“Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style, and Racial Uplift,” a new exhibition at the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, showcases portraits that African Americans in central Virginia commissioned from the Holsinger Studio during the first decades of the 20th century. The photographs expressed the individuality of the women and men who commissioned them, while silently yet powerfully asserting their claims to rights and equality. Opening Sept. 22, the exhibition is the result of years of research by UVA professors, students, and community members.
Susie Smith (1891-1961) was born in Albemarle County to Ferrell Smith and Annie Lee Smith. She worked as a chambermaid, housekeeper, and cook for families in the Charlottesville area. In 1912, Smith married Maryland Brown. Smith’s portrait illustrates a sense of style and self that did not rely on white middle-class values.
John Edwin Mason, a UVA associate professor of history and a documentary photographer, first learned about the Holsinger Studio Collection, held in the Small Special Collections Library, when he saw a small exhibition at the UVA’s Woodson Institute, curated by the late professor Reginald Butler and professor Scot French (now of the University of Central Florida) in 1998. The collection, which UVA acquired in 1978, includes about 10,000 glass plate negatives taken by the Holsinger Studio of life in Charlottesville and Albemarle and Nelson counties from the 1890s to the 1920s. Many of the photographs were commissioned portraits and more than 600 of those portraits are of African American citizens in central Virginia. Mason was immediately intrigued.
“I thought that we could use these portraits not simply to enjoy for their beauty as aesthetic objects, but we could see history through them, we could tell history through them. By researching the lives of the people in the photographs, we can learn a lot about the history of this place,” he said.
The portraits were taken during the height of the Jim Crow era, when state laws enforced racial segregation in the South, the Ku Klux Klan had local chapters in the Albemarle region, and a wealthy, white UVA alumnus successfully commissioned two statues of Confederate leaders (Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson) to be erected in Charlottesville parks. “It was an incredibly oppressive time,” Mason said. “But the magic of these portraits is that you don’t see the oppression in them. And that was intentional on the part of the people who had their images made. They are saying, ‘We are not who you think we are. We are not those stereotypes, we are not defined by our status in Jim Crow society.”
A community effort
Anthony T. Buckner (1845-1923) was born into slavery in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. By the time he commissioned this portrait of himself and his granddaughter, Eileen Buckner (1909-1985), he had become one of the most respected merchants in the Charlottesville. His son, George W. Buckner, who was Eileen’s father, wrote the New Negro manifesto that was published in the Charlottesville Messenger in 1921.
In 2015, Mason turned his interest in the photos into action. He launched the Holsinger Studio Portrait Project, to delve into the lives of the portrait subjects; a partnership with the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities director Worthy Martin in 2018 provided the project with a web presence to share their research. With a 3Cavaliers grant from the office of UVA’s Vice President for Research, the team was able to hire seven undergraduate students to examine census records, military records, birth and death certificates, and African American newspapers from surrounding regions. They also dug through personal papers in UVA Special Collections to find original Holsinger prints, giving the students information about the people in the portraits and about central Virginia during that era.
A grant from Virginia Humanities allowed the team to begin reaching out to the local community to help identify portrait subjects. In 2019, the project partnered with the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to host a “Family Photo Day,” where participants could examine the Holsinger Studio portraits in flipbooks and add comments if they had any information about the subjects. “We had over 300 people come to our Family Photo Day,” Mason said. “That was a moment where we could see the potential for the project; we could see how engaged and how excited people were by these portraits.”
That same year, the team also installed 30 of the portraits around the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers construction site, drawing attention from hundreds of passers-by each day. Two Charlottesville community members, Descendants of Enslaved Communities at UVA co-chair DeTeasa Brown Gathers (who found a photo of her great-great grandmother in the Holsinger Studio Collection) and local realtor Edwina St. Rose, joined the project as community advisors. Working with the group The Preservers of the Daughters of Zion Cemetery, they launched an exhibit of the portraits at CitySpace in downtown Charlottesville in the summer of 2019.
A significant grant from the Jefferson Trust earlier this year, awarded to the University’s Corcoran Department of History, IATH, and the UVA Library, is supporting the team to think more broadly about a community engagement program. In March, the team launched a pop-up exhibit of the Holsinger photos at the Northside branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. “Our trustees were fascinated to learn that such an interesting collection of African American history is held by the University,” said Amy Bonner, director of grants at the Jefferson Trust. “The opportunity to help launch such a powerful exhibition and support the associated research was impossible to pass up.”
Viola Green Porter (1898-1985) commissioned this portrait to commemorate her graduation from the eighth grade at Charlottesville’s segregated Jefferson Graded School. The white dress and diploma make this photo similar to other Holsinger Studio graduation portraits of young women, both Black and white.
The grant is also supporting the “Visions of Progress” exhibition launching Sept. 22 in the Main Gallery of the Small Special Collections Library, where visitors can view almost 100 Holsinger Studio portraits and take in the biographical information about the subjects unearthed over the past few years by the Holsinger Studio Portrait Project team. They can also learn about the “New Negro” movement that countered the Jim Crow oppression of the early 20th century, stemming from Black intellectual leaders Booker T. Washington, Alain LeRoy Locke, and Charlottesville native George W. Buckner, whose manifesto, “The New Negro,” caused an uproar when the Charlottesville Messenger, the city’s Black newspaper, published it in 1921. “The New Negro the country over is coming to see that his salvation is in his own hands,” Buckner wrote.
The portraits in the exhibit reflect this ethos, Mason said. “It’s important to emphasize that even though the people in the portraits are dressed to the nines, they are everyday people. Most had working-class jobs.” By dressing so beautifully, Mason said, the portrait sitters were pushing back against racist caricatures that were common in American media during that era. “There was dynamism within the African American community,” he said. “Immediately after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, over 100 African American women registered to vote in Charlottesville. Black people were running barber shops, running blacksmith shops, running laundries, and campaigning for a high school. People were not defined by their oppression.”
Vibrant portraits
In 2020, Holly Robertson, Curator of University Library Exhibitions, reached out to Mason to suggest co-sponsoring an exhibition after seeing the enthusiasm the Holsinger Portrait Project garnered on Grounds in the community.
“The Holsinger Studio portraits have been an important part of the UVA Library’s collections since the 1970s,” Robertson said. “We’ve done so much work to describe and provide access to the collection — it was one of the first photographic collections we fully digitized in the late 1990s, and each portrait is available online through Virgo. We’ve taken painstaking care to provide the best preservation environment for the fragile glass plate negatives as well as the business ledgers. Yet, we’ve never exhibited this collection. As the Holsinger Studio Portrait Project grew, we saw a wonderful opportunity to partner in telling the stories of Black central Virginians through our amazing collections.”
Stacey Evans, an imaging specialist and project coordinator for UVA Library, led a team in rephotographing the Holsinger Studio glass-plate negatives for the exhibition.
UVA Library staff played a crucial role in preparing the portraits for the Special Collections exhibition. Stacey Evans, an imaging specialist and project coordinator for the Library, led a team in rephotographing the glass-plate negatives to capture plate identification numbers that had been cropped in scanning efforts in the 1990s. This helped to identify photo subjects. By following standards set by the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative, Cultural Heritage Imagining, and the Library of Congress, Evans and her team then took their photographic reproductions of the negatives and created “artist’s renderings” of the portraits using Photoshop.
Evans and her team took their photographic reproductions of the glass-plate negatives and created “artist’s renderings” of the portraits using Photoshop, dramatically improving their tonal range.
Evans, a photographer who has nearly 30 years of experience scanning negatives and working in digital imaging, said that when comparing the original scans of the negatives in Virgo to the images her team created, the tonal range of the portraits has dramatically improved. “On a personal note,” she said, “John Mason and I have been friends in the Charlottesville photo community for many years. It’s an honor to work with him on this project.”
Brandon Butler, the Library’s Director of Information Policy, conducted extensive research on copyright issues pertaining to the Holsinger collection to prepare for the exhibition. “Perhaps surprisingly, some portraits in the Holsinger Studio Collection are still subject to copyright regulations more than 100 years after they were created,” Butler said. “We believe the portrait copyrights belonged to whoever paid to have them taken — often the subject or a relative. Because that right would endure for 120 years, the descendants of the portrait sitters may still hold rights to their ancestors’ images.”
Mason and Library staff members urge exhibition visitors who might recognize ancestors or have any information about the portrait subjects to email the team at HolsingerStudio@virginia.edu. A brochure of the portraits will be freely available at the opening, and the Holsinger Project website, built by IATH, will live on after the exhibition ends in June 2023. With further support from the Jefferson Trust grant, the Holsinger Studio Project will continue to bring the portraits into the local community, visiting schools, religious organizations, and civic groups. An exhibition at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center curated by Andrea Douglas, the center’s Executive Director, is in development.
“We want to change the way that everyone in central Virginia sees our shared history,” Mason said.
Public exhibition opening details
By the time that he registered for the World War I draft, Frank W. Robertson (b. 1893) had relocated from North Garden, in Albemarle County, to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. There he worked at an attendant in a resort hotel, as did many young Black men from central Virginia. In the late 1910s, Frank moved to the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, area, working first as a manual laborer and later as a grocery store clerk.
The public opening celebration for “Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style, and Racial Uplift” will be held on Sept. 22 in the Main Gallery of UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library from 5-8 p.m.
John Edwin Mason will host two rounds of gallery talks that evening: one at 5:30 p.m., another at 6:30 p.m.
Kendall King and Jalane Schmidt, curators of another UVA Library exhibition, “No Unity Without Justice: Student and Community Organizing During the 2017 Summer of Hate,” will speak in the First Floor Gallery at 6 and 7 p.m.
This event is free, but registration is required: 100 tickets will be released via EventBrite for the 5:30/6:00 talks, and another 100 for the 6:30/7:00 talks. Register here: https://Visions-UVA.eventbrite.com
A shuttle will run from the Jefferson School African American Center to the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at UVA every 30 minutes from 4-8 p.m. for the public opening celebration on September 22, 2022. Registered attendees may also request a code to park for free in the Central Grounds Garage.
The identity of a young African American woman wearing a flowered hat and a lacey blouse, looking out from a photo portrait taken over a century ago, is a mystery under investigation. It’s only one of the Holsinger studio photos of African Americans on display through March in a pop-up exhibition in the Northside branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, part of the Holsinger Portrait Project, a partnership of UVA and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
John Edwin Mason and others are on a mission to share these images of local African Americans via the Holsinger Portrait Project. (Photos by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)
The exhibition is a teaser, according to project co-director, associate history professor John Edwin Mason, “with just enough information to give context for those viewers who haven’t seen the images or known about the Holsinger Studio Collection” — a collection of over 9,000 camera negatives taken in the early 20th century, held by the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.
“The library exhibition is just one component of this forthcoming effort,” said Holly Robertson, exhibitions coordinator of UVA’s Special Collections Library. “It is supported by the Jefferson Trust, the University Library, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities and the Department of History. There will be an exhibition at the Jefferson School and a broad community engagement program with events, programs and exterior art installations.”
From Judith Thomas, Director of Faculty Programs The Library is pleased to announce recipients of Course Enrichment Grants for 2022-2023. The Course Enrichment Grant (CEG) program supports faculty who would like to enhance their students’ abilities to seek, evaluate, manage, and use information and data, as well as create new kinds…
John Edwin Mason and others are on a mission to share these images of local African Americans via the Holsinger Portrait Project. (Photos by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)
Wearing a stiff hat adorned with small flowers and a fine, lacey blouse, the lone woman gazes directly into the lens – and hence at the viewer, her expression as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s.
Her identity is currently a mystery, one of the many unknowns surrounding the subjects of about 500 portraits of local African Americans who commissioned the Holsinger Studio, owned by professional Charlottesville photographer Rufus W. Holsinger, to take their pictures in the early 20th century.
University of Virginia associate history professor John Edwin Mason and others, including scholars, students and community members, are on a mission to share these images and perhaps solve some of those mysteries via the Holsinger Portrait Project. A partnership between UVA and the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, the collaborative project is based on the Holsinger Studio Collection, held in the University’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.
A new pop-up exhibition that displays a selection of the portraits through the month of March is set up to entice the public at the Northside branch of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library.
Mason considers the exhibit a teaser – with just enough information to give context for those viewers who haven’t seen the images or known about the Holsinger Studio Collection.
The Holsinger Studio’s portraits of African Americans were made around the same time as the New Negro movement, described in the exhibit.
Although the woman in the hat is unidentified, Mason and researchers have a suspicion about who she is, but are still trying to nail it down, he said. He hopes they can identify her and say more about her life when a more comprehensive exhibition opens in the fall.
A studio fire in 1912 destroyed the Holsinger Studio’s early business ledgers and some negatives, leaving many people in the portraits unidentified. The library collection, acquired in 1978, comprises approximately 9,000 dry-plate glass negatives and 500 celluloid negatives.
“With the Holsinger Portrait Project, we want to change the way people see our history – and I mean, see it literally and understand it,” said Mason, who is co-director of the project. “The exhibition is a way of telling history that doesn’t start with oppression, but with beauty, style, grace and dignity.”
Nowadays it’s commonplace to share selfies taken with smartphones on social media, but it was a big deal to get a photographic portrait made 100 or so years ago. The African Americans in the Holsinger Studio portraits clearly look like they wanted to show themselves in the best light, as a counterweight to the discriminatory forces leading to Jim Crow laws, restrictions and segregation, Mason said.
Mason studies and teaches the history of photography and has focused on early 19th-century South African history and South African popular culture, including the Cape Town New Year’s Carnival. Several years ago, he served as vice chair of Charlottesville’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces. National Geographic magazine approached Mason in 2018, asking if he would help the magazine examine and acknowledge the racist coverage that predominated so much of its 130-year history.
Researching and promoting the work of photographer Rufus W. Holsinger, who moved to Charlottesville in the 1880s and lived there until his death in 1930, has been occupying Mason in recent years.
Holsinger turned his lens on Charlottesville, capturing both daily life and pivotal moments such as the burning of the Rotunda in 1895. He ran a successful studio, employing about 20 workers, including other photographers. They also took thousands of portraits, including approximately 500 portraits of African American residents in Charlottesville and the surrounding area. (His son Ralph took over the studio and ran it until retiring in 1969 and selling the business, which operated until 1977.)
Individuals and families usually posed in the Holsinger Studio.
In addition to individual portraits, there are couples, small groups, families and babies. Photographs were mostly posed in the studio, but some were also staged outdoors. Everyone is dressed up in suits and ties, beautiful dresses, white blouses and sometimes jewelry or hats.
“When you look at these portraits, you don’t see oppression. You see family love, romantic love, strength, grace, dignity – despite oppression,” Mason said.
Mason wants to show that no matter how bad it got, Black people were not crushed. “With self-consciousness, they used the camera as a weapon against white supremacy,” he said.
Similarities can be found between the civil rights activism that ramped up in the 1950s and this earlier time, when activism was presented as the “New Negro” movement, according to Mason, who describes it in the exhibit.
The “New Negro” movement was a nationwide movement whose leaders, such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois, were writing and speaking out to show that Black people were part of “a new spirit,” Mason said.
“They were more assertive, standing independent on their own two feet, less afraid of white supremacy, demanding their equal share of civil rights,” he said.
John Edwin Mason, UVA associate professor of history, co-directs the Holsinger Portrait Project and curated this exhibit at Northside Library.
Around this time, African American organizations – including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP – emerged and flourished, looking for ways to fight for Black people’s rights.
“This is all happening when Jim Crow’s getting worse,” Mason said. “The Ku Klux Klan was rising and active locally by 1920, crosses are being burned, statues being erected, etc. It was front-page news in the Daily Progress. The newspaper reported on the Klan as if they were the Chamber of Commerce.”
Local activities of Black organizations were connected to national actions. The Holsinger exhibit includes commentary published by George W. Buckner, a civil rights activist and businessman who was born and raised in Charlottesville. In 1921, Buckner published a manifesto, “The New Negro: What He Wants,” in the local Black newspaper, The Messenger. It also was reprinted in the Daily Progress.
The Holsinger Studio portraits of African Americans who exemplified the virtues of the New Negro amplify Buckner’s words, Mason said.
In a tweet about the exhibit, Mason wrote, “For most of the 20th century, ‘Negro’ was the term that most African Americans preferred. That changed in the 1960s, when ‘Black,’ ‘Afro-American’ and ‘African American’ came into common usage. But early in the century, when the portraits were made, ‘Negro’ signified race pride.”
The Northside exhibit, which is free and open during the library’s regular hours, was originally planned for spring 2020, but the pandemic put it on hold. The Northside Library, located at 705 West Rio Road, is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Evan Stankovics, adult programming and supervising reference librarian at Northside, helped set up the exhibit.
This exhibit is a preview of a more extensive exhibition being planned for later this year at the UVA Special Collections Library and next year at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
“The library exhibition is just one component of this forthcoming effort,” Holly Robertson, exhibitions coordinator of UVA’s Special Collections Library, said. “It is supported by the Jefferson Trust, the University Library, the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities and the Department of History. There will be an exhibition at the Jefferson School and a broad community engagement program with events, programs and exterior art installations.”
In addition to a Jefferson Trust grant, the Holsinger Portrait Project is supported by a 3 Cavaliers grant, which Mason shares with a pair of UVA colleagues: religious studies professor Jalane Schmidt, who directs the UVA Democracy Initiative’s Memory Project; and architectural historian Louis Nelson, vice provost for academic outreach. The grants have also helped pay for five students doing research to find out as much about the people in the portraits as possible, part of ongoing efforts to tell Charlottesville history, as well as their stories.
The fall exhibit will have more information about the portraits’ subjects and will be accompanied by a brochure with essays that contextualize local and national history, Mason said. The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities also will create a new website to go with the collection, Worthy Martin, interim director of IATH, said. The website that currently exists was created for an earlier program before the pandemic.
Many of the Holsinger Studio’s portrait subjects from the early 20th century are unidentified.
They are working with community advisers and descendants to help shape the exhibit, Mason said. “We want to make sure when we display ancestors, we’re doing it respectfully and with permission, if possible.
“We’ll talk about the individuals – many had remarkable lives, and it’s important to remember them.”
