The State Flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( ), or simply the Soviet flag ( ), was a red banner with two communist symbols displayed in the canton: a gold hammer and sickle topped off by a gold five-point star. The flag's design and symbolism are derived from several sources, but emerged during the Russian Revolution. It has also come to serve as the standard symbol representing communism as a whole, recognized as such in international circles, even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The plain red flag, which was a traditional revolutionary symbol long before 1917, was incorporated into the Soviet flag to pay tribute to the international aspect of the workers' revolution. On the other hand, the unique hammer-and-sickle design was a modern industrial touch adopted from the Russian Revolution; it represented the "victorious and enduring revolutionary alliance" by unifying the hammer (i.e., workers) and the sickle (i.e., peasants). The gold-bordered five-point star situated above the hammer and sickle was a representation of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The first flag was adopted in December 1922. In 1923, 1924, 1936 and 1955, statutes were adopted that resulted in adjustments to the hammer's handle length and the sickle's shape. In 1980, an amendment was made to the 1955 decree that removed the hammer and sickle displayed on the flag's reverse side, though the legal description remained completely unchanged. The design of the 1955 Soviet flag served as the basis for all of the flags of the Union Republics.

Symbolism and design
The flag of the Soviet Union consisted of a plain red flag with a gold hammer crossed with a gold sickle placed beneath a gold-bordered red star. This symbol is in the upper left canton of the red flag.

The colour red honours the red flag of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the red star and hammer and sickle are symbols of communism and socialism.

The hammer symbolises urban industrial workers while the sickle symbolises agricultural workers (peasants)—who together, as the Proletarian class, form the state.  The red star represents the Communist Party, and its position over the hammer and sickle symbolises its leading role in socialist society to unify and enlighten the workers and peasants in the building of communism.

The flag's design was legislated in 1955, which gave a clear way to define and create the flag. This resulted in a change of the hammer's handle length and the shape of the sickle.  The adopted statute stated that:
The ratio of width to length of the flag is 1:2.
The hammer and sickle are in a square with sides equal to  of the flag's height. The sharp tip of the sickle lies in the center of the upper side of the square, and the handles of the hammer and sickle rest in the bottom corners of the square. The length of the hammer and its handle is  of the square diagonal.
The five-pointed star is inscribed into a circle with a diameter of  of the flag's height, the circle being tangent to the upper side of the square.
The distance of the vertical axis of the star, hammer and sickle from the hoist is  of the flag's height. The distance from the upper side of the flag to the center of the star is  of the flag's height.

Officially since 1980, the reverse side of the flag was a plain red field without the hammer and sickle. In practice however, this was very commonly disregarded by flag makers as it was far easier and less costly to simply print the flag through and through, with the obverse design mirrored on the reverse. It was also common to see the reverse of the flag bear the hammer and sickle in the obverse formation. An example of the flag demonstrating its de jure status as being only one-sided is that of the Soviet flag atop the Moscow Kremlin which bore the single-side official design.

For vertical display, the flag was made with the distinct difference of having the hammer and sickle rotated 90 degrees in order to compensate for the change in dimensions. This was common in official practice, however the common flag owner would simply hang the standard design of the flag by the hoist.

History
During the establishment of the Russian Soviet Republic, Vladimir Lenin and his followers had considered the inclusion of a sword symbol in addition to the hammer and sickle as part of the state seal on which the flag was eventually based.  The idea was dismissed as too visually aggressive, with Lenin apparently affirming, "A sword is not one of our symbols."

The first official flag was adopted in December 1922 at the First Congress of Soviets of the USSR.  It was agreed that the red banner "was transformed from the symbol of the Party to the symbol of a state, and around that flag gathered the peoples of the soviet republics to unite into one state — the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics".  On 30 December 1922, the Congress adopted a Declaration and Agreement on the establishment of the USSR.  Article 22 of the Agreement states: "The USSR has a flag, coat of arms and a state seal."  The description of the first flag was given in the 1924 Soviet Constitution, accepted in the second session of the executive committee (CIK) of the USSR on 6 July 1923.  The text of article 71 states: "The state flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics consists of a red or scarlet field with the state's coat of arms." It was ordered with the unusual ratio of 4:1 in proportion and consisted of a red flag with the state coat of arms in the center.  However, such a flag was never mass-produced.  This flag was the official flag for four months, and was replaced as the official flag by the more familiar hammer and sickle design during the third session of the CIK of the USSR on 12 November 1923.

In the third session of the CIK of the USSR, the description of Soviet flag in the Constitution was changed, and article 71 was edited to read: "The state flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics consists of a red or scarlet field, and in the canton a golden sickle and hammer, and a red five-pointed star bordered in gold above them.  The ratio of width to length is 1:2."  On 19 August 1955, the Statute on the State Flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was adopted by a decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.  This resulted in a change of the hammer's handle length and the shape of the sickle. On 15 August 1980, a new edition of the Statute on the State Flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was adopted, which did not make any changes to the flag's description aside from removing the hammer and sickle on the reverse side of the flag. From this point on, the flag stayed in use with this design until the disintegration of the USSR on 26 December 1991, at which time it ceased to be a national flag and replaced by national flags of the post-Soviet republics.

On 15 April 1996 Boris Yeltsin signed a presidential decree giving the Soviet flag (called the Victory Banner, after the banner that was raised above the Reichstag on 1 May 1945) status similar to that of the national flag. The hammer and sickle were removed from the flag, leaving only the star, but they were reinstated later. On certain holidays, the Victory Banner is flown along with the Russian flag.

Contemporary usage
In current times, the Soviet national flag (and similar flags) are widely used by those on the political far left, most often by those who support Marxism–Leninism.

The Soviet flag is also actively promoted in Russia as a symbol of nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Various politicians frequently utilize it as a symbol of the superpower status Russia lost in 1991.

Amidst the backdrop of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation proposed to the State Duma the adoption of the Soviet flag as the official flag of Russia on April 19, 2022. The use of Soviet symbols including its flag became very extensive by invading Russian forces over the course of the war along with the letter "Z".

Derivative flags from the Soviet flag
The flags of the Soviet republics that constituted the USSR and the Victory Banner were all defaced or modified versions of the Soviet flag.

Gallery

See also
Communist symbolism
Flag of Russia
Flags of the Soviet Republics
Flags whose reverse differs from the obverse
Hammer and sickle
Red flag
Red star
State Emblem of the Soviet Union

Notes

References

External links

Flags of the Soviet Union
National symbols of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
1923 establishments in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union

Flag of the Soviet Union


Fangbone is a Canadian animated television series. It is produced by the Canadian company Radical Sheep Productions Inc. It is distributed by Disney XD Canada. The series is based on the New York Times best-selling comic books by Michael Rex. The first episode aired in March 2016. The last episode was in January 2017.

The series' pilot first aired in Canada. It won numerous awards including Best One-Off Or Special from the 2015 Kidscreen Awards, Best Animated Writing from the 2015 Writer's Guild Of Canada Awards, and Best TV Show Ages 9-14 from the 2015 Youth Media Alliance Awards. It was also nominated for Best Animated Series at the 2015 Canadian Screen Awards.

Plot
Fangbone is a nine-year-old barbarian warrior from Skullbania. He has landed in Eastwood Elementary's third grade class to save his native land from the villain, Venomous Drool. With the help of his new friend Bill, a lovable, normal, goofy kid, Fangbone beats his enemies while discovering the modern world.

Broadcast
A pilot for the series premiered on Disney XD Canada in 2014. Soon after, production began on a first season. This first aired in March 2016 in North America.

References

Canadian animated television series

Fangbone


Ethnologue is an annual publication which lists information about all living languages of the world. Ethnologue uses  a three letter code to identify a language. It also classifies the languages into ten different groups, based on how common they are. The classification is from international language, to extinct language.  The organism that publishes Ethnologue is called SIL international.

Linguistics

Ethnologue


Quinn Sullivan (born March 26, 1999) is an American child prodigy from New Bedford MA. He plays the guitar.

Sullivan began taking guitar lessons at age three. He has studied with Brian Cass of The Overclock Orchestra and the Toe Jam Puppet Band as well as Stan Belmarce. The first original song he wrote with Chris Waters was titled "Sing, Dance, Clap Your Hands". Sullivan first gained national media attention at age six when he appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show. Sullivan gained more notoriety when Buddy Guy asked him to come on stage and play during a performance at the Zeiterion Theater in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 2007. Quinn has since performed on stage with Guy as well as with B.B. King and has played in venues such as the Beacon Theatre in New York City, the Orpheum Theatre in Boston, and Buddy Guy's Legends in Chicago. In 2008, Sullivan appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and was featured on NBC's The Today Show in July 2009. In 2009, Sullivan opened for Buddy Guy on his East Coast tour during the summer, played his own set at the popular summer music festival Lollapalooza, as well as the Austin City Limits Festival in October.

Sullivan makes a guest appearance on Buddy Guy's Grammy-nominated album Skin Deep, released in 2008.  Sullivan's solo can be heard on the track "Who's Gonna Fill Those Shoes".  Sullivan's single, "Summer of Love", was released in 2009.

