CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY: http://www.core-online.org/History/freedom_summer.htm
WIKIPEDIA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Summer
PBS: AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/09_summer.html
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MISSISSIPPI: http://www.usm.edu/crdp/html/cd/summer.htm
VOTING RIGHTS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_rights_in_the_United_States
4. Freedom Summer (also known as the Mississippi Summer Project) was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. The project was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC, CORE, NAACP and SCLC). Most of the impetus, leadership, and financing for the Summer Project came from the SNCC. Robert Parris Moses, SNCC field secretary and co-director of COFO, directed the summer project.
Freedom Summer was possible because of years of earlier work by numerous African Americans who lived locally in Mississippi. By 1964, students and others had begun the process of integrating public accommodations, registering adults to vote, and above all organizing a network of local leadership. But recent voting campaigns, including a massive effort in Greenwood and a 1963 Freedom Election that brought students from Stanford and Yale to help distribute non-binding ballots, had been met with whiplash violence. Seeking a new tactic, Moses prevailed over doubts among SNCC and COFO workers, and planning for Freedom Summer began in February 1964. Speakers recruited on college campuses across the country, drawing standing ovations for their dedication in braving the routine violence perpetrated by police, sheriffs, and others in Mississippi. SNCC recruiters interviewed dozens of potential volunteers, weeding out those with a John Brown complex (similar to the perception their job was solely a white man's burden, or that they were in some way superior to those who they were helping), informing others that their job that summer would not be to "save the Mississippi Negro" but to work with local leadership to develop the grassroots movement.
Well over 1,000 out-of-state volunteers participated in Freedom Summer alongside thousands of black Mississippians. Most of the volunteers were young, most of them from the North, 90 percent were white and many were Jewish. Two one-week orientation sessions for the volunteers were held at Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio (now part of Miami University), from June 14 to June 27.
Organizers focused on Mississippi because it had the lowest percentage of African Americans registered to vote in the country; in 1962 only 6.7% of eligible black voters were registered. White officials in the South systematically kept African Americans from being able to vote by charging them expensive poll taxes, forcing them to take especially difficult literacy tests, making the application process inconvenient, harassing would-be voters economically (as by denying crop loans), and carrying out arson, battery, and lynching.
During the ten weeks of Freedom Summer, a number of other organizations provided support for the COFO Summer Project. More than 100 volunteer doctors, nurses, psychologists, medical students and other medical professionals from the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) provided emergency care for volunteers and local activists, taught health education classes, and advocated improvements in Mississippi's segregated health system. Volunteer lawyers from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Inc ("Ink Fund"), National Lawyers Guild, Lawyer's Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC) an arm of the ACLU, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (LCCR) provided free legal services — handling arrests, freedom of speech, voter registration and other matters. And the Commission on Religion and Race (CORR), an endeavor of the National Council of Churches (NCC), brought Christian and Jewish clergy and divinity students to Mississippi to support the work of the Summer Project. In addition to offering traditional religious support to volunteers and activists, the ministers and rabbis engaged in voting rights protests at courthouses, recruited voter applicants and accompanied them to register, taught in Freedom Schools, and performed office and other support functions.
5. FURTHER READING:
· Sally Belfrage, Freedom Summer (University of Virginia Press, 1965, reissued 1990). ISBN 978-0-8139-1299-8
· Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Harvard University Press, 1981). ISBN 0-674-44726-3
· Susie Erenrich, editor, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: An Anthology of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (Montgomery, AL: Black Belt Press, 1999). ISBN 1-881320-58-8
· Adam Hochschild, Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels (Syracuse University Press, 1997), "Summer of Violence," pp. 140–150. ISBN 978-0815605942.
· Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). ISBN 0-19-504367-7
· Elizabeth Martinez, editor, Letters from Mississippi (Zephyr Press, 2002). ISBN 0-939010-71-2
· Bruce Watson, Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy (New York, NY: Viking, 2010). ISBN 978-0670021703
6. SOME SOUTHERN STATES are creating controversy by adding what some feel are obstacles to voting.
Here, for example, is a section from the Texas voter requirement website: http://www.sos.state.tx.us/elections/pamphlets/largepamp.shtml
What if I don't have a driver's license, personal identification number, OR a social security number? Can I still register to vote in Texas?
A voter who has not been issued a driver’s license or social security number may register to vote, but such a voter must submit proof of identification when presenting himself/herself for voting or with his/her mail-in ballots, if voting by mail. These voters’ names are flagged on the official voter registration list with the annotation of “ID.” The “ID” notation instructs the poll worker to request a proper form of identification from these voters when they present themselves for voting.
Acceptable identification includes:
1. a driver's license or personal identification card issued to the person by the Department of Public Safety or a similar document issued to the person by an agency of another state, regardless of whether the license or card has expired;
2. a form of identification containing the person's photograph that establishes the person's identity;
3. a birth certificate or other document confirming birth that is admissible in a court of law and establishes the person's identity;
4. United States citizenship papers issued to the person;
5. a United States passport issued to the person;
6. official mail addressed to the person by name from a governmental entity;
7. a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the name and address of the voter; or
8. any other form of identification prescribed by the Secretary of State.
7. The Mississippi civil rights workers murders involved the lynching of three anti-racism and social justice activists near Philadelphia in Neshoba County, Mississippi on June 21, 1964, during the American Civil Rights Movement.
The murders of James Chaney, a 21-year-old black man from nearby Meridian, Mississippi; Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old white Jewish anthropology student from New York; and Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old white Jewish CORE organizer and former social worker also from New York, demonstrated the dangers faced by civil rights workers in the South, especially during what became known as "Freedom Summer", dedicated to voter education and registration. Blacks in Mississippi, as throughout the former Confederacy, lived under racial segregation and Jim Crow laws, and had been essentially disfranchised in Mississippi since the passage of the state constitution of 1890.
Blacks led an increasing series of civil rights activities in the South since World War II. Sit-ins, non-violent demonstrations, and Freedom Rides were among the actions that had been taken by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee(SNCC), and other organizations. White volunteers also helped with organizing and supported actions, many of them from northern states.
In 1964, the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) a coalition of SNCC, CORE, NAACP, and SCLC in Mississippi planned a summer of voter education and registrations in that state, which had essentially disfranchised black and Native American voters since passage of a new constitution in 1890. They organized volunteers and local activists to work on these issues. Michael Schwerner and his wife Rita were in Meridian as CORE organizers. He and James Earl Chaney, a local young man, had returned from training in Ohio with Andrew Goodman, a 20-year-old volunteer from New York. Officials of the state of Mississippi and local groups such as the Ku Klux Klan resented these efforts to change their society of white supremacy, and activists worked at high risk.
Since May 2, 1964, two young black men, Henry Hezekiah Dee, a civil rights activist, and his friend Charles Eddie Moore had been missing from Roxie. Their beaten bodies were found months later, bound to an engine block and railroad rails in a river in Warren County. Most suspected the Klan.[1] (In 2007, James Ford Seale was tried and convicted of the kidnapping of the two men. They were beaten by several Klansmen and drowned in the river.)
Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner were lynched shortly after midnight on June 21, 1964, after they had investigated the burning of a church that had agreed to support a Freedom School. James Chaney was a local Freedom Movement activist in Meridian, Mississippi; Michael Schwerner was a CORE organizer there from New York; and Andrew Goodman, also from New York, was a Freedom Summer volunteer. The three men had just finished week-long training on the campus of Western College for Women (now part of Miami University), in Oxford, Ohio, regarding strategies on how to register blacks in the South to vote.[2]
Local Klansmen were resentful of the activities of Schwerner and other workers.[3] Schwerner, called "Goatee" by the Klansmen, had been based in Meridian since January 1964. His activities included setting up a black community center in the town, organizing a black boycott of a white-owned variety store that refused to hire a black shop assistant, and educating African Americans to register to vote, as they had to deal with discriminatory rules and officials.[4][5] Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the KKK splinter group White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, had issued an order to kill the civil rights worker.[6]
The morning after they returned to Meridian, the three men headed to Philadelphia, Mississippi, 50 miles away in Neshoba County, in order to inspect the ruins of Mount Zion United Methodist Church. The church, a meeting place for civil rights groups, had been burned just five days earlier. Neshoba County was known as a dangerous area for civil rights workers. The County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price were found to be members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, as were many other residents.[6]
Aware that their station wagon's license number had been given to members of the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan,[7] before leaving Meridian they informed other Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) workers of their plans and set check-in times, part of standard security procedures. Late that afternoon, Price, the county deputy, stopped the blue Ford carrying the trio. He arrested Chaney for allegedly driving 35 miles per hour over the speed limit. He also booked Goodman and Schwerner "for investigation" when he took them back to the county jail.
Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were each denied telephone calls during their time at the jail.[6] COFO workers made attempts to find the three men, but when they called the Neshoba County jail, the secretary followed instructions to deny that the workers were being held there.[6] During the hours they were held incommunicado in jail, Price notified his Klan associate Edgar Ray Killen, who assembled fellow Klan members and planned how to kill the three workers.[6]
After the Klan ambush was set up on the road back to Meridian, Chaney was fined $20, and the three men were ordered to leave the county. Price followed them to the edge of town, where he pulled them over, sounding his police siren. He held them until the Klan murder squad arrived. The KKK took the three men to an isolated spot where they shot Schwerner and Goodman, and beat Chaney before shooting him to death. The Klan drove the CORE car into Bogue Chitto swamp and set it on fire. They buried the bodies in an earthen dam, using a bulldozer to cover them.[8]
On June 4, 2000, the journalist Jerry Mitchell, who had been reporting on the case, published data from the autopsy report. It had been withheld from the 1967 trial as the county pathologist had contended that the injuries to Chaney's body had happened during excavation of the grave, which the FBI denied. The report stated Chaney's left arm was broken in one place, his right arm was broken in two places, there was "a marked disruption" of the left elbow joint, and he may also have suffered trauma to the groin area.[9] A pathologist who examined the bodies at the families' request following their autopsies noted Chaney had suffered "an extreme beating with either a blunt instrument or a chain."[10] As the autopsy photographs and x-rays have been destroyed, the injuries could not be confirmed by additional study.
The national uproar caused by the disappearance of the civil rights workers led President Lyndon Johnson to force J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to investigate the case. Hoover's antipathy to civil rights groups caused him to resist until Johnson used indirect threats of political reprisals. One hundred and fifty FBI agents[11] including Major Case Inspector Joseph Sullivan[6] were sent to Neshoba county to investigate. During the investigation, searchers including Navy divers and the FBI discovered the bodies of at least seven other Mississippi blacks, whose disappearances over the past several years had not attracted attention outside of their local communities.
The disappearance of the three activists captured national attention; it took 44 days for investigators to discover where they had been buried. Johnson and civil rights activists used the outrage over their deaths in their efforts to bring about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed July 2, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Mississippi officials resented the outside attention. The Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey said, "They're just hiding and trying to cause a lot of bad publicity for this part of the state." The Mississippi governor Paul Johnson dismissed concern by stating that "they could be in Cuba".[12]
For a while, the trail went cold. When the FBI offered a $25,000 reward for news of the workers' whereabouts, a break came in the case. After paying at least one participant in the crime for details, the FBI found the men's bodies on August 4. They were buried in an earthen dam on Olen Burrage's Old Jolly Farm, six miles southwest of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Schwerner and Goodman had each been shot once in the heart; Chaney, a black man, had been beaten and shot three times.
Known as "Mr. X", the identity of the informant was a closely held secret by the government for 40 years. In the process of studying the case, journalist Jerry Mitchell and teacher Barry Bradford uncovered his identity: Maynard King, a highway patrolman who had been tipped off by Klansman Pete Jordan.[13]
In 2007, Linda Schiro testified in an unrelated court case that her late boyfriend, Gregory Scarpa Sr., a capo in the Colombo crime family, had been recruited by the FBI to help find the civil rights workers' bodies. She said that she had been with Scarpa in Mississippi at the time and had witnessed his being given a gun, and later a cash payment, by FBI agents. She testified he told her he had threatened a Klansman by placing a gun in his mouth, forcing him to reveal the location of the bodies. Similar stories of mafia involvement in the case had been circulating for years, and had been previously published in the New York Daily News, but had never before been introduced in court.[14][15]
Because Mississippi officials refused to prosecute the killers for murder, a state crime, the US Justice Department, led by prosecutor John Doar, charged 18 individuals under the 1870 US Force Act with conspiring to deprive the three of their civil rights (by murder). They indicted Sheriff Rainey, Deputy Sheriff Price and 16 other men.
Those found guilty on October 20, 1967, were Cecil Price, Klan Imperial Wizard Samuel Bowers, Alton Wayne Roberts, Jimmy Snowden, Billey Wayne Posey, Horace Barnett, and Jimmy Arledge. Sentences ranged from 3 to 10 years. After exhausting their appeals, the seven began serving their sentences in March 1970. None served more than six years. Sheriff Rainey was among those acquitted. Two of the defendants, E.G. Barnett, a candidate for sheriff, and Edgar Ray Killen, a local minister, had been strongly implicated in the murders by witnesses, but the jury came to a deadlock on their charges and the Federal prosecutor decided not to retry them.[11] On May 7, 2000, the jury revealed that in the case of Killen, they deadlocked after a lone juror stated she "could never convict a preacher".
For much of the next four decades, no legal action was taken on the murders. The journalist Jerry Mitchell, an award-winning investigative reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, wrote extensively about the case for six years. Mitchell had earned fame for helping secure convictions in several other high-profile Civil Rights Era murder cases, including the murders of Medgar Evers and Vernon Dahmer, and the Birmingham Church Bombing.
In the case of the civil rights workers, Mitchell developed new evidence, found new witnesses, and pressured the state to take action. Barry Bradford, a high school teacher at Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and three of his students, Allison Nichols, Sarah Siegel, and Brittany Saltiel, joined Mitchell's efforts. Bradford later achieved recognition for helping clear the name of the civil rights martyr Clyde Kennard.
Together the student-teacher team produced a documentary for the National History Day contest. It presented important new evidence and compelling reasons to reopen the case. The team also obtained an interview with Edgar Ray Killen, which helped convince the state to investigate. Partially by using evidence developed by Bradford and the students, Mitchell was able to determine the identity of "Mr. X", the mystery informer who had helped the FBI discover the bodies and end the conspiracy of the Klan in 1964.