Frederick Douglass, ca. 1879. George K. Warren. (National Archives Gift Collection)
Exact Date Shot Unknown
NARA FILE #: 200-FL-22
WAR & CONFLICT BOOK #: 113
The University of Virginia’s Holsinger Studio Portrait Project is currently on exhibit, showcasing portraits of Black Charlottesville residents from the Jim Crow era. The goal, head curator John Edwin Mason said, is to show a side of Black history that is often ignored in retellings. “We have not learned about Black life, Black joy, Black family, Black churches, Black schools, Black politics, Black style. All of those things have been in the background,” he said. “And through these portraits, we’re bringing them into the foreground.” This video was produced by Casey Kuhn, Rachel Liesendahl, Nicole Ellis, Yasmeen Alamiri and Julia Griffin. Graphics by Megan McGrew. Portraits provided by the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. Other video courtesy University of Virginia, Virginia Public Media and Maupintown Media. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6 Follow us: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pbsnews Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/newshour Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/newshour Facebook: http://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe: PBS NewsHour podcasts: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/podcasts Newsletters: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/subscribe
The HistoryMakers: Documenting Black history through first-person accounts | 60 Minutes 60 Minutes 6,347 views Feb 20, 2023 #60Minutes#News#BlackHistory
Julieanna Richardson’s organization is documenting the breadth of the Black experience in America, one story at a time. #60Minutes#News#BlackHistory “60 Minutes” is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen’s Top 10. Subscribe to the “60 Minutes” YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/1S7CLRu Watch full episodes: http://cbsn.ws/1Qkjo1F Get more “60 Minutes” from “60 Minutes: Overtime”: http://cbsn.ws/1KG3sdr Follow “60 Minutes” on Instagram: http://bit.ly/23Xv8Ry Like “60 Minutes” on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1Xb1Dao Follow “60 Minutes” on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1KxUsqX Subscribe to our newsletter: http://cbsn.ws/1RqHw7T Download the CBS News app: http://cbsn.ws/1Xb1WC8 Try Paramount+ free: https://bit.ly/2OiW1kZ For video licensing inquiries, contact: licensing@veritone.com
How Larry Wilmore’s 30 years in TV have shaped comedy and challenged traditional notions 7:51 mins
How do self-driving cars change our psychology and do they solve The Trolley Problem? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice philosophize about science’s role in society with prolific author Malcolm Gladwell. What’s the best way for scientists to communicate with the public? Learn about Malcolm’s new book, The Bomber Mafia (https://amzn.to/30JnKSo), and about incorporating science into writing. Should every scientist also be a science communicator? Should all areas of science be made accessible to the public? We debate the popularity of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time (https://amzn.to/32hVDu2) and the role of pseudoscience in American science history. As a society, are we pulling away from scientific literacy? We talk about Malcolm’s mother growing up in Jamaica and why he loves the city of Atlanta. Neil and Malcolm compare notes about school growing up and discuss demographic disparities in school suspensions. Malcolm breaks down the concept of his new book about the quest to create accurate bombing in the second world war. Discover General Curtis LeMay and why he is one of the deadliest people in human history. You’ll also learn… how to make a mini firestorm on a birthday cake? Why is Malcolm running in front of self-driving cars? We break down the changes in psychology between cars and pedestrians when it comes to autonomous vehicles. If the fear of an imperfect driver is removed, will pedestrians behave differently? Does the self-driving car revolution also hail in pedestrian anarchy? Should autonomous vehicles be less good at driving? Do self-driving cars have a trolley problem? Does programmer bias have the potential to put certain people more at risk of accidents? All that plus, find out the evolution of Malcolm’s hair. Thanks to our Patrons Tobias Malmborg, Andy Pattinson, Adam Lenda, Naomi Martin, Johan Fredrik Oldervik, and Scott Heflen for supporting us this week. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/startalkradio FOLLOW or SUBSCRIBE to StarTalk: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/startalk… Twitter: http://twitter.com/startalkradio Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StarTalk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/startalkradio/ About StarTalk: Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up! #StarTalk#NeildeGrasseTyson
Philip Reid & The Statue of Freedom and Michelle Browder, Mothers of Gynecology
Philip Reid and The Statue of Freedom
Philip Reid (c. 1820 — February 6, 1892) was an African American master craftsman and artisan who played a key role as the foreman in the casting of the Statue of Freedom sculpture atop the United States Capitol building in Washington D.C. He was born into slavery in South Carolina’s historic city of Charleston.
Commissioned in 1855, the initial full-size plaster model of Freedom was completed by American sculptor Thomas Crawford in his studio in Rome, Italy, but he died suddenly in 1857 before it left his studio. Shipped by his widow, packed into six crates, it finally arrived in Washington in late March 1859 and was then assembled and put on display in the Old Hall of the House, now National Statuary Hall.
In May 1860, self-taught sculptor Clark Mills was awarded the contract by the Secretary of War to cast Freedom at his foundry off Bladensburg Road, just inside the District of Columbia. In June 1860, casting of the statue began. The first step was to disassemble the plaster model for the statue into its five main sections in order to move it from the Capitol to the foundry. After its arrival at the Capitol an Italian sculptor, according to Mills’ son Fisk, was hired to assemble it.
However, when the time came to separate the sections, the Italian sculptor refused to help unless given a pay raise. Fortunately, Philip Reid figured out that using a pulley and tackle to pull up on the lifting ring at the top of the model would reveal the joints between the sections. The statue was successfully separated into its five sections and transported to Mills’ Foundry.
The government rented Mills’s foundry for $400 a month and supplied the materials, fuel and labor to cast the statue. Because of this arrangement, the names of the craftsmen and laborers were recorded each day in Mills’ monthly report. Philip Reid was listed as a “laborer” and was paid $1.25 a day, while other laborers were paid $1 day. There is no evidence that any of other men listed as laborers were black or enslaved. An enslaved worker was paid directly if he worked on Sunday; his owner received the payment for his work the other six days. Only Philip Reid was paid directly by the government for working on 33 Sundays.
Amid the Civil War, work on Freedom continued. Arriving in pieces, she was cast at the Clark Mill’s Foundry near Bladensburg, Maryland, under the care, ironically, of a mulatto slave.
On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed an act abolishing involuntary servitude in the District of Columbia, and district slave owners were allowed to petition for compensation. Clark Mills petitioned for compensation for eleven slaves, including Philip Reid, and included a description of Reid in the petition. Mills wrote that Reid was “aged 42 years, mullatto [sic] color, short in statue, in good health, not prepossessing in appearance but smart in mind, a good workman in a foundry…” Mills asked $1500 for Reid, but received only $350.40.
It is not known if Reid witnessed the assembly of the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol Dome, but he was a free man when the last piece was put into place in December 1863. Two years later, in 1865, author S.D. Wyeth wrote in The Federal City, “Mr. Reed [as his name was spelled during the rest of his life], the former slave, is now in business for himself, and highly esteemed by all who know him.” Afterwards he was listed as “Philip Reed” in city directories and census records as a “plasterer.” In 1870 he was listed along with a wife, Jane, whom he had married in June 1862, and a two-year-old son. In 1880 his wife was listed as Mary P., a laundress.
Death records state that he lived into his seventies and died on February 6, 1892. Though he was initially laid to rest at Graceland Cemetery within view of the Capitol, research revealed that Philip Reid was disinterred and reburied in Columbian Harmony Cemetery in 1895. This cycle repeated itself when he was disinterred and reburied in National Harmony Memorial Park in 1959. On April 16, 2014, the 152nd anniversary of Emancipation in Washington, D.C., a memorial plaque was dedicated to Philip Reed in the cemetery that is now his final resting place.
In an address to Congress 70 years later, a long-time admirer of Lady Freedom, William A. Cox, recalled the facts surrounding Freedom’s construction:
“… the facts are that [Freedom’s] successful taking apart and handling in parts as a model was due to the faithful service and genius of an intelligent negro in Washington named Philip Reed (sic), a mulatto slave owned by Mr. Clark Mill, and that much credit is due him for his faithful and intelligent services rendered in modeling and casting America’s superb Statue of Freedom, which kisses the first rays of the aurora of the rising sun as they appear upon the apex of the Capitol’s wonderful dome.” (Congressional Record (1928), 1200)
For more information, please visit the following link:
Philip Reed also Philip Reid (c. 1820 – February 6, 1892) was an African American master craftsman who worked at the foundries of self-taught sculptor Clark Mills, where historical monuments such as the 1853 equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square, near the White House in Washington, D.C., the 1860 equestrian statue of George Washington in Washington Circle, and the 1863 Statue of Freedom in Washington D.C., were created. [1] He was born in c. 1820 into slavery in South Carolina‘s historic city of Charleston and was emancipated on April 16, 1862, under the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act[2] After his emancipation, he assisted Mills in installing the Statue of Freedom atop the United States Capitol, which was completed on December 2, 1863. Reid began working as an enslaved apprentice to Mills in 1842, as a young man in his twenties, who was already recognized for his talents in the foundry industry. In the 1860s, after having worked at the foundry for almost two decades, Reid’s skills in working with bronze casting were recognized. In 1928, Tennessee Representative, Finis J. Garrett presented a paper honoring Reid for his “faithful service and genius”, and describing the key role he had played in casting the statue of Freedom, that is now part of the Congressional Record.[3][4] A memorial plaque honoring Philip Reed[Notes 1] was unveiled on April 16, 2014—the 152nd anniversary of Emancipation in Washington, D.C.—in the National Harmony Memorial Park in Hyattsville, Maryland. It reads, “Philip Reed The slave who built the Statue of Freedom atop the U.S. Capitol died a free man on February 6, 1892 and is buried here…”[5] In 2013, he was described by the Architect of the Capitol as the “single best known enslaved person associated with the Capitol’s construction history”.[6]
Reid—who was an enslaved African American from South Carolina—was born in c. 1820, and became enslaved to Mills when Reid was about 22-years-old, according to the 1864 petition made by Mills for compensation, after slavery had been abolished.[4] Reid remained enslaved to Mills for over twenty years, and was finally emancipated in 1863.
In 1863, with the Statue of Freedom newly installed on the Capital, a newspaper correspondent wrote, “The black master-builder lifted the ponderous uncouth masses and bolted them together, joint by joint, piece by piece, till they blended into the majestic ‘Freedom’…. Was there a prophecy in that moment when the slave became the artist and with rare poetic justice, reconstructed the beautiful symbol of freedom for America?” The Senate Historical Office reprinted these words in their tribute to Reid—”Philip Reid and the Statue of Freedom”—which is part of their series, The Civil War: The Senate’s Story.[2]
During the 70th United States Congress in 1928, Tennessee Representative, Finis J. Garrett, submitted a paper by William A. Cox, describing Reid as an “intelligent negro”, a “mulatto”,[3][4] whose “faithful service and genius” led to the “successful taking apart and handling” of the Freedom statue.[3]
The 1928 Congressional Record Cox’s description of Reid’s role in constructing Freedom. [3]:?1199–1200? Fox, who was a long-time admirer of the Statue of Freedom, said that it had arrived in pieces and was cast at the Clark Mill’s Foundry near Bladensburg, Maryland, under the care, ironically, of a mulatto slave. [3]:?1199–1200?
“… the facts are that [Freedom’s] successful taking apart and handling in parts as a model was due to the faithful service and genius of an intelligent negro in Washington named Philip Reed (sic), a mulatto slave owned by Mr. Clark Mill, and that much credit is due him for his faithful and intelligent services rendered in modeling and casting America’s superb Statue of Freedom, which kisses the first rays of the aurora of the rising sun as they appear upon the apex of the Capitol’s wonderful dome.”
—?William A. Cox. Congressional Record. 1928:1200
The Architect of the Capitol described Reid as the “single best known enslaved person associated with the Capitol’s construction history”.[6]
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Artist and activist Michelle Browder’s monument reclaims the history of the enslaved Black women who underwent non-anesthetized medical experimentation by Dr. James Marion Sims in the late 1840s in Montgomery, Alabama. The monument includes a sculptural group that portrays the only three enslaved women whose names were recorded in Dr. Sims’ documentation of his experiments: Anarcha, Betsey, and Lucy. The identities of other enslaved women who suffered under Dr. Sims, whose names he did not record, are unknown.
James Marion Sims has long been celebrated as the father of gynecology for, among other things, developing a procedure to remedy vesicovaginal fistulas. The excruciating and repeated experimentation on enslaved Black women that led him to perfect this procedure, however, reflects the racist devaluation of Black humanity and prevailing perception of Black people as property in the mid-19th century. Sims justified these experiments in part because he, along with many other white people at the time, believed that Black people didn’t feel as much pain as white people (a racist belief which still impacts medical treatment for Black people today).
Browder’s monument includes larger-than-life-sized figures of the three women and the displaced womb of Anarcha. The bodies and womb are made from discarded metal materials that reference their inhumane treatment by Dr. Sims and other whites who perpetuated slavery. The women’s postures, hair, and adornments, however, serve to reinstate their identities and celebrate the power and resilience of Black women.
Deirdre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology (University of Georgia Press, 2017)
More to think about
A 2017 Alabama law, enacted to safeguard Confederate monuments, states that no monuments erected on public property for more than 40 years may be removed. With her ability to advocate for the removal of a 1939 sculpture of Dr. Sims in the city of Montgomery restricted, Michelle Browder chose to make a new monument to reclaim the history of the women upon whom Dr. Sims experimented. Discuss the impact of retaining monuments to individuals who perpetuated harm verses removing them. How can Michelle Browder’s new monument function in relation to the older monument to Sims*? Consider the choices Browder made in materials, size, and composition.
*The Sims monument is discussed and shown in the Mothers of Gynecology video.
Black History Is Our History: Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Also Known As The ‘Father Of Black History Month’
Black History Month is an annual observance originating in the United States, where it is also known as African-American History Month. It has received official recognition from governments in the United States and Canada, and more recently has been observed in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Wikipedia
Significance:to remember important people and events in the history of the African diaspora
Kadir Nelson is a Los Angeles–based painter, illustrator, and author who is best known for his paintings often featured on the covers of The New Yorker magazine, and album covers for Michael Jackson and Drake. His work is focused on African-American culture and history. Wikipedia
Kadir Nelson, one of this generation’s most accomplished, award-winning artists, has created an epic yet intimate introduction to the history of America and African Americans, from colonial days through the civil rights movement.
Kadir Nelson: 2011 National Book Festival 43:42 mins
Kadir Nelson appears at the 2011 National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: Writer and illustrator Kadir Nelson, who began drawing at age 3 and painting at age 10, says, “I have always been an artist. It’s part of my DNA.” He began collaborating with writers in 1999, including choreographer Debbie Allen (“Dancing in the Wings”) and Ntozake Shange (“Ellington Was Not a Street”). Nelson debuted as an author with “We Are the Ship.” His current work is “Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans” (HarperCollins). For transcript, captions, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feat….
Kadir Nelson: 2013 National Book Festival 28:03 mins
Kadir Nelson appears at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Speaker Biography: The works of award-winning artist Kadir Nelson have been exhibited worldwide. He is a two-time winner of the Caldecott Honor Award as well as a Coretta Scott King Award. His clients include Coca-Cola, the U.S. Postal Service, Major League Baseball and Dreamworks SKG. His debut as a writer, “We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball,” won the Coretta Scott King Award. Nelson has just published a picture book biography, called “Nelson Mandela.” For captions, transcript, and more information visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feat…
The Undefeatedis a 2019 poem by Kwame Alexander and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. The poem’s purpose is to inspire and encourage black communities, while also delivering a tribute to black Americans of all occupations in past years. The poem describes the toughness black Americans faced during times such as slavery, and segregation in America. Nelson’s illustrations also provide a visual for the meaning of the poem. The book was well received and won the 2020 Caldecott Medal and a Newbery Honor.[1] Kadir Nelson’s artwork also earned it a Coretta Scott King Award.[2]
“We are the ship; all else the sea.”—Rube Foster, founder of the Negro National League The story of Negro League baseball is the story of gifted athletes and determined owners; of racial discrimination and international sportsmanship; of fortunes won and lost; of triumphs and defeats on and off the field. … Google Books
Kadir Nelson’s Heart and Soul is the winner of numerous awards, including the 2012 Coretta Scott King Author Award and Illustrator Honor, and the recipient of five starred reviews.
The story of America and African Americans is a story of hope and inspiration and unwavering courage. This is the story of the men, women, and children who toiled in the hot sun picking cotton for their masters; it’s about the America ripped in two by Jim Crow laws; it’s about the brothers and sisters of all colors who rallied against those who would dare bar a child from an education. It’s a story of discrimination and broken promises, determination, and triumphs.
Told through the unique point of view and intimate voice of a one-hundred-year-old African-American female narrator, this inspiring book demonstrates that in gaining their freedom and equal rights, African Americans helped our country achieve its promise of liberty and justice—the true heart and soul of our nation.
One day when Nelson Mandela was nine years old, his father died and he was sent from his village to a school far away from home, to another part of South Africa. In Johannesburg, the country’s capital, Mandela saw fellow Africans who were poor and powerless. He decided then that he would work to protect them. When the government began to keep people apart based on the color of their skin, Mandela spoke out against the law and vowed to fight hard in order to make his country a place that belonged to all South Africans.
Kadir Nelson tells the story of Mandela. It is the story of a young boy’s determination to change South Africa and of the struggles of a man who eventually became the president of his country. Readers will be inspired by Mandela’s triumph.
This stunning picture book biography of Nelson Mandela by Kadir Nelson is a receipient of the Coretta Scott King Honor award.In this lush, acclaimed book, award-winning author-illustrator Kadir Nelson … Google Books
Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story
from the Underground Railroad
by Ellen Levine; illustrated by Kadir Nelson
Henry’s Freedom Box tells the true story of Henry, a young boy who grows into a man under the harsh conditions of slavery, all the time yearning to be free. After he is separated from his family for the second time (once as a son, once as a father), Henry comes up with the idea of mailing himself to freedom in the north.
What an inspirational, thought-provoking, and stunningly illustrated story. What makes it all the more magical is that it’s loosely based on the true story of a man who escaped slavery by mailing himself to freedom inside a wooden crate (An author’s note at the back shares what happened to Henry ‘Box’ Brown later in his life.) Illustrator Kadir Nelson has truly captured the humanity and emotions of the characters. Moving! This is an inspiring anytime read, but would be ideal for units on slavery and the Underground Railroad.
The book won quite a number of prestigious children’s book awards, including the Caldecott Honor in 2008. Additionally, the book was named to many ‘best books’ lists, including the American Library Association Notable Children’s Book in 2008 and the National Council for Social Studies Notable Social Studies Book in 2008.
See Inside Henry’s Freedom Box
Below are two sample pages from inside Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad. What a beautifully illustrated book! The left is a portrait of the main character, Henry, as a child and the middle page shows Henry visiting his sick master, who had called for him. Henry wondered if perhaps the master would set him free, as some slaves were freed upon the death of their owners. Sadly, that was not why he was called to see the master.
The bestselling book about the power of one kind act from Caldecott Medal and Coretta Scott King Award winner Kadir Nelson.
“Timeless and delectable.”—School Library Journal
If you plant a carrot seed . . . a carrot will grow.
If you plant a cabbage seed . . . cabbage will grow.
But what happens if you plant a seed of kindness . . . or selfishness?
With spare text and breathtaking oil paintings, If You Plant a Seed demonstrates not only the process of planting and growing for young children but also how a seed of kindness can bear sweet fruit.
Kadir Nelson’s acclaimed books include The Undefeated, winner of the Caldecott Medal as the most distinguished picture book of the year, Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans, and Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom.
The black and white images throughout are personal reflections, uniquely felt and rendered by award winning artist Kadir Nelson. They are accompanied by the uplifting words of Barack Obama and commemorate the movement and the moment that have changed our history. It’s a celebration of the power of inspiration. It’s a celebration of how far we have come and how determined we are to look ahead. It’s a celebration of pride, hope and joy personally felt and publically shared.
Most of all it’s a celebration of the 44th president – a new president and a new chapter in the American story.
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.
A special video for Change Has Come: An Artist Celebrates Our American Spirit, with illustrations by award winning artist Kadir Nelson, published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. Change Has Come is a celebration of how far we have come and how determined we are to look ahead. It’s a celebration of pride, hope and joy personally felt and publically shared. Most of all it’s a celebration of the 44th president – a new president and a new chapter in the American story.