References
"8-year-old guitarist jams with Buddy Guy at 'Z'" (South Coast Today)
"Jerry Lee Lewis knocks 'em dead at the 'Z'" (South Coast Today)
Quinn's Father's Band: "18 years on ... The PEARLY BAKER BAND keeps on truckin' " (South Coast Today)
Local guitar prodigy ready to rock Oprah

opening for Buddy Guy at Legends 2011

Other websites
Official website

1999 births
Living people
American guitarists
Musicians from Massachusetts

Quinn Sullivan


The Invisible Man, the second television series with this title, debuted in the US in 1975 on NBC and starred David McCallum as the scientist Daniel Westin and Melinda Fee as his wife, Dr. Kate Westin. The series was created by Harve Bennett. A pilot TV movie initially aired in May 1975 and was followed by a 12-episode series later that year. A TV tie-in novel based on the script of the pilot episode was written by Michael Jahn and published by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1975.

Plot

The pilot

Inspired by the original 1897 novel by H.G. Wells, the pilot film depicts Daniel Westin working for a company called the Klae Corporation, which is doing experiments in teleportation. He discovers the side effect of his work is the ability to turn objects invisible, and tries to find medical applications for his invention. He discovers that objects that are made invisible reappear after a few hours, and on living test animals the collars they wear re-appear before the living cells themselves. Obsessed by his invention, Westin decides to become invisible himself, in part to prove that a human can survive the process, and also to test a serum he has developed to reverse the invisibility.

He reveals the process to his boss, Walter Carlson (Jackie Cooper), who is initially unimpressed by what he sees as millions spent on a nuclear disintegrator, but he becomes more interested when he realises that the pen Westin disintegrated is actually still there ("Do you know what you've got here?" "An invisible pen..." "Cute. No, invisible armies..."). He wants to back the project for military purposes, and in the course of the argument it is revealed that the Pentagon has provided the funding for Westin's research; in effect the military already own the process. Westin tries to destroy his invention by sneaking into the lab after hours and deleting his research. In order to make his escape he becomes invisible for a second time, before triggering an overload and destroying the apparatus. But it appears that after all the process is unstable, and he becomes only briefly visible before turning permanently invisible; he cannot return to his visible state any longer, and the serum is ineffective. He goes to his friend, Dr. Nick Maggio (Henry Darrow), a skilled plastic surgeon who creates a disguise for him in the form of a face mask and a pair of gloves using a special material called Dermaplex that has the same properties as human skin, which enable Westin to appear in public. The Dermaplex side effect is that Westin has to remove the mask from time to time because, as Dr. Maggio states, "The beard will be your enemy, and the itch will drive you crazy."

By the conclusion of the pilot, the process' lack of stability renders it effectively useless for commercial or military applications, and the Klae Corporation is persuaded to re-employ him in his research capacity despite his condition, and thus the series begins from this point. Westin seeks to perfect his work and at the same time find a cure — a means of restoring his visibility.

The series

There were differences between the pilot and the series. The pilot depicts Westin as a tragic figure, the "victim" of the invisibility process; despite his continued efforts, he essentially remains invisible all the time and must use technology to "fake" being visible.

The series was lighter and more humorous, featuring invisibility-related gags and scenarios (in the case of the latter, many of these were depicted in the opening title sequence — such as a telephone receiver rising unsupported off its hook and a Jeep driving itself, to name but two), and ignoring the tragic side of Westin's predicament. The first post-pilot episode indicates that Westin and his wife Kate have been working as agents for some time. Indeed, the character's invisibility was utilised as the Klae Resource of the show's introduction; an invisible man can go places and do things that the visible cannot accomplish.

Another difference is in the area of casting; in the pilot, Jackie Cooper portrayed Westin's superior, Walter Carlson, but for the series, the role was recast with Craig Stevens playing the part. The character was also altered to be more sympathetic and closer to the Oscar Goldman archetype.

Like its late 1950s predecessor, H.G. Wells' Invisible Man, the episodes featured sequences of the camera taking on Westin's point of view, showing whoever and/or whatever the character himself was seeing at the time.

The Invisible Man featured episodes that were episodic in that, save the pilot, the series episodes could be viewed in any order. However, the show was canceled after one season due to low ratings before the underlying arc of Westin curing his invisibility and returning to normality could be resolved. For the following season, NBC did however commission a near-identical series in terms of premise, entitled Gemini Man.

Cast
 David McCallum as Dr. Daniel Westin
 Melinda O. Fee as Kate Westin
 Jackie Cooper as Walter Carlson (pilot episode only)
 Craig Stevens as Walter Carlson
 Henry Darrow as Dr. Nick Maggio (pilot episode only)
 Charles Aidman as Dr. Nick Maggio ("An Attempt to Save Face" only)

Production
The series was shot on film, but the blue screen special effects were shot on video using "Image 655", a special 24 frame/sec 655 line video system based on modified NTSC cameras and videotape recorders, as this was much cheaper and faster than using traditional film-based blue screen effects. The videotaped effects shots were transferred to film and edited into the finished episodes.

Episodes

International broadcasting
The series aired on BBC1 in the UK, starting later in September 1975.
It was shown on French TV (TF1) in 1976.
It was also dubbed in Persian and broadcast on NIRT 2 (Iran) in 1978.
It was also dubbed in Italian and broadcast on various channels in Italy in the early 1980s.
It was broadcast in Finland in 1976, with original soundtrack and Finnish subtitles.
It was broadcast in Australia in 1976.

Home media
On February 21, 2012, Visual Entertainment released The Invisible Man: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1 and on Blu-ray in Region A in Canada for the first time. In the US, the DVD release was on May 1, 2012, and the Blu-ray release on June 19, 2012, and distributed by Millennium Entertainment.

In Region 4, the series was released on DVD in Australia on August 15, 2012, and in New Zealand on September 13, 2012, and distributed by Madman Entertainment.

In Region 2, the series was released on DVD in the UK on 8 July 2013  and distributed by Acorn Media UK.

References

External links

1970s American science fiction television series
1975 American television series debuts
1976 American television series endings
1975 TV series
English-language television shows
NBC original programming
Television series by Universal Television
Espionage television series
Television shows set in Los Angeles

The Invisible Man (1975 TV series)


Exile's Return is a fantasy novel by American writer Raymond E. Feist, the third book   in the Conclave of Shadows trilogy, part of The Riftwar Cycle.  It was preceded by King of Foxes and is followed by Flight of the Nighthawks.

Plot summary
Kaspar, former Duke of Olasko, finds himself alone and without provisions on the continent of Novindus on the other side of the world after being removed from power by the Conclave of Shadows (in King of Foxes, the preceding novel). His desire for revenge must be put aside as he struggles to survive in a harsh unfamiliar land. He happens upon a farm, where his only choice is to work for food and shelter. As he is no longer under the magical influence of Leso Varen, the evil necromancer who had manipulated him while in Olasko, he begins to show compassion, and atone for his past deeds.

Kaspar later  joins a band of traders who have been cursed with transporting a mysterious magical suit of seemingly invulnerable animated armor, which will not allow them to leave it. Kaspar discovers the armor's origin, and is tasked with returning it across the vast ocean to the Conclave, once his enemies, now his only hope to help prevent the world's destruction.

2004 American novels
2004 fantasy novels
American fantasy novels
Novels by Raymond E. Feist

Exile's Return


John Kocinski (born March 20, 1968 in Little Rock, Arkansas) is a retired American Grand Prix motorcycle road racer whose successes include winning the 1990 250cc World Championship, and the 1997 Superbike World Championship title.

Career

Early years
At age seventeen, Kocinski was already a factory rider for Yamaha, in the AMA Championship Cup. He won the AMA 250 Grand Prix Championship every year from 1987 to 1989, and won the 1989 Supersport race at Daytona having started 53rd in a field of 80 riders.  In 1988, he won the pole position at the 250cc US Grand Prix and finished the race in fourth place. He would also place fifth at 1988 250cc Japanese Grand Prix.

Middle years

1989 was also the year of his 500cc World Championship debut. In 1990 he raced in four different championships, but the highlight was winning the 250cc World Championship in his first full season on a Team Roberts Yamaha YZR250.
In a funny and unusual story happening after his loss at the 1991 American Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, According to Michael Scott, Kocinski was so upset after the loss that he drove away from the track recklessly and refused to pull over when stopped by a policeman; he was arrested and sentenced to community service. He was a full-time 500cc racer for the next two years, finishing fourth and third in the championship and winning the final round in both seasons.

During his first year in the 500cc class, Kocinski infamously told reporters that if a rider hadn't won the World Championship within 2 years of starting in the class, then they should give up racing. This statement would come back to haunt the American as he competed in the top class for over six seasons without ever becoming World Champion, with many reminding him of his comment in later years.

