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(born 1927) Cuban president and perpetual thorn in the side of US administrations, Fidel Castro has outwitted the United States for over forty years, withstanding the Bay of Pigs invasion, CIA assassination attempts, blockades and other efforts to destabilize his regime.
Castro came to power in 1958 after overthrowing Fulgencio Batista, a corrupt and unpopular dictator whose own rise to power had been facilitated by President Roosevelt.
Castro began as a baseball-loving Social Democrat, with considerable support from Americans initially until he declined to accept American bank loans, believing that they had so many strings attached that they could not help bring development to Cuba.
Instead, he began nationalizing US property and, by the end of 1959, announced that he was going to join the communists and begin receiving aid from the Soviet Union.
After this declaration, the US began to prepare to overthrow Castro. He survived the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and Robert Kennedy’s “Operation Mongoose.” Castro then began to export his revolution, offering support to rebels and nations from Chile to Grenada in the western hemisphere, and aiding Angola in its efforts to fight the forces of apartheid in South Africa. The Cuban economy meanwhile collapsed, especially after the end of the Cold War with Soviet loans drying up, and, while the country managed to keep a social welfare system in place, opposition grew. Thus Castro met with growing repression, censoring the press, imprisoning many opponents of the regime and forcing others into exile in the US, where they joined exiles from the revolution in large Cuban communities in Florida.
Efforts to liberalize Cuba in the 1990s have led many to believe that Castro’s rule may be nearing a close, but the final chapter has yet to be written.
Industry:Culture
(born 1927) Mayor of New York City (1990–4). The first African American to lead New York City, Dinkins pledged to heal ethnic divisions in the nation’s largest and most diverse metropolis. Dinkins’ tenure was instead marred by racial violence—in particular, the 1991 Crown Heights riots that erupted over rifts between African Americans and Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn. Dinkins was plagued by allegations that he mishandled the crisis, criticism that subsequently contributed to his failed bid for a second term. He was defeated by former prosecutor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had a strong law-and-order reputation.
Industry:Culture
(1927 – 1989) Writer and ecologist of the Southwest. Sometimes called the “Thoreau of the Southwest,” Abbey combined a deep, lyrical love for the mountains and deserts of his adopted region with radical environmental proposals to preserve it. Among his major works are Fire on the Mountain (1962), Desert Solitaire (1968) and The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975). His impact and following have continued to grow even after his death.
Industry:Culture
(1927 – 1993) Cesar Chavez grew up in a family that lost its small farm due to the Great Depression.
In 1965 he founded the United Farm Workers of America, a California-based union for agricultural workers, which brought attention to the squalid conditions these workers endured and the low wages they earned for back-breaking labor. His call for a national boycott of table grapes eventually led to union agreements with several large growers.
Chavez’s work brought about improved wages and benefits for migratory agricultural workers throughout the Southwest; he also encouraged Mexican Americans to become more politically active.
Industry:Culture
(born 1928) Aaron Spelling has produced almost one hundred different TV series and movies, many in syndication. In four decades, he has created some of the most popular—if not critically acclaimed—1-hour television shows, often appealing to the eversought-after eighteen to forty age group. He is best known for Mod Squad, Dynasty, Melrose Place, The Love Boat, Charlie’s Angels and Beverly Hills, 90210. He is also known for casting virtually unknown (but beautiful) actors and placing them in projects with a clear formula and target audience. Spelling was born in Dallas, TX and started out as a teleplay writer. After working with partners, he formed his own production company in 1986 and started Spelling Entertainment, which has diversified concerns, including merchandising and film production.
Industry:Culture
(born 1928) Born Marguerite Johnson in segregated Arkansas, Maya Angelou is best known for her autobiographical novels, such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), her poetry which she read at President Clinton’s inaugural celebration in 1993, and her civil rights activism. A northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, appointed to the Bicentennial Commission by President Ford, and by Carter to the Observance of International Women’s Year, Angelou is now arguably the most visible American poet. Her work deals with the intersection of race and gender, highlighting the impact of segregation and racism on African American communities and gender relations within them. I Know Why recounted the experience of being raped as a young girl, while her best-known poetry, And Still I Rise and Phenomenal Woman (1978), has, as the titles suggest, celebrated women and perseverance.
Industry:Culture
(born 1928) Comedian who combines slapstick and sentimentality Lewis became famous partnering stylish crooner Dean Martin (1917–95) in films like At War with the Army (1951) or The Caddy (1953). Later films like The Delicate Delinquent (1957) and The Nutty Professor (1961) solidified his boisterous solo comic persona; he later took on more reflective roles (e.g. The Kïng of Comedy, 1983). Lewis’ style has divided American audiences and critics, and he has often gained greater accolades abroad, especially in France. He has also been extremely active in work with Muscular Dystrophy although his sentimentalism has come under criticism there as well.
Industry:Culture
(born 1928) Dissenting intellectual whose theory of linguistics revolutionized the study of language, but whose following (much of it European) comes from his radical political analyses. Working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s, he dismantled behaviorism, the dominant school of thought in the social sciences. Through the study of linguistics, Chomsky showed that children did not merely respond to outside stimuli, but had innate capacity for language. The Vietnam War turned him towards political analysis, and, in a plethora of works like American Power and the New Mandarins (1969) and the essay “Cold War and the university” (1997), he has dissected American imperialism abroad and the corporate capitalist culture at home.
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(born 1928) Émigré Jewish author, activist and historical consciousness. Born in Romania, both his parents were killed in Auschwitz. His works, fiction, memoirs and non-fiction, have poignantly explored the Holocaust and the Jewish experience. Wiesel became an American citizen in 1963 and chaired the President’s Commission on the Holocaust. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1985 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 for his work in promoting human rights. The next year he established the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity.
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(born 1928) Liberal Democratic senator of Norwegian American descent from Minnesota who became vice-president under Jimmy Carter (1977–81). After Carter’s defeat, Mondale gained the 1984 presidential nomination, but he and running-mate Geraldine Ferraro were trounced by Ronald Reagan. Under Bill Clinton, Mondale returned to national public service as ambassador to Japan (1993–7) and special envoy to Indonesia.
Industry:Culture
