Word of the day
- leitmotif January 12, 2025Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 12, 2025 is: leitmotif • \LYTE-moh-teef\ • noun A leitmotif is a dominant recurring theme—something (such as a melody, an idea, or a phrase) repeated many times throughout a book, story, opera, etc. // The overcoming of obstacles and a love of theater are the two leitmotifs of […]Merriam-Webster
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On This Day
Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies), and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.[3] Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States.
Early in his political career, Debs was a member of the Democratic Party. He was elected as a Democrat to the Indiana General Assembly in 1884. After working with several smaller unions, including the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Debs was instrumental in the founding of the American Railway Union (ARU), one of the nation’s first industrial unions. After workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company organized a wildcat strike over pay cuts in the summer of 1894, Debs signed many into the ARU. He called a boycott of the ARU against handling trains with Pullman cars, in what became the nationwide Pullman Strike, affecting most lines west of Detroit, and more than 250,000 workers in 27 states. Purportedly to keep the mail running, President Grover Cleveland used the United States Army to break the strike. As a leader of the ARU, Debs was convicted of federal charges for defying a court injunction against the strike and served six months in prison.
In jail, Debs read various works of socialist theory and emerged six months later as a committed adherent of the international socialist movement. Debs was a founding member of the Social Democracy of America (1897), the Social Democratic Party of America (1898), and the Socialist Party of America (1901).
Debs ran as a Socialist candidate for President of the United States five times, including 1900 (earning 0.6% of the popular vote), 1904 (3.0%), 1908 (2.8%), 1912 (6.0%), and 1920 (3.4%), the last time from a prison cell. He was also a candidate for United States Congress from his native state Indiana in 1916.
Debs was noted for his oratory, and his speech denouncing American participation in World War I led to his second arrest in 1918. He was convicted under the Sedition Act of 1918 and sentenced to a term of 10 years. President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence in December 1921. Debs died in 1926, not long after being admitted to a sanatorium due to cardiovascular problems that developed during his time in prison. He has since been cited as the inspiration for numerous politicians.
Born On This Day
1891 – Nella Larsen, Danish/African-American nurse, librarian, and author (d. 1964)
Nellallitea “Nella” Larsen, born Nellie Walker (April 13, 1891 – March 30, 1964), was an American novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. Working as a nurse and a librarian, she published two novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), and a few short stories. Though her literary output was scant, she earned recognition by her contemporaries.
A revival of interest in her writing has occurred since the late 20th century, when issues of racial and sexual identity have been studied. Her works have been the subjects of numerous academic studies, and she is now widely lauded as “not only the premier novelist of the Harlem Renaissance, but also an important figure in American modernism.”[1]
Early life
Nella Larsen was born Nellie Walker in a poor district of Chicago known as the Levee, on April 13, 1891, the daughter of Peter Walker, believed to be a mulatto Afro-Caribbean immigrant from the Danish West Indies, and Marie Walker, née Hansen, a Danish immigrant. Her mother was a seamstress and domestic worker.[2] Her father was likely a mixed-race descendant of Henry or George Walker, white men from Albany, New York, who settled in the Danish West Indies about 1840.[3] In that Danish colonial society, racial lines were more fluid and Walker may never have identified as “Negro.”[3] He soon disappeared from the lives of Nella and her mother; she said he had died when she was very young. At this time, Chicago was filled with immigrants, but the Great Migration had not begun from the South. The black population of the city was 1.3% in 1890 and 2% in 1910, near the end of Walker’s childhood on the South Side.[4]
Marie married Peter Larsen, a fellow Danish immigrant, by whom she had another daughter, Anna.[2] Nellie took her stepfather’s surname, sometimes using versions spelled Nellye Larson and Nellie Larsen, before settling finally on Nella Larsen.[5] The mixed family moved west to a mostly white neighborhood of German and Scandinavian immigrants, but encountered discrimination because of Nella. When Nella was eight, they moved a few blocks back east. The author and critic Darryl Pinckney wrote of her anomalous situation:
“as a member of a white immigrant family, she [Larsen] had no entrée into the world of the blues or of the black church. If she could never be white like her mother and sister, neither could she ever be black in quite the same way that Langston Hughes and his characters were black. Hers was a netherworld, unrecognizable historically and too painful to dredge up.”[2]
Most American blacks were from the South, and Larsen had no connection with them.
As a child, Larsen lived for a few years with relatives in Denmark, possibly in Jutland.[6] While she was unusual in being of mixed race, she had some good memories of that time. After returning to Chicago, she attended a large public school. As migration of blacks increased to the city, so had European immigration, and racial segregation and tensions had increased in the immigrant neighborhoods. Her mother believed that education could give Larsen an opportunity and supported her in attending Fisk University, a historically black university in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1907-08, for the first time Larsen was living within an African-American community; but she was still separated by her own background and life experiences from most of the students, who were primarily from the South, with many descended from former slaves. Biographer George B. Hutchinson found that Larsen was expelled for some violation of Fisk’s strict dress or conduct codes.[7] Larsen went to Denmark for four years and then returned to the US, but continued to struggle to find a place where she could belong.[2]
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wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for January 12 January 12, 2025Picture of the day Olive-bellied sunbird (Cinnyris chloropygius) starting to fly at Kibale National Park
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for January 11 January 11, 2025Picture of the day Sninský kameň, Vihorlatské vrchy in the winter, frost on trees
Recipes
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