Batson, Ruth (3 August 1921–28 October 2003), educator, community organizer, and civil right activist, was born Ruth Marion Watson in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, to Jamaican immigrants Joel Watson and Cassandra Buchanan. Growing up, she experienced and observed racial discrimination all around Boston. Her propensity to challenge these injustices came from her early exposure to activism. She and her brother were raised mostly by her mother, a health-care worker and a staunch follower of Jamaican political activist and Black nationalist ...
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Batson, Ruth (3 August 1921–28 October 2003), educator, community organizer, and civil right activist
Michelle Valletta
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Goldman, Eric (1915-1989), historian, author, educator, and presidential adviser
Francesco L. Nepa
Goldman, Eric (17 June 1915–19 February 1989), historian, author, educator, and presidential adviser, was born Eric Frederick Goldman in Washington, D.C., the son of Harry Goldman, a fruit and vegetable store owner and cabdriver, and Bessie Chapman. Goldman’s parents divorced when he was very young, and he was raised mainly by his father. He attended public school in Baltimore but held out no hope of ever attending college because of his father’s poor financial situation. On graduation from high school in 1931, however, he was awarded a scholarship and decided to enroll at Johns Hopkins University. Goldman moved on to graduate work at Johns Hopkins without ever completing the undergraduate program. He received an M.A. in American history in 1935 and a Ph.D. in the same subject in 1938, earning the latter degree at twenty-two years of age....
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Greene, Roger Sherman (1881-1947), diplomat, medical administrator, and lobbyist
Daniel Malleck
Greene, Roger Sherman (29 May 1881–27 March 1947), diplomat, medical administrator, and lobbyist, was born in Westborough, Massachusetts, the son of Daniel Crosby Greene and Mary Jane Forbes, two of the earliest American missionaries to work in Japan. He received his early education in Japan, where he spent most of his life before college. At Harvard University he earned an A.B. in 1901 and an A.M. in 1902....
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Holborn, Hajo Ludwig Rudolph (1902-1969), historian and government adviser
Earl Edmondson
Holborn, Hajo Ludwig Rudolph (18 May 1902–20 June 1969), historian and government adviser, was born in Berlin, the son of Ludwig Rudolph Holborn, a physicist and director of an imperial research institute, and Helene Bussmann. Enjoying a rapid rise in the academic world, he earned his doctorate in 1924 under Friedrich Meinecke in Berlin, began lecturing at the University of Heidelberg in 1926, and in 1931 received the first permanent appointment to the Carnegie Chair for History and International Relations at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin, where he also lectured at the university....
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Moley, Raymond (1886-1975), professor of public law and presidential adviser
Elliot A. Rosen
Moley, Raymond (27 September 1886–18 February 1975), professor of public law and presidential adviser, was born in Berea, Ohio, the son of Felix James Moley, proprietor of a “gent’s furnishings” store, and Agnes Fairchild. With the onset of the 1893 depression, the family moved to the nearby hamlet of Olmsted Falls. After graduating from Cleveland’s Baldwin-Wallace College (B. Phil., 1906), he became a teacher and superintendent of schools at Olmsted Falls (1906–1910). Stricken by tuberculosis in 1909, Moley sought a cure by moving to New Mexico and Colorado. Upon his return to Ohio in 1912, he pursued an M.A. in political science at Oberlin College (1913) while teaching at West High School in Cleveland. He then earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University (1918) while serving as instructor and then assistant professor at Western Reserve University (1916–1919). Moley married Eva Dall in 1916; they had two sons. In 1946, after divorcing Eva, he married Frances S. Hebard, with whom he had one daughter....
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Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr. (1917-2007)
In
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. Digital pigment print, 1978 (printed 2009), by Bernard Schwartz. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Bernard L. Schwartz Foundation.
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Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr. (1917-2007), historian, intellectual, presidential adviser
Alan Brinkley
Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Jr. (15 October 1917–28 February 2007), historian, intellectual, presidential adviser, was born in Columbus, Ohio, to Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Sr., an influential historian who inspired his young son, and Elizabeth Bancroft. The younger Arthur's middle name was Bancroft at first, but when he was old enough, he changed his middle name to match his revered father's. After teaching at Ohio State University and the University of Iowa, the older Schlesinger moved to Harvard in 1924. The younger Arthur attended the local schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, graduating at the age of fifteen. Because his parents thought he was too young for college, they took him on a long trip around the world—what he called his “great adventure.” When the family returned to Boston, Arthur, Jr., entered Harvard College in 1934, at the age of seventeen. He graduated in 1938. His undergraduate thesis, ...
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Wiesner, Jerome Bert (1915-1994), electrical engineer, presidential adviser, and university president
Elizabeth Noble Shor
Wiesner, Jerome Bert (30 May 1915–21 October 1994), electrical engineer, presidential adviser, and university president, was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Joseph Wiesner, a shopkeeper, and Ida Freedman. The boy grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, where he attended public schools and took an interest in electrical equipment, even creating a private telephone network with his friends. He entered the University of Michigan in 1933 and as an undergraduate became associate director of the campus radio broadcasting facility. After receiving a B.S. in both electrical engineering and mathematics in 1937 and an M.S. in electrical engineering in 1938, he continued with the radio service and with studies of acoustics. In 1940 he became chief engineer for the Acoustical and Record Laboratory of the Library of Congress. With folklorist Alan Lomax he recorded ethnic music in the southern and southwestern United States. Also in 1940, he married Laya Wainger; they had four children....
