title: Jim Ratcliffe

text: Ratcliffe enjoys physical adventure and has made expeditions to the North and South Poles, as well as a three-month-long motorbike trek in South Africa. In 2013, he completed the Marathon Des Sables across the Sahara Desert, and he has founded a charity "Go Run for Fun", encouraging thousands of children aged between five and ten to get active by creating celebrity-driven events.


title: Jim Ratcliffe

text: Ratcliffe is a eurosceptic: "As a business, Ineos supported the common market, but not a United States of Europe." He is opposed to the "layers and layers" of European legislation that he feels is making European economies increasingly cumbersome and inefficient. He has publicly expressed his disdain for politicians, criticising them for the way they negotiated the Brexit withdrawal agreement and are often happy to "lunch around with bankers", but less keen to discuss economic issues with industrialists and business owners.


title: Jim Ratcliffe

text: Ratcliffe has owned two super yachts, "Hampshire" and "Hampshire II". His first yacht was built as "Barbara Jean" by Feadship. In 2012, he took delivery of the Feadship "Hampshire II", built by Royal Van Lent, which he still owns.


title: Jim Ratcliffe

text: Ratcliffe is not only a supporter of Manchester United F.C., but also a Chelsea F.C. season ticket holder. In August 2022, he expressed an interest in buying Manchester United F.C.


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org (formerly Earth Day Network) including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. The official theme for 2022 is Invest In Our Planet.


title: Earth Day

text: In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day". Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More than 20 million people poured out on the streets, and the first Earth Day remains the largest single-day protest in human history. Key non-environmentally focused partners played major roles. Under the leadership of labor leader Walter Reuther, for example, the United Auto Workers (UAW) was the most instrumental outside financial and operational supporter of the first Earth Day. According to Hayes, "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!" Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom award in recognition of his work.


title: Earth Day

text: The first Earth Day was focused on the United States. In 1990, Denis Hayes, the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international and organized events in 141 nations. On Earth Day 2016, the landmark Paris Agreement was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and 120 other countries. This signing satisfied a key requirement for the entry into force of the historic draft climate protection treaty adopted by consensus of the 195 nations present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Numerous communities engaged in Earth Day Week actions, an entire week of activities focused on the environmental issues that the world faces. On Earth Day 2020, over 100 million people around the world observed the 50th anniversary in what is being referred to as the largest online mass mobilization in history.


title: Earth Day

text: On January 28, 1969, a well drilled by Union Oil Platform A off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, blew out. More than three million gallons of oil spilled, killing more than 10,000 seabirds, dolphins, seals, and sea lions. As a reaction to this disaster, activists were mobilized to create environmental regulation, environmental education, and Earth Day. Among the proponents of Earth Day were the people in the front lines of fighting this disaster, Selma Rubin, Marc McGinnes, and Bud Bottoms, founder of Get Oil Out. Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day said that Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin was inspired to create Earth Day upon seeing Santa Barbara Channel 800 square-mile oil slick from an airplane.


title: Earth Day

text: On the first anniversary of the oil blowout, January 28, 1970, Environmental Rights Day was created, and the Declaration of Environmental Rights was read. It had been written by Rod Nash during a boat trip across the Santa Barbara Channel while carrying a copy of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. The organizers of Environmental Rights Day, led by Marc McGinnes, had been working closely over a period of several months with Congressman Pete McCloskey (R-CA) to consult on the creation of the National Environmental Policy Act, the first of many new environmental protection laws sparked by the national outcry about the blowout/oil spill and on the Declaration of Environmental Rights. Both McCloskey (Earth Day co-chair with Senator Gaylord Nelson) and Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, along with Senator Alan Cranston, Paul Ehrlich, David Brower and other prominent leaders, endorsed the Declaration and spoke about it at the Environmental Rights Day conference. According to Francis Sarguis, "the conference was sort of like the baptism for the movement." According to Hayes, this was the first giant crowd he spoke to that "felt passionately, I mean really passionately, about environmental issues." Hayes also thought the conference might be the beginning of a real movement. Nash, Garrett Hardin, McGinnes and others went on to develop the first undergraduate Environmental Studies program of its kind at the University of California at Santa Barbara.


title: Earth Day

text: The seeds that grew into the first Earth Day were planted by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. An ardent conservationist and former two-term governor of Wisconsin, Nelson had long sought ways to increase the potency of the environment as a political issue. The extraordinary attention garnered by Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring", the famous of the earth from the moon, the saturation news coverage given to the Santa Barbara oil spill and the Cuyahoga River catching fire in early 1969 led Nelson to think the time was ripe for an environmental initiative. As a result of interactions with his staff and with Fred Dutton, a prominent Democratic operative who had been Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign manager, Nelson became convinced that environmental teach-ins on college campuses could serve as such a vehicle.


title: Earth Day

text: Teach-ins had been held on hundreds of college campuses to debate the war in Vietnam. They generally reflected the divide between those who thought of Vietnam as a bulwark to stop additional countries falling to communism like dominos, versus those who believed that the war was the latest stage of a nationalist, anti-colonialist campaign by Vietnamese who had fought against China, then France, Japan, France again, and now the United States. These debates elevated arguments over the war in the public consciousness and enlisted a generation of student activists.


title: Earth Day

text: Nelson asked public interest lawyer Anthony Roisman to establish a non-profit, Environmental Teach-In, Inc., to manage the campaign, and recruited a small board of directors. He asked Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to co-chair the board to ensure it was bipartisan and bicameral.


title: Earth Day

text: On September 20, 1969, Senator Nelson first announced his plans for an "environmental teach-In" in a little-publicized talk at the University of Washington. "I am convinced that the same concern the youth of this nation took in changing this nation's priorities on the war in Vietnam and on civil rights can be shown for the problem of the environment. That is why I plan to see to it that a national teach-in is held."


title: Earth Day

text: Senator Nelson went on to encourage teach-ins at many more speeches. A November talk at Airlie House had a "New York Times" reporter in the audience. The resulting front-page article was a turning point. Letters of inquiry from across the country began to pour into Nelson's Senate office. The article piqued the interest of Denis Hayes, then a graduate student at Harvard. Hayes traveled to Washington, DC, and arranged a 10-minute visit with Senator Nelson (which stretched into two hours). Hayes returned to Harvard with the charter to organize Boston. After a few days of reference checks, he was asked to drop out of Harvard to become executive director of the national campaign.


title: Earth Day

text: Because of the non-hierarchical tenor of the times, Hayes suggested that people be designated coordinators rather than directors. He became the national coordinator, and he quickly hired various regional coordinators, a press coordinator, a K-12 coordinator, a volunteer coordinator, etc. At its peak, the national office had a few dozen paid staff, each earning a flat $375/month (), plus more than 100 regular volunteers.


title: Earth Day

text: As the talented regional coordinators fanned out across the country, however, they immediately encountered two problems. First, by 1970, the concept of "teach-ins" had become passé. Moreover, teach-ins generally involved debates, and no one was pro-pollution. Second, and more troubling, leading activists on college campuses were deeply involved in the anti-war and civil rights movements. They tended to view the environment as a distraction.


title: Earth Day

text: The solution to the first problem came from an unexpected direction. Shortly after the turn of the year, a quiet man named Julien Koenig stopped by the national offices and volunteered to help. Koenig was a Madison Avenue giant. His campaign for Volkswagen, "Think Small," was later cited by Advertising Age as the "greatest advertising campaign of the 20th century."


title: Earth Day

text: Over coffee, Hayes confided that the "teach-in" moniker was not working and asked whether Koenig had any ideas. Koenig asked for a few days. A week later, he returned with an assortment of mock-ups for ads, laid out around the announcement of "Ecology Day," "Environment Day," "Earth Day," and "E Day." Koenig said that his personal favorite was Earth Day – in part because April 22 happened to be his birthday, and "birthday" rhymes with "Earth Day." Hayes immediately agreed. Koenig offered to prepare a fully refined ad. Hayes insisted that it include a small coupon soliciting funds for the threadbare operation. Koenig's ad was visually arresting, and perfectly summed up the issues and values, the feisty-but-welcoming tone that the campaign had adopted. Hayes loved it and decided to bet the farm. He committed about half of all the money in the campaign's bank account to buy a full page in the "Sunday New York Times" opinion section.


title: Earth Day

text: The ad was a huge success. Overnight, "Earth Day" became the almost-universally-used name for the upcoming event. The ad generated more than enough revenue to repay its cost, and thousands of potential organizers sent in their names and addresses along with their checks. In future months, magazines and alternative newspapers ran the ad for free, generating still more names and more financial support. The national office started using Environmental Action, rather than Environmental Teach-in, on its letterhead and publications to promote Earth Day.


title: Earth Day

text: At this point, Hayes made a far-reaching decision. In those early days, it would have been easy to obtain trademark protection for Earth Day and force compliance with a set of standards by anyone using it. Hayes decided, however, that he wanted the name to be broadly used by anyone who planned to focus on environmental issues that spring.