Mitchell's investigation and the high school students' work in creating Congressional pressure, national media attention and a taped conversation with Killen prompted action.[16] In 2004, on the 40th anniversary of the murders, a multi-ethnic group of citizens in Philadelphia, Mississippi, issued a call for justice. More than 1,500 people, including civil rights leaders and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, joined them to voice their desire to revisit the case.[17][18]
On January 6, 2005, a Neshoba County grand jury indicted Edgar Ray Killen on three counts of murder. When Mississippi Attorney General prosecuted the case, it was the first time the state took action against the perpetrators. Rita Bender, Michael Schwerner's widow, testified in the trial. Afterward she said to the press,
"You're treating this trial as the most important trial of the civil rights movement because two of these three men were white," she said. "That means we all have a discussion about racism in this country that has to continue. And if this trial is a way for you to all acknowledge that, for us to all acknowledge that and to have that discussion openly, then this trial has meaning."[19]
On June 21, 2005, 41 years to the day after the murders were carried out, a jury convicted Killen on three counts of manslaughter; he was described as the man who planned and directed the killing of the civil rights workers.[20] Killen, then 80 years old, was sentenced to three consecutive terms of 20 years in prison. He appealed, claiming that no jury of his peers would have convicted him at the time on the evidence presented. The Mississippi Supreme Court confirmed the verdict in 2007.[21]
REFERENCES
1. Donna Ladd, "Dredging Up the Past: Why Mississippians Must Tell Our Own Stories", Jackson Free Press, 29 May 2007, accessed 15 October 2011
2. "Freedom Summer". Miami University. Retrieved October 1, 2011.
3. Carmichael, Fredie (January 18, 2009). "Historic moment reminder of civil rights work". The Meridian Star. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
4. "Slain civil rights workers found". History.com. Retrieved October 1, 2011.
5. Linder, Douglas O. "Michael Schwerner". Retrieved October 1, 2011.
6. Linder, Douglas O. "The Mississippi Burning Trial". Retrieved September 19, 2011.
7. Ladd, Donna (May 29, 2007). "Dredging Up the Past: Why Mississippians Must Tell Our Own Stories". Jackson Free Press. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
8. "Lynching of Chaney, Schwerner & Goodman". Civil Rights Movement Veterans
9. Mitchell, Jerry (June 4, 2000). "Experts: Autopsy reveals beating". The Clarion Ledger (Jackson, MS). Retrieved September 30, 2011.
10. "Post Mortem Examination Report of the Body of James Chaney". University of Virginia.
11. "Neshoba Murders Case—A Chronology". Arkansas Delta Truth and Justice Center. Retrieved September 11, 2011.
12. "Civil Rights: Grim Discovery in Mississippi". Time. June 22, 2005. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
13. Mitchell, Jerry (December 2, 2007). "Documents Identify Whistle-blower", The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS).
14. Brick, Michael (October 30, 2007). "At Trial of Ex-F.B.I. Supervisor, How to Love a Mobster". The New York Times. Retrieved February 20, 2010.
15. "Witness: FBI used mob muscle to crack ’64 case", MSNBC.com, October 29, 2007, Retrieved February 20, 2010
16. "How Mississippi Burning Was Reopened". MississippiBurning.org. Archived from the original on September 24, 2008. Retrieved September 21, 2011.
17. Broder, David S. (January 16, 2005), "Mississippi Healing", The Washington Post
18. "Statement Asking for Justice in the June 21, 1964, Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner".,The Neshoba Democrat. June 24, 2004. Retrieved July 7, 2011.
19. SHAILA DEWAN, "Widow Recalls Ghosts of '64 at Rights Trial", New York Times, 17 June 2005, accessed 15 October 2011
20. Dewan, Shaila (June 22, 2005), "Ex-Klansman Guilty of Manslaughter in 1964 Deaths", The New York Times
21. "Mississippi: Convictions Upheld". The New York Times. Associated Press. April 13, 2007.
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BEVERLY SILLS
December 2011
A wonderful DVD Biography: "Beverly Sills: Made in America"
Available at bookstores and on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Beverly-Sills-Made-America/dp/B000JJRYAG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323731308&sr=8-1
Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929 – July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist.
Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet, Wagner, and Verdi, she was known for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, Violetta in Verdi's La traviata, and most notably Elisabetta in Roberto Devereux. After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.
(c) Matthew Boyden. The Rough Guide to Opera 3rd Edition London: Rough Guides Ltd., 2002
National Public Radio Obituary: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11618782
Beverly Sills sings Rossini: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmEFfeYRWeI
Beverly Sills Farewell 1980: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoXHfNGtccc
Beverly Sills sings "Willow" from THE BALLAD OF BABY DOE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNg8VGrIqls
Beverly Sills sings The Queen of The Night : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oZKZnvonuw&feature=related (Two live versions from the 1960's)
Beverly Sills sings her signature role, Anna Bolena: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipbpopcXyg4
Beverly (1976). Bubbles: A Self-Portrait. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. A revised edition was issued in 1981 as Bubbles: An Encore.
Sills, Beverly (1987). Beverly: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books.
Sills, Beverly (1987). Beverly Sills: On My Own. An audio book designated as a companion to Beverly: An Autobiography, with Sills speaking in interview about her life, interspersed with narration and live musical excerpts.
BEVERLY SILLS QUOTES:
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you’re doomed if you don’t try.
A happy woman is one who has no cares at all; a cheerful woman is one who has cares but doesn't let them get her down.
A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.
Anger begins with folly, and ends with repentance.
Art is the signature of civilizations.
Attachment to spiritual things is just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.
Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.
I lived through the garbage. I might as well dine on the caviar.
I've always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.
In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us.
My dear [friends], take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.
My voice had a long, nonstop career. It deserves to be put to bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it can still do what it used to do. It can't.
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
There is a growing strength in women but it's in the forehead, not the forearm.
You don't always get what you ask for, but you never get what you don't ask for...unless it's contagious!
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JACKSON POLLOCK
November 2011
The following websites have useful information about Pollock, with many images of his more famous work:
WEB MUSEUM: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/pollock/
JACKSON POLLOCK.COM: http://www.jacksonpollock.com/index.php
THE BEAT MUSEUM: http://www.beatmuseum.org/pollock/jacksonpollock.html
One of Pollock's favorite drinking holes was the Cedar Tavern: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Tavern
One of the legacies of Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, is the on-going work of the Pollock-Krasner House & Study Center, now part of Stony Brook University.
