Marcus Garvey

Need to know
1. The first UNIA division was formed in New York in May 1917. Within a month,
the organization had 2 million members all over the United States. By 1920,
the U.N.I.A. had 1,100 chapters in 40 countries around the world such as UK,
Cuba, Panama, Costa Rica, Ghana. By 1926, the membership of the U.N.I.A.
had grown to over 11 million members. Marcus Garvey built the largest Black
organization in history.
2. In 1918, nine years after the failure of his first newspaper, The Watchman,
Garvey and the UNIA created the Negro World. It quickly grew from being a
weekly into a worldwide phenomenon with a peak circulation of 200, 000. It
featured reports from UNIA chapter, poetry, literary excerpts, a women's
page and commentary on global events significant to Black people. It had
sections in Spanish and French. Colonial authorities feared the Negro World
and it was banned in many countries such as Belize, Trinidad, Guyana,
Jamaica and several African countries.
3. In 1920, Garvey established the Negro Factories Corporation and offered
stock for African Americans to buy. He raised one million dollars for the
project. He wanted to produce everything that a nation needed so that
African Americans could completely rely on their own efforts. It generated
income and provided jobs by its numerous enterprises.
4. In New York City alone, Garvey owned several buildings, owned a fleet of
trucks and had over 1,000 Black people working in his businesses. Marcus
Garvey's U.N.I.A. also operated the Phyllis Wheatley Hotel.
5. Garvey's ultimate dream was for the independence of all African Countries
and the creation of a United States of Africa. The UNIA embarked on a plan to
repatriate some Blacks from the United States and other parts of the African
Diaspora back to Africa.
6. In 1928, Garvey created the People's Political Party (PPP) which was Jamaica
first modern political party and the first to defend the interests of the Black
majority. The party's manifesto called for official representation in the British
Parliament, a minimum wage, land reform, a Jamaican university, judicial
reform, a government-run electrical system, public high schools and libraries
and a National Opera House.
7. The Black Star Line, financed and run by African Americans, became a
powerful recruiting tool for the UNIA. By 1920 the UNIA had hundreds of
branches worldwide, hosted international conventions and published the
weekly 'Negro World'.
8. On January 12, 1922 Marcus Garvey was arrested for mail fraud in connection
with the sale of stock in the failed Black Star Line. He was accused of using
the United States mail to fraudulently collect money for investment in a ship
that was never acquired.
9. Despite his emerging popularity, Garvey received widespread opposition
among both black and white political, labor, and religious organizations.
During the postwar era, a growing fear of Socialist and Communist

conspiracies led many to view Garveys movement as a harbinger of radical

black power.
10.The Garvey movement was the greatest international movement of African
peoples in modern times. At its peak, in 1922-1924, the movement counted
over 8 million followers.
Neat to know
1. One of Garvey close confidantes Herbert Boulin was a spy for the FBI known
as agent P-138.
2. Marcus Garvey has inspired every major black movement of the 20th century,
both in Africa and the Americas. Followers of Garvey's ideology include Hon
Elijah Muhammad, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Malcolm X and Martin Luther
King Jr.
3. On November 10, 1964 the body of Marcus Garvey was returned to Jamaica.
The following day he was declared the country's first national hero.
4. Marcus was one of 11 children born to Marcus Garvey, Sr. and Sarah Jane
Richards.
5. The first ship of the Black Star Line was unofficially named after famous
abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Calvin Coolidge
Need to know
1. After 10 ballots, Republican delegates settled on Senator Warren G. Harding
of Ohio as their presidential nominee in 1920, and Coolidge was nominated
as vice president. Harding and Coolidge beat opponents James M. Cox and
Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide, taking every state outside of the South.
2. Coolidge became the first president who appointed special prosecutors to
investigate a single scandal and allowed them to complete their mission with
no interference at all on his part.
3. Coolidge issued 1,545 pardons, the second most pardons issued by a
president before Franklin Roosevelt; and he cast fifty vetoes, the fourth
largest number cast by any president before Franklin Roosevelt.
4. After finishing Harding's term, Coolidge was elected to another term of
president. He ran under the slogan "Keep Cool with Coolidge". As president,
Coolidge was for small government. He also wanted to keep the country
somewhat isolated and did not want to join the League of Nations that formed
after World War I.
5. It was during his time as vice-president that Coolidge earned the nickname
"Silent Cal." Though he was known for being an eloquent public speaker, in
private he was withdrawn and quiet. This intensified after the death of his
son.
6. At the 1920 Republican National Convention, Coolidge was discussed as a
possible presidential candidate, but ended up coming in 6th on the balloting.
However, his name was brought up again during the balloting for vicepresident, and he unexpectedly won the nomination to be Warren G.
Harding's running mate.