title: Earth Day

text: Although "Earth Day" swiftly replaced Environmental Teach-in, the second problem proved more complicated. College activists, for the most part, viewed anything other than ending the war as a distraction. A majority of the Earth Day staff had cut their teeth as organizers against the war and saw no conflict. The war appeared to be winding down, and they felt it was prudent to start paying attention to the far more profound changes needed to produce a healthy, sustainable America. But time was short, and college activists were not responding.


title: Earth Day

text: Hayes spent a day reviewing the letters Senator Nelson had received, and discovered that very few were from college students. Most were from women who appeared to be college-educated homemakers who wanted to do something to improve the world for their children. Another large share was from K-12 teachers.


title: Earth Day

text: Hayes decided to shift the campaign's focus from colleges and universities to community organizing. Building off the successful strategies of the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, he decided to promote large urban rallies, focused on major environmental issues, while also encouraging environmental education at the K-12 level.


title: Earth Day

text: Bryce Hamilton, who had been Midwest coordinator, was shifted to K-12 coordinator, and it proved to be a great choice. Hamilton reached out to the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, and the National Science Teachers Association to enlist their members; he provided materials to thousands of educators who wrote to the group directly; and he distributed the most creative ideas he received from anyone to everyone else. In April, more than 10,000 primary and secondary schools engaged in Earth Day activities, mostly education and service actions like beach clean-ups, tree planting, and recycling.


title: Earth Day

text: Walt Kelly created an anti-pollution poster featuring his comic strip character Pogo with the quotation "We have met the enemy and he is us" to promote the 1970 Earth Day. Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action to change human behavior and provoke policy changes.


title: Earth Day

text: The first Earth Day "brought 20 million Americans out into the spring sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform." Earth Day is now observed in 192 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit EARTHDAY.ORG (formerly Earth Day Network). According to Denis Hayes, the first Earth Day 1970 organizer and current Board Chair Emeritus of EARTHDAY.ORG, Earth Day is now "the largest secular day of protest in the world, and more than a billion people participate in Earth Day actions every year."


title: Earth Day

text: By far the largest source of funding for the first Earth Day was organized labor. Walter Reuther had led the United Auto Workers (UAW) since 1946, and he was a progressive supporter of civil rights, opposed the war, and championed the environment. He was a founding member of the Coalition for Clean Air, which successfully lobbied for the Clean Air Act of 1970. Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, made the first donation to support the first Earth Day in the amount of $2,000. Under his leadership, the UAW also funded telephone capabilities so that the organizers could communicate and coordinate with each other from all across the United States. The UAW also financed, printed, and mailed all of the literature and other materials for the first Earth Day and mobilized its members to participate in the public demonstrations across the country. According to Denis Hayes, "The UAW was by far the largest contributor to the first Earth Day" and "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!" Hayes further said, "Walter's presence at our first press conference utterly changed the dynamics of the coverage—we had instant credibility."


title: Earth Day

text: At a meeting of the Environmental Teach-In board of directors, the finance committee chair arrived with a check for $20,000 from Standard Oil of New Jersey (now ExxonMobil). That would have provided an effective measure of financial relief for the financially strapped group. But Hayes declined the check, convincing the board that it would destroy the credibility of the nascent organization. He said that he would be delighted to accept money from clean sources, but no other corporate money was ever raised for the national organization.


title: Earth Day

text: Individual donations were a significant source of funding, generally accompanied by a contribution slip from the Earth Day Ad providing the donor's name and address. Larry Rockefeller persuaded Robert Rauschenberg to create and donate a batch of Earth Day lithographs, but the Earth Day staff lacked contacts in the art world who were able to sell them for their $2,000 market value, so they were provided to donors for much less.


title: Earth Day

text: The sale of standard posters and especially pins brought in additional revenue. The staff refused to sell bumper strips because they would be attached to cars.


title: Earth Day

text: The staff of Environmental Teach-In resigned immediately after Earth Day, and most moved directly to a new organization, Environmental Action, with a tax status that permitted lobbying and a more activist stance. EA immediately confronted a problem that had been looming in the background throughout the campaign. Some of the staff had been drawn to the movement through science and culture and felt that politics was inherently dirty and government was irredeemably compromised. This group believed that by living lives of voluntary simplicity, employing tools like those that filled the resolutely-nonpolitical "Whole Earth Catalog", they could force the world to adapt to them. Their theory of change was modeled loosely on the southern African Americans who sat at segregated lunch counters, drank from segregated lunch counters, and sat in the front of the bus, it ignored the role of strategic litigation federal legislation, and electoral politics in cementing lasting change.


title: Earth Day

text: Other staff members had worked in the Robert Kennedy, Gene McCarthy, and various congressional campaigns before Earth Day. They believed that lasting progress could only come through institutional change. 1970 was a Congressional election year. They had just organized the largest demonstration in the nation's history in order to support environmental values. Former Lindsay organizer, Steve Haft, summed up this faction's attitude at an Environmental Action staff meeting, "We had 20 million people in the streets in an election year, and you plan to sit out the election? Are you nuts?"


title: Earth Day

text: In order to square the circle, Hayes proposed that the group not endorse any candidates but that it try to defeat 12 of the worst. If having a terrible environmental record became a political liability, it would inevitably lead to better environmental legislation. Haft was selected to coordinate the Dirty Dozen campaign. With just $50,000 to defeat 12 incumbent members of the House, the odds were long.


title: Earth Day

text: To improve the odds, the group selected candidates who not only had lousy environmental records—which were plentiful—but who also had won their most recent race by a narrow margin; who were on the wrong side of an important environmental issue in their districts; and who lived in areas where talented Earth Day organizers resided. In the end, seven of the original Dirty Dozen were defeated—five Republicans and two Democrats. And the first to fall was George Fallon, chairman of the hugely powerful House Public Works Committee.


title: Earth Day

text: Representative Pete McCloskey, Earth Day co-chair, credits the Dirty Dozen's defeat of key Congressional leaders with the unstoppable wave of environmental legislation that immediately followed: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and others.


title: Earth Day

text: As the tone of major planned Earth Day activities shifted to become less academic and more confrontational, and the Environmental Action newsletter emphasized the need for broad structural change, interest in the event began to mount among college student activists.


title: Earth Day

text: One place where the interest in a teach-in was robust from the beginning was the University of Michigan. The very first teach-in on the Vietnam War had been held at the University of Michigan in March 1965, and a group of students, led by Doug Scott, decided to mark the five-year anniversary with an environmental teach-in on March 11–14, 1970. The Michigan teach-in presented a series of speeches dealing with various environmental problems, along with some debate over the best tactics and solutions. No one, including the president of Dow Chemical, argued for more environmental destruction.


title: Earth Day

text: After the University of Michigan teach-in, there was an explosion of interest on other college campuses. Upwards of 2,000 universities, colleges, and junior colleges ultimately put on events. By the end, the national staff had a hard time merely keeping up with the colleges that called to register events.


title: Earth Day

text: The delicate line straddled by organizers was to attract seasoned activists who would demand far-reaching change without alienating the middle class whose active participation and political support were seen as essential. The greatest environmental insults were visited on the poor. Factories and power plants were located in the poorest neighborhoods. Freeways were plowed through the poorest neighborhoods. Toxic waste dumps were situated in the poorest neighborhoods. But these problems tended not to affect the middle class.


title: Earth Day

text: The solution was to promote an overarching concern with air and water pollution, which affected everyone, while encouraging each community to pay attention to whatever other issues were of most concern to it. Earth Day included events that focused on fighting freeways, protecting the ozone layer, organic food, whales and endangered species, oil spills, the military use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, overpopulation, peeling lead paint in ghetto housing, opposition to the supersonic transport, and myriad other topics. At one event, college students would pound an automobile apart with sledgehammers, or, wearing gas masks, would block traffic on a freeway. At other events, grade-school students would plant trees, pick up litter in city parks, or identify birds. Earth Day welcomed them all.


title: Earth Day

text: Regional coordinators focused heavily on finding and enlisting the best local leadership in major metropolitan areas. For instance, Hayes flew to Chicago to help organize a subtle coup, replacing a pro-business Earth Day organization with a Saul Alinsky affiliated group called Campaign Against Pollution. CAP abruptly shifted the focus away from recycling to focus on two issues: opposition to a massive proposed freeway program, the Crosstown Expressway, and protesting the uncontrolled air pollution Commonwealth Edison was pouring into Chicago's air—more sulfur pollution than all other companies combined. Although mailings went out to thousands of communities of all sizes, the campaign focused especially hard on large cities.


title: Earth Day

text: In the winter of 1969–1970, a group of students met at Columbia University to hear Denis Hayes talk about his plans for Earth Day. Among the group were Fred Kent, Pete Grannis, and Kristin and William Hubbard. This group agreed to head up the New York City activities within the national movement. Fred Kent took the lead in renting an office and recruiting volunteers. The liberal Republican mayor of New York, John Lindsay, saw the environment as an issue that could help unite his then-troubled city. Moreover, he viewed the environment as a progressive wedge issue that would position him as clearly distinct from President Nixon's ultra-conservative "Southern Strategy," in a struggle for the soul of the Republican Party. He became fully engaged in supporting the event, and he delegated many of the talented young staff who had been drawn to his administration to help as well.


