__NOTOC__ Year 1890 (MDCCCXC) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.

Events

January–March

January 1

* The Kingdom of Italy establishes Eritrea as its colony in the Horn of Africa.

In Michigan, the wooden steamer ''Mackinaw'' burns in a fire on the Black River.

January 2

The steamship ''Persia'' is wrecked off Corsica; 130 lives are lost.

Alice Sanger becomes the first female staffer in the White House.

January 15 – The Sleeping Beauty (ballet) with music by Tchaikovsky is premiered at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, Russia.

January 25

* The United Mine Workers of America is founded.

* Nellie Bly completes her round-the-world journey in 72 days.

February 17 – The British steamship ''Duburg'' is wrecked in the China Seas: 400 lives are lost.

February 24 – Chicago is selected to host the Columbian Exposition

March 1

The British steamship ''Quetia'' founders in the Lorres Straits: 124 lives are lost.

* Léon Bourgeois succeeds Jean Antoine Ernest Constans as French Minister of the Interior.

March 3 – The first football game in Ohio State history is played in Delaware, Ohio against Ohio Wesylan where Ohio State won 20–14.

March 4 – The longest bridge in Britain, the Forth Bridge (8,296 ft) in Scotland, is opened.

March 8 – North Dakota State University is founded in Fargo, North Dakota.

March 20 – Wilhelm II of Germany dismisses Otto von Bismarck.

March 27 – A tornado strikes Louisville, Kentucky, killing 76 people and injuring 200.

March 28 – Washington State University is founded in Pullman, Washington.

April–June

April 14 – Commercial Bureau of the American Republics

May 12 – The first ever ''official'' County Championship cricket match begins in Bristol; Yorkshire beats Gloucestershire by 8 wickets.

May 31 – The 5-story skylight Arcade opens in Cleveland, Ohio.

June 1 – The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to count census returns.

June 12 – In Michigan, the wooden steamer ''Ryan'' is lost near Thunder Bay Island.

June 20 – The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde published by Philadelphia based Lippincott's Monthly magazine.

July–September

July – Politics of Japan: In the first general election for the House of Representatives of Japan, c. 5% of the adult male population elect a lower house of the Diet of Japan.

July 1 – Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty is signed by Great Britain and Germany.

July 2 – The Sherman Antitrust Act and Sherman Silver Purchase Act become United States law.

July 3 – Idaho is admitted as the 43rd U.S. state.

July 10 – Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state.

July 13 – In Minnesota, storms result in the Sea Wing disaster on Lake Pepin killing 98.

July 26 – In Buenos Aires, the ''Revolución del Parque'' takes place, forcing President Juárez Celman's resignation.

July 27 – Vincent van Gogh shoots himself in the stomach and dies two days later.

August 6 – At Auburn Prison in New York, William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed in the electric chair.

September 19 – The Turkish frigate ''Ertogrul'' founders off Japan; 540 lives are lost.

October–December

October 1 – Weather Bureau (within Department of Agriculture).

October 9 – The first brief flight of Clément Ader's steam-powered fixed-wing aircraft ''Eole'' takes place in Satory, France. It flies uncontrolled approximately at a height of 20 cm, the first take-off of a powered airplane solely under its own power.

October 11 – In Washington, D.C., the Daughters of the American Revolution is founded.

October 13

In Michigan, the schooner ''J.F. Warner'' is lost at Thunder Bay.

* The Delta Chi Fraternity is founded by 11 law students at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

November 23 – King William III of the Netherlands dies without a male heir, and his daughter Princess Wilhelmina becomes Queen, causing Luxembourg (who required a male heir) to declare independence.

November 29

* The Meiji Constitution goes into effect in Japan and the first Diet convenes.

* In West Point, New York, the United States Navy defeats the United States Army 24–0 in the first Army–Navy Game.

November – Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, moves to a building on London's Victoria Embankment, as the New Scotland Yard.

December – The British steamship ''Shanghai'' burns in the East China Sea off the coast of Anhui Province; 200 lives are lost.

December 29 – Wounded Knee Massacre: At Wounded Knee, South Dakota, a Native American camp, the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment tries to disperse the non-violent "Ghost-Dance" which was promised to usher in a new era of power and freedom to Native Americans but was feared as a potential rallying tool for violent rebellion by some in the U.S. government. Shooting begins, and 153 Lakota Sioux and 25 troops are killed; about 150 flee the scene.

Date unknown

The corrugated cardboard box is invented by Robert Gair, a Brooklyn printer who developed production of paper-board boxes in 1879.

U.S. Census: Herman Hollerith's invention of recording data on a medium that was machine readable (he used punch cards) and the machines he developed are used to tabulate census data. (see also History of computing hardware). Hollerith's company eventually becomes IBM.

The prosecution of Edward King, Anglican bishop of Lincoln, for using ritualistic practices ends.

The United States city of Boise, Idaho drills the first geothermal well.

Brown trout are introduced into the upper Firehole River in Yellowstone National Park.

''High School Cadets'' is written by John Philip Sousa.

William II of Prussia opposes Bismarck's attempt to renew the law outlawing the Social Democratic Party.

Blackwall Buildings, Whitechapel, noted philanthropic housing, is built in the East End of London.

W.M.F. Petrie excavated the site of Tell el-Hesi in Palestine, during which excavation he discovered how tells were formed.

American geostrategist Alfred Thayer Mahan publishes his influential book ''The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783''.

The book ''Finger Prints'' by Francis Galton is published. This is an important milestone in the history of forensic crime detection.

Births

January–June

January 1 – Anton Melik, Slovenian geographer (d. 1966)

January 5 – Sarah Aaronsohn, member of the Jewish spy ring Nili (d. 1917)

January 4 – Victor Lustig, Bohemian-born con artist (d. 1947)

January 9

* Kurt Tucholsky, German-born journalist and satirist (d. 1935)

* Karel Čapek, Czech writer (d. 1938)

January 11 – Oswald de Andrade, Brazilian Modernist writer (d.1954)

January 19 – Élise Rivet, French Roman Catholic nun and war heroine (d. 1945)

January 22 – Fred M. Vinson, Chief Justice of the United States (d. 1953)

January 28 – Robert Franklin Stroud, ''Birdman of Alcatraz'' (d. 1963)

February 10 – Boris Pasternak, Russian writer (''Doctor Zhivago''), Nobel Prize laureate (declined) (d. 1960)

February 14 – Nina Hamnett, Welsh artist (d. 1956)

February 17 – Ronald Fisher, English biologist (d. 1962)

February 18 – Adolphe Menjou, American actor (d. 1963)

February 24 – Marjorie Main, American actress (d. 1975)

February 25 – Dame Myra Hess, English pianist (d. 1965)

February 27 – Freddie Keppard, American jazz musician (d. 1933)

March 3 – Norman Bethune, Canadian doctor and humanitarian (d. 1939)

March 9

* (new style) Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet politician (d. 1986)

* Rupert Balfe, Australian rules footballer (d. 1915)

March 11 – Vannevar Bush, American engineer, inventor, and politician (d. 1974)

March 20

* Beniamino Gigli, Italian tenor (d. 1957)

* Lauritz Melchior, Danish-American tenor (d. 1973)

March 28 – Paul Whiteman, American bandleader (d. 1967)

March 31 – William Lawrence Bragg, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1971)

April 6 – Anthony Fokker, Dutch aircraft manufacturer (d. 1939)

April 7

* Marjory Stoneman Douglas, American conservationist and writer (d. 1998)

* Paul Berth, Danish amateur football (soccer) player (d. 1969)

April 11 – Rachele Mussolini, Italian, wife of Benito Mussolini (died 1979)

April 15 – Percy Shaw, British inventor (d. 1976)

April 16 – Fred Root, English cricketer (d. 1954)

April 20

* Maurice Duplessis, premier of Quebec (d. 1959)

* Adolf Scharf, former President of Austria (d. 1965)

May 1 – Laurence Wild, 1913 NCAA Men's Basketball All-American, former head coach for the Navy Midshipmen men's basketball, and 30th Governor of American Samoa (d. 1971)

May 4 – Franklin Carmichael, Canadian artist (d. 1945)

May 10 – Alfred Jodl, German general (executed) (d. 1946)

May 11 – Woodall Rodgers, mayor of Dallas, Texas (d. 1961)

May 15 – Katherine Anne Porter, American author (d. 1980)

May 19 – Ho Chi Minh, Prime minister/President of North Vietnam (d. 1969)

May 23 – Herbert Marshall, English actor (d. 1966)

June 6 – Ted Lewis, American jazz musician and entertainer (d. 1971)

June 16 – Stan Laurel, British actor (d. 1965)

June 26 – Jeanne Eagels, American actress (d. 1929)

July–December

July 18 – Frank Forde, Australian Prime Minister (d. 1983)

July 20 – Verna Felton, American character actress (d. 1966)

July 22 – Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, American philanthropist and matriarch of the Kennedy family (d. 1995)

July 29 – Daniel J. Callaghan, American United States Navy officer (d. 1942)

August 4 – Erich Weinert, German writer and political activist (d. 1953)

August 5 – Erich Kleiber, Austrian conductor (d. 1956)

August 10 – Angus L. Macdonald, Nova Scotia Premier (d. 1954)

August 15

* Jacques Ibert, French composer (d. 1962)

* Elizabeth Bolden, American, last verified person born in 1890 (d. 2006)

August 18 – Walther Funk, German politician (d. 1960)

August 20 – H. P. Lovecraft, American writer (d. 1937)

August 24 – Duke Kahanamoku, American swimmer (d. 1968)

September 9 – Harland Sanders, Founder of KFC (d. 1980)

September 10 – Elsa Schiaparelli, French couturiere (d. 1973)

September 15

* Agatha Christie, English writer (d. 1976)

* Frank Martin, Swiss composer (d. 1974)

September 20

* Jelly Roll Morton, American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader (d. 1941)

* Rachel Bluwstein, Israeli poet (d. 1931)

October 1

* Katherine Corri Harris, actress first wife of John Barrymore (d. 1927)

* Alice Joyce, American silent film actress (d. 1955)