The House's website gives detailed backgrounds on both artists, the house in Springs, as well as on the Center.
http://sb.cc.stonybrook.edu/pkhouse/index.shtml
As part of her estate, Lee Krasner established the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. The Foundation's mission is to aid, internationally, those individuals who have worked as artists over a significant period of time. The Foundation’s dual criteria for grants are recognizable artistic merit and financial need, whether professional, personal or both. The Foundation is pleased to report that since its inception in 1985, it has awarded 3,569 grants totaling over 54 million dollars to artists in 72 countries. The site offers many more items of interest for art lovers: http://www.pkf.org/
INFLUENCES:
Although the pop artists rejected Pollock’s romantic individuality, his concentration on
the instant at which the paint hit the canvas was the central inspiration for the immediacy of
gestural painting and happenings of the fifties and the directness of materials that are expressed
in minimal art of the sixties. Jackson’s influence can be seen in
Barnett Newman’s huge scale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_Newman) ,
David Smith’s figurative structure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Smith_%28sculptor%29),
Mark Rothko’s richness of color and surface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothko) ,
Jean Dubuffet’s physicality of material (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubuffet),
Allan Kaprow’s spatial expressionism, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaprow)
Robert Arnesan’s psychological introspection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Arneson),
and Johnny “Crash” Matos’ graffiti drip art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Matos).
(c) Cassandra Fitzgerald
THE CAR ACCIDENT:
The car accident that killed Jackson Pollock also killed a friend and neighbor Edith Metzger. The sole survivor of the accident was Pollock's mistress Ruth Kligman, who served as a muse to a number of avant-garde artists including DeKooning and Pollock. Here is her 2010 obituary from THE NEW YORK TIMES:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/06/arts/design/06kligman.html
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H. G. WELLS
November 2011
1. Unlike Albert Einstein who barely spoke with his two sons (one of whom was a schizophrenic) and had a distant though friendly relationship with his two adopted daughters, H. G. Wells had a far more interactive relationship with his four children, especially with his first born son, George Philip and with his son Anthony. With his wife, Anne (nicknamed Jane), he had George and Frank. With his mistress Amber Reeves, he had a daughter Anna-Jane, and with the novelist Rebecca West had Anthony.
George Philip (known as Gip to friends and family) became a highly regarded zoologist and wrote a book with his father and Julian Huxley (grandson of the evolutionist Thomas Huxley and brother to novelist Aldous Huxley) called THE SCIENCE OF LIFE, a multi-volume work published between 1929 and 1930 that summarized the science and history of biology through the 1920's.
Anthony West became a famous essayist, novelist, and journalist. His articles and essays appeared regularly in The New Yorker magazine from the 1950's through through the late 1970s. He published a generally favorable biography of his father, called H. G. Wells: Aspects of a Life in 1984. More famously, he wrote a highly autobiographical novel called Heritage in 1955 in which he presented his novelist-mother Rebecca in a very negative light. (His father is portrayed far more sympathetically.) Rebecca was infuriated and threatened to sue Anthony if the book was published in England. It was finally printed in 1984 after Rebecca's death.
2. Wells was an outspoken advocate for women's rights. His 1909 novel, Ann Veronica, which is based on the personality and life of his 19-year old mistress Amber Reeves, was a trail-blazing and controversial book in its time.
In the course of the action the heroine matures from an innocent and naïve girl to a representative of the New Woman. Wells portrays many of the prevailing attitudes of Edwardian England, particularly those of the heroine's father and her boyfriends who are completely unable to understand why a woman should want to be independent, study math and science, or have the right to vote. These male chauvinists are not portrayed as bad people, but as men blinded by the prevailing education system, society, and religion.
If you'd like to glance through this work, it's available online through the Project Gutenberg, a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library.
ANN VERONICA: A MODERN LOVE STORY
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/524
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RIGOLETTO PRESENTATION
OCTOBER 2011
One of the audience conversations during these presentations focused on Gilda. Here's an interesting blog from a Danish writer.
On the Character of Gilda in Rigoletto
Posted on July 11, 2010 by atthelighthouse
(A website/blog kept by a young Danish theater/literature aficionado)
A weird obsession of mine since young adulthood has been Gilda from Verdi’s Rigoletto. Which propably sounds strange to most people. There is nothing obviously remarkable about her, and I believe that you could easily make the assertment that Gilda is nothing more than a plot device in the tragic story: She’s what the poor, down-trodden Rigoletto treasures and what the ruthless men of power take away from him.
But then she does take action out of her own free will, by sacrifising herself to save the Duke, and while I think this is a fatally stupid thing to do, this is in part what interests me about her. The fact that she chooses this for herself, chooses to be so selfdestructively altruistic. Rigoletto ultimately perishes while selling out from his morals, trying to preserve his poor, unattractive self in a world that’s reserved for the beautiful and the rich, by being a vicious court jester. When Gilda’s in a position to make her own choice, she chooses to do the exact opposite thing; she chooses to perish by means of being extraordinarily good. Foolish, but good. And at least it’s her own choice.
Anyway. I did an online search was comforted by the search results which showed me that I’m not alone in being interested in the Gilda character. I found a truly great and interesting article: “Gilda Seduced – a Tale Untold” by Elizabeth Hudson, published in Cambridge Opera Journal vol. 4.
Hudson’s intriguing point in the article is the fact that although Gilda may seem like a fairly simple and straightforward character, there is one important thing that we do not know about her: We are left almost completely in the dark as to what happened to Gilda when she was alone with the Duke in his chamber after having been abducted and held there by the courtiers.
It’s really interesting once you start noticing it: In most summaries of the opera, the summarist seems to be unsure about what he’s supposed to do with those missing minutes of the operas. In a lot of summaries the incident is bypassed completely. This is the case with the wikipedia summary for instance: “By their description, [the Duke] recognizes it to be Gilda, and he rushes off to the room where she is held” it simply says, and then later “Gilda describes to her father what has happened to her in the palace.” I myself once had to do a summary of the opera, and this part of the opera was the one that gave me the most troubles. I ended up writing, somewhat vaguely, that the Duke had “amused himself” with Gilda.
I guess you could say that what happened in there was too obvious and too trivial to write about. Elizabeth Hudson’s point, however, is that it really isn’t, and that maybe it’s left ambigious for a reason.
She begins by pointing out something that I cannot believe I never noticed before about the second act of Rigoletto: The fact that the act opens with no less than three different narrative episodes, all recounting the same incident, albeit from different perspectives, namely the incident of Gilda’s abduction by the courtiers. First we get the Duke’s version (“Ella mi fu rapita! … Parmi veder le lagrime”), then the courtier’s (“Scorrendo uniti remota via”), and then Gilda’s (“Tutte le feste al tempio”). Hudson convincingly argues that the first two narrative episodes serve a fairly obvious purpose: They form the set-up for the Duke’s double aria “Ella mi fu rapita!” and “Parmi veder le lagrime” and for the Duke’s cabaletta “Possente amor me chiama” at a time when the inclusion of such pieces, so Hudson explains, was a conventionality in Italian operas.
The third narrative episode, however, stands out: Gilda’s “Tutte le feste al tempio”.
There seems to be no apparent reason for Gilda to tell the story of her abduction in this scene, and as Hudson argues, she seems to be recounting the wrong story here: She ought to be telling Rigoletto what happened in the Duke’s bed chamber, what he did to her in there. After all, Gilda’s defloration by the Duke is what motivates Rigoletto to have the Duke killed in the third act, and in Victor Hugo’s play we’re treated to a scene that makes it quite explicit what happened between them: Blanche (the name of the court jester’s daughter in the play) is appalled to find out about her ardent lover’s true identity, begs the openly lustful Duke to be let go, and finally tries to flee into an adjacent chamber. The Duke laughs brutally and goes after her, producing a key: The frightened girl has fled into his royal bed chamber! But instead she confesses to having met with the Duke (in disguise) at their home, ending her confession with the opera’s third recount of Gilda’s abduction by the hands of the courtiers.