title: Earth Day

text: "The big break came when Mayor Lindsay agreed to shut down Fifth Avenue for the event. A giant cheer went up in the office on that day," according to Kristin Hubbard (now Kristin Alexandre). "From that time on we used Mayor Lindsay's offices and even his staff. I was Speaker Coordinator but had tremendous help from Lindsay staffer Judith Crichton." Mayor Lindsay completely closed down Fifth Avenue to traffic from E. 14th Street to West 59th Street (Central Park)—more than 2 miles—and 14th Street between 3rd and 7th Avenues. An estimated one million participants took part—right in the nerve center of the nation's communications complex.


title: Earth Day

text: In addition to shutting down Fifth Avenue, Mayor John Lindsay made Central Park available for Earth Day. In Union Square, the "New York Times" estimated crowds of up to 20,000 people at any given time and, perhaps, more than 100,000 over the course of the day. Since Manhattan was also the home of NBC, CBS, ABC, "The New York Times", "Time", and "Newsweek", it provided the best possible anchor for national coverage from their reporters throughout the country.


title: Earth Day

text: U.S. Senator Edmund Muskie was the keynote speaker on Earth Day in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. Other notable attendees included consumer protection activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, landscape architect Ian McHarg, Nobel prize-winning Harvard biochemist George Wald, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, and poet Allen Ginsberg.


title: Earth Day

text: The 1970s were a period of substantial environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Superfund, Toxics Substances Control Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. It had seen the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the banning of DDT and of lead in gasoline. Jimmy Carter was president.


title: Earth Day

text: The 1980 Earth Day effort was led by Mike McCabe and Byron Kennard, and the general mood was festive and celebratory. The principal Washington, DC event was a festival held in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House.


title: Earth Day

text: Mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting the status of environmental issues onto the world stage, Earth Day activities in 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Unlike the first Earth Day in 1970, this 20th Anniversary was waged with stronger marketing tools, greater access to television and radio, and multimillion-dollar budgets.


title: Earth Day

text: Two separate groups formed to sponsor Earth Day events in 1990: The Earth Day 20 Foundation, assembled by Edward Furia (Project Director of Earth Week in 1970), and Earth Day 1990, assembled by Denis Hayes (National Coordinator for Earth Day 1970). Senator Gaylord Nelson, the original founder of Earth Day, was honorary chairman for both groups. The two did not combine forces over disagreements about leadership of combined organization and incompatible structures and strategies. Among the disagreements, key Earth Day 20 Foundation organizers were critical of Earth Day 1990 for including on their board Hewlett-Packard, a company that at the time was the second-biggest emitter of chlorofluorocarbons in Silicon Valley and refused to switch to alternative solvents. In terms of marketing, Earth Day 20 had a grassroots approach to organizing and relied largely on locally based groups like the National Toxics Campaign, a Boston-based coalition of 1,000 local groups concerned with industrial pollution. Earth Day 1990 employed strategies including focus group testing, direct mail fundraising, and email marketing.


title: Earth Day

text: The Earth Day 20 Foundation highlighted its April 22 activities in George, Washington, near the Columbia River with a live satellite phone call with members of the historic Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb who called from their base camp on Mount Everest to pledge their support for world peace and attention to environmental issues. The Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb was led by Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mt. Everest (many years earlier), and marked the first time in history that mountaineers from the United States, Soviet Union, and China had roped together to climb a mountain, let alone Mt. Everest. The group also collected more than two tons of trash (transported down the mountain by support groups along the way) that was left behind on Mount Everest from previous climbing expeditions. The master of ceremonies for the Columbia Gorge event was the TV star, John Ratzenberger, from "Cheers", and the headlining musician was the "Father of Rock and Roll", Chuck Berry.


title: Earth Day

text: Warner Bros. Records released an Earth Day-themed single in 1990 entitled "Tomorrow's World", written by Kix Brooks (who would later become one-half of Brooks & Dunn) and Pam Tillis. The song featured vocals from Lynn Anderson, Butch Baker, Shane Barmby, Billy Hill, Suzy Bogguss, Kix Brooks, T. Graham Brown, The Burch Sisters, Holly Dunn, Foster & Lloyd, Vince Gill, William Lee Golden, Highway 101, Shelby Lynne, Johnny Rodriguez, Dan Seals, Les Taylor, Pam Tillis, Mac Wiseman, and Kevin Welch. It charted at number 74 on the Hot Country Songs chart dated May 5, 1990.


title: Earth Day

text: As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focusing on global warming and pushing for clean energy. The April 22 Earth Day in 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. For 2000, Earth Day had the internet to help link activists around the world. By the time April 22 came around, 5,000 environmental groups worldwide were on board, reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries. Events varied: A talking drum chain traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa, for example, while hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., USA.


title: Earth Day

text: The theme for Earth Day 2003 was the Water for Life Campaign. This year, Earth Day Network developed a water quality project called "What's in Your Water?" Water-related events were held on every continent, including water workshops, exhibitions, concerts, and more in Togo, Egypt, the Cook Islands, Jordan, Palestine, Japan, Venezuela, Slovenia, Nigeria, and Canada. Educational curricula, teacher's guides, water testing kits, and posters focused on water.


title: Earth Day

text: Campaign for Communities, an initiative led by NAACP, Latino organizations including Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, and other organizations focused on environmental justice, created events focused on low-income communities around the U.S. These events were also focused on building support among low-income communities through clean-ups, park revitalization, and town halls focused on integrating the environmental movement with community and social justice causes.


title: Earth Day

text: In the U.S. in 2004, Earth Day Network and its partners focused on voter registration for Earth Day, registering hundreds of thousands of voters. Major tree planting events also took place. Other prominent U.S. Earth Day events included an annual cleanup in Dayton, Ohio and the "3rd Annual Community Based Solutions to Environmental Health & Justice Conference" in Seattle, Washington.


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day 2006 focused on science and faith. Earth Day expanded into Europe for Earth Day 2006, and events and speeches were held in most of the EU countries. Key events included the "Festival on Climate Change" in Utrecht, the Netherlands, which was focused on "How to break away from the oil dependence," and included Earth Day founder Denis Hayes and members of the Dutch and E.U. parliament, NGOs, local authorities, and media representatives. In the first of two years of Earth Day events in Ukraine, Denis Hayes also attended and spoke at the "Chernobyl 20 Remembrance for the Future" conference in Kyiv, Ukraine. 2006 also saw events in China organized between Earth Day Network and Global Village Beijing educating communities about energy savings, the first-ever coordinated Earth Day events in Moscow, Russia, a scientific panel and a religious response panel on climate change throughout the U.S., and a "Conserve Your Energy" event in Philadelphia.


title: Earth Day

text: Thousands of Earth Day projects were held across the globe that ranged from energy efficiency events, protests, letter writing campaigns, civic and environmental k-12 education trainings, urban and rural cleanups, and water projects with a particular focus on building a broader and more diverse environmental movement. Major events took place in Kyiv, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; Tuvalu; Philippines; Togo; and Madrid, Spain.


title: Earth Day

text: In the US, civil rights, religious, and social justice leaders joined Earth Day Network the week of April 16 through April 20 to demand Congress on behalf of their communities and their constituencies that there be no "grandfathering" of pollution permits, that an immediate reduction in carbon emissions be imposed through legislation and that all revenues generated from a carbon tax or a government auction of carbon permits be used for public benefit.


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day Network partnered with Green Apple Music & Arts Festival to mark Earth Day with weekend-long events featuring music and entertainment in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. More than 200,000 people attended the events and millions of people were reached through the media.


title: Earth Day

text: The "Global Warming in the Pulpit Pledge campaign" which mobilized priests, ministers, rabbis, and other faith leaders across the U.S. and Canada to make a commitment to preach on global climate change as a moral issue was launched. Later in 2007, Live Earth, a global music event, was held across the world.