Michael Jordan. The mere mention of the name conjures up visions of basketball played at its absolute best. But as a child, Michael almost gave up on his hoop dreams, all because he feared he’d never grow tall enough to play the game that would one day make him famous. … Google Books
Salt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream
Deloris Jordan. Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, $17.99 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-689-83371-7
Michael Jordan’s mother and sister team up for an inspirational story about this athlete’s earliest on-court efforts. Nelson (Big Jabe) is also a strong player here; he contributes animated art, rendered in a cartoon style that is informal yet polished. In the opening scenario, a bully intimidates young Jordan during a basketball game at a neighborhood park, causing him to flub a pass. Michael tells his older brothers, “”I am really sorry, guys. If I were taller that wouldn’t have happened.”” When he asks his mother what will make him grow, she advises him to put salt in his shoes and say a prayer every night. Though he obliges Dand continues to practice shooting baskets at home Dhis efforts don’t immediately pay off. One day, his father convinces him that, rather than being tall, “”practice, determination, and giving your best”” are the keys to being “”a real winner,”” and Michael runs off to join his brothers in the park, where he makes the game’s winning shot. Though the book ends with a rather facile slam-dunk, the authors offer authoritative insight into this six-foot-six-inch-tall hoopster’s boyhood spunk as well as reassurance to young athletes impatient for a growth spurt. Nelson handily balances in-your-face on-court action with more reflective portraits of the player’s inner growth. All ages. (Nov.)
Illustrator Kadir Nelson explains the inspiration, experiences, and processes behind his work. To view his artwork for The Art of Read Every Day, and to download Common Core-ready resources and information about Kadir Nelson, visit The Art of Read Every Day collection: www.scholastic.com/readeveryday/art
Kadir Nelson is a naturally gifted artist whose extraordinary talent continues to develop and be discovered. Before the age of 30, Nelson had already illustrated children’s books, sold paintings to celebrities, and worked on a movie directed by Steven Spielberg. In 2007 Kadir Nelson received a Caldecott Honor for his evocative illustrations in Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. In 2008 he won a second Caldecott Honor for his artwork in Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad. To view the full version of this and other author interviews, visit us at www.adlit.org! AdLit.org is funded by the Ann B. and Thomas L. Friedman Family Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Acclaimed artist Kadir Nelson on what influences his paintings 8:26 mins
Award-winning artist Kadir Nelson is known for his oil paintings that evoke both modern urban realism and the masterly works of turn-of-the century American painters. For our Weekend Spotlight, Geoff Bennett spoke to Nelson while he was in Washington, D.C., for the unveiling of his portrait of humanitarian chef José Andrés at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS NewsHour at https://www.pbs.org/newshour Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/2HfsCD6
Artist Kadir Nelson – Illustrations of Pride and Soul CBS Sunday Morning 5 mins
One of our favorite artists and illustrators, Kadir Nelson, whose work is found among the collections of some of entertainment’s elite stars like Debbie Allen, Michael Jackson, Will Smith and George Lucas, is visited by CBS Sunday Morning’s Ben Tracy. The artist touches on his work on magazines, albums, posters and postage stamps. Then there are the children’s books – more than two dozen in fact. Ben meets the illustrator who counts Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth among his influences – and who explains what happens when his paintbrush takes up wings and begins to fly. For art news, everyday, visit us at: www.BlackArtNews.com To Submit News: http://www.blackartnews.com/submit-ne… Pinterest: http://www.Pinterest.com/BlackArtNews Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/BlackArtNews Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/BlackArtNews
In 1996, Nelson began his career as a conceptual artist for Steven Spielberg‘s feature film Amistad, and the animated feature film Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. Nelson has since designed several commemorative postage stamps for the United States Postal Service including stamps featuring Wilt Chamberlain,[2]Joe Dimaggio,[3] and Richard Wright.[4] He has also authored and/or illustrated over 30 picture books including, Brothers of the Knight[5] by actress Debbie Allen, WE ARE THE SHIP: The Story of Negro League Baseball,[6] which was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated[7] magazine, and Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans.[8] In 2013, Nelson was commissioned to paint his first cover for The New Yorker magazine, a portrait of Nelson Mandela.[9] Nelson has since created several memorable covers for the magazine including, Eustace Negro,[10]Schomburg Center, Harlem, New York,[11] and A Day at the Beach.[12]
Nelson was born in Washington D.C.,[13] and grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey and San Diego, California, the son of author Emily Gunter and educator Lenwood Nelson.[14] He received his early training in art from his uncle, Michael Morris, who is an artist and art instructor.[15] Both his uncle and his high school art teacher taught him important artistic principles and techniques, including how to paint with oils. After developing an impressive portfolio during high school, Crawford High in San Diego, Kadir Nelson earned a partial scholarship to the prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. Nelson earned his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1996.[16]
In August 1999, Nelson’s paintings depicting Negro league baseball scenes were featured in Sports Illustrated magazine on its opening Leading Off pages.[17] They were some of the first paintings in a series of works that led to Nelson writing and illustrating a book commemorating the history of the Negro Baseball Leagues entitled, We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro Leagues Baseball, published by Jump at the Sun in 2008.[6] Nelson’s critically acclaimed[18][19][20] authorial debut was created over the span of seven years and earned Nelson the Sibert Medal, a Coretta Scott King Author Award and Illustrator Honor. We Are the Ship was released by Brilliance Audio as an audiobook in 2009, narrated by voice actor Dion Graham.
In 2005, Nelson was contacted by Michael Jackson to create a commissioned painting of the King of Pop’s life story. The commission was delayed and shelved for several years until the untimely death of the singer in 2009.[24] Upon which Nelson was tapped to resume the portrait to be used later for the posthumously released album titled Michael.[25][26] On Friday, December 10, 2010, a 29,070-square-foot (2,701 m2) poster depicting the Michael album artwork was erected at the Rectory Farm in Middlesex, England, which broke a Guinness World Record for the largest poster in the world.[27]
In 2013, Nelson was contacted by recording artist Drake to create two covers for his album Nothing Was the Same.[28] The album artwork became a signature work for the recording artist, and the subject of multiple internet memes.[29] The album remained on the Billboard 200 sales chart for more than 400 weeks after its release in 2013.[30]
Nelson has received multiple Gold and Silver Medals from the New York Society of Illustrators. In February 2014, Nelson was awarded the Hamilton King Award for best illustration of the year. Nelson is also the recipient of three NAACP Image Awards for his illustrated picture books, and the New York Times Best Illustrated Book for We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball.
Kadir Nelson’s portrait of Henrietta Lacks was recently jointly acquired by The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Lacks’ portrait was commissioned by HBO.[38]
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Ten sample tubes, capturing an amazing variety of Martian geology, have been deposited on Mars’ surface so they could be studied on Earth in the future. Read More
The mission is characterizing its new “green” propulsion system and developing a modified plan for the briefcase-size satellite’s journey to the Moon. Read More
What are some skywatching highlights in February 2023? See Jupiter and Venus appear nearer each night, as they head for a close conjunction at the start of March. Use bright stars Capella and Elnath to identify the constellation Auriga, and then find your way to two distant star clusters using Sirius as a guidepost. 0:00 Intro 0:12 Moon & planet highlights 0:47 The constellation Auriga 1:52 Easy-to-find star clusters 3:10 February Moon phases Additional information about topics covered in this episode of What’s Up, along with still images from the video, and the video transcript, are available at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/skywatch….
What can hidden motions underground tell us about earthquakes, eruptions, and even climate change? NASA scientists are using data gathered 400 miles above Earth to find out. Read More
The newly discovered planet and its Earth-size sibling are both in the habitable zone, where liquid water could potentially exist on their surfaces. Read More
A case study involving Europe’s largest coal-fired power plant shows space-based observations can be used to track carbon dioxide emissions – and reductions – at the source. Read More
You know about our missions – now join the team. We’re seeking experts in autonomous systems, avionics, software development and more to join our robotics team at JPL.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
NASAJPL
4800 Oak Grove Dr
Pasadena, CA 91109
System’s Second Earth-Size World
Jan. 10, 2023
Newly discovered Earth-size planet TOI 700 e orbits within the habitable zone of its star in this illustration. Its Earth-size sibling, TOI 700 d, can be seen in the distance.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt
The newly discovered planet and its Earth-size sibling are both in the habitable zone, where liquid water could potentially exist on their surfaces.
Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet’s surface. The world is 95% Earth’s size and likely rocky.
Astronomers previously discovered three planets in this system, called TOI 700 b, c, and d. Planet d also orbits in the habitable zone. But scientists needed an additional year of TESS observations to discover TOI 700 e.
“This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” said Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California who led the work. “That makes the TOI 700 system an exciting prospect for additional follow-up. Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so the system also shows how additional TESS observations help us find smaller and smaller worlds.”
Gilbert presented the result on behalf of her team at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle. A paper about the newly discovered planet was accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, scientists have identified an Earth-size world, called TOI 700 e, orbiting within the habitable zone of its star – the range of distances where liquid water could occur on a planet’s surface. The world is 95% Earth’s size and likely rocky. Music credit: “Dream Box” by Carl David Harms from Universal Production Music Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio Sophia Roberts(AIMM): Lead Producer, Narrator Jeanette Kazmierczak (University of Maryland College Park) – Lead Science Writer Robert Hurt (JPL/Caltech): Animator Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle) – Producer Aaron E. Lepsch (ADNET): Technical Support This video can be freely shared and downloaded at https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14264. While the video in its entirety can be shared without permission, the music and some individual imagery may have been obtained through permission and may not be excised or remixed in other products. Specific details on such imagery may be found here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14264. For more information on NASA’s media guidelines, visit https://nasa.gov/multimedia/guidelines. If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/NASAGoddard Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center · Instagram http://www.instagram.com/nasagoddard · Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddard · Twitter http://twitter.com/NASAGoddardPix · Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NASAGoddard · Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc
Watch to learn about TOI 700 e, a newly discovered Earth-size planet with an Earth-size sibling.
Credit: Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
TOI 700 is a small, cool M dwarf star located around 100 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. In 2020, Gilbert and others announced the discovery of the Earth-size, habitable-zone planet d, which is on a 37-day orbit, along with two other worlds.
The innermost planet, TOI 700 b, is about 90% Earth’s size and orbits the star every 10 days. TOI 700 c is over 2.5 times bigger than Earth and completes an orbit every 16 days. The planets are probably tidally locked, which means they spin only once per orbit such that one side always faces the star, just as one side of the Moon is always turned toward Earth.
TESS monitors large swaths of the sky, called sectors, for approximately 27 days at a time. These long stares allow the satellite to track changes in stellar brightness caused by a planet crossing in front of its star from our perspective, an event called a transit. The mission used this strategy to observe the southern sky starting in 2018, before turning to the northern sky. In 2020, it returned to the southern sky for additional observations. The extra year of data allowed the team to refine the original planet sizes, which are about 10% smaller than initial calculations.
“If the star was a little closer or the planet a little bigger, we might have been able to spot TOI 700 e in the first year of TESS data,” said Ben Hord, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park and a graduate researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But the signal was so faint that we needed the additional year of transit observations to identify it.”
TOI 700 e, which may also be tidally locked, takes 28 days to orbit its star, placing planet e between planets c and d in the so-called optimistic habitable zone.
Scientists define the optimistic habitable zone as the range of distances from a star where liquid surface water could be present at some point in a planet’s history. This area extends to either side of the conservative habitable zone, the range where researchers hypothesize liquid water could exist over most of the planet’s lifetime. TOI 700 d orbits in this region.
Finding other systems with Earth-size worlds in this region helps planetary scientists learn more about the history of our own solar system.
Follow-up study of the TOI 700 system with space- and ground-based observatories is ongoing, Gilbert said, and may yield further insights into this rare system.
“TESS just completed its second year of northern sky observations,” said Allison Youngblood, a research astrophysicist and the TESS deputy project scientist at Goddard. “We’re looking forward to the other exciting discoveries hidden in the mission’s treasure trove of data.”
More About the Mission
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer mission led and operated by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts; MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory; and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes, and observatories worldwide are participants in the mission.
Inspiration Grid: Expressive Street Art & Matador Network: The 3D Chalk Drawing
InspirationGrid: Expressive Street Art by Medianeras
Published Jan 6, 2023
Medianeras is an Argentinian street art duo formed by two extraordinary female artists: Vanesa Galdeano and Anali Chanquia. Together, they have created some of the most eye-catching large-scale murals and artwork across Argentina and Spain, where they’re currently based.
Vanesa and Anali have been creating art in the public space for more than 12 years. Brought together by shared concerns for urban space and public art, they began producing work together 5 years ago. They created a unifying project called Medianeras to expand and combine their artistic output.
“Medianeras is the Spanish word for ‘side walls’. Unlike other walls, which are only responsible for separating spaces, side walls are those shared between neighbours. This concept interests us because we believe that public art, besides making cities more beautiful, claims the idea of a shared place – of all individuals. We want to change the way we usually perceive spaces, our intention is to alter the urban landscape.”
POSTED BY IG Team
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With a background in cognitive psychology, I can’t help but find illusions and other perceptual tricks utterly fascinating. As our modes of sensory input are streamlined for efficiency, this leaves a significant and somewhat shocking margin for error.
Combine that knowledge with the world of art, and you’ve got the increasingly popular trend of forced perspective “anamorphic” street drawings (wherein the image and three-dimensional illusion are only properly visible while viewing the piece from a particular location).
Here are 30 of the world’s most mind-bending 3D chalk drawings, from five key artists in the scene.
Julian Beever
Born in 1959, this British artist studied art at Leeds Met. University. He began “anamorphic pavement illustrations” in the early ‘90s as a busker.
Premodernist and Postmodernist
About to Meet Mr. Newt
Politicians Meeting Their End
Ballantine’s
Little and Large
Times Square in Times Square
Taking the Plunge
Batman and Robin
That Hemmed-in Feeling…
Beneath Every Carpark…
Christmas Eve in Santa’s Workshop
Yorkshire Water
Wheel of Fortune
Babyfood
Babyfood (wrong view)
Swimming Pool in the High Street
Swimming Pool in the High Street (wrong view)
Make Poverty History
Make Poverty History (wrong view)
The Great Green Grasshopper
The Great Green Grasshopper (wrong view)
Snail (Back off, Creep…)
Snail (Back off, Creep…) (wrong view)
Edgar Mueller
This German artist was born in 1968, and taught himself painting as a child (most often painting his rural hometown of Straelen). He started doing street art full-time at the age of 25.
The Ark
Energy
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – Human Rights and Nonviolence
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have A Dream”
Artwork by Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts
Remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – Human Rights and Nonviolence
Friday January 15, 2016
I did this artwork in 2010. I enjoyed doing the research, reading Dr. King’s biography and his speeches. Dr. King was a great writer and orator. He could captivate the audiences with his great writing and presentation. I would like everyone who views my artwork on Dr. King to be able to read and have some understanding of his feelings. With his wit and energy he devoted himself to human rights and nonviolence. It is not only his family that lost and mourned his death for the world has lost a great man. Humanity had lost Dr. King’s ability to help bring progress to the world by achieving more civilized interaction for the human race as a whole.
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts, Friday, January 15, 2016
President Barack Obama & His First Inauguration Speech PortraitandDr. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have A Dream” two of my artworks displayed at Lincoln School auditorium for the cerebration of Dr. King’s Birthday event in 2015.
Ing-On Vibulbhan-Watts, Friday, January 15, 2016
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On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, and the following year he and SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on segregated housing. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include poverty and speak against the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled “Beyond Vietnam“.
King was a middle child, between an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King.[7] King sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind.[8] King liked singing and music. King’s mother, an accomplished organist and choir leader, took him to various churches to sing. He received attention for singing “I Want to Be More and More Like Jesus.” King later became a member of the junior choir in his church.[9]
King said his father regularly whipped him until he was fifteen and a neighbor reported hearing the elder King telling his son “he would make something of him even if he had to beat him to death.” King saw his father’s proud and unafraid protests in relation to segregation, such as Martin, Sr., refusing to listen to a traffic policeman after being referred to as “boy” or stalking out of a store with his son when being told by a shoe clerk that they would have to move to the rear to be served.[10]
When King was a child, he befriended a white boy whose father owned a business near his family’s home. When the boys were 6, they attended different schools, with King attending a segregated school for African-Americans. King then lost his friend because the child’s father no longer wanted them to play together.[11]
King suffered from depression throughout much of his life. In his adolescent years, he initially felt some resentment against whites due to the “racial humiliation” that he, his family, and his neighbors often had to endure in the segregated South.[12] At age 12, shortly after his maternal grandmother died, King blamed himself and jumped out of a second story window, but survived.[13]
King was originally skeptical of many of Christianity’s claims.[14] At the age of thirteen, he denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school. From this point, he stated, “doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly”.[15] However, he later concluded that the Bible has “many profound truths which one cannot escape” and decided to enter the seminary.[14]
Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. He became known for his public speaking ability and was part of the school’s debate team.[16] King became the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal in 1942 at age 13.[17] During his junior year, he won first prize in an oratorical contest sponsored by the Negro Elks Club in Dublin, Georgia. Returning home to Atlanta by bus, he and his teacher were ordered by the driver to stand so white passengers could sit down. King refused initially, but complied after his teacher informed him that he would be breaking the law if he did not go along with the order. He later characterized this incident as “the angriest I have ever been in my life”.[16] A precocious student, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grades of high school.[18] It was during King’s junior year that Morehouse College announced it would accept any high school juniors who could pass its entrance exam. At that time, most of the students had abandoned their studies to participate in World War II. Due to this, the school became desperate to fill in classrooms. At age 15, King passed the exam and entered Morehouse.[16] The summer before his last year at Morehouse, in 1947, an eighteen-year-old King made the choice to enter the ministry after he concluded the church offered the most assuring way to answer “an inner urge to serve humanity”. King’s “inner urge” had begun developing and he made peace with the Baptist Church, as he believed he would be a “rational” minister with sermons that were “a respectful force for ideas, even social protest.”[19]
In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a B.A. degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a B.Div. degree in 1951.[20][21] King’s father fully supported his decision to continue his education. King was joined in attending Crozer by Walter McCall, a former classmate at Morehouse.[22] At Crozer, King was elected president of the student body.[23] The African-American students of Crozer for the most part conducted their social activity on Edwards Street. King was endeared to the street due to a classmate having an aunt that prepared the two collard greens, which they both relished.[24] King once called out a student for keeping beer in his room because of their shared responsibility as African-Americans to bear “the burdens of the Negro race.” For a time, he was interested in Walter Rauschenbusch‘s “social gospel”.[23] In his third year there, he became romantically involved with the daughter of an immigrant German woman working as a cook in the cafeteria. The daughter had been involved with a professor prior to her relationship with King. King had plans of marrying her, but was advised not to by friends due to the reaction an interracial relationship would spark from both blacks and whites, as well as the chances of it destroying his chances of ever pastoring a church in the South. King tearfully told a friend that he could not endure his mother’s pain over the marriage and broke the relationship off around six months later. He would continue to have lingering feelings, with one friend being quoted as saying, “He never recovered.”[23]
King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University and received his Ph.D. degree on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation on “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman“. An academic inquiry concluded in October 1991 that portions of his dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly. However, “[d]espite its finding, the committee said that ‘no thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King’s doctoral degree,’ an action that the panel said would serve no purpose.”[29][30][31] The committee also found that the dissertation still “makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship.” However, a letter is now attached to King’s dissertation in the university library, noting that numerous passages were included without the appropriate quotations and citations of sources.[32]
Ideas, influences, and political stances
Religion
As a Christian minister, King’s main influence was Jesus Christ and the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his religious meetings, speeches at church, and in public discourses. King’s faith was strongly based in Jesus’ commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself, loving God above all, and loving your enemies, praying for them and blessing them. His nonviolent thought was also based in the injunction to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus’ teaching of putting the sword back into its place (Matthew 26:52).[33] In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, King urged action consistent with what he describes as Jesus’ “extremist” love, and also quoted numerous other Christian pacifist authors, which was very usual for him. In another sermon, he stated:
Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don’t plan to run for any political office. I don’t plan to do anything but remain a preacher. And what I’m doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man.