* Blanche Oelrichs, American poet second wife of John Barrymore (d. 1950)

October 2 – Groucho Marx, American comedian (d. 1977)

October 8 – Eddie Rickenbacker, American WWI fighter pilot (d. 1973)

October 13 – Conrad Richter, American novelist and short story writer (d. 1968)

October 14 – Dwight David Eisenhower, U.S. general and President of the United States (d. 1969)

October 16

* Michael Collins, Irish patriot (d. 1922)

* Paul Strand, American photographer (d. 1976)

October 17 – Roy Kilner, English cricketer (d. 1928)

October 29 – Hans-Valentin Hube, German army general (d. 1944)

November 7 – Jan Matulka, American painter (d. 1972)

November 20 – Leon Cadore, American baseball pitcher (d. 1968)

November 22 – Charles de Gaulle, President of France (d. 1970)

November 23 – El Lissitzky, Russian artist and architect (d. 1941)

December 5 – David Bomberg, English painter (d. 1957)

December 8 – Bohuslav Martinů, Czech composer (d. 1959)

December 10 – Henry Louis Larsen, American Marine Corp General; Governor of American Samoa and Governor of Guam (d. 1962)

December 11 – Carlos Gardel, Argentine tango singer (d. 1935)

December 20 – Jaroslav Heyrovský, Czech chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1967)

December 21 – Hermann Joseph Muller, American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1967)

December 25 – Robert Ripley, collector of odd facts (d. 1949)

December 26 – Uncle Charlie Osborne, Appalachian fiddler (d. 1992)

December 30 – Lanoe Hawker, British fighter pilot (d. 1916)

Date unknown

John Aae, Norwegian politician (d. 1968)

Bechara El Khoury, President of Lebanon (d. 1964)

Taixu, Chinese Buddhist activist (d. 1947)

Deaths

January–June

January 7 – Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Empress Consort of William I, German Emperor (b. 1811)

January 18 – King Amadeus I of Spain (b. 1845)

February 22

* John Jacob Astor III, American businessman (b. 1822)

* Carl Heinrich Bloch, Danish painter (b. 1834)

March 3 – Innocenzo da Berzo, Capuchin friar (b. 1844)

March 7 – Karl Rudolf Friedenthal, Prussian statesman (b. 1827)

March 9 – Sir Mangaldas Nathubhoy, Indian politician (b. 1832)

March 16 – Princess Zorka of Montenegro (b. 1864)

April 1 – David Wilber, American politician (b. 1820)

April 1 – Alexander Mozhaysky, Russian aeronautical pioneer (b. 1825)

April 11 – Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man), English oddity (b. 1862)

June 24 – Subba Row, Hindu theosophist (b. 1856)

June 30 – Samuel Parkman Tuckerman, American composer (b. 1819)

July–December

July 9 – Clinton B. Fisk, American philanthropist and temperance activist (b. 1828)

July 13

* John C. Frémont, American explorer and military officer (b. 1813)

* Johann Voldemar Jannsen, Estonian journalist and poet (b. 1819)

July 15 – Gottfried Keller, Swiss writer (b. 1819)

July 29 – Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter (b. 1853)

August 11 – John Henry Newman, English Roman Catholic Cardinal (b. 1801)

October 4 – Catherine Booth, Mother of The Salvation Army (b. 1829)

October 20 – Richard Francis Burton, English explorer, linguist, soldier (b. 1820)

October 26 – Carlo Collodi, Italian writer (''The Adventures of Pinocchio'') (b. 1826)

November 3 – Ulrich Ochsenbein, member of the Swiss Federal Council (b. 1811)

November 4 – Felix du Temple de la Croix, French Army Captain & aviation pioneer (b. 1823)

November 8 – César Franck, Belgian composer and organist (b. 1822)

November 11 – Marie-Charles David de Mayréna, French adventurer and self-styled ''King of Sedang'' (b. 1842)

November 23 – King William III of the Netherlands (b. 1817)

November 24 – August Belmont, Sr., Prussian-born financier (b. 1816)

December 15 – Sitting Bull, Native American chief (b. c. 1831)

December 21 – Johanne Luise Heiberg, Danish actress (b. 1812)

December 26 – Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist (b. 1822)

December 31 – Pancha Carrasco, Costa Rican war heroine (b. 1826)

Date unknown

Comanche, horse, survivor of Custer's cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn

References

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Name	Florence Nightingale
Birth date	May 12, 1820
Birth place	Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Death date	August 13, 1910
Death place	Park Lane, London, United Kingdom
Profession	Nurse and Statistician
Specialism	Hospital hygiene and sanitation
Known for	Pioneering modern nursing
Work institutions	Selimiye Barracks, Scutari
Awards	Royal Red Cross (1883) Order of Merit (1907)
Signature	Florence Nightingale Signature.svg }}

Florence Nightingale OM, RRC (; historically ; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. An Anglican, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night.

Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.

Biography

Early life

Florence Nightingale was born into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana at Bellosguardo in Florence, Italy, and was named after the city of her birth. Florence's older sister Frances Parthenope had similarly been named after her place of birth, ''Parthenopolis'', a Greek settlement now part of the city of Naples.

Her parents were William Edward Nightingale, born William Edward Shore (1794–1874) and Frances ("Fanny") Nightingale ''née'' Smith (1789–1880). William's mother Mary ''née'' Evans was the niece of one Peter Nightingale, under the terms of whose will William inherited his estate Lea Hurst in Derbyshire, and assumed the name and arms of Nightingale. Fanny's father (Florence's maternal grandfather) was the abolitionist and Unitarian William Smith. (For family trees, see here.)

Inspired by what she took as a call from God in February 1837 while at Embley Park, Florence announced her decision to enter nursing in 1844, despite the intense anger and distress of her mother and sister. In this, she rebelled against the expected role for a woman of her status, which was to become a wife and mother. Nightingale worked hard to educate herself in the art and science of nursing, in spite of opposition from her family and the restrictive societal code for affluent young English women. Nightingale was courted by politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, but she rejected him, convinced that marriage would interfere with her ability to follow her calling to nursing.

In Rome in 1847, she met Sidney Herbert, a brilliant politician who had been Secretary at War (1845–1846), a position he would hold again during the Crimean War. Herbert was on his honeymoon; he and Nightingale became lifelong close friends. Herbert and his wife were instrumental in facilitating Nightingale's nursing work in the Crimea, and she became a key adviser to him in his political career, though she was accused by some of having hastened Herbert's death from Bright's Disease in 1861 because of the pressure her programme of reform placed on him.

Nightingale also much later had strong relations with Benjamin Jowett, who may have wanted to marry her.

Nightingale continued her travels (now with Charles and Selina Bracebridge) as far as Greece and Egypt. Her writings on Egypt in particular are testimony to her learning, literary skill and philosophy of life. Sailing up the Nile as far as Abu Simbel in January 1850, she wrote

"I don't think I ever saw anything which affected me much more than this." And, considering the temple: "Sublime in the highest style of intellectual beauty, intellect without effort, without suffering... not a feature is correct – but the whole effect is more expressive of spiritual grandeur than anything I could have imagined. It makes the impression upon one that thousands of voices do, uniting in one unanimous simultaneous feeling of enthusiasm or emotion, which is said to overcome the strongest man."

At Thebes she wrote of being "called to God" while a week later near Cairo she wrote in her diary (as distinct from her far longer letters that her elder sister Parthenope was to print after her return): "God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for him alone without reputation." Later in 1850, she visited the Lutheran religious community at Kaiserswerth-am-Rhein in Germany, where she observed Pastor Theodor Fliedner and the deaconesses working for the sick and the deprived. She regarded the experience as a turning point in her life, and issued her findings anonymously in 1851; ''The Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, for the Practical Training of Deaconesses, etc.'' was her first published work; she also received four months of medical training at the institute which formed the basis for her later care.

On 22 August 1853, Nightingale took the post of superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Upper Harley Street, London, a position she held until October 1854. Her father had given her an annual income of £500 (roughly £40,000/US$65,000 in present terms), which allowed her to live comfortably and to pursue her career.

Crimean War

Florence Nightingale's most famous contribution came during the Crimean War, which became her central focus when reports began to filter back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded. On 21 October 1854, she and a staff of 38 women volunteer nurses, trained by Nightingale and including her aunt Mai Smith, were sent (under the authorisation of Sidney Herbert) to the Ottoman Empire, about across the Black Sea from Balaklava in the Crimea, where the main British camp was based.

Nightingale arrived early in November 1854 at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari (modern-day Üsküdar in Istanbul). She and her nurses found wounded soldiers being badly cared for by overworked medical staff in the face of official indifference. Medicines were in short supply, hygiene was being neglected, and mass infections were common, many of them fatal. There was no equipment to process food for the patients.

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was asserted that Nightingale reduced the death rate from 42% to 2% either by making improvements in hygiene herself or by calling for the Sanitary Commission. The 1911 first edition of the Dictionary of National Biography made this claim, but the second edition in 2001 did not. However, death rates did not drop: they began to rise. The death count was the highest of all hospitals in the region. During her first winter at Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died there. Ten times more soldiers died from illnesses such as typhus, typhoid, cholera and dysentery than from battle wounds. Conditions at the temporary barracks hospital were so fatal to the patients because of overcrowding and the hospital's defective sewers and lack of ventilation. A Sanitary Commission had to be sent out by the British government to Scutari in March 1855, almost six months after Florence Nightingale had arrived, and effected flushing out the sewers and improvements to ventilation. Death rates were sharply reduced. During the war she did not recognise hygiene as the predominant cause of death, and she never claimed credit for helping to reduce the death rate.

Nightingale continued believing the death rates were due to poor nutrition and supplies and overworking of the soldiers. It was not until after she returned to Britain and began collecting evidence before the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army that she came to believe that most of the soldiers at the hospital were killed by poor living conditions. This experience influenced her later career, when she advocated sanitary living conditions as of great importance. Consequently, she reduced deaths in the army during peacetime and turned attention to the sanitary design of hospitals.

The Lady with the Lamp

During the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp", deriving from a phrase in a report in ''The Times'':

She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.

The phrase was further popularised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1857 poem "Santa Filomena":

Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room.