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day 2008 galvanized millions of people around the world in a Call For Climate. In the U.S., the campaign challenged the public to make one million calls to Congress about pushing for climate change legislation. 2008 also included large climate rallies in eight major U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C., New York, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, to which around 350,000 people attended. Washington, D.C. hosted actor Edward Norton, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, and James Hansen of NASA to deliver a strong global warming message and call for tough and fair climate action by Congress. O.A.R., Umphrey's McGee, Warren Haynes, Mambo Sauce, and Blake Lewis of American Idol entertained enthusiastic crowds, and the event was covered live by CNN and The Weather Channel, plus scores of other media that carried the Call for Climate message. Many Earth Day events were held around the world from the Earth Day on Campus campaign.


title: Earth Day

text: The 2009 National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions reached college campuses, civic organizations, and faith groups across the U.S. As part of this event, members of Congress addressed college and high school campuses in their districts via video conference.


title: Earth Day

text: An estimated one billion people around the world took action for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. An estimated 20,000 partners took action on climate change and other environmental issues through climate rallies, Billion Acts of Green™, and by engaging civil leaders in plans to build a green economy, connected through the online action center at EARTHDAY.ORG. Through the Global Day of Conversation, more than 200 elected officials in more than 39 countries took part in active dialogues with their constituents about their efforts to create sustainable green economies and reduce their carbon footprints. Students around the world participated in school greenings, featuring community clean-ups, solar energy systems, school gardens, and environmental curriculum. Earth Day Network announced a partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment's Avatar Home Tree Initiative to plant one million trees in 15 countries by the end of 2010.


title: Earth Day

text: The Climate Rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., drew in more than 150,000 activists to demand that U.S. Congress pass comprehensive climate legislation in 2010. The nine-hour event featured more than 70 high-profile speakers, including leadership from the faith, labor, civil rights, environmental communities, the private sector, leading climate scientists, celebrities, Cabinet Secretaries, international political leaders, and local government officials.


title: Earth Day

text: In partnership with the Peace Corps, Earth Day Network worked with local volunteers to implement environmental and civic education programs, tree plantings, village clean-ups, and recycling seminars in rural areas in Ukraine, the Philippines, Georgia, Albania, and Kolkata, India. In 2010, Earth Day Network also established a satellite office in Kolkata, India.


title: Earth Day

text: As part of a nationwide commemoration of the 40th anniversary in Morocco, the government announced a unique National Charter for the Environment and Sustainable Development, the first commitment of its kind in Africa and the Arab world, which will inform new environmental laws for the country. The Kingdom of Morocco also pledged to plant one million trees.


title: Earth Day

text: 2011 Earth Day events included an environmental forum for local political leaders and the first-ever Earth Day celebration in Tunis City and primary school events throughout Iraq. In 17 of the world's most severely deforested countries, Earth Day Network completed a project to plant over 1.1 million trees. Across the globe, more than 100 million Billion Acts of Green were registered. In September 2011, at the Clinton Global Initiative, President Clinton recognized this project as an exemplary approach to addressing global challenges.


title: Earth Day

text: A Billion Acts of Green were achieved on Earth Day 2012, with Earth Day Network announcing the accomplishment at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio. A Billion Acts of Green is billed as the world's largest environmental service campaign, inspiring and rewarding both simple individual acts and larger organizational initiatives that further the goal of measurably reducing carbon emissions and supporting sustainability.


title: Earth Day

text: The goal of Earth Day 2013 was to personalize the massive challenge that climate change presents while uniting people around the globe into a powerful call to action with the theme: The Face of Climate Change. To illustrate that climate change is not a remote problem for our leaders but is impacting real people, animals, and places everywhere, EDN collected images sent into #faceofclimate and displayed them in a collage at thousands of events around the world—from schools to parks to government buildings. High level organizations and individuals participated in the campaign, including the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, US Secretary of State, and many more.


title: Earth Day

text: Meanwhile, stories of hope inspired communities to take action and MobilizeU, a program to educate and activate college students around Earth Day and environmental issues, expanded in 2013 to 296 universities in 51 countries on six continents and in 46 US states.


title: Earth Day

text: In Washington, D.C., EDN presented Earth Month at Union Station, a four-week series of events that featured an environmental film festival, renewable energy demonstrations, farmers markets, NASA educational exhibits, and public talks by scientists and astronauts. In partnership with Washington, D.C. Public Schools, EDN also presented a STEM Fair at Union Station.


title: Earth Day

text: The goal of Earth Day 2014 was to dramatically personalize the massive challenges surrounding global climate change and weave that into both Earth Day 2014 and the five-year countdown to Earth Day 2020, the 50th anniversary. It was an opportunity to unite people worldwide into a common cause and call for action.


title: Earth Day

text: The theme of Earth Day 2014 was Green Cities. Earth Day Network launched the Green Cities campaign in the fall of 2013 to help cities worldwide become more sustainable and reduce their carbon footprint. Focused on three key elements – buildings, energy, and transportation – the campaign aims to help cities accelerate their transition to a cleaner, healthier, and more economically viable future through improvements in efficiency, investments in renewable technology, and regulation reform.


title: Earth Day

text: To recognize the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, the 2015 global theme was termed "It's Our Turn to Lead."


title: Earth Day

text: That year, Earth Day was a part of the steady drumbeat towards Paris for the UNFCCC COP 21 climate talks that December. With a binding treaty on climate change expected from this conference, this is a pivotal year for the environmental movement. Earth Day Network's (EDN) campaigns focused on instigating environmental advocacy, as well as strengthening climate communication and education.


title: Earth Day

text: EDN designed and executed four campaigns for its major constituencies: Green Cities, MobilizeU, Climate Education Week, and Faith Mobilization, all of which concentrated on the organization's theme: "It's Our Turn to Lead".


title: Earth Day

text: In addition, EDN hosted Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day, in partnership with Global Poverty Project (GPP) on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This venue allowed EDN and GPP to inspire and activate a new generation of global activists. The event worked to establish the intersection between eradicating global poverty and stopping climate change. Earth Day Network worked directly with major partners to garner large-scale commitments to stop climate change.


title: Earth Day

text: The theme for Earth Day 2016 was Trees for Earth. India, the Caribbean, Vietnam, and Morocco made substantial government commitments. The Black Lives Matter organization, which was created in 2013, also engaged with EarthDay.org in community panels. Close to 700 million community members, organizations, and school children took part in Earth Day 2016. Over 36 million trees were planted in India. "Earth Day Network" (now EARTHDAY.ORG) was accepted as an entry on Baidu Baike, a major online cyclopedia in China.


title: Earth Day

text: Hundreds of mayors across the world participated in Earth Day 2016 primarily focused on urban planning and reforestation.


title: Earth Day

text: It was no accident that the United Nations selected Earth Day to sign the most significant climate accord in the history of the climate movement. On Earth Day 2016, world leaders from 175 nations broke a record by doing exactly that.


title: Earth Day

text: For Earth Day 2017, Earth Day Network launched the goal of global environmental and climate literacy by 2020. EDN envisioned a world that is fluent in the concepts of climate change and aware of its unprecedented threat to our planet. Environmental and climate literacy is the engine not only for creating green voters and advancing environmental and climate laws and policies but also for accelerating green technologies and jobs.


title: Earth Day

text: To that end, the 2017 Earth Day theme is environmental and climate education. EDN knows that education is the foundation for progress. Before we can solve the dire environmental threats facing us in the 21st century, we must build a global citizenry knowledgeable in environmental science and fluent in local and global ecological issues. A world with a more educated populace internalizes values – such as environmental protection – and is empowered to act in defense of these values.


title: Earth Day

text: To support this Earth Day theme, EDN promoted teach-ins as an activity to educate communities on global environmental issues and how global environmental issues impact local communities. EDN teach-ins strove to empower attendees with real, tangible actions they could take for the environment.


title: Earth Day

text: EDN developed an extensive global outreach strategy to promote Earth Day and assist organizations with producing a variety of actions, including teach-ins, in their own communities. Staff sent thousands of emails and made hundreds of phone calls, and revamped the organization's social media. Additionally, EDN created five teach-in toolkits, with accompanying translations in four languages, to help constituencies organize and mobilize their communities.


title: Earth Day

text: Finally, EDN hosted the flagship March for Science march, rally, and teach-ins on Earth Day on the Washington Monument Grounds in Washington D.C. This event rallied and empowered attendees to support science and evidence-based policy. Approximately 100,000 people attended.


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day 2018's theme, End Plastic Pollution, was dedicated to building a world of educated citizens who understand the environmental, climate, and health consequences of using plastic. Through an online Plastics Pollution Calculator, consumers calculated how much disposable plastic they used in a year and planned how to reduce this amount of waste. A Plastic Pollution Primer and Action Toolkit also educated consumers about actions to reduce their plastic footprint. Events worldwide in The Gambia, Italy, Thailand, Japan, India, the U.S., among others, included plastic cleanups, teach-ins, and festivals in which 10,000 partners participated. In April 2018, the Google search for "Plastic Pollution" saw the highest trends in the previous five years, 5.5 million pages in 17 languages were created on the internet about "Earth Day 2018" and "plastics," and global media outlets with a combined audience of 450+ million people covered the campaign. The phrase "plastic pollution" on social media in the U.S. alone reached more than 155 million people. As a result, over 23,0000+ plastic cleanups were registered on Google, 60 countries introduced single-use plastic bans and legislation, and companies such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks announced steps to eliminate and significantly reduce plastic pollution.


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day 2019's theme was Protect Our Species. For this campaign, events and programs spread information about the causes and consequences of growing species extinctions. Earth Day Network partnered with Keep America Beautiful and National Cleanup Day for the inaugural nationwide Earth Day Clean Up. Cleanups were held in all 50 States, 5 U.S. Territories, 5,300 sites and had more than 500,000 volunteers. Thousands of locations featured ads with vivid photos of important species. Viewers were encouraged to share photos of ads on social media with the tag #ProtectOurSpecies. Earth Day 2019 also encouraged participants to protect threatened species through educational resources, tree plantings, and a climate action guide.