Veteran African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin was King’s first regular advisor on nonviolence.[36] King was also advised by the white activists Harris Wofford and Glenn Smiley.[37] Rustin and Smiley came from the Christian pacifist tradition, and Wofford and Rustin both studied Gandhi‘s teachings. Rustin had applied nonviolence with the Journey of Reconciliation campaign in the 1940s,[38] and Wofford had been promoting Gandhism to Southern blacks since the early 1950s.[37] King had initially known little about Gandhi and rarely used the term “nonviolence” during his early years of activism in the early 1950s. King initially believed in and practiced self-defense, even obtaining guns in his household as a means of defense against possible attackers. The pacifists guided King by showing him the alternative of nonviolent resistance, arguing that this would be a better means to accomplish his goals of civil rights than self-defense. King then vowed to no longer personally use arms.[39][40]
In the aftermath of the boycott, King wrote Stride Toward Freedom, which included the chapter Pilgrimage to Nonviolence. King outlined his understanding of nonviolence, which seeks to win an opponent to friendship, rather than to humiliate or defeat him. The chapter draws from an address by Wofford, with Rustin and Stanley Levison also providing guidance and ghostwriting.[41]
Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi‘s success with nonviolent activism, King had “for a long time … wanted to take a trip to India”.[42] With assistance from Harris Wofford, the American Friends Service Committee, and other supporters, he was able to fund the journey in April 1959.[43][44] The trip to India affected King, deepening his understanding of nonviolent resistance and his commitment to America’s struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, “Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity”.
Bayard Rustin’s open homosexuality, support of democratic socialism, and his former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself from Rustin,[45] which King agreed to do.[46] However, King agreed that Rustin should be one of the main organizers of the 1963 March on Washington.[47]
King’s admiration of Gandhi’s nonviolence did not diminish in later years. He went so far as to hold up his example when receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, hailing the “successful precedent” of using nonviolence “in a magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire … He struggled only with the weapons of truth, soul force, non-injury and courage.”[48]
Gandhi seemed to have influenced him with certain moral principles,[49] though Gandhi himself had been influenced by The Kingdom of God Is Within You, a nonviolent classic written by Christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy. In turn, both Gandhi and Martin Luther King had read Tolstoy, and King, Gandhi and Tolstoy had been strongly influenced by Jesus‘ Sermon on the Mount. King quoted Tolstoy’s War and Peace in 1959.[50]
Another influence for King’s nonviolent method was Henry David Thoreau‘s essay On Civil Disobedience, which King read in his student days. He was influenced by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system.[51] He also was greatly influenced by the works of Protestant theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich,[52] as well as Walter Rauschenbusch’s Christianity and the Social Crisis. King also sometimes used the concept of “agape” (brotherly Christian love).[53] However, after 1960, he ceased employing it in his writings.[54]
Even after renouncing his personal use of guns, King had a complex relationship with the phenomenon of self-defense in the movement. He publicly discouraged it as a widespread practice, but acknowledged that it was sometimes necessary.[55] Throughout his career King was frequently protected by other civil rights activists who carried arms, such as Colonel Stone Johnson,[56]Robert Hayling, and the Deacons for Defense and Justice.[57][58]
Politics
As the leader of the SCLC, King maintained a policy of not publicly endorsing a U.S. political party or candidate: “I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of both—not the servant or master of either.”[59] In a 1958 interview, he expressed his view that neither party was perfect, saying, “I don’t think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses … And I’m not inextricably bound to either party.”[60] King did praise Democratic Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois as being the “greatest of all senators” because of his fierce advocacy for civil rights causes over the years.[61]
King critiqued both parties’ performance on promoting racial equality:
Actually, the Negro has been betrayed by both the Republican and the Democratic party. The Democrats have betrayed him by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the Southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed him by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of reactionary right wing northern Republicans. And this coalition of southern Dixiecrats and right wing reactionary northern Republicans defeats every bill and every move towards liberal legislation in the area of civil rights.[62]
Although King never publicly supported a political party or candidate for president, in a letter to a civil rights supporter in October 1956 he said that he was undecided as to whether he would vote for Adlai Stevenson or Dwight Eisenhower, but that “In the past I always voted the Democratic ticket.”[63] In his autobiography, King says that in 1960 he privately voted for Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy: “I felt that Kennedy would make the best president. I never came out with an endorsement. My father did, but I never made one.” King adds that he likely would have made an exception to his non-endorsement policy for a second Kennedy term, saying “Had President Kennedy lived, I would probably have endorsed him in 1964.”[64] In 1964, King urged his supporters “and all people of goodwill” to vote against Republican Senator Barry Goldwater for president, saying that his election “would be a tragedy, and certainly suicidal almost, for the nation and the world.”[65] King supported the ideals of democratic socialism, although he was reluctant to speak directly of this support due to the anti-communist sentiment being projected throughout America at the time, and the association of socialism with communism. King believed that capitalism could not adequately provide the basic necessities of many American people, particularly the African American community.[66]
Compensation
King stated that black Americans, as well as other disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. In an interview conducted for Playboy in 1965, he said that granting black Americans only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. King said that he did not seek a full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of $50 billion over ten years to all disadvantaged groups.[67]
He posited that “the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils”.[68] He presented this idea as an application of the common law regarding settlement of unpaid labor, but clarified that he felt that the money should not be spent exclusively on blacks. He stated, “It should benefit the disadvantaged of all races”.[69]
Recently, the press has been filled with reports of sightings of flying saucers. While we need not give credence to these stories, they allow our imagination to speculate on how visitors from outer space would judge us. I am afraid they would be stupefied at our conduct. They would observe that for death planning we spend billions to create engines and strategies for war. They would also observe that we spend millions to prevent death by disease and other causes. Finally they would observe that we spend paltry sums for population planning, even though its spontaneous growth is an urgent threat to life on our planet. Our visitors from outer space could be forgiven if they reported home that our planet is inhabited by a race of insane men whose future is bleak and uncertain.
There is no human circumstance more tragic than the persisting existence of a harmful condition for which a remedy is readily available. Family planning, to relate population to world resources, is possible, practical and necessary. Unlike plagues of thedark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess.
What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims. …[70][71]
In March 1955, a fifteen-year-old school girl in Montgomery, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in compliance with Jim Crow laws, laws in the US South that enforced racial segregation. King was on the committee from the Birmingham African-American community that looked into the case; because Colvin was pregnant and unmarried, E.D. Nixon and Clifford Durr decided to wait for a better case to pursue.[72]
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat.[73] The Montgomery Bus Boycott, urged and planned by Nixon and led by King, soon followed.[74] The boycott lasted for 385 days,[75] and the situation became so tense that King’s house was bombed.[76] King was arrested during this campaign, which concluded with a United States District Court ruling in Browder v. Gayle that ended racial segregation on all Montgomery public buses.[77][78] King’s role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.[79]
On September 20, 1958, while signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein’s department store in Harlem,[84] King narrowly escaped death when Izola Curry, a mentally ill black woman who believed he was conspiring against her with communists, stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener. After emergency surgery, King was hospitalized for several weeks, while Curry was found mentally incompetent to stand trial.[85][86] In 1959, he published a short book called The Measure of A Man, which contained his sermons “What is Man?” and “The Dimensions of a Complete Life”. The sermons argued for man’s need for God’s love and criticized the racial injustices of Western civilization.[87]
Harry Wachtel—who joined King’s legal advisor Clarence B. Jones in defending four ministers of the SCLC in a libel suit over a newspaper advertisement (New York Times Co. v. Sullivan)—founded a tax-exempt fund to cover the expenses of the suit and to assist the nonviolent civil rights movement through a more effective means of fundraising. This organization was named the “Gandhi Society for Human Rights”. King served as honorary president for the group. Displeased with the pace of President Kennedy’s addressing the issue of segregation, King and the Gandhi Society produced a document in 1962 calling on the President to follow in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln and use an Executive Order to deliver a blow for Civil Rights as a kind of Second Emancipation Proclamation – Kennedy did not execute the order.[88]
The FBI, under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, began tapping King’s telephone in the fall of 1963.[89] Concerned that allegations of communists in the SCLC, if made public, would derail the administration’s civil rights initiatives, Kennedy warned King to discontinue the suspect associations, and later felt compelled to issue the written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other SCLC leaders.[90] J. Edgar Hoover feared Communists were trying to infiltrate the Civil Rights movement, but when no such evidence emerged, the bureau used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years in attempts to force King out of the preeminent leadership position.[91]
King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality and voting rights. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily deprivation and indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment of civil rights workers and marchers, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced the majority of Americans that the Civil Rights Movement was the most important issue in American politics in the early 1960s.[92][93]
King and the SCLC put into practice many of the principles of the Christian Left and applied the tactics of nonviolent protest with great success by strategically choosing the method of protest and the places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities. Sometimes these confrontations turned violent.[96]
Throughout his participation in the civil rights movement, King was criticized by many groups. This included opposition by more militant blacks such as Nation of Islam member Malcolm X.[97]Stokely Carmichael was a separatist and disagreed with King’s plea for racial integration because he considered it an insult to a uniquely African-American culture.[98]Omali Yeshitela urged Africans to remember the history of violent European colonization and how power was not secured by Europeans through integration, but by violence and force.[99]
The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. In December, King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he “had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel.”[100] The following day he was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made concessions. According to King, “that agreement was dishonored and violated by the city” after he left town.[100]
King returned in July 1962, and was sentenced to forty-five days in jail or a $178 fine. He chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Police Chief Laurie Pritchett discreetly arranged for King’s fine to be paid and ordered his release. “We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools … ejected from churches … and thrown into jail … But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail.”[101] It was later acknowledged by the King Center that Billy Graham was the one who bailed King out of jail during this time.[102]
After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a “Day of Penance” to promote nonviolence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts.[103] Though the Albany effort proved a key lesson in tactics for Dr. King and the national civil rights movement,[104] the national media was highly critical of King’s role in the defeat, and the SCLC’s lack of results contributed to a growing gulf between the organization and the more radical SNCC. After Albany, King sought to choose engagements for the SCLC in which he could control the circumstances, rather than entering into pre-existing situations.[105]
In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign used nonviolent but intentionally confrontational tactics, developed in part by Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker. Black people in Birmingham, organizing with the SCLC, occupied public spaces with marches and sit-ins, openly violating laws that they considered unjust.
King’s intent was to provoke mass arrests and “create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation”.[106] However, the campaign’s early volunteers did not succeed in shutting down the city, or in drawing media attention to the police’s actions. Over the concerns of an uncertain King, SCLC strategist James Bevel changed the course of the campaign by recruiting children and young adults to join in the demonstrations.[107]Newsweek called this strategy a Children’s Crusade.[108][109]
During the protests, the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene “Bull” Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs against protesters, including children. Footage of the police response was broadcast on national television news and dominated the nation’s attention, shocking many white Americans and consolidating black Americans behind the movement.[110] Not all of the demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm’s way. But the campaign was a success: Connor lost his job, the “Jim Crow” signs came down, and public places became more open to blacks. King’s reputation improved immensely.[108]
King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest[111] out of 29.[112] From his cell, he composed the now-famous Letter from Birmingham Jail which responds to calls on the movement to pursue legal channels for social change. King argues that the crisis of racism is too urgent, and the current system too entrenched: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”[113] He points out that the Boston Tea Party, a celebrated act of rebellion in the American colonies, was illegal civil disobedience, and that, conversely, “everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’”.[113] King also expresses his frustration with white moderates and clergymen too timid to oppose an unjust system:
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistic-ally believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season”.[113]
In March 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with Robert Hayling’s then-controversial movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Hayling’s group had been affiliated with the NAACP but was forced out of the organization for advocating armed self-defense alongside nonviolent tactics. Ironically, the pacifist SCLC accepted them.[114] King and the SCLC worked to bring white Northern activists to St. Augustine, including a delegation of rabbis and the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, all of whom were arrested.[115][116] During June, the movement marched nightly through the city, “often facing counter demonstrations by the Klan, and provoking violence that garnered national media attention.” Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed. During the course of this movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.[117]
In December 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.[118] A local judge issued an injunction that barred any gathering of 3 or more people affiliated with the SNCC, SCLC, DCVL, or any of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.[119]
New York City
On February 6, 1964, King delivered the inaugural speech of a lecture series initiated at the New School called “The American Race Crisis”. No audio record of his speech has been found, but in August 2013, almost 50 years later, the school discovered an audiotape with 15 minutes of a question-and-answer session that followed King’s address. In these remarks, King referred to a conversation he had recently had with Jawaharlal Nehru in which he compared the sad condition of many African Americans to that of India’s untouchables.[120]
The primary logistical and strategic organizer was King’s colleague Bayard Rustin.[122] For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was one of the key figures who acceded to the wishes of President John F. Kennedy in changing the focus of the march.[123][124] Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, the organizers were firm that the march would proceed.[125] With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to work to ensure its success. President Kennedy was concerned the turnout would be less than 100,000. Therefore, he enlisted the aid of additional church leaders and the UAW union to help mobilize demonstrators for the cause.[126]
The march originally was conceived as an event to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern U.S. and an opportunity to place organizers’ concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the nation’s capital. Organizers intended to denounce the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks. However, the group acquiesced to presidential pressure and influence, and the event ultimately took on a far less strident tone.[127] As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the “Farce on Washington”, and the Nation of Islam forbade its members from attending the march.[127][128]
The march did, however, make specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public schools; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee.[129][130][131] Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success.[132] More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.’s history.[132]
King delivered a 17-minute speech, later known as “I Have a Dream“. In the speech’s most famous passage—in which he departed from his prepared text, possibly at the prompting of Mahalia Jackson, who shouted behind him, “Tell them about the dream!”[133][134]—King said:[135]
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
“I Have a Dream” came to be regarded as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory.[136] The March, and especially King’s speech, helped put civil rights at the top of the agenda of reformers in the United States and facilitated passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[137][138]
The original, typewritten copy of the speech, including Dr. King’s handwritten notes on it, was discovered in 1984 to be in the hands of George Raveling, the first African-American basketball coach of the University of Iowa. In 1963, Raveling, then 26, was standing near the podium, and immediately after the oration, impulsively asked King if he could have his copy of the speech. He got it.[139]
Selma Voting Rights Movement and “Bloody Sunday”, 1965
Acting on James Bevel’s call for a march from Selma to Montgomery, King, Bevel, and the SCLC, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize the march to the state’s capital. The first attempt to march on March 7, 1965, was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday, and was a major turning point in the effort to gain public support for the Civil Rights Movement. It was the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King’s nonviolence strategy. King, however, was not present.[140]
King met with officials in the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration on March 5 in order to request an injunction against any prosecution of the demonstrators. He did not attend the march due to church duties, but he later wrote, “If I had any idea that the state troopers would use the kind of brutality they did, I would have felt compelled to give up my church duties altogether to lead the line.”[141] Footage of police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused national public outrage.[142]
King next attempted to organize a march for March 9. The SCLC petitioned for an injunction in federal court against the State of Alabama; this was denied and the judge issued an order blocking the march until after a hearing. Nonetheless, King led marchers on March 9 to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, then held a short prayer session before turning the marchers around and asking them to disperse so as not to violate the court order. The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement.[143] The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, 1965.[144][145] At the conclusion of the march on the steps of the state capitol, King delivered a speech that became known as “How Long, Not Long“. In it, King stated that equal rights for African Americans could not be far away, “because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.[a][146][147]
In 1966, after several successes in the South, King, Bevel, and others in the civil rights organizations tried to spread the movement to the North, with Chicago as their first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Ave., in the slums of North Lawndale[148] on Chicago’s West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.[149]
The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations’ efforts were fostered under the aegis of the Chicago Freedom Movement.[150] During that spring, several white couple / black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered racial steering: discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income, background, number of children, and other attributes.[151] Several larger marches were planned and executed: in Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (a suburb southwest of Chicago), Gage Park, Marquette Park, and others.[150][152][153]
Abernathy later wrote that the movement received a worse reception in Chicago than in the South. Marches, especially the one through Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, were met by thrown bottles and screaming throngs. Rioting seemed very possible.[154][155] King’s beliefs militated against his staging a violent event, and he negotiated an agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley to cancel a march in order to avoid the violence that he feared would result.[156] King was hit by a brick during one march but continued to lead marches in the face of personal danger.[157]
When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization.[158] Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks.[159]
You may watch the speech, “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam”, by Martin Luther King here.
King long opposed American involvement in the Vietnam War,[160] but at first avoided the topic in public speeches in order to avoid the interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President Johnson’s policies might have created.[160] However, at the urging of SCLC’s former Director of Direct Action and now the head of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, James Bevel,[161] King eventually agreed to publicly oppose the war as opposition was growing among the American public.[160] In an April 4, 1967, appearance at the New York City Riverside Church—exactly one year before his death—King delivered a speech titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence“.[162] He spoke strongly against the U.S.’s role in the war, arguing that the U.S. was in Vietnam “to occupy it as an American colony”[163] and calling the U.S. government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”.[164] He also connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change:
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.”[165]
King also opposed the Vietnam War because it took money and resources that could have been spent on social welfare at home. The United States Congress was spending more and more on the military and less and less on anti-poverty programs at the same time. He summed up this aspect by saying, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death”.[165] He stated that North Vietnam “did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands”,[166] and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, “mostly children”.[167] King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam’s land reforms.[168]
King’s opposition cost him significant support among white allies, including President Johnson, Billy Graham,[169] union leaders and powerful publishers.[170] “The press is being stacked against me”, King said,[171] complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied “toward little brown Vietnamese children”.[172]Life magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi“,[165] and The Washington Post declared that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people”.[172][173]
King speaking to an anti-Vietnam war rally at the University of Minnesota, St. Paul on April 27, 1967
The “Beyond Vietnam” speech reflected King’s evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated.[174][175] King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation, and more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice.[176] He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism by his enemies, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism.[177][178] In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic …”[179] In one speech, he stated that “something is wrong with capitalism” and claimed, “There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”[180] King had read Marx while at Morehouse, but while he rejected “traditional capitalism”, he also rejected communism because of its “materialistic interpretation of history” that denied religion, its “ethical relativism”, and its “political totalitarianism”.[181]
King also stated in “Beyond Vietnam” that “true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar … it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring”.[182] King quoted a United States official who said that, from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was “on the wrong side of a world revolution”.[182] King condemned America’s “alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America”, and said that the U.S. should support “the shirtless and barefoot people” in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution.[182]
On April 15, 1967, King participated in and spoke at an anti-war march from New York’s Central Park to the United Nations organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and initiated by its chairman, James Bevel. At the U.N. King also brought up issues of civil rights and the draft.
