1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [2]
Adams, Samuel (1722–1803) Bostonian Sam Adams inherited a one-third interest in his father’s prosperous brewery and ran it into the ground. Although incapable of managing money, Adams was highly skilled at politics, founding the Sons of Liberty, the most influential and radical of Boston’s many political clubs. In 1765, Adams organized Massachusetts’ opposition to the oppressive Stamp Act, thereby sowing the seeds of revolution. After 1770, Adams was chief architect of intercolonial “committees of correspondence,” which coordinated the developing revolution, and in 1773, was the prime instigator of the Boston Tea Party. Adams helped mastermind the 1781 Articles of Confederation, precursor of the Constitution.
Addams, Jane (1860–1935) In 1889, Addams and her friend Ellen Starr founded Hull House in the immigrant slums of Chicago. This institution offered hot meals, child care services, tutoring in English, and many classes in vocational and other subjects—all with the goal of tending to the physical and intellectual needs of the community as well as creating a community in which residents themselves worked together to improve their lives. In 1931, Addams became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She also worked vigorously for labor laws to protect children and women and was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Adler, Dankmar (1844–1900) Adler immigrated to the United States from Prussia in 1854 and settled in Detroit, where he began his study of architecture in 1857. He then moved to Chicago, worked as a draftsman, and, in 1881, partnered with Louis Sullivan to create Adler & Sullivan, the most famous and influential firm in American architecture, which, among other things, brought the skyscraper to prominence as the great characteristic American building style.
Adonis, Joe (1902–1972) Born Giuseppe Antonio Doto in Naples, this supremely vain Mafioso took the name Joe Adonis when he rose to power in the New York gangs. Finally brought before the Senate’s Kefauver crime committee, he became the poster boy of American organized crime and was deported to Italy on January 3, 1956, where he settled into a lavish Neapolitan villa—until Italian police picked him up for questioning in 1972. He died in their custody of (according to them) a heart attack.
Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe (1807–1873) Swiss-born Agassiz immigrated to the United States in 1846 and became professor of natural history at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University. One of the great scientists of the 19th century, Agassiz established a museum of comparative zoology at Harvard and opened the field of ecology to generations of scientists. His teaching method, radical in its day, emphasized personal contact with nature rather than instruction from books and lectures.
Agnew, Spiro T. (1918–1996) The son of Greek immigrants, Agnew became governor of Maryland in 1967, then accepted nomination for the vice presidency in 1968, earning wide public recognition for his alliterative speeches denouncing anti-Vietnam War protesters and other opponents of the Nixon administration as “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.” In 1973, he was accused of extortion, bribery, and income-tax evasion while governor of Maryland. He resigned as vice president on October 10, 1973, pleaded no contest to a tax charge, paid a $10,000 fine and “served” three years of unsupervised probation.
Albright, Madeleine (1937– ) With her family, Albright fled her native Czechoslovakia after the Nazi occupation (she learned late in life that her family was Jewish) and earned degrees from Wellesley College and Columbia University (M.A. and Ph.D). President Bill Clinton appointed