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day 2020 is the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. Celebrations included activities such as the Great Global CleanUp, Citizen Science, Advocacy, Education, and art. This year's theme for Earth Day 2020 was "climate action". Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the planned activities were moved online. Notably, a coalition of youth activist organized by the Future Coalition hosted Earth Day Live, a three-day livestream commemorating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in the United States. Celebratory activities centered around five components: citizen science, volunteering, community engagement, education, and the role of art in furthering the cause.


title: Earth Day

text: The Earth Day 2021 theme is Restore Our Earth and features five primary programs: The Canopy Project, Food and Environment, Climate Literacy, the Global Earth Challenge, and The Great Global CleanUp. During the week of Earth Day, EARTHDAY.ORG and lead organizers, Education International, Hip Hop Caucus, and Earth Uprising organized three separate parallel climate action summits on climate literacy, environmental justice, and youth-led climate-focused issues. EARTHDAY.ORG also organized the second-annual Earth Day Live livestream event (April 22, 2021) featuring global activists, international leaders, and influencers.


title: Earth Day

text: The Biden Administration organized a 2021 Leaders' Climate Summit. This virtual Zoom-like meeting featured 40 world leaders and dozens of speakers, including Pope Francis, Xiye Bastida, Danielle Merfeld, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, GE Renewable Energy, Anna Borg, President and CEO, Vattenfall, and Abdullah Subai, Minister of Municipality and Environment, Qatar.


title: Earth Day

text: The Earth Day 2022 theme is Invest in Our Planet and features five primary programs: The Great Global Cleanup, Sustainable Fashion, Climate and Environmental Literacy, Canopy Project, Food and Environment, and the Global Earth Challenge. EARTHDAY.ORG announced the continuation of the "Invest in our Planet" theme for 2023 and that more than one billion citizens participated in Earth Day 2022.


title: Earth Day

text: The first Canadian Earth Day () was held on Thursday, September 11, 1980, and was organized by Paul D. Tinari, then a graduate student in Engineering Physics/Solar Engineering at Queen's University. Flora MacDonald, then MP for Kingston and the Islands and former Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, officially opened Earth Day Week on September 6, 1980, with a ceremonial tree planting and encouraged MPs and MPPs across the country to declare a cross-Canada annual Earth Day. The principal activities taking place on the first Earth Day included educational lectures given by experts in various environmental fields, garbage and litter pick-up by students along city roads and highways, and tree plantings to replace the trees killed by Dutch elm disease.


title: Earth Day

text: The equinoctial Earth Day is celebrated on the March equinox (around March 20) to mark the arrival of astronomical spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and of astronomical autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. An equinox in astronomy is that point in time (not a whole day) when the Sun is directly above the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20 and September 23 each year. In most cultures, the equinoxes and solstices are considered to start or separate the seasons, although weather patterns evolve earlier.


title: Earth Day

text: John McConnell first introduced the idea of a global holiday called "Earth Day" at the 1969 UNESCO Conference on the Environment. The first Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto on March 21, 1970. Celebrations were held in various cities, such as San Francisco and in Davis, California with a multi-day street party. UN Secretary-General U Thant supported McConnell's global initiative to celebrate this annual event; and on February 26, 1971, he signed a proclamation to that effect, saying:


title: Earth Day

text: May there be only peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life.


title: Earth Day

text: United Nations secretary-general Kurt Waldheim observed Earth Day with similar ceremonies on the March equinox in 1972, and the United Nations Earth Day ceremony has continued each year since on the day of the March equinox (the United Nations also works with organizers of the April 22 global event). Margaret Mead added her support for the equinox Earth Day, and in 1978 declared:


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day draws on astronomical phenomena in a new way – which is also the most ancient way – by using the Vernal Equinox, the time when the Sun crosses the equator making the length of night and day equal in all parts of the Earth. To this point in the annual calendar, EARTH DAY attaches no local or divisive set of symbols, no statement of the truth or superiority of one way of life over another. But the selection of the March Equinox makes planetary observance of a shared event possible and a flag that shows the Earth, as seen from space, appropriate.


title: Earth Day

text: At the moment of the equinox, it is traditional to observe Earth Day by ringing the Japanese Peace Bell, which Japan donated to the United Nations. Over the years, celebrations have occurred in various places worldwide at the same time as the UN celebration. On March 20, 2008, in addition to the ceremony at the United Nations, ceremonies were held in New Zealand, and bells were sounded in California, Vienna, Paris, Lithuania, Tokyo, and many other locations. The equinox Earth Day at the UN is organized by the Earth Society Foundation.


title: Earth Day

text: Earth Day ringing the peace bell is celebrated around the world in many towns, ringing the Peace Bell in Vienna, Berlin, and elsewhere. A memorable event took place at the UN in Geneva, celebrating a Minute for Peace ringing the Japanese Shinagawa Peace Bell with the help of the Geneva Friendship Association and the Global Youth Foundation, directly after in deep mourning about the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant catastrophe ten days before.


title: Earth Day

text: Besides the Spring Equinox for the Northern Hemisphere, the observance of the Spring Equinox for the Southern Hemisphere in September is of equal importance. The International Day of Peace is celebrated on September 21, and can thus be considered to accord with the original intentions of John McConnell, U Thant and others.


title: Earth Day

text: In 1968, Morton Hilbert and the U.S. Public Health Service organized the Human Ecology Symposium, an environmental conference for students to hear from scientists about the effects of environmental degradation on human health. This was the beginning of Earth Day. For the next two years, Hilbert and students worked to plan the first Earth Day. In April 1970—along with a federal proclamation from U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson—the first Earth Day was held.


title: Earth Day

text: Project Survival, an early environmentalism-awareness education event, was held at Northwestern University on January 23, 1970. This was the first of several events held at university campuses across the United States in the lead-up to the first Earth Day. Also, Ralph Nader began talking about the importance of ecology in 1970.


title: Earth Day

text: The 1960s had been a very dynamic period for ecology in the US. Pre-1960 grassroots activism against DDT in Nassau County, New York, and widespread opposition to open-air nuclear weapons tests with their global nuclear fallout, had inspired Rachel Carson to write her influential bestseller, "Silent Spring" (1962).


title: Earth Day

text: Nelson chose the date to maximize participation on college campuses for what he conceived as an "environmental teach-in". He determined the week of April 19–25 was the best bet as it did not fall during exams or spring breaks. Moreover, it did not conflict with religious holidays such as Easter or Passover, and was late enough in spring to have decent weather. More students were likely to be in class, and there would be less competition with other mid-week events—so he chose Wednesday, April 22. The day also fell after the anniversary of the birth of noted conservationist John Muir. The National Park Service, John Muir National Historic Site, has a celebration every year on or around Earth Day (April 21, 22 or 23), called Birthday-Earth Day, in recognition of Earth Day and John Muir's contribution to the collective consciousness of environmentalism and conservation.


title: Earth Day

text: Unbeknownst to Nelson, April 22, 1970, was coincidentally the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin, when translated to the Gregorian calendar (which the Soviets adopted in 1918). "Time" reported that some suspected the date was not a coincidence, but a clue that the event was "a Communist trick", and quoted a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution as saying, "subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them." J. Edgar Hoover, director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, may have found the Lenin connection intriguing; it was alleged the FBI conducted surveillance at the 1970 demonstrations. The idea that the date was chosen to celebrate Lenin's centenary still persists in some quarters, an idea borne out by the similarity with the subbotnik instituted by Lenin in 1920 as days on which people would have to do community service, which typically consisted in removing rubbish from public property and collecting recyclable material. Subbotniks were also imposed on other countries within the compass of Soviet power, including Eastern Europe, and at the height of its power the Soviet Union established a nationwide subbotnik to be celebrated on Lenin's birthday, April 22, which had been proclaimed a national holiday celebrating communism by Nikita Khrushchev in 1955.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The Great Migration, sometimes known as the Great Northward Migration or the Black Migration, was the movement of six million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West between 1910 and 1970. It was caused primarily by the poor economic conditions for African American people, as well as the prevalent racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern states where Jim Crow laws were upheld. In particular, continued lynchings motivated a portion of the migrants, as African Americans searched for social reprieve. The historic change brought by the migration was amplified because the migrants, for the most part, moved to the then-largest cities in the United States (New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.) at a time when those cities had a central cultural, social, political, and economic influence over the United States. There, African Americans established influential communities of their own. Despite the loss of leaving their homes in the South, and all the barriers faced by the migrants in their new homes, the migration was an act of individual and collective agency, which changed the course of American history, a "declaration of independence" written by their actions.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: From the earliest U.S. population statistics in 1780 until 1910, more than 90% of the African American population lived in the American South, making up the majority of the population in three Southern states, viz. Louisiana (until about 1890), South Carolina (until the 1920s), and Mississippi (until the 1930s). But by the end of the Great Migration, just over half of the African-American population lived in the South, while a little less than half lived in the North and West. Moreover, the African-American population had become highly urbanized. In 1900, only one-fifth of African Americans in the South were living in urban areas. By 1960, half of the African Americans in the South lived in urban areas, and by 1970, more than 80% of African Americans nationwide lived in cities. In 1991, Nicholas Lemann wrote:


