From Leading Civil Rights Movements to Serving In Congress | The Story Of John Robert Lewis

John Robert Lewis is an American politician and civil rights leader. He was born on February 21, 1940, near Troy, Alabama, U.S). Lewis was the son of Alabama sharecroppers. He attended segregated schools and was encouraged by his parents not to challenge the inequities of the Jim Crow South. As a teenager, he was inspired by the courageous defiance of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., to whose attention Lewis came when he indicated his desire to desegregate Troy State college (now Troy State University). Dissuaded from doing so by his parents, Lewis instead was educated in Nashville at the American Baptist Theological Institute and Fisk University (B.A in religion and philosophy, 1967).

There, Lewis undertook the study of nonviolent protest and became involved in sit-ins at lunch counters and other segregated public places. In 1961, while participating in the Freedom Rides that challenged the segregation of Southern interstate bus terminals, Lewis was beaten and arrested-experiences he would repeat often. In 1963, he was elected as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee also known as SNCC. In his early 20s, Lewis was considered one of the “Big Six” leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington. Lewis played many key roles in the Civil Rights Movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States.

He is now the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s 5th congressional district, serving in his 17th term in the House, having served since 1987, and is the senior member of the Georgia congressional delegation. Lewis is known for leading the march that was halted by police violence on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, a landmark event in the history of the civil rights movement that became known as “Bloody Sunday.” He was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize in 1975, the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Spingarn Medal in 2002. In 2011 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He also wrote several books and a graphic novel series called the March trilogy which was based on Lewis’s experiences in the civil rights movement.

Edsel

Edsel is an automobile marque from Ford Motor Company that was highly publicized as "the car of the future."  However, its 1957 unveiling received an adverse initial public reaction and Edsels never gained popularity.  Today, the name "Edsel" is a popular symbol for commercial failure.

A Ford Edsel, famed for its commercial flop

Ford chose September 4, 1957, as the debut date, dubbing it "E-Day".  In the year leading up to E-Day, Ford heavily invested in a teaser campaign for the new brand and new car.  The public was whipped into a frenzy by the teaser campaign, only to be let down by the final product.  They considered the Edsels to be unattractive and overpriced.

Additionally, many customers thought the Edsel looked ugly.  Ford designers chose to use a vertical grille to make the Edsel stand out, but the grille had to be enormous to keep the car running.  The car looked bad to both critics and consumers.  But Edsel's issues went beyond appearance.  Edsels were assembled in the same factories as the Mercury and Ford cars, and it was expected that the Ford and Mercury production would not drop.  Quality control for different Edsel models was not maintained - some Edsels even left the assembly lines unfinished.

Edsel's vertical grille was intended to make the car stand out
but was considered ugly by customers and critics

The Edsel started at $2500 and topped at $3800, far more expensive than other Ford models of the time.  Given that it debuted at the beginning of a recession, most customers weren't looking to purchase an expensive Ford.  Sales for most car manufacturers were down, even those that weren't introducing new models.  Edsel's problems were compounded by competition with well-established brands like Pontiac, Buick, and Oldsmobile.  

The Edsel was one of Ford's attempt to target the new consumer culture in America.  At release, they offered 19 different models (in a time where most car companies offered a few) to cater to a broad range of preferences.  However, a number of factors turned Edsel from the "car of the future" to the "Ford that flopped".

Upon release, Edsel was mocked for the grille that looked like a toilet seat.
Others said it looked like "an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon".

Ella Baker

 Ella Baker was an African American for civil rights and for the human rights activist. She was one of the most important one in the civil rights movement. She was very well known specially because she "worked alongside some of the most famous civil rights movements in the 20 centuries."

Ella Baker

Ella Josephine Baker was an African-American civil rights and human rights activist. She was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned more than five decades. She worked alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the 20th century.

Ms. Baker played a key role in some of the most influential organizations of the time, including the NAACP, Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She wanted to assist the new student activists because she viewed young, emerging activists as a resource and an asset to the movement. Ms Baker organized a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was born.

A Quick Guide To: The R-7 Semyorka and Yuri Gagarin

The R-7
While we've talked a lot about how there was a 'missile gap' between the US, we haven't talked about what started the panic. That missile was the R-7 Semyorka. And even when compared to other big intercontinental missiles, it was huge. It stood 112 feet tall, and the central core was 10 feet in diameter.

The launch of Sputnik

Even though it was designed and built rather quickly, the R-7 had quite a few interesting design features. One of the main issues in early rocketry was stage separation. Once a booster is out of fuel, it's dead weight. Thus, spent stages needed to be ditched. The problem is that vertical stage separations were difficult and caused many launch failures in the Soviet program. What they decided to do was to separate the boosters horizontally. This is why there are four outer boosters around a central core on the R-7. The outer four would lift the rocket up to altitude, where they'd separate and leave the central core to carry on its nuclear journey. The separation also lead to one of the beautiful sights of rocketry: the "Korolev Cross."

