1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [118]
Sloan, John (1871–1951) Sloan specialized in urban subjects—everyday life in New York—and became identified with painters who engaged similar subjects, collectively called the Ashcan School. It was a reference to the nitty-gritty reality of their work, which was some of the most original in American art.
Smith, Al (1873–1944) Smith worked his way up through city and state politics, gaining election to New York governor four times. He was nominated as the Democratic candidate for president in 1928—the first Roman Catholic ever to run for the office. Although urban America favored him, the rural districts sent Republican Herbert Hoover to the White House.
Smith, Bessie (1898?–1937) Elizabeth “Bessie” Smith was born and raised in the South, which she toured as a singer. In the 1920s, she settled in Philadelphia and made her first blues recordings, which, although intended for the “race market” (black audiences), crossed over into the white mainstream and were big hits. Smith took her blues style into various jazz sessions with most of the great musicians of the 1930s before she succumbed to alcoholism.
Smith, Henry Nash (1906–1986) Born in Texas, Smith became a professor of American literature, but branched out to take an interdisciplinary approach, encompassing literature, history, folklore, cultural studies, art, and psychology to create a new academic field, American Studies. His 1950 book, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth, catapulted Smith to national recognition and is considered the first American Studies text.
Smith, Jedediah Strong (1798–1831) Smith was a mountain man—a fur trader—who, in 1826, became the first American to enter California from the east and return overland.
Smith, John (1580–1631) Smith was a soldier of fortune who served as military leader of the English settlers who founded Jamestown, Virginia, on May 14, 1607. His efforts were critical to the struggling colony’s survival, and he assured himself a place in history through his writings, including the 1624 Generall Historie of Virginia, New England, and the Summer Isles, which contains the first account of how Pocahontas, daughter of the powerful Indian sachem Powhatan, saved Smith’s life—a tale (perhaps true) that entered American folklore, legend, and literature.
Smith, Joseph (1805–1844) On April 6, 1830, at Fayette, New York, Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon Church) with 30 members, basing its theology on The Book of Mormon, a scripture he had published earlier in the year as his translation of golden tablets he claimed to have unearthed in 1827 at Palmyra, New York. Smith and his fellow Mormons were persecuted everywhere they attempted to settle, and on June 27, 1844, Smith and his brother were murdered in the Mormon community of Nauvoo, Illinois, by outsiders. After this, most of the Mormons followed Brigham Young to a new settlement on the Salt Lake in Utah.
Sobell, Morton (1917– ) Sobell was the son of Russian immigrants. He became an engineer for General Electric and Reeves Electronics, working on military contracts. With Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, he was tried in 1951 for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets. Found guilty, he was sentenced to 30 years and was released in 1969.
Solomon, Susan (1956– ) Solomon was a chemist working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1986 when she led an expedition to Antarctica to discover why the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer was happening faster than expected and happening especially fast in Antarctica. Solomon discovered