Later career

While she was in the Crimea, on 29 November 1855, a public meeting to give recognition to Florence Nightingale for her work in the war led to the establishment of the Nightingale Fund for the training of nurses. There was an outpouring of generous donations. Sidney Herbert served as honorary secretary of the fund, and the Duke of Cambridge was chairman. Nightingale was considered a pioneer in the concept of ''medical tourism'' as well, on the basis of her letters from 1856 in which she wrote of spas in the Ottoman Empire, detailing the health conditions, physical descriptions, dietary information, and other vitally important details of patients whom she directed there (where treatment was significantly less expensive than in Switzerland). It may be assumed she was directing patients of meagre means to affordable treatment.

By 1859 Nightingale had £45,000 at her disposal from the Nightingale Fund to set up the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas' Hospital on 9 July 1860. (It is now called the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery and is part of King's College London.) The first trained Nightingale nurses began work on 16 May 1865 at the Liverpool Workhouse Infirmary. She also campaigned and raised funds for the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital in Aylesbury, near her family home.

Nightingale wrote ''Notes on Nursing'', which was published in 1859, a slim 136-page book that served as the cornerstone of the curriculum at the Nightingale School and other nursing schools established, though it was written specifically for the education of those nursing at home. Nightingale wrote "Every day sanitary knowledge, or the knowledge of nursing, or in other words, of how to put the constitution in such a state as that it will have no disease, or that it can recover from disease, takes a higher place. It is recognised as the knowledge which every one ought to have – distinct from medical knowledge, which only a profession can have".

''Notes on Nursing'' also sold well to the general reading public and is considered a classic introduction to nursing. Nightingale spent the rest of her life promoting the establishment and development of the nursing profession and organizing it into its modern form. In the introduction to the 1974 edition, Joan Quixley of the Nightingale School of Nursing wrote: "The book was the first of its kind ever to be written. It appeared at a time when the simple rules of health were only beginning to be known, when its topics were of vital importance not only for the well-being and recovery of patients, when hospitals were riddled with infection, when nurses were still mainly regarded as ignorant, uneducated persons. The book has, inevitably, its place in the history of nursing, for it was written by the founder of modern nursing".

Nightingale was an advocate for the improvement of care and conditions in the military and civilian hospitals in Britain. Among her popular books are ''Notes on Hospitals'', which deals with the correlation of sanitary techniques to medical facilities; ''Notes on Nursing'', which was the most valued nursing textbook of the day; ''Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army''.

As Mark Bostridge has recently demonstrated, one of Nightingale's signal achievements was the introduction of trained nurses into the workhouse system in England and Ireland from the 1860s onwards. This meant that sick paupers were no longer being cared for by other, able-bodied paupers, but by properly trained nursing staff. This innovation may be said to herald the establishment of the National Health Service in Britain, forty years after Nightingale's death.

It is commonly stated that Nightingale "went to her grave denying the germ theory of infection". Mark Bostridge in his recent biography disagrees with this, saying that she was opposed to a precursor of germ theory known as "contagionism" which held that diseases could only be transmitted by touch. Before the experiments of the mid-1860s by Pasteur and Lister, hardly anyone took germ theory seriously and even afterwards many medical practitioners were unconvinced. Bostridge points out that in the early 1880s Nightingale wrote an article for a textbook in which she advocated strict precautions designed, she said, to kill germs. Nightingale's work served as an inspiration for nurses in the American Civil War. The Union government approached her for advice in organizing field medicine. Although her ideas met official resistance, they inspired the volunteer body of the United States Sanitary Commission.

In the 1870s, Nightingale mentored Linda Richards, "America's first trained nurse", and enabled her to return to the USA with adequate training and knowledge to establish high-quality nursing schools. Linda Richards went on to become a great nursing pioneer in the USA and Japan.

By 1882, Nightingale nurses had a growing and influential presence in the embryonic nursing profession. Some had become matrons at several leading hospitals, including, in London, St Mary's Hospital, Westminster Hospital, St Marylebone Workhouse Infirmary and the Hospital for Incurables at Putney; and throughout Britain, e.g., Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley; Edinburgh Royal Infirmary; Cumberland Infirmary and Liverpool Royal Infirmary, as well as at Sydney Hospital in New South Wales, Australia.

In 1883, Nightingale was awarded the Royal Red Cross by Queen Victoria. In 1907, she became the first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit. In 1908, she was given the Honorary Freedom of the City of London. Her birthday is now celebrated as International CFS Awareness Day.

From 1857 onwards, Nightingale was intermittently bedridden and suffered from depression. A recent biography cites brucellosis and associated spondylitis as the cause. An alternative explanation for her depression is based on her discovery after the war that she had been mistaken about the reasons for the high death rate. There is, however, no documentary evidence to support this theory which remains, therefore, largely supposition. Most authorities today accept that Nightingale suffered from a particularly extreme form of brucellosis, the effects of which only began to lift in the early 1880s. Despite her symptoms, she remained phenomenally productive in social reform. During her bedridden years, she also did pioneering work in the field of hospital planning, and her work propagated quickly across Britain and the world.

Relationships

Although much of Nightingale's work improved the lot of women everywhere, she had little respect for women in general preferring the friendship of powerful men. She often referred to herself in the masculine, as for example "a man of action" and "a man of business".

She did, however, have several important and passionate friendships with women. As a young woman she adored both an aunt and a female cousin. Later in life she kept up a prolonged correspondence with an Irish nun, Sister Mary Clare Moore, with whom she had worked in Crimea. Her most beloved confidante was Mary Clarke, an Englishwoman she met in 1837 and kept in touch with throughout her life.

In spite of these deep emotional attachments to women, some scholars of Nightingale's life believe that she remained chaste for her entire life; perhaps because she felt an almost religious calling to her career, or because she lived in the time of Victorian sexual morality.

Death

On 13 August 1910, at the age of 90, she died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South Street, Park Lane. The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives, and she is buried in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, Hampshire.

Contributions

Statistics and sanitary reform

Florence Nightingale had exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age and excelled in the subject under the tutorship of her father. Later, Nightingale became a pioneer in the visual presentation of information and statistical graphics. Among other things she used the pie chart, which had first been developed by William Playfair in 1801. While taken for granted now, it was at the time a relatively novel method of presenting data.

Indeed, Nightingale is described as "a true pioneer in the graphical representation of statistics", and is credited with developing a form of the pie chart now known as the polar area diagram, or occasionally the Nightingale rose diagram, equivalent to a modern circular histogram, in order to illustrate seasonal sources of patient mortality in the military field hospital she managed. Nightingale called a compilation of such diagrams a "coxcomb", but later that term has frequently been used for the individual diagrams. She made extensive use of coxcombs to present reports on the nature and magnitude of the conditions of medical care in the Crimean War to Members of Parliament and civil servants who would have been unlikely to read or understand traditional statistical reports.

In her later life Nightingale made a comprehensive statistical study of sanitation in Indian rural life and was the leading figure in the introduction of improved medical care and public health service in India. In 1858 and 1859 she successfully lobbied for the establishment of a Royal Commission into the Indian situation. Two years later she provided a report to the commission, which completed its own study in 1863. "After 10 years of sanitary reform, in 1873, Nightingale reported that mortality among the soldiers in India had declined from 69 to 18 per 1,000".

In 1859 Nightingale was elected the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society and she later became an honorary member of the American Statistical Association.

Literature and the women's movement

But while better known for her contributions in the nursing and mathematical fields, Nightingale is also an important link in the study of English feminism. During 1850 and 1852, she was struggling with her self-definition and the expectations of an upper-class marriage from her family. As she sorted out her thoughts, she wrote ''Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth''. This was an 829 page, three-volume work, which Nightingale had printed privately in 1860, but which until recently was never published in its entirety. An effort to correct this was made with a 2008 publication by Wilfrid Laurier University, as volume 11 of a 16 volume project, the ''Collected Works of Florence Nightingale''. The best known of these essays, called ''Cassandra'', was previously published by Ray Strachey in 1928. Strachey included it in ''The Cause'', a history of the women's movement. Apparently, the writing served its original purpose of sorting out thoughts; Nightingale left soon after to train at the Institute for deaconesses at Kaiserswerth.

''Cassandra'' protests the over-feminization of women into near helplessness, such as Nightingale saw in her mother's and older sister's lethargic lifestyle, despite their education. She rejected their life of thoughtless comfort for the world of social service. The work also reflects her fear of her ideas being ineffective, as were Cassandra's. Cassandra was a princess of Troy who served as a priestess in the temple of Apollo during the Trojan War. The god gave her the gift of prophecy but when she refused his advances he cursed her so that her prophetic warnings would go unheeded. Elaine Showalter called Nightingale's writing "a major text of English feminism, a link between Wollstonecraft and Woolf."

Theology

Despite being named as a Unitarian in many older sources, Nightingale's own rare references to conventional Unitarianism are mildly negative, and she remained in the Church of England throughout her life, albeit with unorthodox views. ''Suggestions for Thought'' is also Nightingale's work of theology, her own theodicy, which develops her heterodox ideas. Nightingale questioned the goodness of a God who would condemn souls to hell, showing sympathy for the idea of universal reconciliation.

Legacy and memory

Nursing

The first official nurses’ training program, the Nightingale School for Nurses, opened in 1860. The mission of the school was to train nurses to work in hospitals, work with the poor, and to teach. This intended that students cared for people in their homes, an appreciation that is still advancing in reputation and professional opportunity for nurses today.

Florence Nightingale's lasting contribution has been her role in founding the modern nursing profession. She set an example of compassion, commitment to patient care, and diligent and thoughtful hospital administration.

The work of her School of Nursing continues today as the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College London. The Nightingale Building in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Southampton is also named after her. International Nurses Day is celebrated on her birthday each year.

The Florence Nightingale Declaration Campaign, established by nursing leaders throughout the world through the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH), aims to build a global grassroots movement to achieve two United Nations Resolutions for adoption by the UN General Assembly of 2008 which will declare: The International Year of the Nurse–2010 (the centennial of Nightingale's death); The UN Decade for a Healthy World–2011 to 2020 (the bicentennial of Nightingale's birth). NIGH also works to rekindle awareness about the important issues highlighted by Florence Nightingale, such as preventive medicine and holistic health. So far, the Florence Nightingale Declaration has been signed by over 18,500 signatories from 86 countries.