I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both.[183]
Seeing an opportunity to unite civil rights activists and anti-war activists,[161] Bevel convinced King to become even more active in the anti-war effort.[161] Despite his growing public opposition towards the Vietnam War, King was also not fond of the hippie culture which developed from the anti-war movement.[184] In his 1967 Massey Lecture, King stated:
The importance of the hippies is not in their unconventional behavior, but in the fact that hundreds of thousands of young people, in turning to a flight from reality, are expressing a profoundly discrediting view on the society they emerge from.[184]
On January 13, 1968, the day after President Johnson’s State of the Union Address, King called for a large march on Washington against “one of history’s most cruel and senseless wars”.[185][186]
We need to make clear in this political year, to congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the president of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killings of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self-determination in Southeast Asia.[185][186]
In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the “Poor People’s Campaign” to address issues of economic justice. King traveled the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an “economic bill of rights” for poor Americans.[187][188]
King and the SCLC called on the government to invest in rebuilding America’s cities. He felt that Congress had shown “hostility to the poor” by spending “military funds with alacrity and generosity”. He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided “poverty funds with miserliness”.[188] His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of “racism, poverty, militarism and materialism”, and argued that “reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced”.[192]
The Poor People’s Campaign was controversial even within the civil rights movement. Rustin resigned from the march, stating that the goals of the campaign were too broad, that its demands were unrealizable, and that he thought that these campaigns would accelerate the backlash and repression on the poor and the black.[193]
After King’s death
The plan to set up a shantytown in Washington, D.C., was carried out soon after the April 4 assassination. Criticism of King’s plan was subdued in the wake of his death, and the SCLC received an unprecedented wave of donations for the purpose of carrying it out. The campaign officially began in Memphis, on May 2, at the hotel where King was murdered.[194]
Thousands of demonstrators arrived on the National Mall and established a camp they called “Resurrection City”. They stayed for six weeks.[195]
On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of the black sanitary public works employees, represented by AFSCME Local 1733, who had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. In one incident, black street repairmen received pay for two hours when they were sent home because of bad weather, but white employees were paid for the full day.[196][197][198]
On April 3, King addressed a rally and delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address at Mason Temple, the world headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. King’s flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane.[199] In the close of the last speech of his career, in reference to the bomb threat, King said the following:
And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.[200]
King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, owned by Walter Bailey, in Memphis. Abernathy, who was present at the assassination, testified to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed at room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often it was known as the “King-Abernathy suite”.[201] According to Jesse Jackson, who was present, King’s last words on the balcony before his assassination were spoken to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: “Ben, make sure you play ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord‘ in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.”[202]
King was shot at 6:01 p.m., April 4, 1968, as he stood on the motel’s second-floor balcony. The bullet entered through his right cheek, smashing his jaw, then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.[203][204] Abernathy heard the shot from inside the motel room and ran to the balcony to find King on the floor.[205] Jackson stated after the shooting that he cradled King’s head as King lay on the balcony, but this account was disputed by other colleagues of King’s; Jackson later changed his statement to say that he had “reached out” for King.[206]
After emergency chest surgery, King died at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 7:05 p.m.[207] According to biographer Taylor Branch, King’s autopsy revealed that though only 39 years old, he “had the heart of a 60 year old”, which Branch attributed to the stress of 13 years in the Civil Rights Movement.[208]
The assassination led to a nationwide wave of race riots in Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Baltimore; Louisville; Kansas City; and dozens of other cities.[209][210] Presidential candidate Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy was on his way to Indianapolis for a campaign rally when he was informed of King’s death. He gave a short speech to the gathering of supporters informing them of the tragedy and urging them to continue King’s ideal of nonviolence.[211]James Farmer, Jr., and other civil rights leaders also called for nonviolent action, while the more militant Stokely Carmichael called for a more forceful response.[212] The city of Memphis quickly settled the strike on terms favorable to the sanitation workers.[213]
President Lyndon B. Johnson declared April 7 a national day of mourning for the civil rights leader.[214] Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended King’s funeral on behalf of the President, as there were fears that Johnson’s presence might incite protests and perhaps violence.[215] At his widow’s request, King’s last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church was played at the funeral,[216] a recording of his “Drum Major” sermon, given on February 4, 1968. In that sermon, King made a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to “feed the hungry”, “clothe the naked”, “be right on the [Vietnam] war question”, and “love and serve humanity”.[217] His good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”, at the funeral.[218]
Two months after King’s death, escaped convict James Earl Ray was captured at London Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd on his way to white-ruled Rhodesia.[219] Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King’s murder. He confessed to the assassination on March 10, 1969, though he recanted this confession three days later.[220] On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray pled guilty to avoid a trial conviction and thus the possibility of receiving the death penalty. He was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.[220][221] Ray later claimed a man he met in Montreal, Quebec, with the alias “Raoul” was involved and that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy.[222][223] He spent the remainder of his life attempting, unsuccessfully, to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had.[221]
Allegations of conspiracy
Ray’s lawyers maintained he was a scapegoat similar to the way that John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is seen by conspiracy theorists.[224] Supporters of this assertion say that Ray’s confession was given under pressure and that he had been threatened with the death penalty.[221][225] They admit Ray was a thief and burglar, but claim he had no record of committing violent crimes with a weapon.[223] However, prison records in different U.S. cities have shown that he was incarcerated on numerous occasions for charges of armed robbery.[226] In a 2008 interview with CNN, Jerry Ray, the younger brother of James Earl Ray, claimed that James was smart and was sometimes able to get away with armed robbery. Jerry Ray said that he had assisted his brother on one such robbery. “I never been with nobody as bold as he is,” Jerry said. “He just walked in and put that gun on somebody, it was just like it’s an everyday thing.”[226]
Those suspecting a conspiracy in the assassination point to the two successive ballistics tests which proved that a rifle similar to Ray’s Remington Gamemaster had been the murder weapon. Those tests did not implicate Ray’s specific rifle.[221][227] Witnesses near King at the moment of his death said that the shot came from another location. They said that it came from behind thick shrubbery near the boarding house—which had been cut away in the days following the assassination—and not from the boarding house window.[228] However, Ray’s fingerprints were found on various objects (a rifle, a pair of binoculars, articles of clothing, a newspaper) that were left in the bathroom where it was determined the gunfire came from.[226] An examination of the rifle containing Ray’s fingerprints also determined that at least one shot was fired from the firearm at the time of the assassination.[226]
In 1997, King’s son Dexter Scott King met with Ray, and publicly supported Ray’s efforts to obtain a new trial.[229]
Two years later, Coretta Scott King, King’s widow, along with the rest of King’s family, won a wrongful death claim against Loyd Jowers and “other unknown co-conspirators”. Jowers claimed to have received $100,000 to arrange King’s assassination. The jury of six whites and six blacks found in favor of the King family, finding Jowers to be complicit in a conspiracy against King and that government agencies were party to the assassination.[230][231]William F. Pepper represented the King family in the trial.[232]
In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice completed the investigation into Jowers’ claims but did not find evidence to support allegations about conspiracy. The investigation report recommended no further investigation unless some new reliable facts are presented.[233] A sister of Jowers admitted that he had fabricated the story so he could make $300,000 from selling the story, and she in turn corroborated his story in order to get some money to pay her income tax.[234][235]
In 2002, The New York Times reported that a church minister, Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson, claimed his father, Henry Clay Wilson—not James Earl Ray—assassinated King. He stated, “It wasn’t a racist thing; he thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way.” Wilson provided no evidence to back up his claims.[236]
King researchers David Garrow and Gerald Posner disagreed with William F. Pepper’s claims that the government killed King.[237] In 2003, William Pepper published a book about the long investigation and trial, as well as his representation of James Earl Ray in his bid for a trial, laying out the evidence and criticizing other accounts.[238] King’s friend and colleague, James Bevel, also disputed the argument that Ray acted alone, stating, “There is no way a ten-cent white boy could develop a plan to kill a million-dollar black man.”[239] In 2004, Jesse Jackson stated:
The fact is there were saboteurs to disrupt the march. And within our own organization, we found a very key person who was on the government payroll. So infiltration within, saboteurs from without and the press attacks. … I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think the escape route for James Earl Ray.[240]
FBI and King’s personal life
FBI surveillance and wiretapping
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover personally ordered surveillance of King, with the intent to undermine his power as a civil rights leader.[170][241] According to the Church Committee, a 1975 investigation by the U.S. Congress, “From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to ‘neutralize’ him as an effective civil rights leader.”[242]
The Bureau received authorization to proceed with wiretapping from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the fall of 1963[243] and informed President John F. Kennedy, both of whom unsuccessfully tried to persuade King to dissociate himself from Stanley Levison, a New York lawyer who had been involved with Communist Party USA.[244][245] Although Robert Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King’s phones “on a trial basis, for a month or so”,[246] Hoover extended the clearance so his men were “unshackled” to look for evidence in any areas of King’s life they deemed worthy.[247] The Bureau placed wiretaps on Levison’s and King’s home and office phones, and bugged King’s rooms in hotels as he traveled across the country.[244][248] In 1967, Hoover listed the SCLC as a black nationalist hate group, with the instructions: “No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups … to insure the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited.”[241][249]
NSA monitoring of King’s communications
In a secret operation code-named “Minaret“, the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored the communications of leading Americans, including King, who criticized the U.S. war in Vietnam.[250] A review by the NSA itself concluded that Minaret was “disreputable if not outright illegal.”[250]
Allegations of communism
For years, Hoover had been suspicious about potential influence of communists in social movements such as labor unions and civil rights.[251] Hoover directed the FBI to track King in 1957, and the SCLC as it was established (it did not have a full-time executive director until 1960).[91] The investigations were largely superficial until 1962, when the FBI learned that one of King’s most trusted advisers was New York City lawyer Stanley Levison.[252]
The FBI feared Levison was working as an “agent of influence” over King, in spite of its own reports in 1963 that Levison had left the Party and was no longer associated in business dealings with them.[253] Another King lieutenant, Hunter Pitts O’Dell, was also linked to the Communist Party by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).[254] However, by 1976 the FBI had acknowledged that it had not obtained any evidence that King himself or the SCLC were actually involved with any communist organizations.[242]
For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections to communism, stating in a 1965 Playboy interview that “there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida”.[255] He argued that Hoover was “following the path of appeasement of political powers in the South” and that his concern for communist infiltration of the Civil Rights Movement was meant to “aid and abet the salacious claims of southern racists and the extreme right-wing elements”.[242] Hoover did not believe King’s pledge of innocence and replied by saying that King was “the most notorious liar in the country”.[256] After King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech during the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, the FBI described King as “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country”.[248] It alleged that he was “knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists”.[257]
The attempt to prove that King was a communist was related to the feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were happy with their lot but had been stirred up by “communists” and “outside agitators”.[258] However, the 1950s and ’60s Civil Rights Movement arose from activism within the black community dating back to before World War I. King said that “the Negro revolution is a genuine revolution, born from the same womb that produces all massive social upheavals—the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations.”[259]
Adultery
Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, March 26, 1964
Having concluded that King was dangerous due to communist infiltration, the FBI shifted to attempting to discredit King through revelations regarding his private life. FBI surveillance of King, some of it since made public, attempted to demonstrate that he also engaged in numerous extramarital affairs.[248] Lyndon Johnson once said that King was a “hypocritical preacher”.[260]
Ralph Abernathy stated in his 1989 autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down that King had a “weakness for women”, although they “all understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation”.[261] In a later interview, Abernathy said that he only wrote the term “womanizing”, that he did not specifically say King had extramarital sex and that the infidelities King had were emotional rather than sexual.[262] Abernathy criticized the media for sensationalizing the statements he wrote about King’s affairs,[262] such as the allegation that he admitted in his book that King had a sexual affair the night before he was assassinated.[262] In his original wording, Abernathy had claimed he saw King coming out of his room with a lady when he awoke the next morning and later claimed that “he may have been in there discussing and debating and trying to get her to go along with the movement, I don’t know.”[262]
In his 1986 book Bearing the Cross, David Garrow wrote about a number of extramarital affairs, including one woman King saw almost daily. According to Garrow, “that relationship … increasingly became the emotional centerpiece of King’s life, but it did not eliminate the incidental couplings … of King’s travels.” He alleged that King explained his extramarital affairs as “a form of anxiety reduction”. Garrow asserted that King’s supposed promiscuity caused him “painful and at times overwhelming guilt”.[263] King’s wife Coretta appeared to have accepted his affairs with equanimity, saying once that “all that other business just doesn’t have a place in the very high level relationship we enjoyed.”[264] Shortly after Bearing the Cross was released, civil rights author Howell Raines gave the book a positive review but opined that Garrow’s allegations about King’s sex life were “sensational” and stated that Garrow was “amassing facts rather than analyzing them”.[265]
The FBI distributed reports regarding such affairs to the executive branch, friendly reporters, potential coalition partners and funding sources of the SCLC, and King’s family.[266] The Bureau also sent anonymous letters to King threatening to reveal information if he did not cease his civil rights work.[267] One such letter sent to King just before he received the Nobel Peace Prize read, in part:
The so-called “suicide letter”,[268] mailed anonymously by the FBI
The American public, the church organizations that have been helping—Protestants, Catholics and Jews will know you for what you are—an evil beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significant [sic]). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation.[269]
A tape recording of several of King’s extramarital liaisons, excerpted from FBI wiretaps, accompanied the letter.[270] King interpreted this package as an attempt to drive him to suicide,[271] although William Sullivan, head of the Domestic Intelligence Division at the time, argued that it may have only been intended to “convince Dr. King to resign from the SCLC”.[242] King refused to give in to the FBI’s threats.[248]
JudgeJohn Lewis Smith, Jr., in 1977 ordered all known copies of the recorded audiotapes and written transcripts resulting from the FBI’s electronic surveillance of King between 1963 and 1968 to be held in the National Archives and sealed from public access until 2027.[272]
Police observation during the assassination
Across from the Lorraine Motel, next to the boarding house in which Ray was staying, was a fire station. Police officers were stationed in the fire station to keep King under surveillance.[273] Agents were watching King at the time he was shot.[274] Immediately following the shooting, officers rushed out of the station to the motel. Marrell McCollough, an undercover police officer, was the first person to administer first aid to King.[275] The antagonism between King and the FBI, the lack of an all points bulletin to find the killer, and the police presence nearby led to speculation that the FBI was involved in the assassination.[276]
Legacy
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Among the guests behind him is Martin Luther King.
Martin Luther King, Jr., statue over the west entrance of Westminster Abbey, installed in 1998
King’s main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the U.S. Just days after King’s assassination, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968.[277] Title VIII of the Act, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibited discrimination in housing and housing-related transactions on the basis of race, religion, or national origin (later expanded to include sex, familial status, and disability). This legislation was seen as a tribute to King’s struggle in his final years to combat residential discrimination in the U.S.[277]
Internationally, King’s legacy includes influences on the Black Consciousness Movement and Civil Rights Movement in South Africa.[278][279] King’s work was cited by and served as an inspiration for South African leader Albert Lutuli, who fought for racial justice in his country and was later awarded the Nobel Prize.[280] The day following King’s assassination, school teacher Jane Elliott conducted her first “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” exercise with her class of elementary school students in Riceville, Iowa. Her purpose was to help them understand King’s death as it related to racism, something they little understood as they lived in a predominantly white community.[281] King has become a national icon in the history of American liberalism and American progressivism.[282]
King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, followed in her husband’s footsteps and was active in matters of social justice and civil rights until her death in 2006. The same year that Martin Luther King was assassinated, she established the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to preserving his legacy and the work of championing nonviolent conflict resolution and tolerance worldwide.[283] Their son, Dexter King, serves as the center’s chairman.[284][285] Daughter Yolanda King, who died in 2007, was a motivational speaker, author and founder of Higher Ground Productions, an organization specializing in diversity training.[286]
Even within the King family, members disagree about his religious and political views about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. King’s widow Coretta said publicly that she believed her husband would have supported gay rights.[287] However, his youngest child, Bernice King, has said publicly that he would have been opposed to gay marriage.[288]
On February 4, 1968, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, in speaking about how he wished to be remembered after his death, King stated:
I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.[212][289]
Beginning in 1971, cities such as St. Louis, Missouri, and states established annual holidays to honor King.[290] At the White House Rose Garden on November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. Observed for the first time on January 20, 1986, it is called Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Following President George H. W. Bush‘s 1992 proclamation, the holiday is observed on the third Monday of January each year, near the time of King’s birthday.[291][292] On January 17, 2000, for the first time, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was officially observed in all fifty U.S. states.[293]Arizona (1992), New Hampshire (1999) and Utah (2000) were the last three states to recognized the holiday. Utah previously celebrated the holiday at the same time but under the name Human Rights Day.[294]
UK legacy and The Martin Luther King Peace Committee
In the United Kingdom, The Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace Committee[297] exists to honour King’s legacy, as represented by his final visit to the UK to receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University in 1967.[298] The Peace Committee operates out of the chaplaincies of the city’s two universities, Northumbria and Newcastle, both of which remain centres for the study of Martin Luther King and the US Civil Rights Movement. Inspired by King’s vision, it undertakes a range of activities across the UK as it seeks to “build cultures of peace.”
Awards and recognition
Martin Luther King, Jr., showing his medallion received from Mayor Wagner
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where King ministered, was renamed Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in 1978.
King was awarded at least fifty honorary degrees from colleges and universities.[299] On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in the U.S.[300] In 1965, he was awarded the American Liberties Medallion by the American Jewish Committee for his “exceptional advancement of the principles of human liberty”.[299][301] In his acceptance remarks, King said, “Freedom is one thing. You have it all or you are not free.”[302]
In 1957, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.[303] Two years later, he won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for his book Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story.[304] In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America awarded King the Margaret Sanger Award for “his courageous resistance to bigotry and his lifelong dedication to the advancement of social justice and human dignity”.[305] Also in 1966, King was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[306] In November 1967 he made a 24 hour trip to the United Kingdom to receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University, being the first African American to be so honoured by Newcastle.[307] In a moving impromptu acceptance speech,[308] he said
There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face not only in the United States of America but all over the world today. That is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was the conscience of his generation. He gazed upon the great wall of segregation and saw that the power of love could bring it down. From the pain and exhaustion of his fight to fulfill the promises of our founding fathers for our humblest citizens, he wrung his eloquent statement of his dream for America. He made our nation stronger because he made it better. His dream sustains us yet.[310]
The beginning words of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech are etched on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, at the place where King stood during that speech.[320] These words from the speech—”five short lines of text carved into the granite on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial”—were etched in 2003, on the 40th anniversary of the march to Washington, by stone carver Andy Del Gallo, after a law was passed by Congress providing authorization for the inscription.[320]
In 1996, Congress authorized the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, of which King is still a member, to establish a foundation to manage fund raising and design of a national Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.[321] King was the first African American and the fourth non-president honored with his own memorial in the National Mall area.[322] The memorial opened in August 2011[323] and is administered by the National Park Service.[324] The address of the monument, 1964 Independence Avenue, S.W., commemorates the year that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.[325]
On October 11, 2015, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported a proposed “Freedom Bell” may be installed atop Stone Mountain honoring King and his I Have A Dream speech, specifically the line “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.”[326]
Numerous other memorials honor him around the world, including:
On this day of remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, birthday I wish that Dr. King would be alive today to see the progress of his movement. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States, and she took the oaths of office on June 30. 2022. She is the first African American woman appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Current Court: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
Image Credit: Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States
Justice Jackson was born in Washington, D.C. on September 14, 1970 where both of her parents taught in public schools. The family moved to Miami, Florida where Justice Jackson attended public schools. In high school she excelled in debate and speech competition. She enrolled in Harvard University in 1988. In 1992, she graduated from Harvard-Radcliffe with a Bachelor’s Degree in Government. She earned a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Harvard Law School in 1996.
After law school, Justice Jackson’s career included private practice, and three federal clerkships, including a clerkship for Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer at the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition to professional experience in private practice, she also worked in public service. She worked for two years for the United States Sentencing Commission, 2003-2005, and as a federal public defender from 2005-2007. She returned to the U.S. Sentencing Commission as a commissioner in 2010.
She served on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 until her nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States. After her confirmation, she took the oaths of office on June 30. 2022. The Justice is married to Dr. Patrick Jackson, and they are the parents of two daughters.
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Have you made any resolutions this year? (Picture: Getty)
Another year is over, and 2022 is set to go out with a bang tonight, as London’s famous fireworks display is back for the first time since 2019.