Kocinski started 1993 in 250s, taking Suzuki's first-ever podium at this level, but switched back to 500cc mid-season after falling out with the Suzuki team. He won Cagiva's first ever dry-weather 500cc win at Laguna Seca, and came 11th overall with only four appearances. He opened 1994 with a win in Australia and finished the season in third place. After Cagiva pulled out of Grand Prix racing, Kocinski concentrated on becoming a professional water skier.

Later years
Kocinski came back to world-level motorcycle racing in 1996 when he joined the World Superbike series on a factory Ducati and came close to winning the title in his first attempt, despite falling out with Ducati during the year.  He joined the factory Castrol Honda squad for 1997, and won the title with nine wins and seven podium finishes. In the final round of the season at Sentul in Indonesia, Kocinski led teammate Aaron Slight going into the last lap of the first race. Slight needed to win the race to wrap up second in the championship and give Castrol Honda a 1-2 finish, and despite the Kiwi rider passing Kocinski early in the lap, the American re-passed Slight in a move that almost took out Slight's front wheel to take the win, meaning Slight only finished third in the championship. Kocinski's actions caused him to fall out with both the team and Slight.

He returned to the 500cc world championship in 1998 with Sito Pons' Movistar Honda team, and the following year in 1999 riding for Erv Kanemoto's sponsorless team but failed to win a race. He raced at home in AMA National championship in 2000 for Vance & Hines Ducati, and tested for Yamaha for the next two years before retiring.  He is currently a property developer in Beverly Hills, California.

In January 2008, he was reported to have been looking for a professional motorcycle racing ride for 2008 in the AMA, SBK and 250cc sections.

Grand Prix career statistics

Points system from 1988 to 1992:

Points system from 1993 onwards:

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position; races in italics indicate fastest lap)

World Superbike Championship

References

American motorcycle racers
250cc World Championship riders
500cc World Championship riders
Superbike World Championship riders
AMA Superbike Championship riders
Sportspeople from Little Rock, Arkansas
1968 births
Living people
250cc World Riders' Champions

John Kocinski


The Line of Actual Control (LAC) is the effective border between India and China. The LAC is 4,057-km long and traverses three areas of northern Indian states: western (Ladakh, Kashmir), middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh) and eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh). Quote: "India is used to incursions by Chinese troops across the 4,057-km LAC in all the three sectors—western (Ladakh), middle (Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh) and eastern (Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh)— in a bid to strengthen China's claim over disputed areas and ensure New Delhi does not change its Tibet policy."

Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai used the phrase in a letter addressed to Indian Prime Minister Nehru dated October 24, 1959. In a letter dated November 7, Zhou told Nehru that the LAC consisted of "the so-called McMahon Line in the east and the line up to which each side exercises actual control in the west". During the Sino-Indian War (1962), Nehru claimed not to know where the line was: "There is no sense or meaning in the Chinese offer to withdraw twenty kilometers from what they call 'line of actual control'. What is this 'line of control'? Is this the line they have created by aggression since the beginning of September? Advancing forty or sixty kilometers by blatant military aggression and offering to withdraw twenty kilometers provided both sides do this is a deceptive device which can fool nobody."  It should be noted that these incursions were in response to India's "forward policy" in which India began to contest areas controlled by China, including some that were not included in the McMahon Line.

References

Kashmir
Territorial disputes of China

Line of Actual Control


Jimmy Orr (October 4, 1935 – October 27, 2020) was an American Football wide receiver. Orr played for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Colts for 13 seasons from 1958 to 1970. He was born in Seneca, South Carolina.

Orr died on October 27, 2020 at his home in Brunswick, Georgia at the age of 85.

References

1935 births
2020 deaths
American football wide receivers
Baltimore Colts players
Pittsburgh Steelers players
Sportspeople from South Carolina

Jimmy Orr


In the context of racism in the United States, racism against African Americans dates back to the colonial era, and it continues to be a persistent issue in American society in the 21st century.

From the arrival of the first Africans in early colonial times until after the American Civil War, most African Americans were enslaved. Even free African Americans have faced restrictions on their political, social, and economic freedoms, being subjected to lynchings, segregation, Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, and other forms of discrimination, both before and after the Civil War. Thanks to the civil rights movement, formal racial discrimination was gradually outlawed by the federal government, and gradually came to be perceived as socially and morally unacceptable by large elements of American society. Despite this, racism against Black Americans remains widespread in the U.S., and it continues to be reflected in socioeconomic inequality. In recent years research has uncovered extensive evidence of racial discrimination in various sectors of modern U.S. society, including the criminal justice system, businesses, the economy, housing, health care, the media, and politics. In the view of the United Nations and the US Human Rights Network, "discrimination in the United States permeates all aspects of life and extends to all communities of color."

Citizenship and voting rights
The Naturalization Act of 1790 set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization, which limited naturalisation to "free white person[s]", thus excluding from citizenship Native Americans, indentured servants, slaves, free Blacks and later Asians. Citizenship and the lack of it had special impact on various legal and political rights, most notably suffrage rights at both the federal and state level, as well as the right to hold certain government offices, jury duty, military service, and many other activities, besides access to government assistance and services. The second Militia Act of 1792 also provided for the conscription of every "free able-bodied white male citizen". Tennessee's 1834 Constitution included a provision: "the free white men of this State have a right to Keep and bear arms for their common defense."

Citizenship, however, did not guarantee any particular rights, such as the right to vote. Black Americans, for example, who gained formal US citizenship by 1870, were soon disenfranchised. For example, after 1890, less than 9,000 of Mississippi's 147,000 eligible African-American voters were registered to vote, or about 6%. Louisiana went from 130,000 registered African-American voters in 1896 to 1,342 in 1904 (about a 99% decrease). They were also subjected to Black Codes and discriminated against in the Southern states by Jim Crow laws. Voter suppression efforts around the country, though mainly motivated by political considerations, often effectively disproportionately affect African Americans and other minorities. In 2016, one in 13 African-Americans of voting age was disenfranchised, more than four times greater than that of non-African-Americans. Over 7.4% of adult African-Americans were disenfranchised compared to 1.8% of non-African-Americans. Felony disenfranchisement in Florida disqualifies over 10% of its citizens for life and over 23% of its African-American citizens.

Antebellum period

Slavery, as a form of forced labor, has existed in many cultures, dating back to early human civilizations. Slavery is not inherently racial per se. In the United States, however, slavery, having been established in the colonial era, became racialized by the time of the American Revolution (1775–1783), when slavery was widely institutionalized as a racial caste system which was based on African ancestry and skin color.

Slavery

The Atlantic slave trade prospered, with more than 470,000 persons forcibly transported from Africa between 1626 and 1860 to what is now the United States. Prior to the Civil War, eight serving presidents were slaveholders, and slavery was protected by the U.S. Constitution. Creating wealth for the White elite, approximately one in four Southern families held Black people in slavery prior to the Civil War. According to the 1860 U.S. census, there were about 385,000 slave owners out of a White population of approximately 7 million in the slave states. White European Americans who participated in the slave industry tried to justify their economic exploitation of Black people by creating a "scientific" theory of White superiority and Black inferiority. One such slave owner was Thomas Jefferson, and it was his call for science to determine the obvious "inferiority" of Blacks that is regarded as "an extremely important stage in the evolution of scientific racism." He concluded that Blacks were "inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind."

Groups of armed White men, who were called slave patrols, were formed to monitor enslaved Black people. First established in South Carolina in 1704 and later established in other slave states, their function was to police slaves, especially runaways. Slave owners feared that slaves might organize revolts or rebellions, so state militias were formed to provide a military command structure and discipline within the slave patrols so they could be used to detect, encounter, and crush any organized slave meetings which might lead to revolts or rebellions.

Controlling free Blacks

During the 1820s and 1830s, the solution of the American Colonization Society (ACS) to the presence of free Blacks was to persuade them to emigrate to Africa. In 1821, the ACS established the colony of Liberia, and persuaded thousands of former slaves and free Black people to move there. Some slaves were manumitted (set free) on condition that they emigrate. The slave states made no secret that they wanted to get rid of free Blacks, who they believed threatened their investment, the slaves, encouraging escapes and revolts. The support for the ACS was primarily Southern. The founder of the ACS, Henry Clay of Kentucky, stated that because of "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off". Thousands of Black people were resettled in Liberia, where they formed an American English speaking enclave which could not assimilate back into African life and as a result, most of them died of tropical diseases.

White supremacist American governments emphasized the importance of the subjugation and control of other racial populations. In 1824 the Senate of South Carolina enacted a resolution echoing the wording of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution of the United States, declaring that the paramount objective of its government was to prevent the insubordination of black citizens and any possible slave rebellions as well as any social or political causes which might instrumentally lead to such insubordination or insurrection, and declaring that this purpose was paramount over all other laws, constitutions, and domestic or international agreements:

Domestic slave trade

The importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed by federal law from 1808, but smuggling continued, the last known ship to bring enslaved Africans to the United States being the Clotilda in 1859 or 1860. The domestic trade in human beings continued to be a major economic activity. Maryland and Virginia, for example, would export surplus slaves to the south. (See Franklin and Armfield Office.) Enslaved family members could be split up (ie., sold off) never to see or hear of each other again. Between 1830 and 1840, nearly 250,000 slaves were taken across state lines. In the 1850s, more than 193,000 were transported, and historians estimate nearly one million in total were traded.

