Biographical Sketches

World Boxing Champion, 1937-1949.

1914-1981. World boxing champion 1937-1949, nicknamed "The Brown Bomber." Joe Louis was born Joseph Louis Barrow on May 13, 1914, in Lexington , Alabama , the youngest of seven children. His father was committed to a mental institution when Joe was two and died when he was four. His mother, Lilly Barrow, remarried and the family moved to Detroit . Louis was studying cabinet-making at a trade school when he took up amateur boxing, registering as "Joe Louis," in some accounts so his mother wouldn't find out. He won 50 of 54 amateur bouts. He had taken a job on an auto assembly line, but decided to become a professional boxer when he won the U.S. Amateur Athletic Union crown in 1934.

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First African American to win an Oscar.

1895-1952. First African American film star to win an Oscar. Hattie McDaniel was born in Wichita , Kansas to Henry and Susan McDaniel. Her father was a freed slave who have become a Baptist minister; her mother was a gospel singer. McDaniel's father organized her and her brothers and sisters into a singing troupe to earn money.

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Heart-throb of the silent screen.

1899-1968. Actor, best known for his silent films. Born in Durango, Mexico, and christened Ramon Gil Samaniego. His father was a prosperous dentist. Ramon sang in the church choir and studied classical piano. In 1914, his family moved to Los Angeles to escape the aftermath of the 1910 Mexican Revolution.

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Flamboyant central figure in the history of rock and roll.

1932- . Born in Macon, Georgia, as Richard Wayne Penniman. He was one of twelve children. His father, Charles "Bud" Penniman, was a Seventh Day Adventist preacher who sold moonshine on the side. The family lived on an unpaved street in a poor section of town. As a child Richard sang with the Penniman Singers and the Tiny Tots Quartet. By age fifteen he was a regular with Sugarfoot Sam's Minstrel Show.

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Greatest welterweight and middleweight boxer of the 20th century.

1921-1989. World welterweight boxing champion who held the middleweight title five times. Named by the Associated Press in 1999 the greatest welterweight and middleweight boxer of the century.

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Social reformer, suffragist, founder of the Friday Morning Club.

1820-1914. Born Caroline Seymour in Canandaigua , New York . She graduated at fifteen from the Female Seminary at Geneva , New York . In 1840 she married Theodoric C. Severance, a banker. She had five children, the first of which died when he was six weeks old. She was active in abolitionist causes in the years before the Civil War. After the war, in 1866, she helped Susan B. Anthony found the Equal Rights Association.

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Founder of USC. Pistol-packing judge and real estate developer.

1838-1929. Principal founder of USC. Born in Piqua , Ohio . At 16 he left for the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains where he adventured for two years with a knapsack, axe, and rifle. Robert M. Widney arrived in California in 1857. He attended the University of the Pacific at Santa Clara , 1858-62, taking his BA and MA., later serving there as a professor of mathematics.

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