7. Coolidge generally supported minimum regulation and no government

interference in the private sector. For example, he cut taxes, balanced the
federal budget, and he twice vetoed the debt-relief scheme of the McNaryHaugen Farm Relief Bill which championed government purchase and sale of
farm surpluses.
8. Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act, which gave full U.S. citizen rights
to all Native Americans.
9. In the 1924 presidential election, Coolidge beat his opponents by the largest
vote for Republican in history. He had 54% of the vote. Compared to Davis's
28% and La Follette's 16.5%
10.Although many people believed that Coolidge could have won re-election in
1928, he publicly announced his decision not to run on August 2, 1927, in a
simple note delivered to reporters at a press conference. The physical strain
of the job, as well as the death of his father and his youngest son, had
depleted his energy and interest in another term.
Neat to know
1. Coolidge was the last President to write his own speeches and he deliberately
kept them short. The average length of Coolidges sentences was 18 words
by comparison Lincolns average was 26.6 words and George Washingtons
was 51.5.
2. Coolidge was the first vice-president to attend cabinet meetings.
3. President Coolidge was the first president to have his inauguration heard on
the radio and the first president to make a radio broadcast. The first
presidential political speech on the radio originated from New York City and
was broadcast on 5 radio stations. An audience estimated to be about 5
million people listened in to hear Coolidge speak.
4. The Calvin family had two pet raccoons. They were named Rebecca and
Reuben. They stayed in an outdoor shed at night. Sometimes they would
roam the White House during the day.
5. Calvin Coolidge's Vice President, Charles Dawes won a Nobel Peace Prize.
Herbert Hoover
Need to know
1. During WW I Hover worked with the government on saving food and supplies
for the troops. He instituted meatless days and encouraged people to start
victory gardens for food so more food could go towards the war effort. He
created slogans like "Wheatless days in America make sleepless nights in
Germany," and "Save beans by all means."
2. In 1947 President Truman appointed Hoover to a commission, which elected
him chairman, to reorganize the Executive Departments.
3. Herbert Hoover was a self-made millionaire by time he was forty, earning his
money from engineering, owning silver mines and from writing books on
mining engineering. For this reason, he did not take a salary as president. He
was the first millionaire president.
4. Due to the 'Great Depression' and the 'Bonus Army March' Herbert Hoover
became unpopular, many giving blame of the financial situation to him.

5. Herbert Hoover became trapped in Tianjin, North China, with his family when
the Boxer Rebellion occurred. The Hoovers helped to defend their city, using
their local knowledge to their advantage.
6. Hoover went to Stanford University and studied geology. He made his fortune
traveling the world as a gold mine expert.
7. He believed that the only way an economic depression could be cure is
through the workers of the society. In his words, Economic depression cannot
be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds
must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body the
producers and consumers themselves.
8. In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover ran for the Republican Party and
easily won against Democratic candidate Alfred E. Smith. The electoral votes
of 444-87 favored Hoover by a record margin.
9. So many people became homeless during Hoover's presidency that the name
"Hooverville" became a popular phrase to describe the shanty towns and
shelters created by the homeless.
10.Hoover easily lost reelection to Franklin D. Roosevelt due to the effects of the
Great Depression.
Neat to know
1. Hoover was the first president born west of the Mississippi river.
2. Hoover was a Quaker.
3. He was so popular in Finland that the Fins added hoover to their dictionary. It
means "help."
4. He and his wife, Lou Hoover, lived in China before he became president.
While there he and his wife learned to speak Mandarin Chinese. They
sometimes speak Chinese in the White House to prevent others from listening
to their conversation.
5. Hoover was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times.
John Maynard Keynes
Need to know
1. John Maynard Keynes was the most important economist of the 20th century,
but he had only eight weeks undergraduate training in the subject and never
sat an examination in it.
2. In the 1930s, Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking,
challenging the ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets
would, in the short to medium term, automatically provide full employment,
as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands.
3. In January 1915, Keynes took up an official government position at the
Treasury.
4. Keynes completed his A Treatise on Probability and published it in 1921. The
book rejected and attacked the traditional classical theory of probability and
proposed a "logical-relationist" theory.
5. Keynes published his work Treatise on Money in 1930 which stated that the
cause of rise in unemployment lay in the amount of money being saved