Whether you’re off on a night out, wrapping up warm to watch a firework display, or having a cosy night in, this year’s celebrations are likely to be bigger than ever, after 2020 and 2021 celebrations were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
But just who will get to see in 2023 first?
Let’s find out.
What is the first country in the world to celebrate New Year?
The first country – or countries – in the world to mark New Year will actually be the small Pacific Island nations of Tonga, Samoa and Kiribati/Christmas Island.
They’ll be ringing in the new year at 10am GMT, sparking off a day’s worth of celebrations around the globe.
Next in line will be New Zealand, who’ll say hello to 2023 at around 10.15am GMT.
There will be toned down fireworks across the world this year (Picture: Getty)
As it stands the UK will be one of the last countries to celebrate the New Year – and we’ll do so at the same time as Ireland, Iceland, Ghana and Portugal, and an hour later than most of Europe.
However, that won’t be the end of New Year celebrations, as North and South America will be the final part of the world to see 2023.
The last place which will welcome the New Year will be Baker Island and Howland Island, two unoccupied US Islands in the Pacific – but the last occupied territory to celebrate January 1 will be American Samoa at 11am GMT tomorrow morning.
What time is it in Australia?
Australia is known for kicking off the New Year in spectacular fashion with huge fireworks display over Sydney.
New Year’s Eve will be spent in households and bubbles this year (Picture: Getty)
They’ll also be among the first countries to see in 2023, although the time varies according to where you are in Australia.
Sydney and Melbourne are 11 hours ahead of the UK – meaning they’ll be celebrating New Year at 1pm GMT.
Adelaide, meanwhile, is 10 and a half hours ahead of UK time, while Brisbane is 10 hours ahead and Perth is only eight hours ahead.
Aljazeera: Celebrations kick off in Asia as world enters 2023
Asia celebrates a restriction-free New Year after two years of COVID disruptions, as the world enters 2023.
Fireworks explode over Sydney Harbour during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Sydney on January 1 [Jaimi Joy/Reuters]
Published On 31 Dec 202231 Dec 2022
Australia celebrated its first restriction-free New Year’s Eve after two years of COVID disruptions, as the world began bidding farewell to a year marked for many by the war in Ukraine, economic stresses and the effects of global warming.
Revellers celebrated across Asia from China to the Philippines to Thailand.
Sydney, one of the world’s first major cities to welcome in the New Year, did so with a typically dazzling fireworks display, which for the first time featured a rainbow waterfall off the famous Harbour Bridge.
“This New Year’s Eve, we are saying Sydney is back as we kick off festivities around the world and bring in the New Year with a bang,” said Clover Moore, lord mayor of the city, ahead of the events.
Lockdowns at the end of 2020 and a surge in Omicron cases at the end of 2021 led to crowd restrictions and reduced festivities in Australia. However, curbs on celebrations were lifted this year after Australia, like many countries around the world, re-opened its borders and removed social distancing restrictions.
The display in Sydney featured thousands of fireworks launched from the four sails of the Sydney Opera House and from the Harbour Bridge.
In China, rigorous COVID restrictions were lifted only this month in the government’s reversal of its “zero-COVID” policy, a switch that has led to soaring infections and meant some people were in no mood to celebrate.
In the city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began three years ago, tens of thousands of people gathered to celebrate amid a heavy security presence.
Barricades were erected and hundreds of police officers and other security workers stood guard on the night of the first large-scale spontaneous gathering in the city since nationwide protests in late November – soon after which Chinese authorities all but abandoned the zero-COVID policy.
In Shanghai, many thronged the historic riverside walkway, the Bund.
Bottom of Form
“We’ve all travelled in from Chengdu to celebrate in Shanghai,” said Da Dai, a 28-year-old digital media executive who was travelling with two friends. “We’ve already had COVID, so now feel it’s safe to enjoy ourselves.”
Days after Hong Kong lifted limits on group gatherings, tens of thousands of people gathered near the city’s Victoria Harbour for a countdown. Lights beamed from some of the city’s biggest harbour-front buildings.
It was the city’s biggest New Year’s Eve celebration in several years. The event was cancelled in 2019 due to often violent social unrest and was scaled down in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.
Malaysia’s government cancelled its New Year countdown and fireworks event at Dataran Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur after flooding across the nation displaced tens of thousands of people and a landslide killed 31 people this month.
Celebrations at the country’s famous Petronas Twin Towers were pared down with no performances or fireworks.
Earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin devoted his annual New Year’s address to rallying the Russian people behind his troops fighting in Ukraine.
Paris was set to stage its first New Year’s fireworks since 2019. A 10-minute firework show was set to kick off at midnight, with 500,000 people expected to gather on Champs-Elysees avenue to watch.
Heavy rain and strong winds on Saturday meant firework shows in the Netherlands’s main cities including Amsterdam and The Hague – and the nationally televised display in the port city of Rotterdam – were cancelled.
Fireworks explode over Wat Arun of the Temple of the Dawn during the New Year celebrations, in Bangkok, Thailand, on January 1, 2023. [Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters]
Fireworks are seen over Victoria Harbour at midnight on Sunday in Hong Kong. [Anthony Kwan/AP Photo]
People hold balloons as they gather to celebrate New Year’s Eve amid the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China, on December 31, 2022. [Tingshu Wang/Reuters]
Buddhist faithful take pictures as they celebrate New Year’s eve at a temple in Seoul, South Korea, on January 1, 2023. [Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]
Fireworks explode over the Selamat Datang Monument during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Jakarta, Indonesia, on January 1, 2023. [Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana/Reuters]
A screen displays the year 2023 as revellers celebrate New Year’s Eve in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on January 1, 2023. [Hasnoor Hussain/Reuters]
Fireworks explode over Sky Tower in central Auckland as New Year celebrations begin in New Zealand on Sunday. [Dean Purcell/NZ Herald via AP]
A police officer speaks on a megaphone to control a crowd of people as they wait in a queue before they pray at the main hall of the Sensoji Buddhist temple on New Year’s Day in Tokyo on Sunday. [Hiro Komae/AP Photo]
Police patrol the streets for crowd control during the New Year countdown at Marina Bay in Singapore on December 31, 2022. [Caroline Chia/Reuters]
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Aljazeera: Photos – New Year 2023 celebrations around the world
From New Zealand to United States, revellers welcome 2023 with confetti, fireworks and dancing.
Confetti flies around the countdown clock during the first public New Year’s event since the coronavirus pandemic at Times Square in New York City in the United States. [Andrew Kelly/Reuters]
Published On 1 Jan 20231 Jan 2023
A festive atmosphere has swept across the world as countdowns and fireworks ushered in 2023.
The celebrations for the New Year began in the tiny atoll nation of Kiribati in the central Pacific, then moved across Russia and New Zealand before heading deeper, time zone by time zone, through Asia and Europe and into the Americas.
Go through our gallery below to see how people around the world welcomed the arrival of 2023.
Fireworks explode over Sky Tower in central Auckland as New Year celebrations begin in New Zealand. [Dean Purcel/NZ Herald via AP]
A Palestinian man rides his horse next to a 2023 drawing on the sand at a beach in Gaza City during the last sunset of 2022. [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]
Fireworks light the sky over the ancient Parthenon temple on the Acropolis hill during New Year celebrations in Athens, Greece. [Yorgos Karahalis/AP Photo]
Revellers watch a sound and light show projected on the Arc de Triomphe as they celebrate the New Year on the Champs-Elysees in Paris, France. [Aurelien Morissard/AP Photo]
Fireworks are seen over Victoria Harbour at midnight in Hong Kong. [Anthony Kwan/AP Photo]
Revellers gather in the rain as they wait for the countdown during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square in New York City, the US. [Andres Kudacki/AP Photo]
People bring in the New Year as they watch fireworks explode over Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [Bruna Prado/AP Photo]
Performers take part in the London New Year’s Day Parade in the United Kingdom’s capital. [Toby Melville/Reuters]
A reveller spins burning-steel wool to spread sparks of fire during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Nairobi, Kenya. [Thomas Mukoya/Reuters]
A commercial aircraft approaches the runway as the sun sets for the last time in 2022 in New Delhi, India. [Altaf Qadri/AP Photo]
Fireworks explode over Sydney Harbour during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Sydney on January 1 [Jaimi Joy/Reuters]
Published On 31 Dec 202231 Dec 2022
A woman in Japanese traditional kimono attire rings in the New Year by joining a Buddhist ritual called “Joya no Kane” at Sensoji Buddhist temple in Tokyo. In the ritual, temple bells are tolled 108 times, it is said, to get rid of people’s 108 vices and earthly desires in the previous year and to make a fresh start in the New Year. [Hiro Komae/AP Photo]
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CNN: 1.3.2023Updated 12:49 AM EST, Sun January 1, 2023
So long, 2022. Hello, 2023.
Revelers are ringing in the new year with celebrations across the globe.
Last year, with the rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant, many cities across the world scaled back their celebrations — some canceled their events altogether.
But this year, we could be seeing a return to something closer to the norm. New York’s Times Square, for example, is expected to return to full capacity.
Fireworks light up the London skyline over Big Ben and the London Eye. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
People watch a sound and light show projected on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Aurelien Morissard/AP
A reveler smiles in the rain during the New Year’s Eve celebrations in New York’s Times Square. Andres Kudacki/AP
People celebrate the new year at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Adam Berry/Getty Images
A child celebrates the new year in front of the Colosseum in Rome. Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images
Revelers photograph fireworks over the Arc de Triomphe as they celebrate the new year in Paris. Aurelien Morissard/AP
People take part in the annual Allendale Tar Barrel festival in Allendale, England. The New Year’s Eve tradition involves costumed men carrying burning whiskey barrels through the town, which are used to ignite a ceremonial bonfire at midnight. Lee Smith/Reuters
Fireworks are seen over Munich, Germany. Lennart Preiss/DPA/Picture-Alliance/AP
People celebrate in Madrid. Jesús Hellín/Europa Press/AP
People gather in Vilnius, Lithuania, to watch a light and laser show. Yauhen Yerchak/SOPA Imahes/Sipa USA/AP
People watch a fireworks show in Karachi, Pakistan. Rizwan Tabassum/AFP/Getty Images
Women celebrate New Year’s in front of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine. There was a curfew in place as Russia launched a series of deadly strikes that swept several regions of Ukraine. Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
Fireworks explode from the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Satish Kumar/Reuters
A woman kisses her mother during a New Year’s Eve party in Quezon City, Philippines. Eloisa Lopez/Reuters
Fireworks explode over Mosul, Iraq. Khalid al-Mousily/Reuters
A Mass is held to welcome the new year in Nairobi, Kenya. Gerald Anderson/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
People take a selfie as fireworks explode over Cairo. Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters
New Year’s revelers watch a fireworks and laser show in Hong Kong. Isaac Lawrence/AFP/Getty Images
People write messages and release lanterns in Huai’an, China. CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images
Revelers release balloons to celebrate the new year in Wuhan, China. Getty Images
People watch the fireworks in Bangkok, Thailand. Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images
A man lights candles on a sand sculpture in Prayagraj, India. Sanjay Kanojia/AFP/Getty Images
Fireworks explode in Makati, Philippines. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Fireworks light up the sky over Sydney Harbor in Australia. Roni Bintang/Getty Images
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Fireworks light up the sky over Sydney Harbour Bridge on Jan 1, 2023, in Australia. Photo: Roni Bintang/Getty Images
As Americans prepared to celebrate New Year’s Eve on Saturday, millions of people in countries where the clock had already struck midnight were ringing in 2023.
Zoom out: Here’s a look at celebrations across the globe.
Australia
Fireworks light up the sky over Sydney Harbour Bridge on Jan. 1, 2023, in Sydney, Australia. Photo: Roni Bintang/Getty Images
People watch fireworks at Sydney Botanic Garden during New Years Eve celebrations on Dec. 31, 2022, in Sydney, Australia. Photo: Roni Bintang/Getty Images
Indonesia
People gather to celebrate in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Jan. 1, 2023. Photo: Eko Siswono Toyudho/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
China
A couple hugs in front of the Hong Kong Convention Center on Dec. 31, 2022, in Hong Kong, China. Photo: Vernon Yuen/NurPhoto/Getty Images
India
People gather at the sea promenade in Mumbai on Dec. 31, 2022. Photo: Punit Paranjpe/AFP via Getty Images
A shopkeeper at a New Year’s Eve carnival in New Delhi, India, on Dec. 31, 2022. Photo: Pankaj Nangia/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Thailand
People take a selfie during fireworks display from the King Taksin Bridge on Jan. 1, 2023, in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images
Kids watch fireworks display from the King Taksin Bridge on Jan. 1, 2023, in Bangkok, Thailand. Photo: Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images
Kazakhstan
Fireworks light up the sky during the new year celebrations in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 1, 2023. Photo: Meiramgul Kussainova/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Fireworks light up the sky during the new year celebrations in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 1, 2023. Photo:Meiramgul Kussainova/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
United Arab Emirates
New Year’s Eve fireworks light the landmark Burj Khalifa tower at midnight in Dubai on December 31, 2022. Photo: Ryan Lim/AFP/Getty Images)
New York
Revelers wait for New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square on Dec. 31, 2022, in New York City. Photo: Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images
Revelers gather in Times Square on Dec. 31, 2022 in New York City. Photo: Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images
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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Revelers in major city centers across Europe and the Middle East were ushering in 2023 with countdowns and fireworks, as many cities around the globe celebrated New Year’s Eve without restrictions for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Children crowded a metro station in Kharkiv, Ukraine, to meet with St. Nicholas and enjoy a special performance ahead of the new year. Meanwhile, some soldiers who said they usually celebrate the holiday with family decided to stay in the trenches as they sought to defend their country.
People gathered next to a Christmas tree to celebrate the New Year eve before a curfew, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in front of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine December 31, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
People celebrate New Year’s Eve before a curfew, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in front of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, Dec. 31, 2022. Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/REUTERS
Others in Ukraine returned to the capital, Kyiv, to spend New Year’s Eve with their loved ones. As Russian attacks continue to target power supplies, leaving millions without electricity, no big celebrations were planned. A curfew was to be in place as the clock struck midnight.
French President Emmanuel Macron delivered “a message of unity and trust” in a televised address Saturday. Referencing the war in Ukraine several times, Macron also sent a message to France’s “Ukrainian friends,” saying “we respect and admire you.”
“During the coming year, we will be unfailingly at your side. We will help you until victory and we will be together to build a just and lasting peace. Count on France and count on Europe,” he said.
ISTANBUL, TURKIYE – JANUARY 1: Fireworks go off behind minarets of a mosque in Ortakoy Square as part of new year celebrations in Istanbul, Turkiye on January 1, 2023. (Photo by Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Fireworks go off behind minarets of a mosque in Ortakoy Square as part of new year celebrations in Istanbul, Turkiye on Jan. 1, 2023. Photo by Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Turkey’s most populous city, Istanbul, was bringing in 2023 with street festivities and fireworks. At St. Antuan Catholic Church on Istanbul’s popular pedestrian thoroughfare Istiklal Avenue, dozens of Christians prayed for the new year and marked former Pope Benedict XVI’s passing. The Vatican announced Benedict died Saturday at age 95.
The Pacific nation of Kiribati was the first country to greet the new year, with the clock ticking into 2023 one hour ahead of neighbors including New Zealand.
In Auckland, large crowds gathered below the Sky Tower, where a 10-second countdown to midnight preceded fireworks. The celebrations in New Zealand’s largest city were well-received after COVID-19 forced them to be canceled a year ago.
There was a scare in the North Island coastal city of Tauranga, about 225 kilometers (140 miles) from Auckland, when a bouncing castle was blown 100 meters (yards). Tauranga City Council reported one person was hospitalized and four people were treated on site.
Early fireworks explode over Sydney Opera House during the New Year’s Eve celebrations, in Sydney, Australia, December 31, 2022. REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Early fireworks explode over Sydney Opera House during New Year’s Eve celebrations in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 31, 2022. Photo by Jaimi Joy/REUTERS
Over 1 million people crowded along Sydney’s waterfront for a multi-million dollar celebration based around the themes of diversity and inclusion. More than 7,000 fireworks were launched from the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and a further 2,000 from the nearby Opera House.
It was the “party Sydney deserves,” the city’s producer of major events and festivals Stephen Gilby told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“We have had a couple of fairly difficult years; we’re absolutely delighted this year to be able to welcome people back to the foreshores of Sydney Harbor for Sydney’s world-famous New Year’s Eve celebrations,” he said.
In Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, a family-friendly fireworks display along the Yarra River as dusk fell preceded a second session at midnight.
Revellers gather to take part in New Year celebrations at a public park in Yangon on December 31, 2022. (Photo by Sai Aung MAIN / AFP) (Photo by SAI AUNG MAIN/AFP via Getty Images)
Revelers gather to take part in New Year’s Eve celebrations at a public park in Yangon, Myanmar on Dec. 31, 2022. Photo by Sai Aung Main/AFP via Getty Images
Authorities in military-ruled Myanmar announced a suspension of its normal four-hour curfew in the country’s three biggest cities so residents could celebrate New Year’s Eve. However, opponents of army rule urged people to avoid public gatherings, fearing that security forces might stage a bombing or other attack and blame it on them.
Concerns about the Ukraine war and the economic shocks it has spawned across the globe were felt in Tokyo, where Shigeki Kawamura has seen better times but said he needed a free, hot meal this New Year’s.
“I hope the war will be over in Ukraine so prices will stabilize,” he said. “Nothing good has happened for the people since we’ve had Mr. Kishida,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
He was one of several hundred people huddled in the cold in a line circling a Tokyo park to receive free New Year’s meals of sukiyaki, or slices of beef cooked in sweet sauce, with rice.
An entertainer performs during a countdown event for the 2023 New Year celebrations in Tokyo, Japan, December 31, 2022. REUTERS/Issei Kato
An entertainer performs during a countdown event for the 2023 New Year celebrations in Tokyo, Japan, Dec. 31, 2022. Photo by Issei Kato/REUTERS
“I hope the new year will bring work and self-reliance,” said Takaharu Ishiwata, who lives in a group home and hasn’t found lucrative work in years.
Kenji Seino, who heads the meal program for the homeless Tenohasi, which means “bridge of hands,” said the number of people coming for meals was rising, with jobs becoming harder to find after the coronavirus pandemic hit, and prices going up.
Associated Press journalists Henry Hou in Beijing, Renata Brito in Kyiv, Yuri Kagayema in Tokyo, Grant Peck in Bangkok, Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul and Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to this report.
Left: Revelers release balloons as they take part in New Year celebrations in Tokyo, Japan, Jan. 1, 2023. Photo by Issei Kato/REUTERS
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People will be celebrating around the world as we welcome in 2023 (Picture: Getty)
It’s almost time to link arms and break into a rousing rendition of Auld Lang Syne for New Year.
On New Year’s Eve we all sing the traditional Scottish folk song, so dipping in and out of other languages shouldn’t be anything new.
In that spirit, here’s how you can wish people a Happy New Year in a myriad of other languages, perfect whether you’re outcelebrating in Londonwith a group of friends from the world over or you’ve got friends and family in different time zones.
How to say Happy New Year in Spanish
In Spanish, the literal translation for Happy New Year is Feliz Año Nuevo
If you want to give it a bit more pep, you can say Feliz año nuevo, amigo (Happy New Year, friend) or Brindemos al Año Nuevo (Cheers to the New Year).
Fireworks and resolutions will see in the new year (Picture: Getty)
How to say Happy New Year in German
Happy New Year can be wished in German by saying either ‘Frohes Neues Jahr’ or ‘Gutes Neues Jahr’.