What seems like an irrelevant confession in the place of what would have been a highly relevant victim’s account may, however, in Hudson’s view, be testimony to Gilda’s development from child to woman. Musically, “Tutte le feste” is much more sophisticated than what we have hitherto heard from Gilda, argues Hudson:
“A transformation has occured, she casts aside her childish voice; she has left behind the crinoline trills and furbelows of Act I; her expressive power has deepened, her vocal character matured.”
Of course, if Gilda has been brutally violated by the Duke, such an expression of maturity or power seems arbitrary. But as she analyses the lyrics of Gilda’s seemingly irrelevant confession, Hudson proposes that maybe what Gilda lived through was not a case of rape, but of a seduction in which Gilda herself was an active party who made a choice for herself to be with the Duke:
“[C]onfession can do more than simply reveal the domination of the interlocutor. As Foucault point out, it is also: ‘a ritual in which the expression alone, indendently of its external consequences, produces intrinsic modifications in the person who articulates it: it exonerates, redeems, and purifies him; it unburdens him of his wrongs, liberates him, and promises him salvation.”
Of course, Gilda isn’t allowed to complete her confession, it is cut short by Rigoletto who interrupts her with his “Ah! Solo per me l’infamia”. But as Hudson argues, Gilda has already managed to make an impact on Rigoletto with her aborted confession and this is expressed in the music, even after her voice is silenced:
“Her newfound musical power and force of expression superposes a telling element on to her confession. What is more, when her father does join in the duet, Gilda’s voice is not silenced. As we would expect, Rigoletto first enters with his own sixteen-bar period (‘Solo per me l’infamia’); but when this gives way to a slower tempo and a new key (at ‘Piangi, piangi, fanciulla’) and Gilda joins him, she sustains her fledging musical identity: she extends his phrases, eventually carrying the emotional weight of the music in her vocal line. (…) her passionate voice can, in fact, be heard as a moment of ‘true confession’, in which she reveals sexual truth – (…) We discover not a terrorised, shuddering girl, but rather a young woman embracing passion and finding the first glimmers of her identity: a moment of self-definition.”
Hudson acknowledges that such a short glimpse of power in Gilda is hardly enough evidence to the fact that Gilda was seduced rather than raped, “we need something more than substantial than this single moment of self-expression” writes Hudson, and she finds this, interestingly, in the Duke’s much discussed “Ella mi fu rapita!… Parmi veder le lagrime”:
“In the aria, he addresses no one: we assume we are hearing the outpourings of his inner soul. And yet the musical and verbal style do not fit with the Duke’s superficial character: it is too compelling; its expressive power is peculiar. He claims that his love for Gilda is genuine; the music moves us to believe him. Some commentators, in their attempt to reconcile musical and dramatic content, have asked us to believe him as well, claiming that the lyric expression of this aria extends and deepends, rather than contradicts, our picture of the Duke’s character. Thus (…) [Julian] Budden is so convinced by the Duke’s seeming sincerity in this aria that he suggests that it has a ‘subtle aptness’: because the Duke is so succesful at deceiving others, he manages to deceive himself, at least momentarily.
I am unwilling to give the Duke so much credit. Even the aria itself is not without ambiguity. Any interpretation of the Adagio must respond in part to the larger formal context in which it is placed; and the use of adouble aria for the Duke is entirely consistent with his musical portrayal throughout the opera. His character is in part determined by the conventional forms that he sings – strophic aria, folk-like canzone: a double aria completes the conventional gamut. (…) More importantly, however, if we remember that this aria replaces Hugo’s seduction scene, we can hear the Duke’s aria as inscribing the discorse of seduction: in the Adagio, we witness the full persuasiveness of the Duke’s voice, something we hear only glimmers of elsewhere; we hear the voice that will persuade Gilda that he loves her so powerfully that she continues to believe it, and to love him, in the face os his betrayal. In Hugo’s seduction scene, suasion breaks down and the Duke resorts to force, laughing at Blanche’s attempt to escape – making it diffiuclt for an audience to comprehend her continued adoration in the final act. But in Verdi, only the audience witnesses the breaking of the illusion in the cabaletta, the change, in Budden’s words, ‘from… poet to… strutting peacock.’”
It is a highly interesting interpretation, I think. Hudson of course makes some points regarding the music that I am neither qualified to support nor challenge because I am a literature rather than a music scholar, and you should certainly read her very well-written article yourselves, in order to fully appreciate her thesis.
While still maintaining my reservations concerning my own ability to enter into a musical analysis of Rigoletto, I will say that I’m not sure I buy Hudson’s interpretation completely. Hudson makes an excellent case, but in my heart I find it hard to believe that it would be possible for the Duke to get innocent and timid Gilda to give it up to him in such a relatively short time-span (even if we don’t insist on seeing the time-span of “La-ra, la-ra… Cortigiani” as a precise indicator for the time the Duke spends alone with Gilda), without at least some element of force. Moreover, I don’t necessarily see a problem in Gilda’s being in love with the Duke even after a supposed rape: All Gilda has ever known is a father whom she is expected to love unconditionally, even though he keeps her locked up and refuses to even tell her his name! It makes sense to me that Gilda would grow up to fall for a guy who pins her down and lies about his identity to her. So I guess I don’t feel the same need that Hudson feels to find an alternative to the date-rape plot. As for the Duke’s aria, I think I’m with Budden: I’ve always seen this expression of heart-felt love and pity as the Duke succesfully deceiving himself.
But apart from these minor objections of mine, I really like Elizabeth Hudson’s article because it brings focus to Gilda as more than just a weak, pitiful woman or a plot a devise. As Hudson’s writes:
“Her tragedy lies not in the act of choosing, but in the subject of her choice, and in the self-sacrificial love (taught her by her father) that leads in Act III to give up her short-lived sense of herself in favour of a man who deceived and betrayed her.”
Whether Gilda is seduced or raped, Gilda is wronged and deceived by the Duke. But she sings her “Tuttle le feste” with a beautiful, powerful voice that overrules the mocking chorus of the courtiers and that echoes the love that the Duke might have been able to feel for Gilda, had he not been a spoiled royal douchebag of a seducer. She remembers the “ansia píu crudel” she has suffered, but she also cherishes the “speme píu gradita” the Duke inspired in her, and this is what motivates her in the third act to make her foolish, but loving sacrifice. Gilda is even in disguise and lying about her identity in the third act (dressed in men’s clothes for her’s and her father’s journey), just like her father has been all her life, but whereas Rigoletto has used his alter ego to mock and ridicule people, Gilda uses her disguise to gain access to Sparafucile’s inn where she will be able to die for her love. In Hugo’s universe there is no chance of wealth and happiness for poor and down-trodden people such as Rigoletto and Gilda, but when given the chance, Gilda makes an active choice not to follow in the foot-steps of her vengeful, bitter father into the darkness of their poverty and humility. She turns the other cheek, and she chooses love over vengeance and hatred.
And for that I think she should be given credit.