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Some historians differentiate between a first Great Migration (1910–40), which saw about 1.6 million people move from mostly rural areas in the South to northern industrial cities, and a Second Great Migration (1940–70), which began after the Great Depression and brought at least five million people—including many townspeople with urban skills—to the North and West.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Since the Civil Rights Movement, the trend has reversed, with more African-Americans moving to the South, albeit far more slowly. Dubbed the New Great Migration, these moves were generally spurred by the economic difficulties of cities in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, growth of jobs in the "New South" and its lower cost of living, family and kinship ties, and lessening discrimination at the hands of white people.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The primary factors for migration among southern African Americans were segregation, indentured servitude, convict leasing, an increase in the spread of racist ideology, widespread lynching (nearly 3,500 African Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1968), and lack of social and economic opportunities in the South. Some factors pulled migrants to the north, such as labor shortages in northern factories brought about by World War I, resulting in thousands of jobs in steel mills, railroads, meatpacking plants, and the automobile industry. The pull of jobs in the north was strengthened by the efforts of labor agents sent by northern businessmen to recruit southern workers. Northern companies offered special incentives to encourage Black workers to relocate, including free transportation and low-cost housing.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: During World War I, there was a decline in European immigrants, which caused Northern factories to feel the impact of a low supply of workers. Around 1.2 million European immigrants arrived during 1914 while only 300,000 arrived the next year. The enlistment of workers into the military had also affected the labor supply. This created a wartime opportunity in the North for African Americans, as the Northern industry sought a new labor supply in the South.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: There were many advantages for Northern jobs compared to Southern jobs including wages that could be double or more. Sharecropping, agricultural depression, the widespread infestation of the boll weevil, and flooding also provided motives for African Americans to move into the Northern Cities. The lack of political power, representation, and social opportunities due to a culture regulated by Jim Crow laws also motivated African Americans to migrate Northward.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, less than eight percent of the African American population lived in the Northeastern or Midwestern United States. This began to change over the next decade; by 1880, migration was underway to Kansas. The U.S. Senate ordered an investigation into it. In 1900, about 90 percent of Black Americans still lived in Southern states.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Between 1910 and 1930, the African-American population increased by about forty percent in Northern states as a result of the migration, mostly in the major cities. The cities of Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, and New York City had some of the biggest increases in the early part of the twentieth century. Tens of thousands of Black workers were recruited for industrial jobs, such as positions related to the expansion of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Because changes were concentrated in cities, which had also attracted millions of new or recent European immigrants, tensions rose as the people competed for jobs and scarce housing. Tensions were often most severe between ethnic Irish, defending their recently gained positions and territory, and recent immigrants and Black people.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: With the migration of African Americans Northward and the mixing of White and Black workers in factories, the tension was building, largely driven by White workers. The AFL, the American Federation of Labor, advocated the separation between European Americans and African Americans in the workplace. There were non-violent protests such as walk-outs in protest of having Blacks and Whites working together. As tension was building due to advocating for segregation in the workplace, violence soon erupted.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: In 1917, the East St Louis Illinois Riot, known for one of the bloodiest workplace riots, had between 40 and 200 killed and over 6000 African Americans displaced from their homes. The NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, responded to the violence with a march known as the Silent March. Over 10,000 African American men and women demonstrated in Harlem, New York. Conflicts continued post World War I, as African Americans continued to face conflicts and tension while the African American labor activism continued.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: In the late summer and autumn of 1919, racial tensions became violent and came to be known as the Red Summer. This period of time was defined by violence and prolonged rioting between Black and White Americans in major United States cities. The reasons for this violence vary. Cities that were affected by the violence included Washington D.C., Chicago, Omaha, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Elaine, Arkansas, a small rural town southwest of Memphis.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The race riots peaked in Chicago, with the most violence and death occurring there during the riots. The authors of "The Negro in Chicago; a study of race relations and a race riot", an official report from 1922 on race relations in Chicago, came to the conclusion that there were many factors that led to the violent outbursts in Chicago. Principally, many Black workers had assumed the jobs of white men who went to go fight in World War I. As the war ended in 1918, many men returned home to find out their jobs had been taken by Black men who were willing to work for far less.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: By the time the rioting and violence had subsided in Chicago, 38 people had lost their lives, with 500 more injured. Additionally, $250,000 worth of property was destroyed, and over a thousand persons were left homeless. In other cities across the nation many more had been affected by the violence of the Red Summer. The Red Summer enlightened many to the growing racial tension in America. The violence in these major cities prefaced the soon to follow Harlem Renaissance, an African-American cultural revolution, in the 1920s. Racial violence appeared again in Chicago in the 1940s and in Detroit as well as other cities in the Northeast as racial tensions over housing and employment discrimination grew.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: James Gregory calculates decade-by-decade migration volumes in his book "The Southern Diaspora." Black migration picked up from the start of the new century, with 204,000 leaving in the first decade. The pace accelerated with the outbreak of World War I and continued through the 1920s. By 1930, there were 1.3 million former southerners living in other regions.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The Great Depression wiped out job opportunities in the northern industrial belt, especially for African Americans, and caused a sharp reduction in migration. In the 1930s and 1940s, increasing mechanization of agriculture virtually brought the institution of sharecropping that had existed since the Civil War to an end in the United States causing many landless Black farmers to be forced off of the land.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: As a result, approximately 1.4 million Black southerners moved north or west in the 1940s, followed by 1.1 million in the 1950s, and another 2.4 million people in the 1960s and early 1970s. By the late 1970s, as deindustrialization and the Rust Belt crisis took hold, the Great Migration came to an end. But, in a reflection of changing economics, as well as the end of Jim Crow laws in the 1960s and improving race relations in the South, in the 1980s and early 1990s, more Black Americans were heading South than leaving that region.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: African Americans moved from the 14 states of the South, especially Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Georgia.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The Great Depression of the 1930s resulted in reduced migration because of decreased opportunities. With the defense buildup for World War II and with the post-war economic prosperity, migration was revived, with larger numbers of Black Americans leaving the South through the 1960s. This wave of migration often resulted in overcrowding of urban areas due to exclusionary housing policies meant to keep African American families out of developing suburbs. For example, in the New York and northern New Jersey suburbs 67,000 mortgages were insured by the G.I. Bill, but fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Big cities were the principal destinations of southerners throughout the two phases of the Great Migration. In the first phase, eight major cities attracted two-thirds of the migrants: New York and Chicago, followed in order by Philadelphia, St. Louis, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis. The Second great Black migration increased the populations of these cities while adding others as destinations, including the Western states. Western cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Phoenix, Seattle, and Portland also managed to attract African Americans in large numbers.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: There were clear migratory patterns that linked particular states and cities in the South to corresponding destinations in the North and West. Almost half of those who migrated from Mississippi during the first Great Migration, for example, ended up in Chicago, while those from Virginia tended to move to Philadelphia. For the most part, these patterns were related to geography (i.e. longitude), with the closest cities attracting the most migrants (such as Los Angeles and San Francisco receiving a disproportionate number of migrants from Texas and Louisiana). When multiple destinations were equidistant, chain migration played a larger role, with migrants following the path set by those before them.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: African Americans from the South also migrated to industrialized Southern cities, in addition to northward and westward to war-boom cities. There was an increase in Louisville's defense industries, making it a vital part of America's effort into World War II and Louisville's economy. Industries ranged from producing synthetic rubber, smokeless powders, artillery shells, and vehicle parts. Many industries also converted to creating products for the war effort, such as Ford Motor Company converting its plant to produce military jeeps. The company Hillerich & Bradsby initially made baseball bats and then converted their production into making gunstocks.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: During the war, there was a shortage of workers in the defense industry. African Americans took the opportunity to fill in the industries' missing jobs during the war, around 4.3 million intrastate migration and 2.1 million interstate migration in the Southern states. The defense industry in Louisville reached a peak of roughly over 80,000 employment. At first, job availability was not open for African Americans, but the growing need for jobs in the defense industry and the Fair Employment Practices Committee sign by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Southern industries began to accept African Americans into the workplace.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Migration patterns reflected network ties. Black Americans tended to go to locations in the North where other Black Americans had previously migrated. Per a 2021 study, "when one randomly chosen African American moved from a Southern birth town to a destination county, then 1.9 additional Black migrants made the same move on average."


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: After moving from the racist environment of the south to the northern states, African Americans were inspired to be creative in different ways. The Great Migration resulted in the Harlem Renaissance, which was also fueled by immigrants from the Caribbean, and the Chicago Black Renaissance. In her book "The Warmth of Other Suns", Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson discusses the migration of "six million Black Southerners [moving] out of the terror of Jim Crow to an uncertain existence in the North and Midwest."


