1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [28]
Crockett, Davy (1786–1836) With a sparse education that amounted to no more than three months’ tutoring from a backwoods neighbor, Tennessean Crockett fought in the Creek War during 1813–1815, earning a reputation as a fearless Indian fighter, which helped to propel him in 1821 to the Tennessee legislature. There he fashioned his popular political persona and, in fact, showed great flair for spinning out amusing tales and homely metaphors, which found their way into a highly profitable series of almanacs and an 1834 Autobiography. Crockett served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, but after his defeat in 1835 he bade farewell to Washington—“You can all go to hell. I’m going to Texas”—and was among the Alamo defenders slain by Santa Anna on March 6, 1836.
Cullen, Countee (1903–1946) Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Cullen grew up in New York’s Harlem, where he won a citywide poetry competition then went on to New York University (B.A., 1925), winning there the prestigious Witter Bynner Poetry Prize. He was soon published by all of the important literary magazines, and his first collection of verse, Color, appeared in 1925, before he finished college. was one of the most active writers of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary and artistic movement in this predominantly black neighborhood during the 1920s that for the first time brought the work of African-American writers, artists, and musicians to broad American audience.
Cunningham, Merce (1919– ) Cunningham began to study dance from age 12 and joined Martha Graham’s dance troupe in 1939. He began choreographing for her in the 1940s and pushed the limits of modern choreography by developing dances of pure movement, removed from programmatic or narrative implications. From this, he went on to create “choreography by chance,” in which dances were created from a vocabulary of movements, which were assigned sequence random methods, including the toss of a coin. Cunningham founded his own dance company in 1952.
Currier, Nathaniel, and James M. Ives (1813–1888 and 1824-1895) Currier was a New York lithographer, who hired Ives as a bookkeeper in 1852 and made him a partner in 1857. As the firm of Currier & Ives, the pair produced the most popular lithographs of the 19th century. In an era before journalistic photography, film, and television, they satisfied the public appetite for visual depictions of important current events, and they also supplied images of famous people (both current and historical) and scenes of Americana and humor. Their company, run by their sons, endured until 1907, when other technologies made their prints obsolete. Today, the enormous volume of Currier & Ives images provides a unique window on 19th-century America.
Custer, George A. (1839–1876) Custer graduated from the West Point in 1861 at the bottom of his class, but distinguished himself in Civil War combat so spectacularly that, at 23 he became brigadier general of volunteers—the youngest general officer in the army. During the war, he acquired a reputation for recklessness; nevertheless, he was dashing and aggressive, pursuing Robert E. Lee so relentlessly at the end of the war that he surely hastened the Confederate’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. After the war, Custer served in the West, fighting Indians. His career and his life came to an end on June 25, 1876, at the Little Bighorn River, Montana Territory, when, anxious to attack a band of Sioux, he failed to make reconnaissance and fell into a brilliantly executed ambush. He and some 200 men were overwhelmed and killed.
Czolgosz, Leon (1873–1901) The son of Polish immigrants, Czolgosz worked for the American Steel and Wire Company, was fired for striking, and became a confirmed anarchist. On August