The historian Ira Berlin called this forced migration of slaves the "Second Middle Passage", because it reproduced many of the same horrors as the Middle Passage (the name given to the transportation of slaves from Africa to North America). These sales of slaves broke up many families, with Berlin writing that whether slaves were directly uprooted or lived in fear that they or their families would be involuntarily moved, "the massive deportation traumatized black people". Individuals lost their connection to families and clans. Added to the earlier colonists combining slaves from different tribes, many ethnic Africans lost their knowledge of varying tribal origins in Africa. Most were descended from families who had been in the U.S. for many generations.

Civil War and emancipation

During the American Civil War, the Militia Act of 1862, for the first time, allowed African Americans to serve in the Union militias as soldiers. However, Black members were discriminated against in pay, with Black members being paid half of White members. Besides discrimination in pay, colored units were often disproportionately assigned laborer work, rather than combat assignments. General Daniel Ullman, commander of the United States Colored Troops, remarked "I fear that many high officials outside of Washington have no other intention than that these men shall be used as diggers and drudges." Black members were organized into colored regiments. By the end of that war, in April 1865, there were 175 colored regiments constituting about one-tenth of the Union Army. About 20 percent of colored soldiers died, their death toll being about 35 percent higher than that of white Union troops. The 1862 Militia Act, however, did not open military service to all races, only to Black Americans. In the Confederate army, non-white men were not permitted to serve as soldiers.

President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect on January 1, 1863, marked a change in the federal government's position on slavery. (Up to that time, the federal government had never even taken a limited pro-emancipation stance, and it could do so only in 1862 because of the 1861 departure of almost all of the Southern members of Congress). Though the proclamation was welcomed by abolitionists, its application was limited. It did not apply, for example, to the nearly 500,000 slaves in the slave-holding border states of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and the new state of West Virginia, and it also did not apply in parts of Louisiana and Virginia that were occupied by Union forces. In those states, slavery remained legal until abolished by state action or by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.

While personally opposed to slavery (see Abraham Lincoln and slavery), Lincoln accepted the federal consensus that the Constitution did not give Congress the power to end it. But he was also Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy. An action based on military necessity, against states that were in rebellion, would be appropriate as a step towards their defeat. The South of course interpreted the Emancipation Proclamation as a hostile act, but it allowed Lincoln to abolish slavery to a limited extent, without igniting resistance from anti-abolitionist forces in the Union. The slaves were not immediately affected by the proclamation, but advancing Union armies freed them.

About four million Black slaves were freed in 1865. Ninety-five percent of Black people lived in the South, comprising one-third of its total population, while only 5 percent of Black people lived in the North, comprising only 1 percent of its total population. Consequently, fears of eventual emancipation were much greater in the South than in the North. Based on 1860 census figures, 8 percent of males who were aged 13 to 43 died in the Civil War, including 6 percent in the North and 18 percent in the South.

Though the Thirteenth Amendment formally abolished slavery throughout the United States, some Black Americans became subjected to revised forms of involuntary labor, particularly in the South, through the use of Black Codes that restricted African Americans' freedom and compelled them to work for low wages, and through the use of the exception in the Thirteenth Amendment, which permitted slavery "as a punishment for a crime". They were also subject to White supremacist violence, and selective enforcement of statutes.

Reconstruction Era to World War II

Reconstruction Era

After the Civil War, on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment, formally abolishing slavery, was ratified. The next year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which provided a range of civil rights and granted them to all persons who were born in the United States. Despite this, the emergence of Black Codes sanctioned acts of subjugation against Blacks and continued to bar African Americans from exercising their civil rights. The Naturalization Act of 1790 had granted U.S. citizenship only to whites, and in 1868 the effort to broaden civil rights was underscored by the passage of the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States", regardless of race. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 followed, which was eliminated in a decision that undermined federal power to thwart private racial discrimination. Nonetheless, the last of the Reconstruction Era amendments, the 15th Amendment promised voting rights to African American men (previously only white men of property could vote), and these cumulative federal efforts, African Americans began taking advantage of enfranchisement. They began voting, seeking office positions, and getting a public education.

By the end of Reconstruction in the mid 1870s, violent white supremacists came to power via paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts and the White League and imposed Jim Crow laws which deprived African-Americans of voting rights by instituting systemic and discriminatory policies of unequal racial segregation. Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with the passage and enforcement of Jim Crow laws, along with the posting of signs which were used to show Blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat. For those places that were racially mixed, non-Whites had to wait until all White customers were dealt with. Segregated facilities extended from White-only schools to White-only graveyards.

Anti-miscegenation laws, which forbade marriage and even sex between whites and non-whites (which typically covered Blacks but in some cases also Indians and Asians), existed in most of the states well into the 20th century, even after emancipation and even in states that advocated the abolition of slavery. Such anti-miscegenation laws existed in many states until 1967, when the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia that such laws were unconstitutional.

Post-Reconstruction Era

The new century saw a hardening of institutionalized racism and legal discrimination against citizens of African descent in the United States. Throughout the post Civil War period, racial stratification was informally and systemically enforced, to solidify the pre-existing social order. Although they were technically able to vote, poll taxes, pervasive acts of terrorism such as lynchings (often perpetrated by hate groups such as the reborn Ku Klux Klan, founded in the Reconstruction South), and discriminatory laws such as grandfather clauses kept Black Americans (and many Poor Whites) disenfranchised particularly in the South. Furthermore, the discrimination was extended to state legislation which "allocated vastly unequal financial support" for Black and White schools. In addition to this, county officials sometimes redistributed resources which were earmarked for Blacks to White schools, further undermining educational opportunities. In response to de jure racism, protest and lobbyist groups emerged, most notably, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in 1909.

This era is sometimes referred to as the nadir of American race relations because racism, segregation, racial discrimination, and expressions of White supremacy all increased. So did anti-Black violence, including race riots such as the Atlanta race riot of 1906, the Elaine massacre of 1919, the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, and the Rosewood massacre of 1923. The Atlanta riot was characterized as a "racial massacre of negroes" by the French newspaper Le Petit Journal. The Charleston News and Courier wrote in response to the Atlanta riots: "Separation of the races is the only radical solution of the negro problem in this country. There is nothing new about it. It was the Almighty who established the bounds of the habitation of the races. The negroes were brought here by compulsion; they should be induced to leave here by persuasion."

The Great Migration

In addition, racism, which had been viewed as a problem which primarily existed in the Southern states, burst onto the nation's consciousness following the Great Migration, the relocation of millions of African Americans from their roots in the rural Southern states to the industrial centers of the North and West between 1910 and 1970, particularly in cities such as Boston, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, New York City (Harlem), Cleveland, Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, Phoenix, and Denver. Within Chicago, for example, between 1910 and 1970, the percentage of African-Americans leapt from 2.0 percent to 32.7 percent. The demographic patterns of Black migrants and external economic conditions are largely studied stimulants regarding the Great Migration. For example, migrating Blacks (between 1910 and 1920) were more likely to be literate than Blacks who remained in the South. Known economic push factors played a role in migration, such as the emergence of a split labor market and agricultural distress which resulted from the boll weevil destruction of the cotton economy.

Southern migrants were often treated in accordance with pre-existing racial stratification. The rapid influx of Blacks into the North and West disturbed the racial balance within cities, exacerbating hostility between both Black and White residents in the two regions. Stereotypic schemas of Southern Blacks were used to attribute issues in urban areas, such as crime and disease, to the presence of African-Americans. Overall, African-Americans in most Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for Blacks were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility. In 1900 Reverend Matthew Anderson, speaking at the annual Hampton Negro Conference in Virginia, said that "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South. There seems to be an apparent effort throughout the North, especially in the cities to debar the colored worker from all the avenues of higher remunerative labor, which makes it more difficult to improve his economic condition even than in the South." Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants, redlining and racial steering". A club central to the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City, was a whites-only establishment, with Black acts allowed to perform, but to a White audience.

Throughout this period, racial tensions exploded, most violently in Chicago, and lynchings—mob-directed hangings, usually racially motivated—increased dramatically in the 1920s. Urban riots—Whites attacking Blacks—became a northern and western problem. Many Whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward African Americans, while many other Whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as White flight. Racially restrictive housing covenants were ruled unenforceable under the Fourteenth Amendment in the 1948 landmark Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer.

Elected in 1912, President Woodrow Wilson authorized the practice of racial segregation throughout the federal government's bureaucracy. In World War I, Blacks who served in the United States Armed Forces served in segregated units. Black soldiers were often poorly trained and equipped, and they were often put on the frontlines and forced to go on suicide missions. The U.S. military was still heavily segregated during World War II. In addition, no African-American was awarded the Medal of Honor during the war, and sometimes, Black soldiers who traveled on trains had to give their seats up to Nazi prisoners of war.