A colloquial greeting amongst some Germans is ‘Guten Rutsch’, which translates to ‘good slide.’
Why? No one really knows. Although most sites agree it comes from an old Yiddish phrase, a git Rosch, which wishes ‘a good beginning.’
How to say Happy New Year in French
Emily in Parison the brain after the new season? Say bonjour to 2023 by wishing friends and family a ‘Bonne année.’
A year round greeting that works if you think you’ve missed the window to properly say Happy New Year is ‘Meilleurs Voeux’, which is an evergreen way of saying ‘best wishes.’
Hello 2023 – in many languages! (Picture: Getty)
Happy New Year in Maori, the indigenous language of New Zealand
The Maori people were the indigenous population of New Zealand and te reo – the language – is still commonly spoken by a portion of the population.
Gaelic – Bliadhna mhath ur (pronounced: Bleenah vahth oohr)
Mandarin – ???? (pronounced: x?n nián kuài lè)
Portuguese – Feliz Ano Novo
Dutch – Fijne oudejaarsavond, Fine New Year’s Eve (pronounced: fei-nee ow-de-yaarr-sa-vont) or Gelukkig Nieuwjaar, Happy New Year (pronounced: ghu-lukkikgh-neew-yaarr)
Greek – ???? ?????? (pronounced: kali chronya)
Polish – Szcz??liwego Nowego Roku (pronounced: shch-eng-shlee-vego novego roku)
Welsh – blwyddyn newydd dda (pronounced: BLOOdhin NEHwidh dha)
Japanese – ??????????????? (pronounced: akemashite omedeto gozaimasu)
Farsi – ??? ?? ????? (pronounced: sale nou mobarak).
From setting fireworks in Australia to ringing temple bells in Japan, all around the world, New Year’s celebrations are underway. In New York’s Times Square, rain did little to deter revelers anxiously awaiting their first celebration without Covid restrictions since the pandemic began. While on the West Coast, the weather is more of a threat: 31 million people in California and Nevada are under flood alerts. » Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC » Watch more NBC video: http://bit.ly/MoreNBCNews NBC News Digital is a collection of innovative and powerful news brands that deliver compelling, diverse and engaging news stories. NBC News Digital features NBCNews.com, MSNBC.com, TODAY.com, Nightly News, Meet the Press, Dateline, and the existing apps and digital extensions of these respective properties. We deliver the best in breaking news, live video coverage, original journalism and segments from your favorite NBC News Shows. Connect with NBC News Online! NBC News App: https://smart.link/5d0cd9df61b80 Breaking News Alerts: https://link.nbcnews.com/join/5cj/bre… Visit NBCNews.Com: http://nbcnews.to/ReadNBC Find NBC News on Facebook: http://nbcnews.to/LikeNBC Follow NBC News on Twitter: http://nbcnews.to/FollowNBC#NewYear#2023#Fireworks
2023 New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world 2:34 mins
KTLA 5 in Los Angeles is proud to be a broadcast partner of The 134th Rose Parade presented by Honda. Since 1890, the Tournament of Roses has produced America’s New Year Celebration, bringing the traditions of the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game to Pasadena and the world. Program Details: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/watc…
Today, views of the world’s ancient architectural wonders are firmly based in their current state of ruin, leaving to visitors’ imaginations the original glory of structures like the Parthenon, Pyramid of the Sun, and Temple of Luxor. NeoMam, in a project for Expedia, has resurrected several ancient buildings through a series of gifs. In a matter of seconds, centuries of natural and intentional damage and decay are reversed to reveal a rare glimpse at what the original structures would have looked like. The creative contractors behind the labor-intensive renderings are Maja Wro?ska (previously) and her husband Przemek Sobiecki, who works as This Is Render. (via designboom)
Pyramid of the Sun, Mexico
Temple of Largo Argentina, Rome
Nohoch Mul Pyramid (Coba), Mexico
Temple of Luxor, Egypt
Temple of Jupiter, Italy
Hadrian’s Wall, England
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Evoking a bit of time-travel, NeoMam (previously) recently animated a series of gifs that restore impressive, human-made structures around the globe to pristine condition. Although the six landmarks are now in some form of decay and have made UNESCO’s list of endangered world heritage, the short clips digitally reconstruct the sites to show what they’d look like had they not faced the ravages of time
Included in this round of restoration are a remnant of Hatra, a large fortified city that was capital of the first Arab Kingdom, and the hundreds of islets that make up Nan Modol in Micronesia. UNESCO designated these landmarks in danger because of natural and human-generated threats like earthquakes, military conflict, and urbanization. Dig into the history behind the six restorations, which were completed in partnership with BudgetDirect and architect Jelena Popovic, in addition to other at-risk locations on UNESCO’s site.
Nan Madol, Temwen Island, Federated States of Micronesia
Leptis Magna, District of Khoms, Libya
Jerusalem, Israel
Palmyra, Tadmur, Homs Governorate, Syria
Fort San Lorenzo, Province of Colon, District of Cristobal, Panama
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In 2022, AP photographers captured pain of a changing planet, NBC News,and TEDMED
In 2022, AP photographers captured pain of a changing planet
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In 2022, Associated Press photographers captured signs of a planet in distress as climate change reshaped many lives.
That distress was seen in the scarred landscapes in places where the rains failed to come. It was felt in walloping storms, land-engulfing floods, suffocating heat and wildfires no longer confined to a single season. It could be tasted in altered crops or felt as hunger pangs when crops stopped growing. And taken together, millions of people were compelled to pick up and move as many habitats became uninhabitable.
2022 will be a year remembered for destruction brought on by a warming planet and, according to scientists, was a harbinger for even more extreme weather.
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Israeli police clash with mourners as they carry the coffin of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral in east Jerusalem, on May 13, 2022. Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American reporter who covered the Mideast conflict for more than 25 years, was shot dead two days earlier during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin. (AP Photo/Maya Levin)
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Wind whips embers from a burning tree during a wildfire near Hemet, Calif., on Sept. 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
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Arsha Begum receives the Covishield vaccine for COVID-19 from Fozia, a healthcare worker, during a COVID-19 vaccination drive in Budgam, southwest of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, on Jan. 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)
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Matej Svancer of Austria trains ahead of the men’s freestyle skiing big air qualification round of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Feb. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
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A Taliban fighter stands guard at the site of an explosion in front of a school in Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 19, 2022. It was one of several deadly explosions that have targeted educational institutions in Afghanistan’s capital. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
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Children play in the Catia neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, on Jan. 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
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A man recovers items from a burning shop following a Russian attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
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People throng President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s official residence in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on July 11, 2022, the day after it was stormed by protesters demanding his resignation amid the country’s worst economic crisis in recent memory. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
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A boy cools off in a public fountain in Vilnius, Lithuania, during a heat wave on June 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)
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Jennica Secuya swims in her mermaid suit during a mermaiding class in Mabini, Batangas province, Philippines, on May 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
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Revelers dressed as “Mascaritas” take part in a traditional carnival celebration in the small village of Luzon, Spain, on Feb. 26, 2022. Preserved records from the fourteenth century document Luzon’s carnival, but the real origin of the tradition could be much older. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
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Motria Oleksiienko, 99 years old and traumatized by the Russian occupation, is comforted by her daughter-in-law, Tetiana Oleksiienko, in a room without heating in the village of Andriivka, Ukraine, as heavy fighting continues between Russian and Ukrainian forces, on April 6, 2022. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
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President Joe Biden walks to his motorcade after speaking to reporters at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on Jan. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
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Vehicles rest on a bridge in Pittsburgh following its collapse on Jan. 28, 2022. Rescuers had to rappel nearly 150 feet (45 meters), while others formed a human chain to help rescue people from a dangling bus. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
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Ukrainian emergency workers and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from a maternity hospital damaged by an airstrike in Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022. The woman was taken to another hospital, but did not survive. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
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A paper cut-out of a horse peeks out from a stand of prickly pear cactus at a park in Tel Aviv on Feb. 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
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A young boy runs towards a United Nations helicopter carrying Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean Pierre Lacroix before it lands in Bunia, eastern Congo, on Feb. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Moses Sawasawa)
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Communist party supporters hold portraits of Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin as they gather during the national celebration of the “Defender of the Fatherland Day” near the Kremlin in Moscow’s Revolution Square on Feb. 23, 2022. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
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People from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the territory in eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russia separatist governments, watch Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address at their temporary place in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don region on Feb. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Denis Kaminev)
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A girl uses a kerosine oil lamp to attend online lessons during a power cut brought on by a fuel shortage in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on March 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
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Firefighters wait for water as a fire rage in the low-income neighborhood of Laguna Verde, in Iquique, Chile, on Jan. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Ignacio Munoz)
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Bodies are lowered into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 9, 2022, as people cannot bury their dead because of the heavy shelling by Russian forces. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
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A jet ski steers away from a crashing wave during a big wave surfing session at Praia do Norte, or North Beach, in Nazare, Portugal, on Feb. 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)
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Workers clean oil from Cavero beach in Ventanilla, Callao, Peru, on Jan. 18, 2022. The Peruvian Civil Defense Institute said the eruption of an undersea volcano in Tonga created high waves that moved a ship loading oil into La Pampilla refinery, causing the oil to spill. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)
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Goats graze in east Jerusalem with Israel’s separation barrier in the background, surrounding Shuafat refugee camp, on March 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
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A woman shouting anti-government slogans holds an umbrella surrounded by clouds of smoke during a demonstration in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to protest the government’s agreement with the International Monetary Fund to refinance some $45 billion in debt on March 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
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Tom Cruise, center, gestures upon arriving at the premiere of the film “Top Gun: Maverick” at the 75th international film festival in Cannes, France, on May 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)
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A woman adjusts her hat before the 148th running of the Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky, on May 7, 2022, (AP Photo/ Charlie Riedel)
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A civilian wear a Vladimir Putin mask as a spoof, while a Ukrainian soldier stands atop a destroyed Russian tank in Bucha, Ukraine, outside of Kyiv, on April 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)
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Mahtab, an 8-year-old Hazara Shiite student, poses for a photo in her classroom at the Abdul Rahim Shaheed School in Kabul, Afghanistan, on April 23, 2022, days after a bombing attack at the school. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
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A girl has her make up done before the “Las llamadas” carnival parade in Montevideo, Uruguay, on Feb. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)
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Ukrainians huddle under a destroyed bridge as they try to flee by crossing the Irpin River on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
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The body of an unidentified man lies on a road barrier near a village retaken by Ukrainian forces on the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on April 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
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An injured protester cries in pain after police fired tear gas to disperse an anti-government protest in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on May 19, 2022. The protesters were demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, holding him responsible for the country’s worst economic crisis in recent memory. (AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)
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Women, one wearing a traditional Basutu hat, take a selfie during a visit to the Afriski ski resort near Butha-Buthe, Lesotho, on July 30, 2022. Afriski in the Maluti Mountains is Africa’s only operating ski resort south of the equator. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
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Supporters of former President Donald Trump line up behind Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to pose for photos during a book signing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, on Aug. 5, 2022. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
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Villagers gather during a visit by Martin Griffiths, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, in the village of Lomoputh in northern Kenya on May 12, 2022. Griffiths visited the area to see the effects of the drought which the U.N. says is a severe climate-induced humanitarian emergency in the Horn of Africa. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
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JoAnn Daniels, left, accompanied by Kayla Jones, second from right, Donell Jones, right, and other family members, takes a moment to gather her thoughts during an interview with The Associated Press about her sister Celestine Chaney, who was killed in Saturday’s shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., Monday, May 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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The body of a dead addict lies covered by a shawl in an area inhabited by drug users under a bridge in Kabul, Afghanistan, on June 15, 2022. Drug addiction has long been a problem in Afghanistan, the world’s biggest producer of opium and heroin. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
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The body of Palestinian Muhammad Hassouna, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, is prepared for his funeral at a hospital in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Aug. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Fatima Shbair)
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Workers put a dead crane into a bag at the Hula Lake conservation area in northern Israel on Jan. 2, 2022. A bird flu outbreak killed thousands of migratory cranes in what authorities say was the deadliest wildlife disaster in the nation’s history. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
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Pope Francis is aided as he leaves the parish community of Sacred Heart in Edmonton, Alberta, after a meeting with Indigenous peoples on July 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
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Lexie Stroiney, 6, curls up in the plethysmography chamber during a break in her pulmonary function test at Children’s National Hospital in Washington on Jan. 26, 2022. Lexie had COVID-19 and is part of a NIH-funded multi-year study to look at impacts of COVID-19 on children’s physical health and quality of life. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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Scotland’s Micky Yule reacts after a successful lift during the men’s heavyweight para powerlifting final at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, on Aug. 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)
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Rescue workers observe as a Russian Orthodox believer dips into icy water during a traditional Epiphany celebration in St. Petersburg, Russia, on Jan. 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
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A woman looks at the ruins of a Palestinian house demolished by the Jerusalem municipality in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah on Jan. 19, 2022. Israeli police evicted Palestinian residents from the disputed property and demolished the building, days after a tense standoff. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
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A young cowboy wearing a mask as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19 looks at other competitors during the Boyeros Cattlemen’s fair rodeo at the International Agricultural Fair Fiagrop 2022 in Havana, Cuba, Friday, April 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)
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Anti-abortion advocates celebrate outside the Supreme Court in Washington on June 24, 2022, following the court’s decision to end constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
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Spectators watch from a classic Citroen 2CV car as the pack passes during the second stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 202.5 kilometers (125.8 miles) with start in Roskilde and finish in Nyborg, Denmark, Saturday, July 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)
By The Associated Press
December 6, 2022
Taken together, they can convey the feeling of a world convulsing — 150 Associated Press images from across 2022, showing the fragments that make up our lives and freezing in time the moments that somehow, these days, seem to pass faster than ever.
Here: a man recovering items from a burning shop in Ukraine after a Russia attack. Here: people thronging the residence of the Sri Lankan president after protesters stormed it demanding his resignation. Here: medical workers trying to identify victims of a bridge collapse in India. And here: flames engulfing a chair inside a burning home as wildfires sweep across Mariposa County, Calif.
As history in 2022 unfolded and the world lurched forward — or, it seemed sometimes, in other directions — Associated Press photographers were there to bring back unforgettable images. Through their lenses, across the moments and months, the presence of chaos can seem more encircling than ever.
A year’s worth of news images can also be clarifying. To see these photographs is to channel — at least a bit — the jumbled nature of the events that come at us, whether we are participating in them or, more likely, observing them from afar. Thus do 150 individual front-row seats to history and life translate into a message: While the world may surge with disorder, the thrum of daily life in all its beauty continues to unfold in the planet’s every corner.
There is grief: Three heart-shaped balloons fly at a memorial site outside the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed by a gunman.
There is determination: Migrants in a wooden boat float across the Mediterranean Sea south of an Italian island, trying to reach their destination.
There is fear: A man looks skyward over his shoulder, an expression of trepidation on his face, as he walks past homes damaged by a rocket attack in Ukraine.
There are glimpses into calamity: Villagers gather in northern Kenya, in an area stricken by climate-induced drought.
There is perseverance: A girl uses a kerosene oil lamp to attend online lessons during a power cut in the Sri Lankan capital.
Don’t be blinded by all of the violence and disarray, though, which can drown out other things but perhaps should not. Because here, too, are photos of joy and exuberance and, simply, daily human life.
A skier soaring through the air in Austria, conquering gravity for a fleeting moment. Chris Martin of the band Coldplay, singing toward the sky in Rio de Janeiro. A lone guard marching outside Buckingham Palace days after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. An 8-year-old Afghan girl, her eyes locked with the camera, posing for a photo in her classroom in Kabul, days after a bombing attack at her school. Women taking a selfie at a ski resort in Lesotho.
Finally, allow a moment to consider one of those pauses in humanity’s march: a boy drenching himself in a public fountain in a heat wave-stricken Vilnius, Lithuania, reveling in the water and the sun and the simple act of just being. Even in the middle of a year of chaos on an uneasy planet, moments of tranquility manage to peek through.
— By Ted Anthony, AP National Writer
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Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, mainly caused by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels.
East Africa is ground zero for climate change. In Kenya where community leaders tell NBC News Chief International Correspondent Keir Simmons of fertile lands just a decade ago that now looked to me a lot like dessert. These are not the people who caused climate change, yet they are suffering from global warming that has nothing to do with them. But it’s not just climate – conflict around the world is also driving food insecurity. “Scorched: East Africa’s Climate Crisis” looks at the global forces at play and asks how we can address these issues.
1,325,116 views | Rahwa Ghirmatzion and Zelalem Adefris • Countdown
Community-powered solutions to the climate crisis
Climate change is the epic challenge of our lives, and community leaders like Rahwa Ghirmatzion and Zelalem Adefris are already working on sustainable, resilient solutions. Through their organizations in Buffalo and Miami, they’re focused on durable, affordable housing for under-resourced communities, the most vulnerable to the instability of climate change. Watch for a lesson on how we can work alongside our neighbors to address climate catastrophe and social inequality. (Narrated by Don Cheadle)
307,156 views | Cheryl Holder • TEDMED 2020
The link between climate change, health and poverty
For the poor and vulnerable, the health impacts of climate change are already here, says physician Cheryl Holder. Unseasonably hot temperatures, disease-carrying mosquitoes and climate gentrification threaten those with existing health conditions, while wealthier people move to higher ground. In an impassioned talk, Holder proposes impactful ways clinicians can protect their patients from climate-related health challenges — and calls on doctors, politicians and others to build a care system that incorporates economic and social justice.
Rishi Manchanda has worked as a doctor in South Central Los Angeles for a decade, where he’s come to realize: His job isn’t just about treating a patient’s symptoms, but about getting to the root cause of what is making them ill—the “upstream” factors like a poor diet, a stressful job, a lack of fresh air. It’s a powerful call for doctors to pay attention to a patient’s life outside the exam room.
Rishi Manchanda is an “upstreamist.” A physician and public health innovator, he aims to reinvigorate primary care by teaching doctors to think about—and treat—the social and environmental conditions that often underly sickness.
NASA’s Artemis I:Image of the Day, Orion Comes Home to Earth and Axios Space
At 12:40 p.m. EST, Dec. 11, 2022, NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a 25.5 day mission to the Moon. Orion will be recovered by NASA’s Landing and Recovery team, U.S. Navy and Department of Defense partners aboard the USS Portland.
Orion Comes Home to Earth
At 12:40 p.m. EST, Dec. 11, 2022, the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a 25.5-day mission to the Moon.
At 12:40 p.m. EST, Dec. 11, 2022, the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a 25.5-day mission to the Moon. Flight controllers in mission control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston spent about two hours performing tests in open water to gather additional data about the spacecraft. Orion was then recovered by NASA’s Landing and Recovery team, U.S. Navy and Department of Defense partners aboard the USS Portland. Recovery personnel also spent time collecting detailed imagery of the spacecraft before beginning to pull the capsule into the USS Portland’s well deck. The ship will soon begin its trip back to U.S. Naval Base San Diego, where engineers will remove Orion from the ship in preparation for transport back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for post-flight analysis. Orion is expected to arrive to shore Dec. 13.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard is seen illuminated by spotlights after sunset atop the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B as preparations for launch continue, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s Artemis I flight test is the first integrated test of the agency’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, SLS rocket, and supporting ground systems. Launch of the uncrewed flight test is targeted for Nov. 14 at 12:07 a.m. EST. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
Artemis I Glows After Sunset
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard was seen lit by spotlights atop the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B as preparations for launch continued Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard is illuminated by spotlights atop the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B as preparations for launch continued Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. SLS and Orion arrived at the launch pad on Friday, Nov. 4, after a nearly nine-hour journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building.