The Korolev Cross of a modern Soyuz rocket, part of the R-7 family  

The second innovation was the use of vernier thrusters to steer the rocket. A lot of the contemporary US rockets of the time used thrust vectoring, where the nozzle of the engine could be rotated to steer the rocket. This worked very well, but added a huge amount of complexity to the rocket. The Soviets opted to use small rocket motors called vernier thrusters. You see how there are some big engines and a few tiny engines visible in the photo? The tiny ones are the verniers. These would turn on and off, providing thrust on only one side of the rocket to steer it. There were a couple issues with the design. The worst of these was the cryogenic (very cold) propellant. Basically, the fuel would boil and evaporate at room temperature. This meant that the missile had to be kept empty until just before launch. From first alarm to launch took twenty hours.As a strategic weapon, this sorta sucked. To put things into perspective, modern missiles take minutes, if not seconds, to confirm target and launch. 

The R-7 family is still in use today, almost 60 years later. It ferried Sputnik to orbit, and shot Yuri Gagarin to orbit. 

Yuri Gagarin

On April 12, 1961, a strange amount of activity was noticed at Baikanour Cosmodrome. A Vostok-K rocket (derivative of the R-7)  stood on the launch pad, partially shrouded in condensation from the liquid oxygen stored inside. There was a tense atmosphere in mission control as final checks were carried out. Television screens showed live video of the cargo: an astronaut by the name of Yuri Gagarin. Sergei Korolev, the chief designer, started having chest pains and was very worried at the statistics. 24 test launches had been carried out. Only 12 had succeeded. Strangely enough, Gagarin was perfectly calm in his capsule. 

At 6:07 Universal Time, the Vostok-K lifted off, Garagrin saying "Poyekhali!," "Let's go!" Ten minutes later the final engine shut off and the capsule separated from the rocket. The capsule drifted out of radio range, leaving Gagarin alone for a few minutes. About an hour later Gagarin turned the sun-seeking system on, orienting the capsule for re-entry. The retrorockets fired shortly after, nudging the spacecraft out of orbit. A command was sent up from mission control to separate the service module from the re-entry module (the one Gagarin was in). These failed to separate because of a stuck bundle of cables, leading to high g-forces over Egypt. The cables burned through, and the reentry module carried on through reentry.

 Once the capsule slowed down enough and stopped burning, parachutes were deployed. Automatically, at 23,000 feet, explosive bolts blew the hatch off, and two seconds later Gagarin's ejection seat fired, shooting him out of the spacecraft. He then had a "pleasant" ten-minute parachute ride down to the ground. A farmer and his daughter were near where Gagarin landed, and started to back away in fear (It's not every day a figure in a bright orange suit and white helmet parachutes from the sky. Gagarin told them "don't be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"

The landing of a modern-day Soyuz capsule

A model of Gagarin's Vostok spacecraft

Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson's life encompassed a career in law, a professional football career, extensive schooling, and a notable life in performing arts, all enough to prove that he was more than the classic white view of the "black man in America." However, his greatest stand against racism and segregation was shown in his political activism. Lynchings were common occurrences in the early 20th century, asserting white power in a terrible and violent way. After a mass lynching, Robeson had a personal meeting with President Truman himself, urging him to put a stop to the terrors that were going on, not in the world, but right at home. He said that if nothing was done, "the Negroes will defend themselves." He made a huge call to action - earning the support of W.E.B. Dubois and forming the American Crusade Against Lynching. As the Civil Rights Movement was picking up steam, becoming more than a petty uprising that could be squashed by the white population, Robeson was heavily involved. Unfortunately, he was never taken as seriously as he should have due to his affiliation with the Communist Party of the United States. In this time of McCarthyism, he was looked at with no respect, and many of his efforts were never recognized for all that they were.

Isaac Woodard

Isaac Woodard was a black man and veteran of WWII. He became famous after he returned home and, while still in uniform, was attacked in South Carolina while getting on a bus. The incident occured on February 12, 1946, and sparked huge protests, more noticeably among the black community in America. The assault began after having an argument with the bus driver who he had asked about using the restroom. The bus driver called the local police to come detain the black veteran, despite having done nothing wrong. The police showed up, beat Woodard, which left him permanently blind, and then arrested him for alleged misconduct. National outcry started after newspapers all across the country picked up on the egregious story. President Truman ordered a federal investigation into the case, but the sheriff in charge, after having been indicted and brought to court, was acquitted by an all-white jury. A noticeable feature of this case was that it became so huge thanks to the recent growth of radio and broadcasting in America. Because of radio, it was getting much more difficult for white people to get away with acts of blatant racism unscathed.