World War II to the Civil Rights Movement

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws which were enacted in the Southern and border states of the United States and enforced between 1876 and 1965. They mandated "separate but equal" status for Blacks. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were almost always inferior to those which were provided to Whites. The most important laws required that public schools, public places and public transportation, like trains and buses, have separate facilities for Whites and Blacks. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. One of the first federal court cases which challenged segregation in schools was Mendez v. Westminster in 1946.

By the 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum. Membership in the NAACP increased in states across the U.S. A 1955 lynching that sparked public outrage about injustice was that of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago. Spending the summer with his relatives in Money, Mississippi, Till was killed for allegedly having wolf-whistled at a White woman. Till had been badly beaten, one of his eyes was gouged out, and he was shot in the head before being thrown into the Tallahatchie River, his body weighed down with a  cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. David Jackson writes that Mamie Till, Emmett's Mother, "brought him home to Chicago and insisted on an open casket. Tens of thousands filed past Till's remains, but it was the publication of the searing funeral image in Jet, with a stoic Mamie gazing at her murdered child's ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism." News photographs were circulated around the country, and they drew an intense public reaction. The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the Black community throughout the U.S. Vann R. Newkirk wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of White supremacy". The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-White jury.

In response to heightening discrimination and violence, non-violent acts of protest began to occur. For example, in February 1960, in Greensboro, North Carolina, four young African American college students entered a Woolworth store and sat down at the counter but were refused service. The men had learned about non-violent protest in college, and continued to sit peacefully as Whites tormented them at the counter, pouring ketchup on their heads and burning them with cigarettes. The Greensboro sit-ins contributed to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Many more sit-ins took place to non-violently protest against racism and inequality. Sit-ins continued throughout the South and spread to other areas. Eventually, after many sit-ins and other non-violent protests, including marches and boycotts, places began to agree to desegregate.

In June 1963, civil rights activist and NAACP member Medgar Evers was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council. In his trials for murder De La Beckwith evaded conviction via all-White juries (both trials ended with hung juries).

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing marked a turning point during the civil rights era. On Sunday, September 15, 1963, with a stack of dynamite hidden on an outside staircase, Ku Klux Klansmen destroyed one side of the Birmingham church. The bomb exploded in proximity to twenty-six children who were preparing for choir practice in the basement assembly room. The explosion killed four Black girls, Carole Robertson (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Denise McNair (11) and Addie Mae Collins (14).

With the bombing occurring only a couple of weeks after Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, it became an integral aspect of transformed perceptions of conditions for Blacks in America. It influenced the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (that banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions) and Voting Rights Act of 1965 which overruled remaining Jim Crow laws. Nonetheless, neither had been implemented by the end of the 1960s as civil rights leaders continued to strive for political and social freedom.

The first anti-miscegenation law was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage. By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes, and by 1924 it was still in force in 29 states. In 1958, officers in Virginia entered the home of Richard and Mildred Loving and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of a felony" and face prison terms of five years. The law was ruled unconstitutional in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia.

Segregation continued even after the demise of the Jim Crow laws. Data on house prices and attitudes towards integration suggest that in the mid-20th century, segregation was a product of collective actions taken by Whites to exclude Blacks from their neighborhoods. Segregation also took the form of redlining, the practice of denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. Although in the U.S. informal discrimination and segregation have always existed, redlining began with the National Housing Act of 1934, which established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The practice was fought first through passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (which prevents redlining when the criteria for redlining are based on race, religion, gender, familial status, disability, or ethnic origin), and later through the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which requires banks to apply the same lending criteria in all communities. Although redlining is illegal some argue that it continues to exist in other forms.

Up until the 1940s, the full revenue potential of what was called "the Negro market" was largely ignored by White-owned manufacturers in the U.S. with advertising focused on Whites. Blacks were also denied commercial deals. On his decision to take part in exhibition races against racehorses in order to earn money, Olympic champion Jesse Owens stated, "People say that it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals." On the lack of opportunities, Owens added, "There was no television, no big advertising, no endorsements then. Not for a black man, anyway." In the reception to honor his Olympic success Owens was not permitted to enter through the main doors of the Waldorf Astoria New York and instead forced to travel up to the event in a freight elevator. The first Black Academy Award recipient Hattie McDaniel was not permitted to attend the premiere of Gone with the Wind with Georgia being racially segregated, and at the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles she was required to sit at a segregated table at the far wall of the room; the hotel had a strict no-Blacks policy, but allowed McDaniel in as a favor. Her final wish to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery was denied because the graveyard was restricted to Whites only.

As the civil rights movement and the dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s deepened existing racial tensions in much of the Southern U.S, a Republican Party electoral strategy – the Southern strategy – was enacted to increase political support among White voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. Republican politicians such as presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Senator Barry Goldwater developed strategies that successfully contributed to the political realignment of many White, conservative voters in the South who had traditionally supported the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. In 1971, angered by African delegates at the UN siding against the U.S. in a vote to admit China and expel Taiwan, then Governor of California Ronald Reagan stated in a phone call to president Nixon, "To see those... those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes!" Nixon adopted Reagan's offensive language to complain about "cannibals jumping up and down" after the vote passed. Recorded conversations from Nixon's time in office further revealed his bigoted views of minorities, commenting on African Americans: "I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like." The perception that the Republican Party had served as the "vehicle of white supremacy in the South", particularly post 1964, made it difficult for the Party to win back the support of Black voters in the South in later years.

In 1973, African American baseball legend Hank Aaron received hundreds of thousands of hate mail letters from fans, angry at him for trying to break the all-time homerun record at the time set by Babe Ruth. Aaron would eventually break Ruth's homerun record by hitting his 715th homerun on April 8, 1974. That same year, the U.S. Postal Service confirmed that Hank Aaron set the Guinness World Record for most mail received by any private citizen in one year, receiving over 900,000 letters with a third of them being letters of hate.

1980s to the 2000s

While substantial gains were made in the succeeding decades through middle class advancement and public employment, black poverty and lack of education continued in the context of de-industrialization. Despite gains made after the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, some violence against Black churches has also continued – 145 fires were set to churches around the South in the 1990s, and a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina was committed in 2015 at the historic Mother Emanuel Church.

From 1981 to 1997, the United States Department of Agriculture discriminated against tens of thousands of Black American farmers, denying loans that were provided to White farmers in similar circumstances. The discrimination was the subject of the Pigford v. Glickman lawsuit brought by members of the National Black Farmers Association, which resulted in two settlement agreements of $1.06 billion in 1999 and of $1.25 billion in 2009.

Numerous authors, academics, and historians have asserted that the War on Drugs has been racially and politically motivated. As the crack epidemic spread across the country in the mid 1980s, Congress would pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. Under these sentencing guidelines, five grams of crack cocaine, often sold by and to African-Americans, carried a mandatory five-year prison sentence. However, for powder cocaine, often sold by and to White Americans, it would take one hundred times that amount, or 500 grams, for the same sentence, leading many to criticize the law as discriminatory. The 100:1 sentencing disparity was reduced to 18:1 in 2010 by the Fair Sentencing Act. According to the National Security Archive, during the 1980s, US officials, including Oliver North, collaborated with and protected known drug traffickers as part of efforts to fund the Central Intelligence Agency funded right-wing Nicaraguan Contra rebels. In 1989, the Kerry Committee report concluded the Contra drug links included... "Payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies". In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote the Dark Alliance series for the San Jose Mercury News where he asserted that the CIA-backed Contras played a major role in the crack epidemic. The series caused outrage in the African-American community, particularly in South Central Los Angeles, where Congresswoman Maxine Waters served, and subsequently praised the series.

During the 1980s and '90s, a number of riots occurred that were related to longstanding racial tensions between police and minority communities. The 1980 Miami riots were catalyzed by the killing of an African-American motorist by four White Miami-Dade Police officers. They were subsequently acquitted on charges of manslaughter and evidence tampering. Similarly, the six-day 1992 Los Angeles riots erupted after the acquittal of four White LAPD officers who had been filmed beating Rodney King, an African-American motorist. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the Director of the Harlem-based Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture has identified more than 100 instances of mass racial violence in the United States since 1935 and has noted that almost every instance was precipitated by a police incident.

Curriculum
The curriculum in U.S. schools has also contained racism against non-white Americans, including Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Asian Americans. Particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, school textbooks and other teaching materials emphasized the biological and social inferiority of Black Americans, consistently portraying Black people as simple, irresponsible, and oftentimes, in situations of suffering that were implied to be their fault (and not the effects of slavery and other oppression). Black Americans were also depicted as expendable and their suffering as commonplace, as evidenced by a poem about "Ten Little Nigger Boys" dying off one by one that was circulated as a children's counting exercise from 1875 to the mid-1900s. Historian Carter G. Woodson analyzed the American curriculum as completely lacking any mention of Black Americans' merits in the early 20th century. Based on his observations of the time, he wrote that American students, including Black students, who went through U.S. schooling would come out believing that Black people had no significant history and had contributed nothing to human civilization.

