1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [105]
Pullman George Mortimer (1831–1897) Pullman’s “Pioneer” sleeping car appeared in 1865 and transformed long-distance rail travel, creating great profit for the railroads and making Pullman a vast fortune. He became a major industrialist, who attempted to control every aspect of his employees’ lives, building the quasi-utopian town of Pullman (now a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side), in which his employees were obliged to live. Pullman’s extreme paternalism became a subject of great controversy and conflict between the forces of capital and labor.
Pynchon, Thomas (1937– ) Pynchon created novels with a strong element of science fiction and fantasy that explore the alienated human condition in modern post-industrial society. His favorite metaphors are drawn from modern physics and often center on the concept of entropy, the inevitable approach of universal chaos. His masterpiece, the 1973 Gravity’s Rainbow, set in Germany after World War II, is a strange, darkly humorous vision of a modern apocalypse. Widely acclaimed, Pynchon has remained personally aloof, as enigmatic as his novels.
Quantrill, William (1837–1865) Quantrill was a career criminal who, at the outbreak of the Civil War, organized a cutthroat band of guerrillas loosely attached to the Confederate Army. On August 21, 1863, his guerrillas raided Lawrence, Kansas, killing at least 150 residents and burning much of the town. In October of the same year, they put on Union uniforms and ambushed a Union detachment at Baxter Springs, Kansas, killing 90 soldiers. Quantrill was finally gunned down on June 6, 1865, during a Kentucky raid.
Quayle, Dan (1947– ) James Danforth Quayle was the scion of a prominent Indianapolis family who served two terms in the House of Representatives (1977–1981) and was twice elected to the Senate (in 1980 and 1986). Tapped by George H.W. Bush as his running mate in 1988, Quayle was inaugurated as vice president in 1989. Despite his political experience, Quayle was seen as an intellectual lightweight, a reputation that he was never able to live down.
Raleigh, Sir Walter (1554?–1618) A colorful courtier in the court if Elizabeth I, Raleigh organized and sponsored an English colony on Roanoke Island, in what is today North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The colony was established in August 1585, but was quickly abandoned. In July 1587, another contingent of 150 colonists arrived to reestablish the settlement, only to vanish, leaving the word Croatoan carved into a tree as their only trace. Raleigh never visited the colony himself.
Randolph, A. Philip (1889–1979) Randolph was an early civil rights leader who sought racial equality primarily through organizing black labor, beginning with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, of which he became president in 1925. Against much white opposition, Randolph fashioned the Brotherhood into the first successful black trade union. Shortly before U.S. entry into World War II, he persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue an executive order (June 25, 1941) barring discrimination in defense industries and federal bureaus. After the war, Randolph founded the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience against Military Segregation and persuaded President Harry S. Truman to desegregate the armed forces (July 26, 1948).
Randolph, Edmund (1753–1813) Randolph was a prominent Virginia lawyer and pro-independence politician. In 1787, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, at which he proposed the “Virginia Plan” (the basis for the bicameral Congress) and was a member of the committee that drafted the document. He withheld his own signature from