During the Vietnam War, Nightingale inspired many U.S. Army nurses, sparking a renewal of interest in her life and work. Her admirers include Country Joe of Country Joe and the Fish, who has assembled an extensive website in her honour.

The Agostino Gemelli Medical School in Rome, the first university-based hospital in Italy and one of its most respected medical centres, honoured Nightingale's contribution to the nursing profession by giving the name "Bedside Florence" to a wireless computer system it developed to assist nursing.

There are many foundations named after Florence Nightingale. Most are nursing foundations, but there is also Nightingale Research Foundation in Canada, dedicated to the study and treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome, which Nightingale is believed to have had.

In 1912 the International Committee of the Red Cross instituted the Florence Nightingale Medal, awarded every two years to nurses or nursing aides for outstanding service.

Hospitals

Four hospitals in Istanbul are named after Nightingale: F. N. Hastanesi in Şişli (the biggest private hospital in Turkey), Metropolitan F.N. Hastanesi in Gayrettepe, Avrupa F.N. Hastanesi in Mecidiyeköy, and Kızıltoprak F.N. Hastanesi in Kadiköy, all belonging to the Turkish Cardiology Foundation.

An appeal is being considered for the former Derbyshire Royal Infirmary hospital in Derby, England to be named after Nightingale. The suggested new name will be either Nightingale Community Hospital or Florence Nightingale Community Hospital. The area in which the hospital lies in Derby has recently been referred to as the "Nightingale Quarter".

Museums and monuments

A statue of Florence Nightingale stands in Waterloo Place, Westminster, London, just off The Mall.

There are three statues of Florence Nightingale in Derby — one outside the London Road Community Hospital formerly known as the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, one in St. Peter's Street, and one above the Nightingale-Macmillan Continuing Care Unit opposite the Derby Royal Infirmary. A public house named after her stands close to the Derby Royal Infirmary. The Nightingale-Macmillan continuing care unit is now at the Royal Derby Hospital, formerly known as The City Hospital, Derby.

A remarkable stained glass window was commissioned for inclusion in the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary chapel in the late 1950s. When the chapel was later demolished the window was removed, stored and replaced in the new replacement chapel. At the closure of the DRI the window was again removed and stored. In October 2010, £6,000 was raised by friends of the window and St Peters Church to reposition the window in St Peters Church, Derby. The remarkable work features nine panels, of the original ten, depicting scenes of hospital life, Derby townscapes and Florence Nightingale herself. Some of the work was damaged and the tenth panel was dismantled for the glass to be used in repair of the remaining panels. All the figures, who are said to be modelled on prominent Derby town figures of the early sixties, surround and praise a central pane of the triumphant Christ. A nurse who posed for the top right panel in 1959 attended the rededication service in October 2010.

The Florence Nightingale Museum at St Thomas' Hospital in London reopened in May 2010 in time for the centenary of Nightingale's death. Another museum devoted to her is at her sister's family home, Claydon House, now a property of the National Trust.

2010 marked the centenary of Nightingale's death, and to commemorate her connection with Malvern, the Malvern Museum held a Florence Nightingale exhibit, with a school poster competition to promote some events.

In Istanbul, the northernmost tower of the Selimiye Barracks building is now a museum, and in several of its rooms, relics and reproductions relevant to Florence Nightingale and her nurses are on exhibition.

When Nightingale moved on to the Crimea itself, in May 1855, she often travelled on horseback to make hospital inspections. She later transferred to a mule cart and was reported to have escaped serious injury when the cart was toppled in an accident. Following this episode, she used a solid Russian-built carriage, with a waterproof hood and curtains. The carriage was returned to England by Alexis Soyer after the war and subsequently given to the Nightingale training school for nurses. The carriage was damaged when the hospital was bombed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. It was later restored and transferred to the Army Medical Services Museum in Mytchett, Surrey, near Aldershot.

A bronze plaque, attached to the plinth of the Crimean Memorial in the Haydarpaşa Cemetery, Istanbul and unveiled on Empire Day, 1954, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of her nursing service in that region, bears the inscription:

"To Florence Nightingale, whose work near this Cemetery a century ago relieved much human suffering and laid the foundations for the nursing profession."

Audio

Florence Nightingale's voice was saved for posterity in a phonograph recording from 1890 preserved in the British Library Sound Archive. The recording is in aid of the Light Brigade Relief Fund, and says:

"When I am no longer even a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore. Florence Nightingale."

The recording is available online.

Theatre

The first theatrical representations of Nightingale was Reginald Berkeley in his "The Lady with the Lamp", premiering in London in 1929 with Edith Evans in the title role. This does not portray her as an entirely sympathetic character and draws much characterisation from Lytton Strachey's biography of her in ''Eminent Victorians''. It was adapted as a film of the same name in 1951. Nightingale also appears in Edward Bond's surrealist play ''Early Morning'', in which she is depicted having a lesbian affair with Queen Victoria.

In 2009, a stage musical play representation of Nightingale was produced by the Association of Nursing Service Administrators of the Philippines (ANSAP), entitled "The Voyage of the Lass". The play depicts the story of love and vocation on the nursing communities' icon Florence Nightingale, shown on all Fridays of February 2009 at the AFP Theatre, Camp Crame, Philippines. The play tells the story of Nightingale's early life and her struggles during the Crimean War. "The Voyage of the Lass" was a two-hour play that showcased Philippine local registered nurses from various hospitals of the country, exposing their talents on the performing arts.

Television

Portrayals of Nightingale on television, in documentary as in fiction, vary - the BBC's 2008 ''Florence Nightingale'' emphasised her independence and feeling of religious calling, but in Channel 4's 2006 ''Mary Seacole: The Real Angel of the Crimea'' and Simon Schama's A History of Britain she was portrayed as narrow-minded and opposed to Seacole's efforts. In 1985 a TV biopic "Florence Nightingale", starring Jaclyn Smith as Florence, was produced.

Film

In 1912 a biographical silent film titled ''The Victoria Cross'' starring Julia Swayne Gordon as Nightingale was produced. In 1915 another biographical silent film titled ''Florence Nightingale'' was produced starring Elisabeth Risdon. In 1936 a biographical film titled ''White Angel'' was produced, starring Kay Francis as Nightingale. A 1951 a second biographical film titled ''The Lady With the Lamp'' was produced starring Anna Neagle.

Banknotes

Florence Nightingale's image appeared on the reverse of Series D £10 banknotes issued by the Bank of England from 1975 until 1994. As well as a standing portrait, she was depicted on the notes in a field hospital in the Crimea, holding her lamp.

Photography

Nightingale had a principled objection to having photographs taken or her portrait painted. An extremely rare photograph of Florence Nightingale, taken at Embley on a visit to her family home in May 1858, was discovered in 2006 and is now at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London. A black and white photograph of Florence Nightingale taken in about 1907 by Lizzie Caswall Smith at Nightingale's London home in South Street, Park Lane, was auctioned on 19 November 2008 by Dreweatts auction house in Newbury, Berkshire, England, for £5,500.

Biographies

The first biography of Nightingale was published in England in 1855. In 1911 Edward Cook was authorised by Nightingale's executors to write the official life, published in two volumes in 1913. Lytton Strachey based much of his chapter on Nightingale in ''Eminent Victorians'' on Cook, and Cecil Woodham-Smith relied heavily on Cook's ''Life'' in her 1950 biography, though she did have access to new family material preserved at Claydon. In 2008 Mark Bostridge published a major new life of Nightingale, almost exclusively based on unpublished material from the Verney Collections at Claydon,and from archival documents from about 200 archives around the world, some of which had been published by Lynn McDonald in her projected sixteen-volume edition of the ''Collected Works of Florence Nightingale'' (2001 to date).

Fiction

Nightingale is a major supporting character in the ''Enola Holmes'' detective novel, ''The Case of the Cryptic Crinoline'', where a coded message in a crinoline she once gave to Enola's landlady in the Crimean War gets her kidnapped. In this novel, Nightingale is depicted as a firm feminist who malingers as an invalid in order to focus on her political and medical work without the distractions of expected feminine behaviour of the day. This facade, as well as her advanced age and social respect, enables her to bluntly explain to Enola's brother, Sherlock Holmes, why his sister is determined to defy her brothers' wish for her to conform at a boarding school.

Florence Nightingale syndrome

Florence Nightingale syndrome is a term used to describe a situation where a caregiver, typically a doctor or nurse, develops an emotional attachment to a vulnerable patient in his or her care. This attachment may progress into a sexual attraction.

Other

Several churches in the Anglican Communion commemorate Nightingale with a feast day on their liturgical calendars. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorates her as a renewer of society with Clara Maass on 13 August.

Beginning in 1968, the U.S. Air Force operated a fleet of 20 C-9A "Nightingale" aeromedical evacuation aircraft, based on the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 platform. The last of these planes was retired from service in 2005.

In 1982 Sentara Healthcare inaugurated its medical helicopter service, officially named "Nightingale".

See also

Ethel Gordon Fenwick

Crimean War Memorial

History of feminism

Licensed practical nurse

List of suffragists and suffragettes

Mary Seacole

Nightingale's environmental theory

Nursing

Nursing process

Pie chart

Registered Nurse

Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom

Cicely Saunders

Florence Nightingale effect

Works

Privately printed by Nightingale in 1860.

''The Family'', a critical essay in Fraser's Magazine (1870)

Note: First few pages missing. Title page is present. . See also 2005 publication by Diggory Press, ISBN 978-1905363223

''Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile 1849-1850'' (1987) ISBN 1-55584-204-6

Sources

Baly, Monica E. and H. C. G. Matthew, "Nightingale, Florence (1820–1910)"; ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press (2004); online edn, May 2005 accessed 28 October 2006

Gill, G. ''The extraordinary upbringing and curious life of Miss Florence Nightingale'' Random House, New York (2005)

McDonald, Lynn ed., ''Collected Works of Florence Nightingale''. Wilfrid Laurier University Press

Pugh, Martin; ''The march of the women: A revisionist analysis of the campaign for women's suffrage 1866-1914'', Oxford (2000), at 55.