2008 to the present
Some Americans saw the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, who served as president of the United States from 2009 to 2017 and was the nation's first Black president, as a sign that the nation had entered a new, post-racial era. The election of President Donald Trump in 2016, who was a chief proponent of the racist birther movement in the US (which argued that Obama was not born in the United States) and ran a racially tinged campaign, has been viewed by some commentators as a racist backlash against the election of Barack Obama. Before and after the election, Trump has had a history of speech and actions that have been widely viewed as racist or racially charged. During the mid-2010s, American society has seen a resurgence of high levels of racism and discrimination. One new phenomenon has been the rise of the "alt-right" movement: a White nationalist coalition which seeks the expulsion of sexual and racial minorities from the United States. Since the mid-2010s, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have identified White supremacist violence as the leading threat of domestic terrorism in the United States.

Many cite the 2008 United States presidential election as a step forward in race relations: White Americans played a role in electing Barack Obama, the country's first Black president. In fact, Obama received a greater percentage of the White vote (43%), than did the previous Democratic candidate, John Kerry (41%). Racial divisions persisted throughout the election; wide margins of Black voters gave Obama an edge during the presidential primary, where 8 out of 10 African-Americans voted for him in the primaries, and an MSNBC poll found that race was a key factor in whether a candidate was perceived as being ready for office. In South Carolina, for instance, "Whites were far likelier to name Clinton than Obama as being most qualified to be commander in chief, likeliest to unite the country and most apt to capture the White House in November. Blacks named Obama over Clinton by even stronger margins—two- and three-to one—in all three areas."

Sociologist Russ Long stated in 2013 that there is now a more subtle racism that associates a specific race with a specific characteristic. In a 1993 study conducted by Katz and Braly, it was presented that "blacks and whites hold a variety of stereotypes towards each other, often negative". The Katz and Braley study also found that African-Americans and Whites view the traits that they identify each other with as threatening, interracial communication between the two is likely to be "hesitant, reserved, and concealing". Interracial communication is guided by stereotypes; stereotypes are transferred into personality and character traits which then have an effect on communication. Multiple factors go into how stereotypes are established, such as age and the setting in which they are being applied. For example, in a study done by the Entman-Rojecki Index of Race and Media in 2014, 89% of Black women in movies are shown swearing and exhibiting offensive behavior while only 17% of White women are portrayed in this manner.

In 2012, Trayvon Martin, a seventeen-year-old teenager, was fatally shot by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, a neighborhood-watch volunteer, claimed that Martin was being suspicious and called the Sanford police to report him. While on the call to police, Zimmerman began following Martin. Between ending his call with police and their arrival, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin outside of the townhouse he was staying at following an altercation. Zimmerman was injured in the altercation and claimed self-defense. The incident caused national outrage after Zimmerman was not charged over the shooting. The national coverage of the incident lead Sandford police to arrest Zimmerman and charge him with second-degree murder, but he was found not guilty at trial. Public outcry followed the acquittal, leading to the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In 2014, the police shooting of Michael Brown, an African American, in Ferguson, Missouri led to widespread unrest in the town. In the years following, mass media has followed other high profile police shootings of African-Americans, often with video evidence from police body-worn cameras. Amongst 15 high-profile police shooting deaths of African-Americans, only one officer faced prison time. The U.S. Justice Department launched the National Center for Building Community Trust and Justice in 2014. This program collects data concerning racial profiling to create change in the criminal justice system concerning implicit and explicit racial bias towards African-Americans as well as other minorities.

In August 2017, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued a rare warning to the US and its leadership to "unequivocally and unconditionally" condemn racist speech and crime, following violence in Charlottesville during a rally organized by White nationalists, White supremacists, Klansmen, neo-Nazis and various right-wing militias in August.

On June 17, 2015, a white man killed nine people during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. All victims were African Americans, including senior pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney. The perpetrator later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.

White women calling the police on Black people has become more publicized in recent years. In a 2020 article in The New York Times titled How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror, Black columnist Charles M. Blow wrote, "historically, White women have used the violence of White men and the institutions these men control as their own muscle. Untold numbers of lynchings were executed because White women had claimed that a black man raped, assaulted, talked to or glanced at them. This exercise in racial extremism has been dragged into the modern era through the weaponizing of 9-1-1, often by White women, to invoke the power and force of the police who they are fully aware are hostile to black men". White women in the U.S. who used their White privilege as a weapon have been given a different name over the centuries by Black people, with Karen a contemporary name. In May 2020, a White woman calling the police on a Black man bird-watching in Central Park, New York received wide publicity after it was caught on film. After he had asked her to put her dog on a leash (as per the rules in an area of the park to protect other wildlife), she approached him, to which he responded "Please don't come close to me", before she yelled, "I'm taking a picture and calling the cops. I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life." During her phone call, with the man standing a distance away from her and recording her, she spoke in an audibly distraught voice, "There's a man, African American, he is.. threatening me and my dog. Please send the cops immediately!". Other examples of White women calling the police on Black people include reporting an eight-year-old girl for selling bottles of water without a permit in San Francisco, reporting a Black family barbecuing in a park in Oakland, California, blocking a Black man from entering an apartment building in St. Louis, Missouri where he is a resident before calling the police, and a woman accusing a boy of groping her in a store in Brooklyn, New York, which was disproven by surveillance.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was murdered by a White Minneapolis Police Department officer, Derek Chauvin, who forced his knee on Floyd's neck for a total of 9 minutes and 29 seconds.
All four police officers present were fired the next day, and later arrested. Chauvin was charged with and later convicted of second-degree murder, and the other three officers were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. Floyd's murder sparked a wave of protests across the United States and worldwide.

A white male gunman identified as Payton S. Gendron of Conklin, New York shot and killed 10 black people in the 2022 Buffalo shooting. He believed White Americans were being replaced by blacks.

In 2023, a white man shot and killed 3 black people inside a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida. He shot them to death with a Glock handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. One of the guns were painted with a swastika.

See also
Afrophobia
List of unarmed African Americans killed by law enforcement officers in the United States

Notes

References

Further reading

 Raffel, Jeffrey. Historical dictionary of school segregation and desegregation: The American experience (Bloomsbury, 1998) online

Racism against African Americans


Hurricane Florence was the first Atlantic hurricane to produce hurricane force winds on Bermuda since Hurricane Fabian hit the island in September 2003. The seventh tropical storm and second hurricane of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, Florence developed from a tropical wave in the tropical Atlantic Ocean on September 3 and followed the track of a Cape Verde-type hurricane. Because of unfavorable conditions, the system failed to organize at first, and as a result the storm grew to an unusually large size. After several days, Florence encountered an area of lesser wind shear and strengthened into a hurricane on September 10. It passed just west of Bermuda while recurving northeastward, and on September 13 it transitioned into an extratropical cyclone.

Florence produced wind gusts of up to 115 mph (185 km/h) on Bermuda, which caused several power outages and minor damage. Florence then brought heavy rains across Newfoundland as an extratropical storm, destroying one house and causing minor damage to several others. There were no fatalities as a result of the hurricane.

Storm history

A tropical wave moved off the coast of Africa on August 29. It tracked slowly westward, and first showed signs of development two days later. On August 31, a second tropical wave exited the coast of Africa at a faster speed than its predecessor. The two waves interacted, and by September 2 combined to form a large area of disturbed weather across the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Convection increased within the system, and the large system developed a thick area of convection along with an organized low pressure area. By late on September 3, the system maintained a large closed circulation and enough convective organization to be named Tropical Depression Six while located about midway between the Lesser Antilles and Africa.

After becoming a tropical cyclone, the depression had many cloud swirls inside its common center. Banding features increased in satellite pictures, though southwesterly wind shear from an upper-level trough to its northeast and the lack of an organized circulation originally prevented strengthening. Dry air encountered the depression, and as such the depression developed very slowly; forecasters maintained considerable difficulty in determining a center of circulation. It continued its motion to the west-northwest while tracking around the southern periphery of a deep-layer subtropical ridge to its north. Though convection remained focused near the outer periphery of the system, the overall organized continued to steadily increase, and it is estimated the depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Florence on September 5 while located about 1120 miles (1800 km) east-northeast of Anguilla.

After reaching tropical storm status, the maximum sustained winds existed for three days between 40 mph (65 km/h) and 50 mph (85 km/h). This is because of the large size of Florence; the wind field reached 460 miles (745 km) wide with a radius of maximum winds of about 110 miles (170 km). By September 6, an orgained form of cloud swirls became visible, with thin rainbands developing in the southeast and northwest quadrants. As a result, hurricane forecasters predicted Florence to quickly develop and reach major hurricane status. Though convection slowly moved closer to the center of the storm, forecasters could not detect an organized center of circulation late on September 13.

