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Southern Christian Leadership Conference

(Encyclopedia)Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), civil-rights organization founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King, Jr., and headed by him until his assassination in 1968. Composed largely of African-Am...

Brain Trust

(Encyclopedia)Brain Trust, the group of close advisers to Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he was governor of New York state and during his first years as President. The name was applied to them because the members o...

Byrd, Robert Carlyle

(Encyclopedia)Byrd, Robert Carlyle, 1917–2010, U.S. senator from West Virginia (1959–2010), b. North Wilkesboro, N.C., as Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr. A Democrat, he served (1947–52) in the West Virginia legisl...

Wood, John

(Encyclopedia)Wood, John, 1704–1754, English architect, called Wood of Bath. When he went (1727) to Bath from Yorkshire to begin his career as a road surveyor, the city was at its height as a center of fashion. W...

Wyeth, N. C.

(Encyclopedia)Wyeth, N. C. (Newell Convers Wyeth), 1882–1945, American painter and illustrator, b. Needham, Mass., studied with Howard Pyle. Among his many well-known murals are those in the Missouri state capito...

Booth, Junius Brutus

(Encyclopedia)Booth, Junius Brutus, 1796–1852, Anglo-American actor. After experience in the provinces, he appeared at Covent Garden. In 1817, with his portrayal of Richard III, he established himself as a rival ...

Reinhardt, Max

(Encyclopedia)Reinhardt, Max, 1873–1943, Austrian theatrical producer and director, originally named Max Goldmann. After acting under Otto Brahm at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, he managed (1902–5) his own t...

Taylor, Cecil

(Encyclopedia) Taylor, Cecil, 1929-2018, African-American jazz pianist, composer, and poet, b. Queens, N.Y. A child prodigy on the piano, Taylor studied at the N.Y. ...

Belasco, David

(Encyclopedia)Belasco, David bəlăsˈkō [key], 1853–1931, American theatrical manager and producer, b. San Francisco. He was actively connected with the theater from his youth, and while associated with Dion Bo...

Hurston, Zora Neale

(Encyclopedia)Hurston, Zora Neale, 1891?–60, African-American writer, b. Notasulga, Ala. She grew up in the pleasant all-black town of Eatonville, Fla., and graduated from Barnard College, where she studied with ...