Lytton Strachey; ''Eminent Victorians'', London (1918)

Sokoloff, Nancy Boyd.; ''Three Victorian women who changed their world'', Macmillan, London (1982)

Webb, Val; ''The Making of a Radical Theologician'', Chalice Press (2002)

Woodham Smith, Cecil; ''Florence Nightingale'', Penguin (1951), rev. 1955

References

Further reading

Bostridge, Mark (2008). ''Florence Nightingale. The Woman and Her Legend''. Viking (2008); Penguin (2009). US title ''Florence Nightingale. The Making of an Icon''. Farrar Straus (2008).

Chaney, Edward (2006). "Egypt in England and America: The Cultural Memorials of Religion, Royalty and Revolution", in: ''Sites of Exchange: European Crossroads and Faultlines'', eds. M. Ascari and A. Corrado. (Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York,, 39-74.

Gill, Gillian (2004). ''Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale''. Ballantine Books. ISBN 9780345451873

Nelson, Sioban and Anne Marie Rafferty, eds. ''Notes on Nightingale: The Influence and Legacy of a Nursing Icon'' (Cornell University Press; 2010) 184 pages. Essays on Nightingale's work in the Crimea and Britain's colonies, her links to the evolving science of statistics, and debates over her legacy and historical reputation and persona.

Rees, Joan. ''Women on the Nile: Writings of Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, and Amelia Edwards''. Rubicon Press: 1995, 2008

- available online at http://www.bartleby.com/189/201.html

External links

UCLA Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale Collection, hosted at Internet Archive

Eminent Victorians: Florence Nightingale by Lytton Strachey

Florence Nightingale Declaration Campaign for Global Health established by the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH)

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica article

Correspondence between Nightingale and Benjamin Jowett

Gay Great - Florence Nightingale

University of Guelph: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale project

Florence Nightingale Letters Collection - correspondence in the University of Illinois at Chicago digital collections

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Name	Leonard Peltier
Birth date	September 12, 1944
Birth place	Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States
Death date
Ethnicity	Anishinabe-Lakota
Citizenship	United States
Parents	Leo PeltierAlvina Robideau
Website	}}

Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first degree murder in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Peltier's indictment and conviction is the subject of the 1992 documentary ''Incident at Oglala'', a film directed by Michael Apted. Peltier's supporters present him as a political prisoner, although his murder conviction has survived appeals in various courts. Amnesty International has expressed concern about the fairness of the proceedings. Numerous lawsuits have been filed on Peltier's behalf, but none has succeeded.

Peltier is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. His projected release date is October 11, 2040. On July 28, 2009, Peltier was granted a full hearing before the United States Parole Commission; in August the US Attorney Drew Wrigley said that Peltier’s parole request had been denied. Peltier's next scheduled hearing will be in July 2024.

In 2002 and 2003, Paul DeMain, editor of ''News From Indian Country,'' wrote that sources had told him that Peltier had said he killed the FBI agents; DeMain withdrew his support for clemency. At the trials in 2004 and 2010 of two men indicted for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash in December 1975 at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, prosecution witnesses testified that Peltier had told them and a small group of fugitive activists, including Aquash, that he had shot the two FBI agents. Peltier issued a statement in 2004 accusing one witness of perjury for her testimony and being a sellout.

Early life and education

Peltier was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the eleventh of thirteen children, to Leo Peltier and Alvina Robideau. His father was three-fourths Chippewa and one-quarter French, and his mother was Lakota Sioux on her mother's side and Chippewa on her father's. Peltier's parents divorced when he was four years old. At this time, Leonard and his sister Betty Ann were taken to live with their paternal grandparents Alex and Mary Dubois-Peltier in the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation near Belcourt, North Dakota. In September 1953, at the age of nine, Leonard was enrolled at the Wahpeton Indian School in Wahpeton, North Dakota, an Indian boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). He graduated at Wahpeton in May 1957, and attended the Flandreau Indian School in Flandreau, South Dakota. After dropping out in the ninth grade, he returned to the Turtle Mountain Reservation to live with his father.

Career and activism

In 1965, Peltier relocated to Seattle, Washington. He worked for several years and became the owner of an auto body station. In the city, Peltier became involved in a variety of causes championing Native American civil rights, and eventually joined the American Indian Movement (AIM).

In the early 1970s, he learned about the factional tensions at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota between supporters of Richard Wilson, elected tribal chairman in 1972, and traditionalist members of the tribe. Wilson had created a private militia, known as the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs), whose members were reputed to have attacked political opponents. Protests over a failed impeachment hearing of Wilson contributed to the AIM and Lakota armed takeover of Wounded Knee in February 1973, which resulted in a 71-day siege by federal forces, known as the Wounded Knee Incident. They demanded the resignation of Wilson. The takeover did not end Wilson's leadership, the actions of the GOONs or the violence; at least 50 murders were reported on Pine Ridge during the next three years.

In 1975 Peltier traveled to the Pine Ridge reservation as a member of AIM to try to help resolve the continuing violence. At the time, he was a fugitive, with a warrant issued in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, charging unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for the attempted murder of an off-duty Milwaukee police officer, a crime for which he was later acquitted.

Shootout at Pine Ridge

On June 26, 1975, Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were searching for a young Pine Ridge man named Jimmy Eagle. He was wanted for questioning in connection with the recent assault and robbery of two local ranch hands. Eagle had been involved in a physical altercation with a friend, during which he had stolen a pair of leather cowboy boots. Williams and Coler, driving two separate unmarked cars, saw and followed a red pick-up truck which matched the description of Eagle's.

Williams radioed that he and Coler had come under high-powered rifle fire from the occupants of the vehicle and were unable to return fire with their .38 Special pistols. Williams radioed that they would be killed if reinforcements did not arrive. He next radioed that he was hit. FBI Special Agent Gary Adams was the first to respond to Williams' call for assistance, and he also came under intense gun fire from the Jumping Bull Ranch; he was unable to reach or see Coler and Williams.

The FBI, BIA, and the local police spent much of the afternoon pinned down on US Route 18, waiting for other law enforcement officers to launch a flanking attack. At 2:30 p.m., a BIA rifleman fatally shot Joe Stuntz. At 4:31 p.m., authorities recovered the bodies of Williams and Coler from their vehicles. At 6:30 p.m. they ignited tear gas and stormed the Jumping Bull houses, where they found Stuntz's body clad in Coler's green FBI field jacket. The two FBI Agents were later confirmed to have died during the early afternoon 26 June 1975. Stuntz appeared to have died later during subsequent shooting.

Other parties escaped the compound after Stuntz's death, crossed White Clay Creek and hid in a culvert beneath a dirt road. With police focused on the storming of Jumping Bull, the group made a break for the southern hills. In the following days, they separated into smaller parties and scattered across the country, causing a nationwide manhunt that lasted eight months.

The FBI reported Williams had received a defensive wound to his right hand (as he attempted to shield his face) from a bullet which passed through his hand into his head, killing him instantly. Williams had received two gunshot injuries, to his body and foot, prior to the contact shot that killed him. Coler, incapacitated from earlier bullet wounds, had been shot twice in the head execution style. In total 125 bullet holes were found in the agents' vehicles, many from a .223 Remington (5.56 mm) rifle.

At the trial and on other occasions, Leonard Peltier gave a variety of alibis to different people about his activities on the morning of the attacks. In an interview with the author Peter Matthiessen (''In the Spirit of Crazy Horse'' 1983), Peltier described working on a car in Oglala. He drove back to the Jumping Bull Compound about an hour before the shooting started. In an interview with Lee Hill, he described being woken up in the tent city at the ranch by the sound of gunshots; to Harvey Arden, for ''Prison Writings'', he described enjoying a beautiful morning before he heard the firing.

Aftermath

On September 5, 1975, Williams' handgun and shells from both agents' handguns were found in a vehicle near a residence where Dino Butler was arrested. On September 9, 1975, Peltier purchased a Plymouth station wagon in Denver, Colorado. The FBI sent out descriptions of the vehicle and a recreational vehicle (RV) in which Peltier and associates were believed to be traveling. An Oregon State Trooper stopped the vehicles and ordered the driver of the RV to exit; but, after a brief exchange of gunfire, the driver escaped on foot. Authorities later identified the driver as Peltier. Coler's handgun was found in a bag under the front seat of the RV, where authorities reported finding Peltier's thumb print. On December 22, 1975, Peltier was named to the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

On September 10, 1975, a station wagon exploded on the Kansas Turnpike near Wichita. A burned AR-15 rifle was recovered, along with Agent Coler's .38 Special revolver. The car was loaded with weapons and explosives, which apparently ignited when placed too close to a hole in the exhaust pipe. Among those in the car were Robert Robideau, Norman Charles, and Michael Anderson, said to be associates of Peltier.

Peltier fled to Hinton, Alberta, where he hid in a friend's cabin. On February 6, 1976, he was arrested and extradited from Canada based on an affidavit signed by Myrtle Poor Bear, a local Native American woman. She claimed to have been Peltier’s girlfriend at the time and to have witnessed the murders. But, according to Peltier and others at the scene, Poor Bear did not know Peltier, nor was she present at the time of the shooting. She later confessed that she was pressured and threatened by FBI agents into giving the statements. Poor Bear attempted to testify about the FBI's intimidation at Peltier’s trial; however, the judge barred her testimony on the grounds of mental incompetence.

Peltier fought extradition to the United States, even as Bob Robideau and Darelle "Dino" Butler, AIM members also present on the Jumping Bull compound at the time of the shootings, were found not guilty on the grounds of self-defense by a federal jury in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Peltier returned too late to be tried with Robideau and Butler, and he was tried separately.