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The struggle of African-American migrants to adapt to Northern cities was the subject of Jacob Lawrence's "Migration Series" of paintings, created when he was a young man in New York. Exhibited in 1941 at the Museum of Modern Art, Lawrence's "Series" attracted wide attention; he was quickly perceived as one of the most important African-American artists of the time.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The Great Migration had effects on music as well as other cultural subjects. Many blues singers migrated from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago to escape racial discrimination. Muddy Waters, Chester Burnett, and Buddy Guy are among the most well-known blues artists who migrated to Chicago. Great Delta-born pianist Eddie Boyd told "Living Blues" magazine, "I thought of coming to Chicago where I could get away from some of that racism and where I would have an opportunity to, well, do something with my talent... It wasn't peaches and cream [in Chicago], man, but it was a hell of a lot better than down there where I was born."


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The Great Migration drained off much of the rural Black population of the South, and for a time, froze or reduced African-American population growth in parts of the region. The migration changed the demographics in a number of states; there were decades of Black population decline, especially across the Deep South "black belt" where cotton had been the main cash crop but had been devastated by the arrival of the boll weevil. In 1910, African Americans constituted the majority of the population of South Carolina and Mississippi, and more than 40 percent in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas; by 1970, only in Mississippi did the African-American population constitute more than 30 percent of the state's total. "The disappearance of the 'black belt' was one of the striking effects" of the Great Migration, James Gregory wrote.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: In Mississippi, the Black American population decreased from about 56% of the population in 1910 to about 37% by 1970, remaining the majority only in some Delta counties. In Georgia, Black Americans decreased from about 45% of the population in 1910 to about 26% by 1970. In South Carolina, the Black population decreased from about 55% of the population in 1910 to about 30% by 1970.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The growing Black presence outside the South changed the dynamics and demographics of numerous cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and West. In 1900, only 740,000 African Americans lived outside the South, just 8 percent of the nation's total Black population. By 1970, more than 10.6 million African Americans lived outside the South, 47 percent of the nation's total.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Because the migrants concentrated in the big cities of the north and west, their influence was magnified in those places. Cities that had been virtually all white at the start of the century became centers of Black culture and politics by mid-century. Residential segregation and redlining led to concentrations of Black people in certain areas. The northern "Black metropolises" developed an important infrastructure of newspapers, businesses, jazz clubs, churches, and political organizations that provided the staging ground for new forms of racial politics and new forms of Black culture.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: As a result of the Great Migration, the first large urban Black communities developed in northern cities beyond New York, Boston, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and Philadelphia, which had Black communities even before the Civil War, and attracted migrants after the war. It is conservatively estimated that 400,000 African Americans left the South in 1916 through 1918 to take advantage of a labor shortage in industrial cities during the First World War.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: In 1910, the African-American population of Detroit was 6,000. The Great Migration, along with immigrants from southern and eastern Europe as well as their descendants, rapidly turned the city into the country's fourth-largest. By the start of the Great Depression in 1929, the city's African-American population had increased to 120,000.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: In 1900–01, Chicago had a total population of 1,754,473. By 1920, the city had added more than 1 million residents. During the second wave of the Great Migration (1940–60), the African-American population in the city grew from 278,000 to 813,000.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The flow of African Americans to Ohio, particularly to Cleveland, changed the demographics of the state and its primary industrial city. Before the Great Migration, an estimated 1.1% to 1.6% of Cleveland's population was African American. By 1920, 4.3% of Cleveland's population was African American. The number of African Americans in Cleveland continued to rise over the next 20 years of the Great Migration.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Other northeastern and midwestern industrial cities, such as Philadelphia, New York City, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Omaha, also had dramatic increases in their African-American populations. By the 1920s, New York's Harlem became a center of Black cultural life, influenced by the American migrants as well as new immigrants from the Caribbean area.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Second-tier industrial cities that were destinations for numerous Black migrants were Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Columbus, Cincinnati, Grand Rapids and Indianapolis, and smaller industrial cities such as Chester, Gary, Dayton, Erie, Toledo, Youngstown, Peoria, Muskegon, Newark, Flint, Saginaw, New Haven, and Albany. People tended to take the cheapest rail ticket possible and go to areas where they had relatives and friends.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: For example, many people from Mississippi moved directly north by train to Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Louis, from Alabama to Cleveland and Detroit, from Georgia and South Carolina to New York City, Baltimore, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, and in the second migration, from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi to Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland, Phoenix, Denver, and Seattle.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Educated African Americans were better able to obtain jobs after the Great Migration, eventually gaining a measure of class mobility, but the migrants encountered significant forms of discrimination. Because so many people migrated in a short period of time, the African-American migrants were often resented by the urban European-American working class (many of whom were recent immigrants themselves); fearing their ability to negotiate rates of pay or secure employment, the ethnic whites felt threatened by the influx of new labor competition. Sometimes those who were most fearful or resentful were the last immigrants of the 19th and new immigrants of the 20th century.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: African Americans made substantial gains in industrial employment, particularly in the steel, automobile, shipbuilding, and meatpacking industries. Between 1910 and 1920, the number of Black workers employed in industry nearly doubled from 500,000 to 901,000. After the Great Depression, more advances took place after workers in the steel and meatpacking industries organized into labor unions in the 1930s and 1940s, under the interracial Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The unions ended the segregation of many jobs, and African Americans began to advance into more skilled jobs and supervisory positions previously informally reserved for whites.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Between 1940 and 1960, the number of Black people in managerial and administrative occupations doubled, along with the number of Black people in white-collar occupations, while the number of Black agricultural workers in 1960 fell to one-fourth of what it was in 1940. Also, between 1936 and 1959, Black income relative to white income more than doubled in various skilled trades. Despite employment discrimination, Black people had higher labor force participation rates than whites in every U.S. Census from 1890 to 1950. As a result of these advancements, the percentage of Black families living below the poverty line declined from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960 and to 30 percent by 1970.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Populations increased so rapidly among both African-American migrants and new European immigrants that there were housing shortages in most major cities. With fewer resources, the newer groups were forced to compete for the oldest, most run-down housing. Ethnic groups created territories which they defended against change. Discrimination often restricted African Americans to crowded neighborhoods. The more established populations of cities tended to move to newer housing as it was developing in the outskirts. Mortgage discrimination and redlining in inner city areas limited the newer African-American migrants' ability to determine their own housing, or obtain a fair price. In the long term, the National Housing Act of 1934 contributed to limiting the availability of loans to urban areas, particularly those areas inhabited by African Americans.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Migrants going to Albany, New York found poor living conditions and employment opportunities, but also higher wages and better schools and social services. Local organizations such as the Albany Inter-Racial Council and churches, helped them, but de facto segregation and discrimination remained well into the late 20th century.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Migrants going to Pittsburgh and surrounding mill towns in western Pennsylvania between 1890 and 1930 faced racial discrimination and limited economic opportunities. The Black population in Pittsburgh jumped from 6,000 in 1880 to 27,000 in 1910. Many took highly paid, skilled jobs in the steel mills. Pittsburgh's Black population increased to 37,700 in 1920 (6.4% of the total) while the Black element in Homestead, Rankin, Braddock, and others nearly doubled. They succeeded in building effective community responses that enabled the survival of new communities.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: In cities such as Newark, New York and Chicago, African Americans became increasingly integrated into society. As they lived and worked more closely with European Americans, the divide became increasingly indefinite. This period marked the transition for many African Americans from lifestyles as rural farmers to urban industrial workers.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: This migration gave birth to a cultural boom in cities such as Chicago and New York. In Chicago for instance, the neighborhood of Bronzeville became known as the "Black Metropolis". From 1924 to 1929, the "Black Metropolis" was at the peak of its golden years. Many of the community's entrepreneurs were Black during this period. "The foundation of the first African American YMCA took place in Bronzeville, and worked to help incoming migrants find jobs in the city of Chicago."


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The "Black Belt" geographical and racial isolation of this community, bordered to the north and east by whites, and to the south and west by industrial sites and ethnic immigrant neighborhoods, made it a site for the study of the development of an urban Black community. For urbanized people, eating proper foods in a sanitary, civilized setting such as the home or a restaurant was a social ritual that indicated one's level of respectability. The people native to Chicago had pride in the high level of integration in Chicago restaurants, which they attributed to their unassailable manners and refined tastes.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Since African-American migrants retained many Southern cultural and linguistic traits, such cultural differences created a sense of "otherness" in terms of their reception by others who were already living in the cities. Stereotypes ascribed to Black people during this period and ensuing generations often derived from African-American migrants' rural cultural traditions, which were maintained in stark contrast to the urban environments in which the people resided.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The beginning of the Great Migration exposed a paradox in race relations in the American South at that time. Although Black people were treated with extreme hostility and subjected to legal discrimination, the southern economy was deeply dependent on them as an abundant supply of cheap labor, and Black workers were seen as the most critical factor in the economic development of the South. One South Carolina politician summed up the dilemma: "Politically speaking, there are far too many negroes, but from an industrial standpoint there is room for many more."