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SEPTEMBER 20, 2011: EINSTEIN PRESENTATION [Manhasset]
Einstein’s Step-Daughters
Margot Einstein, 86, Is Dead; Stepdaughter of Physicist
© New York Times
Published: July 12, 1986
Margot Einstein, a sculptor who was the stepdaughter of Albert Einstein, the physicist who formulated the theory of relativity, died Tuesday at the home in Princeton, N.J., that she had long shared with her stepfather. She was 86 years old.
Miss Einstein was born in Germany, the daughter of Elsa Hoffman who, after the death of her husband, became Einstein's second wife. In 1930 Miss Einstein married Dr. Dmitri Marianoff, an assistant to Dr. Einstein. The marriage ended in divorce seven years later and Miss Einstein resumed her stepfather's name.
After following Einstein to the United States in 1934, she studied sculpture at Columbia University and, with her stepfather, became an American citizen in 1940. Her mother died in 1936.
Miss Einstein lived in a house on Mercer Street in Princeton with Dr. Einstein and his sister, Maja, who died in 1951, and subsequently with Helen Dukas, his aide and secretary, who died in 1982. Einstein died in 1955.
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Ilse Einstein was born in 1897 and was married to Rudolf Kayser (wedding date unknown). She died in Paris in 1934 at the age of 37.
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His Romantic Affairs
Einstein's Theory of Fidelity
by Anne Casselman
© From the October 2006 issue DISCOVER MAGAZINE; published online December 11, 2006
When the last of Albert Einstein's sealed personal letters were released this summer, the media couldn't resist taking potshots at the famous genius. Fox News titled its news segment "Albert Einstein: Genius, Stud Muffin." Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel recast Einstein as a B-grade celebrity. "He had like half a dozen girlfriends," Kimmel said. "He was like the Wilmer Valderrama of astrophysics."
Einstein's stepdaughter, Margot, anticipated this kind of snickering, because the letters—a series of intimate family dialogues—reveal that Einstein had affairs with seven or so women while married. When she bequeathed the letters to Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Margot therefore stipulated that they were not to be published until 20 years after her death. To those who understand Einstein best, however, the letters do little to diminish his legend.
Einstein scholars, who have known about the content of these letters for decades, are unfazed by the latest revelations. "You have to keep in mind that in Europe at the time, for a pursued, charismatic man, his behavior wasn't so unusual," says Harvard physicist and science historian Gerald Holton. "Moreover, the letters show that it was generally he who asked to end such relationships." Holton suggests the snide tone of the current headlines may reflect a backlash from last year's centennial-of-relativity celebrations. The record also shows, he points out, that far from bilking his first wife of his Nobel Prize money, over time Einstein provided her and their sons more money than he had received from Stockholm and that his relationship with his sons was much more sympathetic than has been presented by some.
Even more telling is how Einstein discussed his affairs. Instead of denials or apologies, he simply described his feelings and staked out a cosmic perspective: "Out of all the dames, I am in fact attached only to Mrs. L," Einstein wrote to his stepdaughter in 1931 as he enlisted her help calming her irate mother. "And even with this there is no danger to the divine world order." Barbara Wolff, an archivist at Hebrew University, suggests that Einstein's behavior may reflect the adage that our greatest strengths are also often our greatest weaknesses. "The fact that he didn't try to hide his mistresses has to do with his need to be frank and open," she says.
Holton agrees that the tone of the letters is consistent with the mindset of the man who rejected scientific convention and dreamed up revolutionary theories of physics. "His character was to be very, very frank about everything, in terms of both scientific and personal matters. I wouldn't draw a straight-line connection, but there's certainly resonance of that in his achievements."
Confidential Confidante
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Below are two letters sent to Margot, Einstein's stepdaughter.
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Dear Margot,
I'm writing to you because you're the most reasonable one and poor mother is really meshugge. It is true that M. followed me and her chasing after me is getting out of control. But, first of all, there was nothing I could do to prevent it and, secondly, the moment I see her I'll tell her to vanish immediately, if for no other reason than just to spare the natural and architectural beauty of England (and so on). Out of all the dames, I am in fact attached only to Mrs. L. who is absolutely harmless and decent, and even with this there is no danger to the divine world order. This morning I am getting all these letters from mother, Estella and Ms. Dukas - expressing horror. I don't care much what people are saying about me, but for mother and Mrs. M. it is better that not every Tom, Dick and Harry gossip about it. It seems all the more funny when on one hand you research the cosmos and on the other hand you need to be engaged in so gracefully ludicrous worldly matters, but that's the way it is with the earthly creature.
Against my expectations I feel very well here and I'm getting used (at least from my stand point of view) to the "England thing". I'm alone most of the time, in the middle of a giant study den making great progress with my work. As for the attached little piece of paper please hand it over to Mr. Mayer and I send you and Dimitri all my kindest regards.
Yours Albert"
"Dear Margot,
You've twice shown me so much affection during my miseries. I appreciated it very much. I'm so much looking forward to you coming here and bringing your youthful energy into my dungeon. I feel a little better but it will still take some time until I am back to the old pig I used to be. For now all the best to you and Rudi and Ilse.
Yours Albert"
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SEPTEMBER 19, 2011: EDWARD ALBEE PRESENTATION
HOW AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL IS EDWARD ALBEE’S WORK, ESPECIALLY Virginia Woolf?
Of Edward Albee’s birth, it is only known that he was born on March 12, 1928 somewhere in Virginia. His biological parents gave him up for adoption two weeks later to Reed and Frances Albee, and this transaction took place in the District of Columbia. His adoptive father was the heir to the famous Keith-Albee Theatre Circuit, and thus it was young Albee’s fortune to be surrounded by wealth and privilege from the earliest days of his life. The Albee’s lived in a large Tudor house in Larchmont, New York where servants, tutors, horses, pets, toys, and chauffeured limousines were part of their lifestyle. Albee’s mother, Frances, was twenty-three years younger and almost a foot taller than his father, who tended to be taciturn and deferential toward his wife (MacNicholas 4). Albee’s relationship with his adoptive parents was fraught with discord and he freely admits that he was a problem child (Rutenberg 3). There was, however, one member of the family, Grandma Cotta, with whom he formed a close relationship. Later he would dedicate his short play The Sandbox to her (Bigsby 1).
Educationally, Albee’s performance was poor and finally at the age of eleven his parents sent him to Lawrenceville, a boarding school, in hopes that he would straighten up. He rebelliously cut classes, refused to do his homework and participate in sports, and behaved so badly all around that he was expelled within a year and a half. A lack of improvement in his attitude at home prompted his mother to send him off to a succession of fashionable Eastern preparatory schools, at which he continued to do poorly (Rutenberg 1). In 1944 he entered Choate School, and although his grades did not improve, he was happy there, and found teachers who encouraged his writing. During this time he experimented with many literary genres, writing numerous poems, stories, a play, and even a 538- page novel. Most of these works were rather banal and unremarkable; however, one of his poems was published in a Texas literary magazine (MacNicholas 5). In 1946 Albee attended Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut where he tried his hand at acting, but neglected his other classes and was asked to leave. Aside from two very brief enrollments in Columbia University and Washington University, this brought his formal education to an end (Bigsby 7).