The trial was held trial in Fargo, North Dakota, where a jury convicted Peltier of the murders of Coler and Williams. Unlike the trial for Butler and Robideau, the jury was told that the two FBI agents were killed by close-range shots to their heads, when they were already defenseless due to previous gunshot wounds. They also saw autopsy and crime scene photographs of the two agents, which had not been shown to the jury at Cedar Rapids. In April 1977, Peltier was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. Upon hearing the appeals case on February 11, 1986, Federal Appeals Judge Gerald W. Heaney, concluded, "When all is said and done ... a few simple but very important facts remain. The casing introduced into evidence had in fact been extracted from the Wichita AR-15." In his 1999 memoir, Peltier admitted that he fired at the agents, but denies that he fired the fatal shots that killed them.

A cartridge case from the Wichita AR-15 was found in the trunk of Agent Coler's car, and admitted as evidence at Peltier's trial in Fargo, N.Dakota. Also admitted as evidence was the fact that no person involved in shooting at the agents, other than Peltier, possessed a Wichita AR-15 weapon.

The journalist Scott Anderson said that in a 1995 interview, he sought answers to the contradictions he had found in Peltier's accounts of the incident on 26 June 1975. When asked about the guns he carried that day, Peltier listed a .30-30, a .303, a .306, a .250 and a .22, but he did not remember the AR-15.

The former United States Attorney General Ramsey Clark has served ''pro bono'' as one of Peltier's lawyers and has aided in filing a series of appeals on Peltier's behalf. In all appeals, the conviction and sentence have been affirmed by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. The last two appeals were ''Peltier v. Henman'', 997 F. 2d 461 in July 1993 and ''United States v. Peltier'', 446 F.3d 911 (8th Cir. 2006) (Peltier IV) in 2006.

Doubts about Peltier's legal proceedings

Numerous doubts have been raised over Peltier’s guilt and the fairness of his trial, based on allegations and inconsistencies regarding the FBI and prosecution's handling of this case:

FBI radio intercepts indicated that the two FBI agents had been pursuing a red pickup truck; this was confirmed by the FBI the day after the shootout. Red pickup trucks near the reservation were stopped for weeks, but Leonard Peltier did not drive a red pickup truck. Evidence was given that Peltier was driving a suburban vehicle, sometimes known as a stationwagon or panelvan, a large sedan with an enclosed rear section, able to be accessed from inside the front of the vehicle, by climbing over the seats, or by opening the door or hatch at the rear. Peltier's vehicle was red with a white roof; not a red, open-tray pickup truck with no white paint. The FBI agents' radio message said that the suspect they were pursuing was driving a red pickup truck, with no additional details. At Peltier's trial, the FBI testified that it had been searching for a red and white van, which Peltier was sometimes seen driving. This was a highly contentious matter of evidence in the trials.

Testimony from three witnesses placed Peltier, Robideau and Butler near the crime scene. Those three witnesses later recanted, alleging that the FBI, while extracting their testimony, had tied them to chairs, denied them their right to talk to their attorney, and otherwise coerced and threatened them. Robideau said during an interview in the Robert Redford/Michael Apted film ''Incident at Oglala'' (1982), that "we approached' the agents" cars.

Unlike the juries in similar prosecutions against AIM leaders at the time, the Fargo jury were not allowed to hear about other cases in which the FBI had been rebuked for tampering with evidence and witnesses.

An FBI ballistics expert testimony during the trial asserted that a shell case found near the dead agents' bodies matched the rifle tied to Peltier. He said that a forensics test of the firing pin, which would have more definitively matched the gun to the cartridge case, was not performed because the gun was damaged in the fire. A less definitive test indicated that the extractor marks on the case and rifle matched.

:Years later, after an FOIA request, the FBI ballistics expert’s records were examined. His report said that he had performed a ballistics test of the firing pin and concluded that the cartridge case from the scene of the crime did not come from the rifle tied to Peltier. That evidence was withheld from the jury during the trial.

Though the FBI's investigation indicated that an AR-15 was used to kill the agents, several different AR-15s were in the area at the time of the shootout. Also, no other cartridge cases or evidence about them were offered by the prosecutor’s office, although other bullets were fired at the crime scene. During the trial, all the bullets and bullet fragments found at the scene were provided as evidence and detailed by Cortland Cunningham, FBI Firearms expert, in testimony. (Ref US v Leonard Peltier Vol 9).

At the conclusion of Peltier’s trial, the prosecutor closed his argument saying, "We proved that he went down to the bodies and executed those two young men at point blank range." However, at the appellate hearing, the government attorney conceded, "We had a murder. We had numerous shooters. We do not know who specifically fired what killing shots...We do not know who shot the agents.".

The Pennsylvania Parole Commission, which presides over the Lewisburg prison where Peltier was held, denied Peltier parole in 1993 based on their finding that he "participated in the premeditated and cold blooded execution of those two officers." But, the Parole Commission has since stated that it "recognizes that the prosecution has conceded the lack of any direct evidence that [Peltier] personally participated in the executions of the two FBI agents."

Post-trial debate

Peltier's conviction sparked great controversy and has drawn criticism from a number of sources. Numerous appeals have been filed on his behalf; none of the resulting rulings has been made in his favor. Peltier is considered by the AIM to be a political prisoner and has received support from individuals and groups including Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchú, Amnesty International, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama), the European Parliament, the Belgian Parliament, the Italian Parliament, the Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Peltier's supporters have given two different rationales for overturning the conviction. One argument asserts that Peltier did not commit the murders, and that he either had no knowledge of the murders (as he told CNN in 1999), or that he has knowledge implicating others which he will never reveal, or (as told in Peter Matthiessen's ''In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (book)'', 1983) that he approached and searched the agents but did not execute them. The other rationale holds that the murders (no matter who committed them) occurred during a war-like atmosphere on the reservation in which FBI agents were terrorizing residents in the wake of the Wounded Knee Incident in 1973.

The film ''Incident at Oglala'' (1992) included the AIM activist Robert Robideau saying the FBI agents had been shot by a 'Mr X'. When Peltier was interviewed about 'Mr X', he said he knew who the man was. In 1995 Dino Butler, in an interview with E.K. Caldwell of ''News From Indian Country'', said that 'Mr X' had been invented as the murderer in an attempt to achieve Peltier's release. In a ''News From Indian Country'' interview with Bernie Lafferty in 2001, she said that she had witnessed Peltier's referring to his murder of one of the Agents.

21st-century developments

Near the end of the Clinton administration in 2000, rumors began circulating that Bill Clinton was considering granting Peltier clemency. Opponents campaigned against that, culminating in a protest outside the White House by about 500 FBI agents and families, and a letter opposing clemency from FBI director Louis Freeh. Clinton did not grant or deny Peltier clemency. In January 2009, President George W. Bush denied Peltier's clemency petition before leaving office.

In 2002, Peltier filed a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the FBI, Louis Freeh, and FBI agents who had participated in the campaign against his clemency petition, alleging that they "engaged in a systematic and officially sanctioned campaign of misinformation and disinformation." On March 22, 2004, the suit was dismissed.

DeMain editorial on agents' and Aquash's deaths

In January 2002 in the ''News from Indian Country,'' the publisher Paul DeMain wrote an editorial that an "unnamed delegation" told him, "Peltier was responsible for the close range execution of the [FBI] agents..." DeMain described the delegation as "grandfathers and grandmothers, AIM activists, Pipe carriers and others who have carried a heavy unhealthy burden within them that has taken its toll." DeMain said he was told the motive for the execution-style murder of the AIM activist Anna Mae Aquash in December 1975 "allegedly was her knowledge that Leonard Peltier had shot the two agents, as he was convicted." DeMain did not accuse Peltier of participation in the Aquash murder (and in 2003 two Native American men were indicted for the murder).

On May 1, 2003, Peltier sued DeMain for libel for similar statements about the case published on March 10, 2003, in ''News from Indian Country''. On May 25, 2004, Peltier withdrew the suit after he and DeMain settled the case. DeMain issued the following statement:

“I do not believe that Leonard Peltier received a fair trial in connection with the murders of which he was convicted. Certainly he is entitled to one. Nor do I believe, according to the evidence and testimony I now have, that Mr. Peltier had any involvement in the death of Anna Mae Aquash.’’

DeMain did not retract his allegations that Peltier was guilty of the murders of the FBI agents and that the motive for Aquash's murder was the fear that she might inform on the activist.

Indictments and trials for the murder of Anna Mae Aquash

Bruce Ellison, Leonard Peltier's lawyer since the 1970s, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and refused to testify at the 2003 federal grand jury hearings on charges against Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham for the murder of Aquash. Ellison also refused to testify at Looking Cloud's trial in 2004. During the trial, the federal prosecutor named Ellison as a co-conspirator in the Aquash case. Witnesses said that Ellison participated in interrogating Aquash about being an informant on December 11, 1975, shortly before her murder.

In February 2004, Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud, an Oglala Sioux, was tried and convicted for the murder of Aquash. In Looking Cloud's trial, the federal prosecution argued that AIM's suspicion of Aquash stemmed from her having heard Peltier admit to the murders. Darlene ''Kamook'' Nichols, former wife of the AIM leader Dennis Banks, was a witness for the prosecution. She testified that in late 1975, Peltier told her and a small group of AIM fugitive activists about shooting the FBI agents. At the time all were fleeing law enforcement after the Pine Ridge shootout. The other fugitives included her sister Bernie Nichols, her husband Dennis Banks, and Anna Mae Aquash, among several others. Bernie Nichols-Lafferty testified with a similar account of Peltier’s statement.

Earlier in 1975, the AIM member Douglass Durham had been revealed to be an FBI agent and dismissed from the organization. AIM leaders were fearful of infiltration. Other witnesses have testified that, once Aquash was suspected of being an informant, Peltier interrogated her while holding a gun to her head. Peltier and David Hill were said to have Aquash participate in bomb-making so that her fingerprints would be on the bombs. The trio planted these bombs at two power plants on the Pine Ridge reservation on Columbus Day 1975.

During the trial, Nichols acknowledged receiving $42,000 from the FBI in connection with her cooperation on the case. She said it was compensation for travel expenses to collect evidence and moving expenses to be further from her ex-husband Dennis Banks, whom she feared because she had implicated him as a witness. On February 10, 2004, Peltier issued a statement suggesting that Kamook Nicholls had committed perjury by her testimony and was a sellout.

