1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [99]
Parker, Dorothy (1893–1967) Born Dorothy Rothschild, Parker was a writer for Vogue and a drama critic for Vanity Fair, which fired her in 1920 because her reviews were too caustic. Working as a freelance writer, she produced short stories and verse, which were notable for their cynicism, acerbic wit, and quotability. In the 1920s, she was the nucleus of the Algonquin Round Table, an assemblage of the “smartest” literary figures of the day—including Robert Benchley, Robert E. Sherwood, and James Thurber, among others—who gathered in the dining room of Manhattan’s Algonquin Hotel, generating wit that was often retailed to the public in the pages of the New Yorker. Parker was an icon of 1920s cynical intellectualism and of female liberation.
Parker, Theodore (1810–1860) A Unitarian pastor and theologian, Parker was active in the abolition movement but exerted his most lasting influence on American religion by repudiating a great deal of Christian dogma and emphasizing instead a personal relationship with God derived from an intimate experience of nature and introspection.
Parkman, Francis (1823–1893) A prolific historical writer, Parkman is best remembered for his seven-volume history of France and England in colonial North America, covering the period through the French and Indian War. Parkman portrayed colonial American history with an epic sweep as a contest among competing civilizations: English, French, and Native American. While modern historians reject some of his interpretations, all acknowledge that he brought to the study of history an awareness of its great drama, which he skillfully conveyed to generations of readers.
Parks, Rosa (1913–2005) An African-American seamstress and early civil rights activist, Parks purposely violated a Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance by refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white man. Her arrest triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted more than a year and forced the integration of the city’s buses. The boycott became the framework within which the early national civil rights movement was organized in large part under the leadership of the young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Parris, Betty (1682–1760) Elizabeth “Betty” Parris was nine years old when she fell ill with convulsions, grotesque contortions, and outbursts of nonsensical speech in 1692. She was diagnosed as having been “bewitched,” and her case triggered the infamous Salem witchcraft trials that year.
Parris, Samuel (1653–1720) The Puritan minister of Salem Village (modern Danvers), Massachusetts, Parris was the father of Betty Parris and the uncle of Abigail Williams, two young girls diagnosed as having been bewitched. Parris accused a slave, Tituba, of witchcraft and beat out a confession from her that led to general hysteria in the Salem region with many accusations of witchcraft. The affair culminated in the infamous Salem witch trials of 1692.
Pastor, Tony (1837–1908) Pastor debuted at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City when he was six and was a stage entertainer until he opened his own variety theater in New York City in 1865. In 1881, he opened a second venue, the Fourteenth Street Theatre, and advertised a new kind of popular entertainment—vaudeville—which catered to ladies and family audiences, in contrast to the vulgar fare presented in other popular variety houses. Pastor’s version of vaudeville developed into the most important form of American popular entertainment before the proliferation of film and electronic media.
Patton, George Smith, Jr. (1885–1945) Patton graduated from West Point in 1909 and pioneered the use of the tank in the