In 1950 Albee, at odds with his parent’s politics, morality, and, as he states, “bigotry,” left the family home. Although some biographers speculate that his less-than-amiable departure had to do with his homosexual identity, Albee himself denies this: “That was never discussed between us.” (Gussow 71) For the next ten years of Albee’s life he lived at a number of different addresses and supplemented the income from his trust fund by working various jobs as an office boy, a salesman, and a messenger. Artistically he was frustrated. He continued to write, but produced nothing of real substance (MacNicholas 5).
On his thirtieth birthday, in 1958, Albee made the decision to quit his job as a messenger and sat down to write his first successful play, The Zoo Story. He finished the play in three weeks. Zoo Story was initially rejected by several New York producers and so its first premiere, on September 28, 1959, occurred at the Theater Werkstatt in Berlin. Four months later it played on a double bill with Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village and received largely positive responses from the critics (Roudane 3). With the advent of this first success, Albee went on to write and produce three other plays in the next year: The Death of Bessie Smith, The Sandbox, and Fam and Yam (Bigsby 175). All three of these plays attack certain features in American society and reflect his lifelong tendency toward idealism.
In 1961, Albee produced The American Dream, which explicitly criticizes the shortcomings of American values. In response to its negative reception by some critics, Albee stated, “The play is an examination of the American scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society . . . it was my intention to offend as well as amuse and entertain.” (Debusscher 35) The American Dream is a landmark in American theater because in it Albee integrates the discoveries of the French avant-garde theater (Debusscher 84). In contrast to the grimly realistic social criticism in The Death of Bessie Smith, The American Dream takes up the style and subject matter of the Theatre of the Absurd and transmutes it into an original American form (Bigsby 23).
In 1962, Albee took Broadway by surprise with what became one of his most famous plays. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was an enormous success, running for a total of 644 performances and thereby firmly establishing Albee as a major playwright (MacNicholas 8). It also sparked impassioned controversy amongst the critics, many who attacked the work for its destructive theme. It was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and yet the committee decided not to bestow this award on it because of the controversy. Some members of the committee who supported Albee’s nomination resigned in protest (Roudane 7). Nonetheless, he did receive the New York Drama Critics Award and Tony Award for the play.
Albee then went on to produce a number of less popular plays: The Ballad of the Sad Café in 1963; Tiny Alice in 1964; and Malcolm in 1966. More successful was, A Delicate Balance, also produced in 1966, for which he was awarded his first Pulitzer Prize. In 1967, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Emerson College. In the next few years he produced: Everything in the Garden, 1967; Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, 1968; and All over in 1971. He also received another honorary doctorate in 1974 from Trinity College. Nearly ten years from the date of receiving his first Pulitzer Prize, Albee was awarded a second for Seascape, which opened in New York in 1975. He continued to write and produce plays through the 1970’s and 80’s, among them are: Counting the Ways and Listening, 1977; The Lady from Dubuque, 1980; and Marriage Play, 1987. In 1991, he won the Pulitzer Prize for the third time for his play Three Tall Women. In this work, he finally deals with the years of conflict with his mother from a new perspective, that is, the family’s story is told from her point of view. Though his attitude is still sardonic, he is able to incorporate empathy for her as well (Gussow 19).
Today Albee still continues to write plays; more recently he has produced: The Play about the Baby, 1998; and The Goat, or, Who Is Sylvia, 2000. At this time he is part of the distinguished faculty at the University of Houston School of Theater where he teaches a playwrights workshop.
Albee has been and continues to be controversial for his denouncement of American values and for his unwavering commitment to produce higher art. Heralded by many as the playwright of the 1960’s, he challenged the orthodox aesthetics of Broadway, refusing to repeat dramatic formulas that might raise his reputation in commercial and even critical terms (Roudane 1). His plays tend to be dark and challenging; the themes of solitude, loss, and death recur throughout his works (Cohn 44). His representation of the American family is usually less than ideal and he focuses on the meretricious nature of many human relationships.
Albee is not easy to classify in terms of style, for he is unique in his generation for having tried his hand at extremely diverse dramatic forms: naturalism, surrealism, expressionism, symbolism, the one-act satiric farce, the full-length tragicomedy, and the metaphysical allegory (Debusscher 84). It is said that his plays have the formal inventiveness and depth of O’Neill’s and the social acuity and judicial firmness of Arthur Miller’s, but he outdoes them both in his wit and grace with words. He is experimental like Thornton Wilder, but his plays have greater passion. In his understanding of the marginalized members of society and his ability to produce tight poetic dialogue, Albee is equal to Tennessee Williams, but his work is more consistent than Williams' and has a greater intellectual quotient (MacNicholas 22).
For all these reasons and more does Albee’s work continue to be the subject of much scholarly discussion. An inquiry into the Dissertation Abstracts reveals that his work has been the subject of more than forty doctoral dissertations, eight of which were written in the last ten years.
With all his success, Albee might easily be expected to retire, but his indefatigable nature and interest in social issues continue to motivate him to create higher art. For him, a playwright has two obligations: first, to make some statement about the condition of ‘man’ and, second, to make some statement about the nature of the art form with which he is working. In both instances he must attempt change (MacNicholas 22). Albee’s work consistently demonstrates a commitment to these ideals as he continues to challenge audiences intellectually and morally.
© Cristina Goforth
Works Cited
Bigsby, C.W.E., ed. Edward Albee: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975.
Cohn, Ruby. Edward Albee. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1969.
Debusscher, Gilbert. Edward Albee: Tradition and Renewal. Trans. by Anne D. Williams. Brussels: American Studies Center, 1967.
Gussow, Mel. Edward Albee: A Singular Journey. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
MacNicholas. Twentieth Century American Dramatists. Part 1: A-J, Gale Research Co., 1981.
Roudane, Matthew C. “Edward Albee.” American Playwrights Since 1945: A Guide to Scholarship, Criticism, and Performance. Ed. Philip C. Kolin. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.
Rutenberg, Michael E. Edward Albee: Playwright in Protest. New York: DBS Publications, Inc., 1969.
© Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 8: Edward Albee." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. URL:http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/albee.html (Retrieved 20 September, 2011).
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SEPTEMBER 12, 2011: ALBERT EINSTEIN PRESENTATION [Jericho]
DID ALBERT EINSTEIN HAVE A SISTER?
Yes.
Maria "Maja" Einstein and her older brother Albert Einstein were the two children of Herman and Pauline Einstein.
She was born November 18, 1881 in Munich. When little Albert saw his sister for the first time he thought she was a kind of toy and asked: "Yes, but where does it have its small wheels?" Maja and Albert got along very well all their lives. She was Albert's only friend during his childhood.
She attended elementary school in Munich from 1887 to 1894. She then moved with her parents to Milan, where she attended the German International School; Albert had stayed behind with relatives in Munich to complete his schooling. From 1899 to 1902, she attended a workshop for teachers in Aarau. After she passed her final exams she studied Romance languages and literature in Berlin, Bern and Paris. In 1909, she graduated from University of Bern, her dissertation was entitled "Contribution to the Tradition of the Chevalier au Cygne and the Enfances Godefroi".