On June 26, 2007, the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered the extradition of John Graham to the United States to stand trial for his alleged role in the murder of Aquash. He was eventually tried by the state of South Dakota in 2010. During his trial, Darlene "Kamook" Ecoffey said Peltier told both her and Aquash that he had killed the FBI agents in 1975. Ecoffey testified under oath, "He (Peltier) held his hand like this," she said, pointing her index finger like a gun, "and he said ‘that (expletive) was begging for his life but I shot him anyway.". Graham was convicted of murder as the gunman who shot Aquash and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Presidential candidate

Peltier was the candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party in the 2004 Presidential race. While prison inmates convicted of felonies are frequently prohibited from voting in the United States (Maine and Vermont are exceptions), the United States Constitution has no prohibition against felons being elected to Federal offices, including President. The Peace and Freedom Party secured ballot status for Peltier only in California, where his presidential candidacy received 27,607 votes, approximately 0.2% of the vote in that state.

Ruling on FBI documents

In a February 27, 2006, decision, U.S. District Judge William Skretny ruled that the FBI did not have to release five of 812 documents relating to Peltier and held at their Buffalo field office. He ruled that the particular documents were exempted on the grounds of “national security and FBI agent/informant protection.” In his opinion Judge Skretny wrote, “Plaintiff has not established the existence of bad faith or provided any evidence contradicting (the FBI's) claim that the release of these documents would endanger national security or would impair this country's relationship with a foreign government.” In response, Michael Kuzma, a member of Peltier's defense team, said, “We're appealing. It's incredible that it took him 254 days to render a decision.” Kuzma further said, “The pages we were most intrigued about revolved around a teletype from Buffalo ... a three-page document that seems to indicate that a confidential source was being advised by the FBI not to engage in conduct that would compromise attorney-client privilege.” Peltier’s supporters have tried to obtain more than 100,000 pages of documents from FBI field offices, claiming that the files should have been turned over at the time of his trial or following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed soon after.

2007 political controversy

In 2007, billionaire David Geffen, a Peltier supporter, shifted his financial support from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to that of Barack Obama. Geffen said he switched his support because he was disillusioned by Bill Clinton's refusal to pardon Peltier, although he had pardoned Marc Rich.

Beaten in Canaan

On January 13, 2009, Peltier was severely beaten by fellow inmates at the United States Penitentiary, Canaan, where he had been transferred from USP Lewisburg. He was sent back to Lewisburg.

Popular culture

''Thunderheart'', a 1992 movie by Michael Apted, is a fictional drama, partly based on Peltier's case but with no pretense of accuracy.

Rock band Rage Against the Machine released "Freedom", a song about Peltier's case and conviction, on their 1992 album ''Rage Against the Machine''.

Robbie Robertson's album, ''Contact from the Underworld of Redboy'' contains the song "Sacrifice", featuring the spoken words of Peltier via telephone.

Toad the Wet Sprocket's song "Crazy Life" from the album Coil is about Peltier.

Buffy Sainte-Marie's song "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" from the album ''Coincidence and Likely Stories'' mentions Peltier.

Flobots' albums ''Fight With Tools'' and ''Onomatopeia'' frequently mention Peltier.

The plot of the graphic novel ''Scalped'' is partly inspired by Peltier's case.

In the Jeffrey Rowland webcomic ''Wigu,'' the main character's father says he goes barefoot "to protest the unfair imprisonment of Native American activist Leonard Peltier" Sixteen Canadian artists contributed to ''Pine Ridge: An Open Letter to Allan Rock - Songs for Leonard Peltier'', a benefit CD released by ''What Magazine'' in 1996.

"Leonard's song" on the Renaud album ''Rouge sang'' is about Peltier.

The song "Leonard Peltier" on the album ''Revolution'' by Little Steven.

Peltier is the subject of the song "Ya'at'eeh" on the album ''Amzer an dispac'h'' by the Breton Celtic punk group ''Les Ramoneurs de menhirs''.

See also

''Incident at Oglala'' (documentary)

Further reading

Peltier, Leonard. ''Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance''. New York, 1999. ISBN 0-3122-6380-5.

About Leonard Peltier:

"Writer Sues Peltier", ''Kansas City Star'', July 3, 1992.

Anderson, Scott. "The Martyrdom of Leonard Peltier", ''Outside Magazine'', July 1995.

Churchill, Ward and Jim Vander Wall: ''Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement''. South End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988, 2002. ISBN 0-8960-8293-8.

Matthiessen, Peter (1983). ''In the Spirit of Crazy Horse''. Penguin. ISBN 0-1401-4456-0.

Trimbach, Joseph H. and John M. Trimbach (2008). ''American Indian Mafia: An FBI Agent's True Story about Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier, and the American Indian Movement (AIM)''. Outskirts Press, Inc. ISBN 978-0-9795855-0-0.

References

External links

Leonard Peltier: "When Truth Doesn't Matter. Thirty Years of FBI Harassment and Misconduct". CounterPunch, January 9, 2007.

Interview with Leonard Peltier from jail in 2000 by Democracy Now!

Plazm magazine — Interview with Leonard Peltier from jail in 1995

Documents from Leonard Peltier's FBI File

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Minneapolis Division: Leonard Peltier Case

Leonard Peltier Memorial Bridge

Leonard Peltier on Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network

No Parole Peltier Association

International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee Website

A.I.M (the American Indian Movement)

It's Time to Free Leonard Peltier by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, ''Counterpunch'', January 23, 2009

Parole Hearing to Be Held Tuesday for Imprisoned Native American Activist Leonard Peltier - video report by ''Democracy Now!''

the yet official Leonard Peltier ~ Denfense Offense Committee - LP-DOC(since May 2008)

Category:1944 births Category:Living people Category:1975 murders in the United States Category:American Indian Movement Category:American people convicted of murdering police officers Category:American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment Category:Indigenous activists Category:Native American activists Category:Ojibwe people Category:People convicted of murder by the United States federal government Category:People from Grand Forks, North Dakota Category:Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by the United States federal government Category:United States presidential candidates, 2004 Category:Peace and Freedom Party politicians Category:People convicted of murdering FBI agents

ca:Leonard Peltier de:Leonard Peltier et:Leonard Peltier es:Leonard Peltier fr:Leonard Peltier gl:Leonard Peltier it:Leonard Peltier nl:Leonard Peltier ja:レナード・ペルティエ no:Leonard Peltier pl:Leonard Peltier ru:Пелтиер, Леонард sk:Leonard Peltier tr:Leonard Peltier

name	Big Bill Broonzy
background	solo_singer
birth name	William Lee Conley Broonzy
alias	Big Bill Broonzy, Big Bill Broomsley
born	June 26, 1898, Lake Dick, Arkansas, U.S. or Bolivar County, Mississippi, U.S.
died	August 14, 1958, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
instrument	Vocals, guitar, fiddle
genre	Folk music, country blues, Chicago blues, spirituals, protest songs
occupation	Musician, songwriter, sharecropper, preacher
years active	1927–1958
label	Paramount, A.R.C., Bluebird, Vocalion, Folkways
associated acts	Papa Charlie Jackson, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger
notable instruments	}}

Big Bill Broonzy (26 June 1898 – 15 August 1958) was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences. In the 1950s a return to his traditional folk-blues roots made him one of the leading figures of the emerging American folk music revival and an international star. His long and varied career marks him as one of the key figures in the development of blues music in the 20th century.

Broonzy copyrighted more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including both adaptations of traditional folk songs and original blues songs. As a blues composer, he was unique in that his compositions reflected the many vantage points of his rural-to-urban experiences.

Life and career

Early years

Born Lee Conley Bradley, "Big Bill" was one of Frank Broonzy (Bradley) and Mittie Belcher's 17 children. His birth site and date are disputed. While he claimed birth in Bolivar County, Mississippi, an entire body of emerging research suggests that Broonzy was actually born in Jefferson County, Arkansas. Broonzy claimed he was born in 1893 and many sources report that year, but after his death, family records reported that the year was actually 1903, the currently accepted date. Soon after his birth the family moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where Bill spent his youth. He began playing music at an early age. At the age of 10 he made himself a fiddle from a cigar box and learned how to play spirituals and folk songs from his uncle, Jerry Belcher. He and a friend named Louis Carter, who played a homemade guitar, began performing at social and church functions. These early performances included playing at "two-stages": picnics where whites danced on one side of the stage and blacks on the other.

In 1915, 17-year-old Broonzy was married and working as a sharecropper. He had decided to give up the fiddle and become a preacher. There is a story that he was offered $50 and a new violin if he would play four days at a local venue. Before he could respond to the offer, his wife took the money and spent it, so he had to play. In 1916 his crop and stock were wiped out by drought. Broonzy went to work locally until he was drafted into the Army in 1917. Broonzy served two years in Europe during the first world war. Then after his discharge from the Army in 1919, Broonzy returned to Pine Bluff, Arkansas where he is reported to have been called a racial epithet and told by a white man he knew before the war that he needed to "hurry up and get his soldier uniform off and put on some overalls." He immediately left Pine Bluff and moved to the Little Rock area but a year later in 1920 moved north to Chicago in search of opportunity.

1920s

After arriving in Chicago, Broonzy made the switch to guitar. He learned guitar from minstrel and medicine show veteran Papa Charlie Jackson, who began recording for Paramount Records in 1924. Through the 1920s Broonzy worked a string of odd jobs, including Pullman porter, cook, foundry worker and custodian, to supplement his income, but his main interest was music. He played regularly at rent parties and social gatherings, steadily improving his guitar playing. During this time he wrote one of his signature tunes, a solo guitar piece called "Saturday Night Rub".

1930s

In 1930 Paramount for the first time used Broonzy's full name on a recording, "Station Blues" – albeit misspelled as "Big Bill Broomsley". Record sales continued to be poor, and Broonzy was working at a grocery store. Broonzy was picked up by Lester Melrose, who produced acts for various labels including Champion and Gennett Records. He recorded several sides which were released in the spring of 1931 under the name "Big Bill Johnson". In March 1932 he traveled to New York City and began recording for the American Record Corporation on their line of less expensive labels: (Melotone, Perfect Records, et al.).