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: When the Great Migration started in the 1910s, white southern elites seemed to be unconcerned, and industrialists and cotton planters saw it as a positive, as it was siphoning off surplus industrial and agricultural labor. As the migration picked up, however, southern elites began to panic, fearing that a prolonged Black exodus would bankrupt the South, and newspaper editorials warned of the danger. White employers eventually took notice and began expressing their fears. White southerners soon began trying to stem the flow in order to prevent the hemorrhaging of their labor supply, and some even began attempting to address the poor living standards and racial oppression experienced by Southern Black people in order to induce them to stay.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: As a result, southern employers increased their wages to match those on offer in the North, and some individual employers even opposed the worst excesses of Jim Crow laws. When the measures failed to stem the tide, white southerners, in concert with federal officials who feared the rise of Black nationalism, co-operated in attempting to coerce Black people to stay in the South. The Southern Metal Trades Association urged decisive action to stop Black migration, and some employers undertook serious efforts against it.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The largest southern steel manufacturer refused to cash checks sent to finance Black migration, efforts were made to restrict bus and train access for Black Americans, agents were stationed in northern cities to report on wage levels, unionization, and the rise of Black nationalism, and newspapers were pressured to divert more coverage to negative aspects of Black life in the North. A series of local and federal directives were put into place with the goal of restricting Black mobility, including local vagrancy ordinances, "work or fight" laws demanding all males either be employed or serve in the army, and conscription orders. Intimidation and beatings were also used to terrorize Black people into staying. These intimidation tactics were described by Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson as interfering with "the natural right of workers to move from place to place at their own discretion".


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: During the wave of migration that took place in the 1940s, white southerners were less concerned, as mechanization of agriculture in the late 1930s had resulted in another labor surplus so southern planters put up less resistance.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: Black Americans were not the only group to leave the South for Northern industrial opportunities. Large numbers of poor whites from Appalachia and the Upland South made the journey to the Midwest and Northeast after World War Two, a phenomenon known as the Hillbilly Highway.


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: The Great Migration is a backdrop of the 2013 film "The Butler", as the Forest Whitaker character Cecil Gaines moves from a plantation in Georgia to become a butler at the White House. The Great Migration also served as part of August Wilson’s inspiration for "The Piano Lesson".


title: Great Migration (African American)

text: After the political and civil gains of the Civil Rights Movement, in the 1970s, migration began to increase again. It moved in a different direction, as Black people who were searching for economic opportunity traveled to new regions of the South.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Frederick Samson Robert Morice Fox (born 5 April 1989) is an English film and stage actor. His prominent screen performances include roles as singer Marilyn in the BBC's Boy George biopic "Worried About the Boy" (2010), Freddie Baxter in series "Cucumber" (2015) and "Banana" (2015), and Jeremy Bamber in "White House Farm" (2020).


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: His many notable theatre credits include starring as Simon Bliss in "Hay Fever" (2012) at the Noël Coward Theatre; as Oscar Wilde's young lover Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas in "The Judas Kiss" (2012–2013) at the Hampstead Theatre, during a UK tour, and in a West End transfer; as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet (2015) at the Sheffield Crucible and in Kenneth Branagh's 2016 production at the Garrick Theatre; as Tristan Tzara in "Travesties" (2016–2017) at the Menier Chocolate Factory and Apollo Theatre; as Lord Goring in "An Ideal Husband" (2018) at the Vaudeville Theatre; and as Edmond Rostand in Edmond de Bergerac (2019) at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and during a UK tour.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Fox appeared on the big screen in "The Three Musketeers" (2011), "The Riot Club" (2014), "Pride" (2014), "Victor Frankenstein" (2015), "" (2017) and "Black '47" (2018).


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Frederick Samson Robert Morice Fox was born on 5 April 1989 in Hammersmith, London. He was raised between London and the family home in Kimmeridge Bay, Dorset and was surrounded by actors and writers from a young age.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: He is the son of actress Joanna David (née Joanna Elizabeth Hacking) and actor Edward Fox. He is the younger brother of actress Emilia Fox and the half-brother of Lucy Arabella Preston (the Viscountess Gormanston), the grandson of actress Angela Worthington Fox and theatrical agent Robin Fox, and the great-grandson of the playwright Frederick Lonsdale. He is the nephew of producer Robert Fox and actor James Fox, and a cousin to actors Laurence, Jack and Lydia Fox. He was named after Fred Zinnemann, who directed his father in "The Day of the Jackal", and after his great-great grandfather Victorian industrialist Samson Fox, who invented the corrugated boiler flue and built Harrogate's former Kursaal now known as the Royal Hall. Asked if he believes in his acting gene, he said, "I used not to until my sister Milly was on the BBC's "Who Do You Think You Are?"" where they discovered the thespian thread goes back 100 years.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: From 1994 to 2002, Fox was educated at Arnold House School, a preparatory school for boys in the St John's Wood area of London, where he was head boy. He was prefect during secondary school at Bryanston School, a boarding school in Dorset where he perfected his elocution and overcame fairly serious dyslexia. During his time there, he portrayed a headmaster in "A Risky Business", a play written especially for him by a classics master.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: He then attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and graduated in 2010. His drama teachers praised his talent for acting.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Fox's first screen appearance was at age seven as an extra in the 1997 TV adaptation of "Rebecca". In 2009, he appeared in "" as head boy and in "Agatha Christie's Marple" as Tom Savage. In 2010, he starred as Jamie in the musical "The Last Five Years" at the Silk Street Theatre and, after a sell-out success, at the Barbican Pit Theatre.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: Fox starred in his first breakthrough role as the androgynous 1980s pop star Marilyn in "Worried About The Boy" based on the life of English singer Boy George. He appeared as Peter Scabius in "Any Human Heart" and as Guy Wells in "Rosamunde Pilcher's Shades of Love". He played cleft-palated Camille Chandebise in "A Flea in Her Ear" at The Old Vic, Tony Davenport in the stage play revival of "Cause Célèbre" at The Old Vic, and Ratallack in "The Shadow Line".


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: His international film debut came through his role as King Louis XIII of France in "The Three Musketeers" (2011). In 2012, he played the title role in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood". He appeared in "Lewis" as Sebastian Dromgoole and in Tom Stoppard's critically acclaimed period drama "Parade's End" as Edward Wannop. He then played Simon Bliss in "Hay Fever" at the Noël Coward Theatre and made an early career impact as Oscar Wilde's young lover Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas in "The Judas Kiss" (2012–2013) at the Hampstead Theatre, during a UK tour, and in its West End transfer. Fox voiced Prince Louis of Battenberg in Margy Kinmonth's "Royal Paintbox" with HRH The Prince of Wales featuring the artworks of the British royal family across centuries. He also starred as Sandy Irvine in "Words of Everest".


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: In Lone Scherfig's "The Riot Club" (2014) Fox played James Leighton-Masters, the outgoing president of the ten-member elite Oxford University club. Based on Laura Wade's hit play "Posh", it tackles class and social structure as a commentary on the Bullingdon Club. He appeared as Jeff Cole in the critically acclaimed historical comedy-drama "Pride" and starred in Anthony Fabian's "Freeze-Frame" (2014) commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to promote collaboration between China and UK's film industries.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: In 2015, he played the breakout 'bisexual nympho' Freddie Baxter in the Channel 4 hit series "Cucumber", a role which he reprised in E4's "Banana", and appeared as himself in "Tofu". Both "Cucumber" and "Banana" were nominated for the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding TV Movie or Limited Series in 2016. "i-D" said of Fox, "you can't deny he's a connoisseur at picking the parts which have maximum impact." Fox then played the wealthy aristocrat Finnegan, the benefactor of the title character's Prometheus creation in "Victor Frankenstein".


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: In June 2016, he was announced as third prize winner at the 2015 Ian Charleson Awards, having played the role of Romeo in "Romeo and Juliet" (2015) to great acclaim at the Sheffield Crucible. His proficiency with the role led him to be called into service again as Romeo in Kenneth Branagh's 2016 production at the Garrick Theatre on short notice when the preceding Romeo and his understudy were both injured. With just a 2-day rehearsal after he was cast, Fox took over the role on 26 July and performed it until the end of the play's run on 13 August, garnering rave reviews and impressing cast and crew. He then starred in "The Northleach Horror" as the maverick scientist Whitsuntide and led the cast of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Southwark Playhouse as Nick Bottom / Demetrius.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: He performed as poet Tristan Tzara, one of the founders and central figures of the Dada movement, in Tom Stoppard's "Travesties" from September until November 2016 at the Menier Chocolate Factory, the play being listed in The Arts Desk's "Best of 2016: Theatre". The following year, it ran for a West End revival from February to April 2017 at the Apollo Theatre to widespread acclaim, subsequently earning Fox nominations at the Laurence Olivier Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and the WhatsOnStage Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Play.


title: Freddie Fox (actor)

text: He then voiced Dennis in hit computer-animated series "", in its launch becoming the highest-rated animated show on CBBC for 6 to 12 year olds and one of the top 10 shows for kids across all channels. Its first season received nominations at the 2018 British Animation Awards as Best Children's Series, the 2019 Kidscreen Awards as Best Animated Series, and the 2018 International Emmy Kids Awards in the Animation category. He then appeared as Rubio in "" (2017) directed by Guy Ritchie. Fox played key scenes as Mr. Sloane in "Joe Orton Laid Bare", voiced a character/s in "Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2", and voiced Corvin in "Xenoblade Chronicles 2".