On September 7, convection developed over and to the west of the center for the first time in its duration. However, Florence failed to strengthen any further with a wind field more than 1035 miles (1670 km) in diameter. This made it diffficult to forecast the storm, since it tracked through an area of 84° F (29° C) water temperatures, light shear, and a large low-level cyclonic envelop with abundant convection. By early on September 8, the storm became a stretched out, shapeless cloud pattern not normal for a tropical cyclone. Later that day, as an anticyclone developed over Florence, the storm began to consolidate around a vorticity center on the western side of the large cyclonic envelope. It began to strengthen more steadily as the storm turned to the northwest. Early on September 10, an eye began developing inside a ring of round thick convection over the center, and shortly thereafter Florence reached hurricane status while located about 390 miles (630 km) south of Bermuda.

Hurricane Florence turned to the north and north-northeast through a break in the subtropical ridge. Though its eyewall was open on the north side, favorable conditions led forecasters to predict Florence passing near Bermuda as a strong Category 2 hurricane. The inner core of convection became ragged-looking on satellite pictures, and based on reports from Hurricane Hunters it is estimated the hurricane reached peak winds of 90 mph (150 km/h) late on September 10. After further erosion of the eyewall, the hurricane weakened, and on September 11 passed about 60 miles (95 km) west of Bermuda with winds of 85 mph (135 km/h). The overall cloud pattern became a little bit better organized, and Florence briefly re-strengthened before encountering increased upper-level winds and cooler waters.

Dry air wrapping around the southern half of the cyclone dissipated most of the deep convection by early on September 12. The cloud shield became asymmetrically displaced to the north of the center, and frontal-like features began to form. It continued to lose tropical characteristics, and on September 13 Florence turned into an extratropical cyclone about 485 miles (780 km) south-southwest of Cape Race, Newfoundland. At first, the storm was able to keep hurricane-force winds, as the extratropical remnant passed near Cape Race before turning to the east-northeast, and on September 14 the winds weakened to gale force. In the next days the storm executed a broad cyclonic half-loop to the southwest of Iceland, and after turning to the west the extratropical remnants of Florence were absorbed to the east of Greenland by a developing extratropical cyclone to its south.

Preparations
The government of Bermuda gave out a hurricane watch for the island on September 8, which was followed by a tropical storm warning on September 9. These were replaced by a hurricane warning on September 10, which were given out at the same time with the storm's strengthening to hurricane status. The government pursaded the potentially impacted citizens to take preparations for the storm, many of whom bought supplies at local hardware stores. Residents installed storm shutters, while boat owners moved their boats to safer locations. An emergency shelter was prepared on the island. Before Florence approached the storm, officials canceled bus and ferry service, and also closed all schools and government offices on the day of impact. The Bermuda International Airport was also closed.

Impact
Hurricane Florence produced strong swells and dangerous surf conditions for the northern Lesser Antilles, U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Bermuda. Later in its duration, the tight pressure gradient between Florence and a high-pressure system over southeastern Canada produced strong winds and rough waves along the East Coast of the United States. The hurricane also caused strong swells and rough ocean conditions, including rip currents, in the Bahamas and Atlantic Canada.

Passing a short distance west of Bermuda, Hurricane Florence produced strong winds on the island; sustained winds peaked at 82 mph (132 km/h) on St. David's Island at an elevation of 410 feet (48 m), while gusts reached 115 mph (185 km/h) at the Maritime Operations Centre in St. George's Parish at an elevation of 665 feet (78 m). The winds knocked down trees and power lines, leaving over 25,000 homes and businesses without electricity during the peak of the storm. The powerful winds damaged ten houses, including destroying the roofs of three, and blew out windows across the island. A few people were injured by flying glass, though none required hospital care. Rainfall on the island reached 1.32 inches (34 mm) at the Bermuda International Airport.
A possible tornado reported in Southampton Parish downed trees and caused light property damage. At the Bermuda Zoo and Aquarium, two flamingos died due to falling branches. During the peak of the storm, police officials advised citizens to remain indoors away from harm, though there were several reports of looting throughout the territory.

The storm caused over $200,000 (2006 USD) in damage on the island. Shortly after the storm passed through, BELCO began restoring power, and by six hours after the peak of the storm power had been restored to 7,000 homes and businesses. By the day after the storm, about 3,000 remained without electricity on the island. The passage of the storm damaged the causeway between St. David's Island and Hamilton Parish, temporarily limiting traffic to one lane in each direction.

As an extratropical storm over Newfoundland, Florence produced powerful winds peaking at 101 mph (163 km/h) and moderate amounts of rainfall of up to 2.6 inches (67 mm). Flooding and power outages were reported, although they were isolated. The hurricane caused flight interruptions at St. John's International Airport and also to the Trans Canada ferry between Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island in eastern Nova Scotia Strong winds destroyed a house in the small Newfoundland village of Francois. Residents in Francois agreed to rebuild the wrecked home while the family temporarily resided in a summer home of another family. The winds also caused damage to shingles and sides of homes, while the strong waves damaged roads and boats along the Burin Peninsula.

Related pages
 2006 Atlantic hurricane season

References

Other websites

 NHC's archive on Hurricane Florence
 HPC's rainfall page for Florence
 CHC's archive on Hurricane Florence

Florence
Florence
Florence
2000s in Bermuda
2006 in Canada
2006 in the United States

Hurricane Florence (2006)


The Lord Howe currawong (Strepera graculina crissalis), Lord Howe Island currawong or Lord Howe pied currawong, is a large and mainly black passerine bird in the family Artamidae.  It is endemic to Lord Howe Island in the Tasman Sea, part of New South Wales, Australia, and is a threatened subspecies of the pied currawong.

Description
The currawong is similar to the other subspecies of the pied currawong. It is generally a black bird with yellow eyes, white on the wing, undertail coverts, the base of the tail and tip of the tail.  Compared with the nominate subspecies of eastern Australia it has a longer and more slender bill, less white on the wings and tail, and a paler iris.

Distribution and habitat
The currawong is restricted to the Lord Howe Island group where it inhabits the main island's native subtropical rainforest and palm forest, especially along creeks and in gullies, as well as areas around human habitation.

Behaviour
The Lord Howe currawong has a strong sense of curiosity, often following walkers on the island's tracks.  They are aggressive during the breeding season and will swoop at walkers who approach their nests.

Feeding
The currawong is a predator and an omnivore.  The birds forage widely throughout the island and offshore seabird colonies.  They take small birds and the young of many birds, including domestic poultry, as well as seeds and fruits.

Breeding
The currawong breeds in territories in the forest that contain a section of gully or watercourse lined with tall timber.  It has been estimated that the island is large enough to contain 35-40 territories.  The bird builds a cup-shaped nest of sticks and twigs, lined with finer twigs, in the outer branches of a tree, in which it lays a clutch of three light brown eggs, marked with darker blotches.  The incubation period is 21 days and the time from hatching to fledging about 30.

Voice
The currawong has a distinct loud and melodious call.

Status and conservation
In 2000 the population was estimated to comprise about 80 mature breeding birds.  The taxon is listed as Vulnerable under Australia's EPBC Act because of its small and restricted population and occasional persecution due to its predatory habits.

Notes

References
 Garnett, Stephen T.; & Crowley, Gabriel M. (2000). The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2000. Environment Australia: Canberra.
 Higgins, P.J.; Peter, J.M.; & Cowling, S.J. (eds). 2006. Handbook of Australian, New Zealand and Antarctic Birds.  Volume 7: Boatbill to Starlings. Oxford University Press: Melbourne.
 Hindwood, K.A. (1940). The Birds of Lord Howe Island. Emu 40: 1-86.
 Hutton, Ian. (1991). Birds of Lord Howe Island - Past and Present. Author: Coffs Harbour.
 Schodde, R.; & Mason, I.J. (1999). The Directory of Australian Birds: Passerines. CSIRO Publishing: Melbourne.

External links
 Australian Government, Dept of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts: Strepera graculina crissalis

Strepera
Birds of Lord Howe Island
Birds described in 1877

Lord Howe currawong


Julien Péridier (1882 – April 19, 1967) was a French electrical engineer and amateur astronomer. For his work he was made an Officer of the Legion of Honour. In 1933 he founded a private observatory at Le Houga (Gers), France. After his death, his library and instruments were acquired by the McDonald Observatory at the University of Texas for use in teaching astronomy.

The double  refracting telescope at Le Houga was used extensively for studies of the planets and the teaching of young astronomers.

In 1959 his observatory was part of an observational campaign regarding an occultation of Regulus by Venus. The team of Harvard observers at Le Houga was led by Gérard de Vaucouleurs, who had previously collaborated with Mr. Péridier on studies at the observatory.  The success of the 1959 work started a five-year collaboration with NASA on photometry of the Moon and planets using a  reflector.

He was married to Adrienne Blanc-Péridier, who was an accomplished author of one-act plays, romantic novels, and biographies.

A crater on Mars is named in his honor.

External links

Obituaries
by G. de Vaucouleurs (at University of Texas website)
PASP 79 (1967) 379

1882 births
1967 deaths
20th-century French astronomers
20th-century French engineers
French electrical engineers

Julien Peridier


Netrampura is a village in the Surajgarh municipality in Rajasthan, India. It is a village of Jats of the Bijarnia clan. Netrampura was founded by Netram Bijarnia. It is commonly also called as Netram ki Dhani

As of 2005, the village counted 120 households (100% of which were using electricity) and featured a primary school of eight grades. The road network consists of earth roads only.