In 1934 Broonzy moved to Bluebird Records and began recording with pianist Bob "Black Bob" Call. His fortunes soon improved. With Call his music was evolving to a stronger R&B; sound, and his singing sounded more assured and personal. In 1937, he began playing with pianist Josh Althiemer, recording and performing using a small instrumental group, including "traps" (drums) and Double bass as well as one or more melody instruments (horns and/or harmonica). In March 1938 he began recording for Vocalion Records. Broonzy's reputation grew and in 1938 he was asked to fill in for the recently deceased Robert Johnson at the John H. Hammond-produced From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall. He also appeared in the 1939 concert at the same venue. His success led him in this same year to a small role in ''Swingin' the Dream'', Gilbert Seldes's jazz adaptation of Shakespeare's ''Midsummer Night's Dream'', set in 1890 New Orleans and featuring, among others, Louis Armstrong as Bottom and Maxine Sullivan as Titania, with the Benny Goodman sextet.

Broonzy's own recorded output through the 1930s only partially reflects his importance to the Chicago blues scene. His half-brother, Washboard Sam, and close friends, Jazz Gillum, and Tampa Red, also recorded for Bluebird. Broonzy was credited as composer on many of their most popular recordings of that time. He reportedly played guitar on most of Washboard Sam's tracks. Due to his exclusive arrangements with his own record label, Broonzy was always careful to have his name only appear on these artists' records as "composer".

1950s

At the start of the 1950s, Broonzy became part of a touring folk music revue formed by Win Stracke called ''I Come for to Sing'', which also included Studs Terkel and Lawrence Lane. Terkel called him the key figure in this group. The group had some success thanks to the emerging folk revival movement. The exposure made it possible for Broonzy to tour Europe in 1951.

In Europe, Broonzy was greeted with standing ovations and critical praise wherever he played. The tour marked a turning point in his fortunes, and when he returned to the United States he was a featured act with many prominent folk artists such as Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. From 1953 on his financial position became more secure and he was able to live quite well on his music earnings. Broonzy returned to his solo folk-blues roots, and travelled and recorded extensively.

While in Holland, Broonzy met and fell in love with a Dutch girl, Pim van Isveldt. Together they had a child named Michael who still lives in Amsterdam.

In 1953, Dr. Vera (King) Morkovin and Studs Terkel took Broonzy to Circle Pines Center, a cooperative year-round camp in Hastings, Michigan, where he was employed as the summer camp cook. He worked there in the summer from '53–'56. On 4 July 1954, Pete Seeger travelled to Circle Pines and gave a concert with Bill on the farmhouse lawn, which was recorded by Seeger for the new fine arts radio station in Chicago, WFMT-FM.

In 1955, with the assistance of Belgian writer Yannick Bruynoghe, Broonzy published his autobiography, entitled ''Big Bill Blues''. He toured worldwide to Africa, South America, the Pacific region and across Europe into early 1956. In 1957 Broonzy was one of the founding faculty members of the Old Town School of Folk Music. At the school's opening night on 1 December, he taught a class "The Glory of Love".

By 1958 Broonzy was suffering from the effects of throat cancer. He died 15 August 1958, and is buried in Lincoln Cemetery, Blue Island, Illinois.

Style and influence

Broonzy's own influences included the folk music, spirituals, work songs, ragtime music, hokum and country blues he heard growing up, and the styles of his contemporaries, including Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Blake, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Broonzy combined all these influences into his own style of the blues that foreshadowed the post-war Chicago blues sound, later refined and popularized by artists such as Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon.

Although he had been a pioneer of the Chicago blues style and had employed electric instruments as early as 1942, his new, white audiences wanted to hear him playing his earliest songs accompanied only by his own acoustic guitar, since this was considered to be more "authentic".

A considerable part of his early ARC/CBS recordings have been reissued in anthology collections by CBS-Sony, and other earlier recordings have been collected on blues reissue labels, as have his later European and Chicago recordings of the 1950s. The Smithsonian's Folkways Records has also released several albums featuring Big Bill Broonzy.

In 1980, he was inducted into the first class of the Blues Hall of Fame along with 20 other of the world's greatest blues legends. In 2007, he was inducted into the first class of the Gennett Records Walk of Fame along with 11 other musical greats including Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Gene Autry, Lawrence Welk and others.

Broonzy as an acoustic guitar player, inspired Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Ray Davies, John Renbourn, Rory Gallagher, Ben Taylor, and Steve Howe

In ''Q Magazine'' (September 2007) it is reported that Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones claims that Bill Broonzy's track, "Guitar Shuffle", is his favorite guitar music. Wood said, "It was one of the first tracks I learnt to play, but even to this day I can't play it exactly right."

During the benediction at the 2009 inauguration ceremony of President Barack Obama, the civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery paraphrased Broonzy's song "Black, Brown and White Blues".

Discography

Between 1927 and 1942, Broonzy recorded 224 songs, making him the second most prolific blues recording artist during that period. These were released before blues records were tracked by recording industry trade magazines. By the time ''Billboard'' instituted the first of its "race music" charts in October 1942, Broonzy's recordings were less popular and none appeared in the charts.

Selected singles

Many of Broonzy's singles were issued by more than one record company, sometimes under different names. Additional versions of some songs were also released. These are marked with a "⁺".

Date	Title	Label & Cat. no.	Comments
	"Big Bill's Blues"		as Big Bill and Thomps
"House Rent Stomp"	Paramount 12656	as Big Bill and Thomps
	"Saturday Night Rub"		as Famous Hokum Boys
"Station Blues"	Paramount 13084	as Big Bill Broomsley
1932	"Mistreatin' Mama"		as Big Bill Johnson
	"At the Break of Day"
"C. C. Rider"
			as State Street Boys
"Bricks In My Pillow"
1936		ARC 6–05–56+
1937	"Mean Old World"	Melotone 7–07–64+
1937	"Louise Louise Blues"	Vocalion 3075+
	"New Shake 'Em on Down"	Vocalion 4149+
"Night Time Is the Right Time No. 2"	Vocalion 4149+	electric guitar by George Barnes
	"Just a Dream"	Vocalion 4706+
"Too Many Drivers"	Vocalion 5096
	"You Better Cut That Out"
"Lonesome Road Blues"	Okeh 6031
	Okeh 6116+
	"All By Myself"	Okeh 6427+
"Key to the Highway"	Okeh 6242+
"Wee Wee Hours"	Okeh 6552
"I Feel So Good"	Okeh 6688+
1942	"I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town"	Okeh 6651	as Big Bill & His Chicago 5
1951	"Hey Hey"

Big Bill Broonzy also appeared as a sideman on recordings by Lil Green, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Washboard Sam, and Jazz Gillum.

Albums

Big Bill Broonzy and Roosevelt Sykes DVD (1956)

"His Story" (Folkways Records) 1957

"Blues with Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee" (Folkways Records) 1959

"Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs" (Smithsonian Folkways) 1989

Best of the Blues Tradition (1991)

Do That Rag Guitar (1928–1935) (1991)

"Trouble In Mind" (Smithsonian Folkways) 2000

Broonzy Volume 2: 1945–1949: The Post War Years (2000)

Big Bill Broonzy In Concert (2002)

Big Bill Broonzy On Tour In Britain: Live In England & Scotland (2002)

Big Bill Blues: His 23 Greatest Songs 1927–42 (2004)

Big Bill Amsterdam Live Concerts 1953 (2006)

Keys to the Blues (2009)

References

External links

Big Bill Broonzy CD reissue discography

Broonzy.com series of tribute pages including bio, discography, sound clips

Big Bill Broonzy: Interviews and performances with Studs Terkel at Smithsonian Folkways

Big Bill Broonzy research at the Mississippi Blues Trail

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Dame Myra Hess DBE (25 February 1890 – 25 November 1965) was a British pianist.

She was born in London as Julia Myra Hess, but was best-known by her middle name. At the age of five she began to study the piano and two years later entered the Guildhall School of Music, where she graduated as winner of the gold medal. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music under Tobias Matthay. Her debut came in 1907 when she played Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting. She went on to tour through Britain, the Netherlands and France. Upon her American debut (New York, 24 January 1922) she became a prime favourite in the United States, not only as a soloist, but also as a fine ensemble player. She also has a surprising link to jazz, having given lessons in the '20s to Ivy Brubeck, mother of Dave Brubeck.

Hess garnered greater fame during World War II when, with all concert halls blacked out at night to avoid being targets of German bombers, she organized what would turn out to be some 1700 lunchtime concerts spanning a period of six years. The concerts were held at the National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square; Hess herself played in 150 of them. For this contribution to maintaining the morale of the populace of London, King George VI awarded her with the Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in 1941; having previously been created a CBE in 1936. Hess makes a brief appearance performing at one of her lunchtime concerts in the 1942 wartime documentary Listen to Britain (directed by Humphrey Jennings and Stuart McAllister).

In 1977, The Chicago Cultural Center began a series of lunchtime concerts every Wednesday at 12:15, named in Dame Myra's honor. These are still broadcast over radio station WFMT and streamed at WFMT.com. http://www.imfchicago.org/hess/main#/hess/history

Hess was most renowned for her interpretations of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, but had a wide repertoire ranging from Domenico Scarlatti to contemporary works. She gave the premiere of Howard Ferguson's Piano Sonata and his Piano Concerto. She also played a good amount of chamber music, and performed in a piano duo with Irene Scharrer. She promoted public awareness of the piano duo and two-piano works of Schubert.

She arranged the chorale prelude of ''"Jesus bleibet meine Freude"'' (known in English as ''"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"'') from Johann Sebastian Bach's Cantata ''Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147'' for piano. Her protégés included Clive Lythgoe and Richard and John Contiguglia.

Hess's lunchtime concerts influenced the formation of City Music Society.

References

External links

Rosenfelder, Ruth. "Dame Myra Hess." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 20 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. January 5, 2010

Category:1890 births Category:1965 deaths Category:People from London Category:British classical pianists Category:English pianists Category:Jewish classical pianists Category:Classical piano duos Category:Alumni of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama Category:Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire Category:English Jews Category:Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists Category:People associated with the National Gallery, London

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