which when exceeds the amount being invested, happening due to very high
interest rates leads to unemployment.
6. In 1940 Keynes came out with his How to Pay for the War which discussed
about the methods and techniques like taxation, compulsory saving
(essentially workers loaning money to the government), rather than deficit
spending that could well save nations from war losses.
7. Though Keynes economics were rejected by the British government many of
his theories have been combined with neo-classical economics to produce
Neo-Keynesian economics. Several nations adopted Keynesian economics to
formulate their countrys economic and governmental laws.
8. In June 1942 Keynes got rewarded for his services with a hereditary peerage in the King's
Birthday Honors. On 7 July Keynes was upgraded on his title, being gazetted as Baron
Keynes, of Tilton in the County of Sussex.
9. Keynes totally rejected the classical argument that if there is unemployment,
wages will fall and that if trade unions, etc., prevent this fall, such rigidity is
the cause of protracted unemployment.
10.In his early days Keynes was, like all liberals, a fervent believer in free trade.
Later he saw the possibility of conflict between free trade and full
employment.
Neat to know
1. Keynes was a bisexual and had several relationships with men.
2. His father was an economist and a philosopher, his mother became the
town's first female mayor.
3. He was bright scholar won a scholarship to Eton College.
4. Keynes was a pacifist
5. Keynes was a pioneer of womens rights to control their own bodies and of
gender equality.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Need to know
1. Eleanor Roosevelt served as first lady from March 1933 to April 1945, longer
than any other president's wife.
2. In 1905, Eleanor married her distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would
later become president of the United States.
3. After her husband suffered a polio attack in 1921, Eleanor stepped forward to
help Franklin with his political career.
4. From 1945 to 1953, Eleanor served as a delegate to the United Nations
General Assembly. She also became chair of the UN's Human Rights
Commission.
5. As the United States moved toward war in the late 1930s, Eleanor Roosevelt
spoke out forcefully in favor of her husband's foreign policy. She accepted an
appointment as deputy director in the Office of Civilian Defense but resigned
in 1942 after being criticized for being a poor administrator in this position.
6. Eleanor was orphaned at a very young age.
7. As first lady, Eleanor traveled across the United States, acting as her
husbands eyes and ears and reporting back to him after she visited

government institutions and programs and numerous other facilities. She was
an early champion of civil rights for African Americans, as well as an advocate
for women, American workers, the poor and young people.
8. She hosted radio programs and a television news show, and continued to
write her newspaper column and give lectures.
9. In 1933, Mrs. Roosevelt became the first, First Lady to hold her own press
conference. In an attempt to afford equal time to women--who were
traditionally barred from presidential press conferences--she allowed only
female reporters to attend.
10.In World War II, she visited England and the South Pacific to foster good will
among the Allies and boost the morale of US servicemen overseas.
Neat to know
1. Eleanor was known as a shy child, and experienced tremendous loss at a
young age: Her mother died in 1892 and her father died two years later,
when she was just 10 years old.
2. The couple had six children: Anna, James, Franklin (who died as an infant),
Elliott, Franklin Jr. and John.
3. On her wedding day, then-president Teddy Roosevelt walked Eleanor down
the aisle.
4. Eleanor discovered her husband was having an affair with her social
secretary, Lucy Mercer and offered Franklin a divorce.
5. Over the course of her life, Roosevelt wrote 27 books and more than 8,000
columns.