Most inhabitants of the village work in the Indian army.

References

Villages in Jhunjhunu district

Netrampura


Ruddell Bird "Rudd" Weatherwax (September 23, 1907 – February 25, 1985) was an American actor, animal trainer, and breeder. He and his brother Frank are best remembered for training dogs for motion pictures and television. Their collie, Pal, became the original Lassie, handled by Rudd for the 1943 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Lassie Come Home. He also handled the dogs for the Lassie television series which ran from 1954 to 1974, and trained Spike for the 1957 feature film Old Yeller. After his death, his son, Robert, took over the training of the animals.

Weatherwax was also responsible for training the official New York Mets' team mascot in the 1960s, a beagle named Homer.

Biography
Weatherwax was born in Engle, New Mexico Territory, the son of Anna Elisa (née Wallis) and Walter Smiley Weatherwax.

Pal became a movie star through a weather-related event. MGM, which had decided to use a show collie trained by Frank Inn in the movie, took advantage of a massive flooding of the Sacramento River in northern California to obtain some spectacular footage for the film. Inn's collie was still in training, so MGM hired Pal as a stand-in for the river scene. Although the work was considered complicated for an animal actor, the dog performed exceptionally well. According to legend, after seeing the first prints, MGM head Louis B. Mayer stated that "Pal had entered the water, but Lassie had come out," and a new star was born.

MGM owned the rights to Lassie's name, but when the series of films ended, Weatherwax obtained those rights in lieu of his final year's salary and a little additional money. Therefore, he benefited from those rights during the program's 17-year run on CBS and additional broadcasts in syndication.

Legacy
Weatherwax was posthumously inducted into the New Mexico Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2012. He had two sons, Jackie
 and Bob. He was the uncle of Ken Weatherwax, who played Pugsley Addams in The Addams Family television series.

He received a joke 'screen credit' in the Dudley Do-Right  segment Faithful Dog, playing Dudley.

References

Book
FOUR FEET TO FAME: A Hollywood Dog Trainer's Journey, by Bob Weatherwax and Richard Lester. Published 2017 by BearManor Media. .

External links

1907 births
1985 deaths
American male film actors
Burials at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery
Dog trainers
Male actors from New Mexico
Male actors from Hollywood, Los Angeles
Place of death missing
People from Sierra County, New Mexico
20th-century American male actors

Rudd Weatherwax


The Castañeda Doctrine is a term used as reference to Mexico's foreign policy during the presidency of Vicente Fox. Its name derives from its proponent, Jorge Castañeda Gutman.

Fox appointed Castañeda to be his Secretary of Foreign Affairs at the beginning of his term. Castañeda immediately broke with the old-style foreign policy, known as the Estrada Doctrine. The new foreign policy called for an openness and an acceptance of criticism from the international community and the increase of Mexican involvement in foreign affairs.

However, after a series of foreign policy blunders, such as Mexico's temporary rift with Cuba and criticism from many other Latin American countries such as Argentina and Venezuela for adopting a pro-US stance with the doctrine, the Castañeda Doctrine was later effectively, if not officially, discontinued under the Calderón administration.

References

Politics of Mexico
Vicente Fox
Foreign policy doctrines
Foreign relations of Mexico

Castañeda Doctrine


The Hygienic Association of Hvar (Societa Igienica)  was founded in  on the island of Hvar by Juraj II. Duboković, Bishop of Hvar.

It was an early instance of health tourism, as it was established for the benefit of foreign visitors, who were to be encouraged to regain their health with the help of the Hvar town climate. The association raised funds to invest in facilities for the visitors.  The bishop was the biggest stock holder and first president of the association.  It specialised in chest illnesses.

It claims to be the first organised tourism in Europe.  It opened a hotel, adapted from a private house, October 15 1868. It had 13 single rooms with heating and a restaurant, with a staff of  a cook, two waiters and a chambermaid from Trieste. It moved to a military building on the Fabrika in 1872, then after securing a donation of 200 florins from the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who became its patron,  built a new hotel, the Kur Hotel Kaiserin Elizabeth. When it was completed in 1903 it had 35 beds, bathrooms, a reading room, restaurant and a coffee-house. The society collapsed around 1918.

References

Medical and health organizations based in Croatia
History of Hvar
Medical tourism
1868 in Croatia
History of Dalmatia

Hygienic Association of Hvar


Michael Edward Hudock, Jr. (September 29, 1934 – May 7, 2003) was an American football center. He helped the University of Miami to become a national football power for the first time. He went played in the American Football League (AFL) as an original member of the New York Titans. He played high school football for the Tunkhannock Tigers, graduating in 1952.

College career
An offensive lineman and linebacker, Hudock was a sophomore in 1954 when the Miami Hurricanes finished No. 9 in the nation, the first time they ended a season top 10. In his senior year they were 8–1–1, No. 6 in all three wire polls and Hudock was named honorable mention All-American. Hudock was twice named first-team center for the All-South team in college football and was selected to play in the Chicago Charities College All-Star Game (an injury meant that he did not play). He had begun his college career at the University of Pittsburgh before transferring to Miami.

Professional career
Although his early professional years were plagued by knee injuries, Hudock became an integral part of another team's rise to prominence in 1960 when he joined the New York Titans for the first American Football League season. The Titans became the New York Jets in 1963 and in 1965 Hudock played for Joe Namath's rookie year. Taken by the Miami Dolphins in the 1966 AFL expansion draft, he retired in 1967 after he was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs.

He became an assistant high school football coach at Old Forge (Pa.), but returned to the Chiefs and played until the end of the season for their injured starting center.

Post-football career
Hudock later served as police chief in Tunkhannock Township, Pennsylvania.

See also
 List of American Football League players

References

1934 births
2003 deaths
American football centers
Kansas City Chiefs players
Miami Hurricanes football players
New York Jets players
New York Titans (AFL) players
People from Pittston, Pennsylvania
Players of American football from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
American Football League players
People from Wyoming County, Pennsylvania
Miami Dolphins players

Mike Hudock


Donald Davis (October 25, 1938 – June 5, 2014) was an American record producer, songwriter and guitarist who combined a career in music with one in banking.

Biography
Born in Detroit, he started playing music in the mid-1950s and after leaving Central High School formed his own jazz group, the Don Davis Trio, before becoming a session musician.  He played guitar for many Detroit record labels, including Golden World  and Ric-Tic, as well as on early Motown records such as the hits, "Money (That's What I Want)" by Barrett Strong and Mary Wells' "Bye Bye Baby".

He moved on to writing and producing records in Detroit and then joined Stax Records in Memphis, aiming to achieve a fusion of the Stax and Motown sounds.  He achieved his first major success as a songwriter and producer in 1968 with Johnnie Taylor's hit "Who's Making Love", which reached no.1 on the Billboard Hot R&B Singles chart and no.5 on the Billboard Hot 100.  Davis also played guitar on the track, together with Steve Cropper.  He worked with Taylor on many of his hits in the 1970s, including the 1971 R&B no.1 hit "Jody's Got Your Girl and Gone", which Davis co-wrote.  Later, in 1976, he also co-wrote and produced Taylor's "Disco Lady", which spent four weeks at no.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and six weeks on the Billboard R&B chart in the US. It was the first single to be certified platinum by the RIAA.

Davis set up his own record production and music publishing companies, called Groovesville, which are still operating. In 1971, he bought one of Detroit's premier recording studios, United Sound, used by a host of musicians including George Clinton, Aretha Franklin, The Dramatics, The Dells, Carla Thomas, Michael Henderson, David Ruffin and Johnnie Taylor. He also used the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama to record the basic rhythm tracks on some of his productions.

In 1975, Davis started and headed the RCA-distributed Detroit-based record label, Tortoise International which included artists, First Fire, The Rockets, the 1978 comeback album by The Skyliners, as well as the 1978 Dan Schafer version of the 1960s re-make "Baby Now That I've Found You" which was re-released in 2012 on the CD Perhaps..the Very Best of Dan Schafer.   In 1977, Davis produced the Billy Davis, Jr. and Marilyn McCoo hit, "You Don't Have to Be a Star (To Be in My Show)".

Davis also established himself as a banker, founding the First Independence Bank, the only African American-owned and operated commercial bank in Michigan in 1970.  He concentrated on his banking concern in later years, but continued to operate his music interests as well.

He lived in West Bloomfield Township, north of Detroit, and died after a short illness in June 2014, aged 75.  He is survived by a wife and three children.

References

External links

"Don Davis, The 70th Composition: The Man. The Music. The Mogul. - A Tribute" February 9, 2009
"A tribute with an interview with Don Davis at Soul Express"

1938 births
2014 deaths
African-American bankers
American bankers
African-American record producers
Record producers from Michigan
Musicians from Detroit
People from West Bloomfield, Michigan
20th-century African-American people
21st-century African-American people

Don Davis (record producer)