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Mansa Musa was the ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa. Details recorded here should be sourced; unknown information is left blank.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| Statue of Samuel Adams | |
|---|---|
 Samuel Adams, 1876, National Statuary Hall Collection |
Anne Whitney created two public statues of American Founding Father Samuel Adams. One, made in 1876, is in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.[1][2] The other, made in 1880, is located in front of Faneuil Hall Plaza in Boston.
Congress asked each state to provide the nation's capitol with two statues of prominent individuals. Some thought that John Adams, Samuel's cousin and also a Founding Father as well as an American president, should have been chosen, but at the time Samuel Adams was the most popular figure in the state's history.[3] Having written thousands of letters to political leaders and newspapers, he was called "the most persuasive political writers of all time" by George Sand.[3]
Whitney won a contest in 1873 to create a statue of Samuel Adams,[4] one of the requirements being that the statue be carved in Italy from a plaster cast made in Boston.[5] She traveled to Italy in 1875 to acquire Carrara marble for the sculpture.[6][7] It was sent to Washington, D.C. in 1876, the country's centennial.[3] In a verse that mocked the judges who first selected her in a blind competition to create a statue for Charles Sumner, but deselected her when they found out that she was a woman, a verse was published in New York Evening Telegram that stated, "Yet under the dome of the Capitol / Stands Samuel Adams erect and tall, / As free as his namesake before the fall; / And though the image was carved by woman / Rarely is marble so grandly human."[8] The statue was unveiled in the Capitol on December 19, 1876.[9]
Before being sent to Washington, D.C., the statue was exhibited at the Boston Athenæum where it proved to be so popular that the citizens of Boston commissioned a bronze version for the city.[10] The bronze version of the statue on a granite base (1880) was installed on Congress Street in Faneuil Hall Plaza in Boston, where Adams gave speeches about British rule and taxation.[1][11][12] It is based upon the marble statue that she made for the National Statuary Hall Collection. She was requested to make another version by the City of Boston.[11]
Adams attitude suggests one of defiance against British rule, such as the manner in which his arms are crossed,[11] and determination. Adam's face is finely chiseled, and he wears citizen's clothing of the period. The Revolutionary patriot,[12] Adams founded the Sons of Liberty with John Hancock to protest unfair taxation on the residents of the colonies.[11] The statue is meant to convey his attitude at the point, after the Boston Massacre, when Adams demanded that Governor Thomas Hutchinson remove British troops from the city. The troops were moved to Castle Island in Boston Harbor.[12] The inscription on the monument states "Samuel Adams 1722–1803 – A Patriot – He organized the Revolution, and signed the Declaration of Independence. Governor – A True Leader of the People. Erected A. D. 1880, from a fund bequeathed to the city of Boston by Jonathan Phillips. A statesman, incorruptible and fearless."[12]
The pedestal is ten feet high. That statue sits upon a polished Quincy granite base and cap and a lower nine-feet square base of unpolished Quincy granite.[12] The granite plaza surface is marked for 850 feet (260 m) with the approximate location of the early Colonial shoreline c. 1630. The street layout and building plot plan designations from an 1820 map are shown by etched dashed lines and changes from pink granite to grey granite paving slabs. The 1996 shoreline marking artwork by Ross Miller entitled, A Once and Future Shoreline, is made with etched silhouettes of seaweed, sea grass, fish, shells and other materials found along a high tide line.[13]
It first stood in Adams Square, but was moved for the construction of the Government Center.[12]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Anne Whitney created two public statues of American Founding Father Samuel Adams. One, made in 1876, is in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C. The other, made in 1880, is located in front of Faneuil Hall Plaza in Boston.
Samuel Adams (September 27 [O.S. September 16], 1722 – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He was a second cousin to his fellow Founding Father, President John Adams. He founded the Sons of Liberty. Adams was born in Boston, brought up in a religious and politically active family. A graduate of Harvard College, he was an unsuccessful businessman and tax collector before concentrating on politics. He was an influential official of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Boston Town Meeting in the 1760s, and he became a part of a movement opposed to the British Parliament's efforts to tax the British American colonies without their consent. His 1768 Massachusetts Circular Letter calling for colonial non-cooperation prompted the occupation of Boston by British troops, eventually resulting in the Boston Massacre of 1770. Adams and his colleagues devised a committee of correspondence system in 1772 to help coordinate resistance to what he saw as the British government's attempts to violate the British Constitution at the expense of the colonies, which linked like-minded Patriots throughout the Thirteen Colonies. Continued resistance to British policy resulted in the 1773 Boston Tea Party and the coming of the American Revolution. Adams was actively involved with colonial newspapers publishing accounts of colonial sentiment over British colonial rule, which were fundamental in uniting the colonies. Adams, the ringleader at the destruction of the East India Company's tea, was also actively involved in bribing British soldiers to desert and provided them with new clothes and the offer of land to cultivate.. Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774, at which time Adams attended the Continental Congress in Philadelphia which was convened to coordinate a colonial response. He helped guide Congress towards issuing the Continental Association in 1774 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and he helped draft the Articles of Confederation and the Massachusetts Constitution. Adams returned to Massachusetts after the American Revolution, where he served in the state senate and was eventually elected governor. Adams later became a controversial figure in American history. Accounts written in the 19th century praised him as someone who had been steering his fellow colonists towards independence long before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. This view was challenged by negative assessments of Adams in the first half of the 20th century, in which he was portrayed as a master of propaganda who provoked mob violence to achieve his goals. However, according to biographer Mark Puls, a different account emerges upon examination of Adams's many writings regarding the civil rights of the colonists, while the mob referred to were a highly reflective group of men inspired by Adams who made his case with reasoned arguments in pamphlets and newspapers, without the use of emotional rhetoric.
George Washington is a large bronze sculpture of George Washington by John Quincy Adams Ward, installed on the front steps of Federal Hall National Memorial on Wall Street in New York City.
The John Bridge Monument (also known as The Puritan), in the northeast corner of the Cambridge Common in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was given by Samuel James Bridge in honor of his ancestor John Bridge (1578–1665) and sculpted by Thomas R. Gould.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