In the year following her graduation, she married Paul Winteler, but they were to be childless. The young couple moved to Luzern in 1911, where Maja's husband had found a job. In 1922 they moved to Colonnata near Florence in Italy.
After Italian leader Benito Mussolini introduced anti-Semitic laws in Italy, Albert invited Maja to emigrate to the United States in 1939 and live in his residence in Mercer Street, Princeton, New Jersey. Her husband was denied entry into the United States on health grounds. Maja spent some pleasant years with Albert, until she suffered a stroke in 1946, and became bedridden. She later developed progressive arteriosclerosis, and died in Princeton on June 25, 1951 four years before her brother.
WHAT HAPPENED TO EINSTEIN’S DAUGHTER?
Lieserl Einstein (born January, 1902 – last mentioned in 1903; date of death unknown) was the first child of Mileva Marić and Albert Einstein.
According to the correspondence between her parents, "Lieserl" was born in January, 1902, a year before her parents married, in Novi Sad, Vojvodina, present day Republic of Serbia, and was cared for by her mother for a short time while Einstein worked in Switzerland before Marić joined him there without the child.
"Lieserl's" existence was unknown to biographers until 1986, when a batch of letters between Albert and Mileva was discovered by Hans Albert Einstein's daughter Evelyn.
Marić had hoped for a girl, while Einstein would have preferred a boy. In their letters, they called the unborn child "Lieserl", when referring to a girl, or "Hanserl", if a boy. Both "Lieserl" and "Hanserl" are diminutives of the very common German names Liese (Elisabeth) and Hans (Johannes).
The first reference to Marić's pregnancy is found in a letter Einstein wrote to her from Winterthur, probably on May 28, 1901 (letter 36), asking twice about "the boy" and "our little son", whereas Marić's first reference is found in her letter of November 13, 1901 (letter 43) from Stein am Rhein, in which she refers to the unborn child as "Lieserl". Einstein goes along with Marić's wish for a daughter, and refers to the unborn child as "Lieserl" as well, but with a sense of humour as in letter 45 of December 12, 1901 "... and be happy about our Lieserl, whom I secretly (so Dollie doesn't notice) prefer to imagine a Hanserl."
The child must have been born shortly before February 4, 1902, when Einstein wrote: "... now you see that it really is a Lieserl, just as you'd wished. Is she healthy and does she cry properly? [...] I love her so much and don't even know her yet!"
The last time "Lieserl" is mentioned in their extant correspondence is in Einstein's letter of September 19, 1903 (letter 54), in which he shows concern for her suffering from scarlet fever. His asking "as what is the child registered? [Adding] we must take precautions that problems don't arise for her later" may indicate the intention to give the child up for adoption.
As neither the full name, nor the fate of the child are known so far several theories about her life and death have been put forward:
Michele Zackheim, in her book on "Lieserl", Einstein's Daughter, states that "Lieserl" was mentally challenged at birth, and that she lived with her mother's family and probably died of scarlet fever in September 1903.
Another possibility, favoured by Robert Schulmann of the Einstein Papers Project, is that "Lieserl" was adopted by Marić's close friend, Helene Savić, and was raised by her and lived under the name "Zorka Savić" until the 1990s. Savić did in fact raise a child by the name of Zorka, who was blind from childhood and died in the 1990s. Her grandson Milan Popović rejects the possibility that it was "Lieserl", and also favors the theory that the child died in September 1903.
DID EINSTEIN HAVE GRANDCHILDREN?
Yes. His son Hans had five children. We do not know the fate of his daughter Lieserl.
His son Eduard died unmarried.
Hans Albert was born in Bern, Switzerland, where his father, Albert Einstein, worked as a clerk in the patent office. His younger brother, Eduard Einstein, was born in 1910 and died in 1965. The fate of his older sister, Lieserl Einstein, Albert Einstein's and Mileva Marić's first child, is unknown. Their parents divorced in 1919 after living apart for five years.
In 1927 he married Frieda Knecht. Ironically, Albert Einstein disapproved of Frieda much as his parents had of Mileva. Hans Albert and Frieda had five children — Bernhard Caesar (b. 1930-2008) was a physicist, and engineer. Klaus Martin (1932-1938) died of diphtheria. Two subsequent boys died several days after their birth. They adopted a daughter, Evelyn (1941-2011), soon after her birth. Frieda died in 1958, and Hans Albert later married Elizabeth Roboz.
Hans Albert followed his father's footsteps and studied at ETH, the Swiss Federal Institute of technology, in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1926 he was awarded the diploma in civil engineering. From 1926 to 1930 he worked as a steel designer on a bridge project in Dortmund. In 1936 Hans Albert obtained the doctor of technical science degree. His doctoral thesis "Bed Load Transport as a Probability Problem" is considered the definitive work on sedimentation transportation.
Hans Albert's father, Albert Einstein, left Germany in 1933 because of the national socialist movement. Heeding his father's advice, Hans Albert emigrated to Greenville, South Carolina in 1938. He worked for the US Department of Agriculture, studying sedimentation transport from 1938 to 1943. He continued working for the USDA at the California Institute of Technology starting in 1943. In 1947 Hans Albert took a position as associate professor of hydraulic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He continued his career advancing to full professor, and later professor emeritus. As an authority in his field, Hans Albert travelled the world to participate in hydraulic engineering conferences. He was at a symposium at Woods Hole in Massachusetts when he collapsed and died from a sudden cardiovascular event.
Hans Albert enjoyed life. He was an avid sailor, frequently taking colleagues and family out for excursions on the San Francisco Bay. On his many field trips and academic excursions, he took thousands of pictures, many of which he developed himself, and presented as slide shows. He also loved music, and played flute and piano.
WHAT HAPPENED TO EDUARD EINSTEIN?
Eduard Einstein (28 July 1910 – 25 October 1965) was born in Zürich, Switzerland, the second son of physicist Albert Einstein and his first wife Mileva Marić. Einstein and his family moved to Berlin in 1914, but shortly thereafter Marić returned to Zürich, taking Eduard and his brother with her.
Eduard was a good student and had musical talent. He started to study medicine to become a psychiatrist, but by the age of twenty he was afflicted with schizophrenia and institutionalized two years later for the first of several times. Many people believe he was overdosed with drugs and harmed by the many "cures" that were used at the time. According to his brother Hans Albert Einstein, the thing that ruined him were the electric shock treatments.
After his illness struck, Eduard told his father that he hated him. Einstein never saw his son again for the rest of his life.
His mother cared for him until she died in 1948. From then on Eduard lived most of the time at the psychiatric clinic Burghölzli in Zürich, where he died of a stroke at age 55. He is buried at Hönggerberg-Cemetery in Zurich. His family lineage has been used to raise public awareness of schizophrenia.
SOURCES:
--Ronald W Clark. Einstein: The Life and Times. Avon. 1971
--For those who know German: Eduard Rübel. Eduard Einstein: Erinnerungen ehemaliger Klassenkameraden am Zürcher Gymnasium. P. Haupt. 1986.
--Albert Einstein, Mileva Marić: The Love Letters. Edited by Jürgen Renn & Robert Schulmann. Translated by Shawn Smith. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. 1992.
--Michele Zackheim, Einstein's Daughter: the Search for Lieserl, Riverhead, 1999.
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