Artemis I is the first integrated test of our deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, SLS rocket, and supporting ground systems. Launch of the uncrewed flight test is targeted for Nov. 14 at 12:07 a.m. EST. See the full launch coverage schedule.
The Moon is seen rising above NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard at Launch Pad 39B as preparations for launch continue, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s Artemis I flight test is the first integrated test of the agency’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, SLS rocket, and supporting ground systems. Launch of the uncrewed flight test is targeted for no earlier than Nov. 16 at 1:04 a.m. EST. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Moonlit Launch Preparations at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
The Moon is seen rising above NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard at Launch Pad 39B as preparations for launch continue, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The Moon is seen rising above NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft at Launch Pad 39B as preparations for launch continue, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch of the uncrewed flight test is targeted for no earlier than Nov. 16 at 1:04 a.m. EST. Coverage begins with cryogenic fueling of the SLS at 3:30 p.m. EST on Nov. 15; launch coverage begins at 10:30 p.m. EST on Nov. 15.
NASA’s Artemis I flight test is the first integrated test of the agency’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, SLS rocket, and supporting ground systems.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s Artemis 1:47 a.m. EST mission is the first integrated flight test of the agency’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and ground systems. SLS and Orion launched at 1:47 a.m. EST, from Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
We Are Going: Artemis I Launches
Our Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket in the world, carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:47 a.m. EST.
Our Space Launch System (SLS), the most powerful rocket in the world, carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:47 a.m. EST.
Artemis I is the first integrated flight test of the agency’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, SLS rocket, and ground systems. The mission is a critical part of our Moon to Mars exploration approach—an important test before flying astronauts on the Artemis II mission.
NASA’s uncrewed Orion spacecraft snapped this black and white photo of Earth on Nov. 17, 2022, the second day of the 25.5-day Artemis I mission. The optical navigation camera is used to capture imagery of the Earth and the Moon at different phases and distances, which help establish its effectiveness as a way of determining its position in space for future missions under differing lighting conditions.
On Nov. 20, the fifth day of the 25.5-day Artemis I mission, a camera mounted on the tip of one of Orion’s solar array wings captured this footage of the spacecraft and the Moon as it continued to grow nearer to our lunar neighbor.
On Nov. 20, the fifth day of the 25.5-day Artemis I mission, a camera mounted on the tip of one of Orion’s solar array wings captured this footage of the spacecraft and the Moon as it continued to grow nearer to our lunar neighbor.
The spacecraft entered the lunar sphere of influence at 2:09 p.m. EST, making the Moon, instead of Earth, the main gravitational force acting on the spacecraft. Orion completed its first flyby on the morning of Nov. 21, 2022.
Snoopy, the zero-gravity indicator for NASA’s Artemis I flight test, floating in space Nov. 20, 2022, while attached to his tether in the Orion spacecraft.
Snoopy, the zero-gravity indicator for NASA’s Artemis I flight test, floats in space on Nov. 20, 2022, while attached to his tether in the Orion spacecraft. In this enhanced image, Snoopy stands out in a custom orange spacesuit, while Orion’s interior has been shaded black and white for contrast. The character’s spacesuit is modeled after the suit astronauts will wear during launch and reentry in Orion on future missions to the Moon. NASA has shared an association with Charles M. Schulz and Snoopy since the Apollo missions and the relationship continues under Artemis. Snoopy was selected as the zero-gravity indicator for the flight because of the inspiration and excitement the character has provided for human spaceflight for more than 50 years.
On the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, Nov. 21, 2022, the Orion spacecraft’s optical navigation camera captured black-and-white images of craters on the Moon below.
On the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, Nov. 21, 2022, the Orion spacecraft’s optical navigation camera captured black-and-white images of craters on the Moon below. This photo and others captured are the closest photos of the Moon from a human-rated vessel since Apollo. The optical navigation camera takes black-and-white imagery of the Earth and the Moon at different phases and distances; this technology demonstration will help prove its effectiveness for future missions with crew.
A portion of the far side of the Moon looms large just beyond the Orion spacecraft in this image taken Nov. 21, the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays.
A portion of the far side of the Moon looms large just beyond the Orion spacecraft in this image taken Monday, Nov. 21, the sixth day of the Artemis I mission, by a camera on the tip of one of Orion’s solar arrays. The darkest spot visible near the middle of the image is Mare Orientale.
The Astronaut Snoopy balloon is seen floating along in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022, in New York City. The Astronaut Snoopy balloon is flying in New York City at the same time that Snoopy also flies around the Moon in the Orion spacecraft as a zero gravity indicator for the Artemis I mission. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Astronaut Snoopy ‘Lands’ in New York
The annual Thanksgiving event was held Nov. 24, 2022.
On Monday, Nov. 28, 2022, NASA’s Orion spacecraft reached its maximum distance from Earth during the Artemis I mission—268,563 miles away from our home planet, farther than any spacecraft designed to send humans to space and back has gone before. In this image, Orion captures a unique view of Earth and the Moon, seen from a camera mounted on one of the spacecraft’s solar arrays.
On the 19th day of the Artemis I mission, Dec. 4, 2022, a camera mounted on the Orion spacecraft captured the Moon just in frame as Orion prepared for its return powered flyby on Dec. 5, when it passed approximately 79 miles above the lunar surface.
On the 19th day of the Artemis I mission, Dec. 4, 2022, a camera mounted on the Orion spacecraft captured the Moon just in frame as Orion prepared for its return powered flyby on Dec. 5, when it passed approximately 79 miles above the lunar surface.
Orion performed the return powered flyby burn at 11:43 a.m. EST, changing the velocity of the spacecraft by approximately 655 mph (961 feet per second). The return powered flyby is the last large maneuver of the mission, with only smaller trajectory corrections to target Earth remaining.
On flight day 20 of the Artemis I mission, Dec. 5, 2022, Orion captured the Moon on the day of return powered flyby, the final major engine maneuver of the flight test.
On flight day 20 of the Artemis I mission, Dec. 5, 2022, Orion captured the Moon on the day of return powered flyby, the final major engine maneuver of the flight test. The burn, which used the spacecraft’s main engine on the European-built service module, lasted 3 minutes, 27 seconds, and changed the velocity of the spacecraft by about 655 mph (961 feet per second). It also committed the spacecraft to a Dec. 11 splashdown, which will air live on NASA Television, our website, and the NASA app.
The Moon makes a stunning backdrop for the successful launch of the third in a series of polar-orbiting weather satellites for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and our Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID) on Nov. 10 at 1:49 a.m. PST from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The Moon makes a stunning backdrop for the successful launch of the third in a series of polar-orbiting weather satellites for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and our Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID) on Nov. 10 at 4:49 a.m. EST from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carried the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS)-2 and LOFTID.
JPSS-2 will circle the globe 14 times a day 512 miles above Earth, providing forecasters the benefit of three polar-orbiting satellites operating simultaneously, joining its predecessors Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) and NOAA-20.
Following JPSS-2’s deployment, the LOFTID heat shield autonomously inflated and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, splashing down about 500 miles off the coast of Hawaii just over two hours and ten minutes after launch.
In this illustration by Rick Giudice from August 1973, the Pioneer 10 spacecraft passes by the gas giant planet Jupiter. The spacecraft’s primary goal was to explore Jupiter, its satellites, its magnetic field, and trapped radiation belts. Pioneer 10 was the first satellite to pass through an asteroid belt and the first spacecraft to obtain detailed images of Jupiter and its moons. Between 1972 and 1974, the Deep Space Network ground stations tracked the Pioneer 10 for over 21,000 hours. Pioneer 10 fell silent on its 30-year anniversary in 2002.
Apollo 17 Astronauts Capture Iconic Blue Marble 50 Years Ago
This classic photograph of the Earth was taken on Dec. 7, 1972, by the crew of the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17, as they traveled toward the moon on their lunar landing mission.
This classic photograph of the Earth was taken on Dec. 7, 1972, by the crew of the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17, as they traveled toward the moon on their lunar landing mission. For the first time, the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap, shown here along with heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Apollo 17 crew consisted of astronauts Eugene A. Cernan, mission commander; Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot; and Harrison H. Schmitt, lunar module pilot. While astronauts Cernan and Schmitt descended in the lunar module to explore the moon, astronaut Evans remained with the command and service modules in lunar orbit.
In this Dec. 1993, onboard view from Space Shuttle mission STS-61 shows astronauts Story Musgrave and Jeffrey Hoffman’s Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
In this Dec. 1993, onboard view from Space Shuttle mission STS-61 shows astronauts Story Musgrave and Jeffrey Hoffman’s Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. STS-61 was the first service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
On flight day four, Dec. 4 at 10:46 p.m. EST, Musgrave and Hoffman began the first spacewalk. For five days, they or another pair would exit the airlock at around the same time each evening and spend between six and eight hours in the payload bay.
This whole collection is NGC 1858, an open star cluster in the northwest region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way that boasts an abundance of star-forming regions. NGC 1858 is estimated to be around 10 million years old.
Against a backdrop littered with tiny pinpricks of light glint a few, brighter stars. This whole collection is NGC 1858, an open star cluster in the northwest region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way that boasts an abundance of star-forming regions. NGC 1858 is estimated to be around 10 million years old.
Open clusters are a type of star cluster with loose gravitational attraction between the stars, which causes the cluster to be irregularly shaped and its stars to be spread out. NGC 1858 is also an emission nebula, which is a cloud of interstellar gas that has been ionized by ultraviolet wavelengths radiating off of nearby stars. The gas of the nebula emits its own light at visible wavelengths, seen here as a faint cloud that populates the middle and bottom right of the image.
The stars within this young cluster are at different phases of their evolution, making it a complex collection. Within NGC 1858, researchers have detected a protostar, a very young, emerging star, indicating that star formation within the cluster may still be active or has stopped very recently. The presence of an emission nebula also suggests that star formation recently occurred here, since the radiation required to ionize the gas of the nebula comes from stars that only live a short time.
NGC 1858 is located about 160,000 light-years away in the constellation Dorado and contains multiple massive stars, which can be seen shining brightly throughout the center of the image. The cluster is located in a crowded area of the sky, and the large number of stars around the cluster makes it difficult to study alone. To survey these distant stars, scientists relied on the Hubble Space Telescope’s unique resolution and sensitivity at visible and infrared wavelengths.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA and G. Gilmore (University of Cambridge); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)
Kamala Harris and French President Macron Meet at NASA Headquarters
Vice President Kamala Harris delivers remarks prior to meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson for an Earth Science briefing, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington.
French President Emmanuel Macron (far left) delivers remarks prior to meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris (second from left) and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson (far right) for an Earth Science briefing, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2022, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington. Also shown is Phil Gordon, national security advisor to the vice president.
Administrator Nelson and Vice President Harris met with Macron to highlight space cooperation between the United States and France.
A small, dense cloud of gas and dust called CB 130-3 blots out the centre of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. CB 130-3 is an object known as a dense core, a compact agglomeration of gas and dust. This particular dense core is in the constellation Serpens, and seems to billow across a field of background stars. Dense cores like CB 130-3 are the birthplaces of stars, and as such are of particular interest to astronomers. During the collapse of these cores enough mass can accumulate in one place to reach the temperatures and densities required to ignite hydrogen fusion, marking the birth of a new star. While it may not be obvious from this image, a compact object teetering on the brink of becoming a fully fledged star is embedded deep within CB 130-3. Astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to better understand the environment surrounding this fledgling star. As this image shows, the density of CB 130-3 isn’t constant; the outer edges of the cloud consist of only tenuous wisps, whereas at its core CB 130-3 blots out background light entirely. The gas and dust making up CB 130-3 affect not only the brightness but also the colour of background stars, with stars towards the centre the cloud appearing redder than their counterparts at the outskirts of this image. Astronomers used Hubble to measure this reddening effect and chart out the density of CB 130-3, providing insights into the inner structure of this stellar nursery. [Image description: The image shows an irregularly-shaped bright orange object composed of dense gas and dust, which appears darker and more compact at the centre. This dense cloud, called CB 130-3, is outlined by thinner gas and dust in light shades of blue. The background shows a multitude of bright stars against a black background.] Links Video of Clouded Vision
Hubble Views a Billowing Cosmic Cloud
A small, dense cloud of gas and dust called CB 130-3 blots out the center of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
A small, dense cloud of gas and dust called CB 130-3 blots out the center of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. CB 130-3 is an object known as a dense core, a compact agglomeration of gas and dust. This particular dense core is in the constellation Serpens and seems to billow across a field of background stars.
Dense cores like CB 130-3 are the birthplaces of stars and are of particular interest to astronomers. During the collapse of these cores enough mass can accumulate in one place to reach the temperatures and densities required to ignite hydrogen fusion, marking the birth of a new star. While it may not be obvious from this image, a compact object teetering on the brink of becoming a star is embedded deep within CB 130-3.
Astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to better understand the environment surrounding this fledgling star. As this image shows, the density of CB 130-3 isn’t constant; the outer edges of the cloud consist of only tenuous wisps, whereas at its core CB 130-3 blots out background light entirely. The gas and dust making up CB 130-3 affect not only the brightness but also the apparent color of background stars, with stars toward the cloud’s center appearing redder than their counterparts at the outskirts of this image. Astronomers used Hubble to measure this reddening effect and chart out the density of CB 130-3, providing insights into the inner structure of this stellar nursery.
Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)
Image credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA & STScI, C. Britt, T. Huard, A. Pagan
Stephanie Yazzie, Northern Arizona University student and NAU Space Jacks team member, poses with her team’s rocket in this photo from the 2019 NASA First Nations Launch (FNL) competition.
Stephanie Yazzie, Northern Arizona University student and NAU Space Jacks team member, poses with her team’s rocket in this photo from the 2019 NASA First Nations Launch (FNL) competition.
In this competition, students from Tribal Colleges and Universities, Native American Serving Nontribal Institutions, and schools with American Indian Science and Engineering Society chapters demonstrated their engineering and design skills.
FNL 2022, an Artemis Student Challenge, called for faculty advisor-led teams of undergraduate students to conceive, design, fabricate, and fly dual deploy high-power rockets within three challenges with various technical requirements. Winners were chosen by a pool of Native American NASA and industry judges for the competition also included four FNL alumni who completed their STEM degrees and became engineers in the aerospace field.
Explore more Minority University Research and Education Project opportunities and resources here.
We’re celebrating Native American Heritage Month, highlighting the achievements of Native Americans at NASA, and bolstering the next generation of talent.
Celebrating Native American Heritage Month with Jerry C. Elliott
Jerry Elliott, a former NASA physicist and one of the first Native Americans hired at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, speaks during Native American Heritage Month event in 2017 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Jerry C. Elliott, a former NASA physicist and one of the first Native Americans hired at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, speaks during Native American Heritage Month event in 2017 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
He joined NASA in April 1966, as a Flight Mission Operations Engineer at NASA’s Mission Control Center and held technical and managerial positions with highly successful accomplishments in many fields including spacecraft systems, mission operations, astronaut crew equipment, scientific experiments and technical management.
Elliott received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest U.S. civilian honor, for duties as Retrofire Officer at NASA Mission Control Center during the aborted Apollo 13 space mission with the safe return of the flight crew.
Astronauts Jessica Watkins and Bob Hines Study Farming in Space
In this image from June 24, 2022, NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Bob Hines work on the XROOTS space botany investigation, which used the International Space Station’s (ISS) Veggie facility to test soilless hydroponic and aeroponic methods to grow plants.
In this image from June 24, 2022, NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Bob Hines, part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-4, work on the XROOTS space botany investigation, which used the International Space Station’s (ISS) Veggie facility to test soilless methods to grow plants. The space agricultural study could enable production of crops on a larger scale to sustain crews on future space explorations farther away from Earth and could enhance cultivation of plants in terrestrial settings such as greenhouses, contributing to better food security for people on Earth.
This composite made from ten images shows the progression of the Moon during a total lunar eclipse above the Vehicle Assembly Building, Nov. 8, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Visible trailing the Moon in this composite is Mars. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
Blood Moon Total Eclipse at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
This composite made from ten images shows the progression of the Moon during a total lunar eclipse above the Vehicle Assembly Building, Nov. 8, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This composite made from ten images shows the progression of the Moon during a total lunar eclipse above the Vehicle Assembly Building, Nov. 8, 2022, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Visible trailing the Moon in this composite is Mars.
For North America, the partial eclipse began at 4:09 a.m. EST, with totality beginning at 5:16 a.m. One feature of a total lunar eclipse is the Moon’s red hue during totality. The red color occurs because of the refraction, filtering, and scattering of light by Earth’s atmosphere.
At 12:40 p.m. EST, Dec. 11, 2022, NASA’s Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a 25.5 day mission to the Moon. Orion will be recovered by NASA’s Landing and Recovery team, U.S. Navy and Department of Defense partners aboard the USS Portland.
Orion Comes Home to Earth
At 12:40 p.m. EST, Dec. 11, 2022, the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis I mission splashed down in the Pacific Ocean after a 25.5-day mission to the Moon.
From launch to splashdown, NASA’s Orion spacecraft completed its first deep-space mission with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, west of Baja California, at 9:40 a.m. PST (12:40 p.m. EST) Sunday. The record-breaking Artemis mission traveled more than 1.4 million miles on a path around the Moon and returned safely to Earth. Splashdown was the final milestone of the Artemis I mission, which began with a successful liftoff of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket Nov. 16, from Launch Pad 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Over the course of 25.5 days, NASA tested Orion in the harsh environment of deep space before flying astronauts on Artemis II. During the mission, Orion performed two lunar flybys, coming within 80 miles of the lunar surface. At its farthest distance during the mission, Orion traveled nearly 270,000 miles from our home planet, more than 1,000 times farther than where the International Space Station orbits Earth, to intentionally stress systems before flying crew. Prior to entering the Earth’s atmosphere, the crew module separated from its service module, which is the spacecraft’s propulsive powerhouse provided by ESA (European Space Agency). During re-entry, Orion endured temperatures of about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, half as hot as the surface of the Sun. Within about 20 minutes, Orion slowed from nearly 25,000 mph to about 20 mph for its parachute-assisted splashdown. During the flight test, Orion stayed in space longer than any spacecraft designed for astronauts without docking to a space station. While in a distant lunar orbit, Orion surpassed the record for distance traveled by a spacecraft designed to carry humans, previously set during Apollo 13. Select music courtesy of Gothic Storm Publishing
After Orion enters the Earth’s atmosphere at the conclusion of its 25.5-day mission, the spacecraft will rely on its rigorously tested parachute system to slow its speed and allow for a gentle splashdown. Koki Machin, chief engineer of Orion’s parachute assembly system, describes the process and the path to certification of the system. Follow the mission: Twitter: https://twitter.com/NASAArtemis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nasaartemis Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NASAArtemis Get the latest from NASA weekly: www.nasa.gov/subscribe
Artemis All Access – Updates on Orion’s Journey in Space – 12/9/22 – 5:26 mins
Artemis All Access – Episode 6 Artemis All Access is your look at the latest in Artemis I, the people and technology behind the mission, and what is coming up next. This uncrewed flight test around the Moon will pave the way for a crewed flight test and future human lunar exploration as part of Artemis. Learn more about the mission and track the Orion spacecraft’s current position at www.nasa.gov/trackartemis/ and on Twitter at @NASA_Orion. Live coverage of major events will air on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website at www.nasa.gov/live Download imagery in high-resolution here: https://go.nasa.gov/3K1voda Select music courtesy of Gothic Storm Publishing Follow the mission: Blog: https://blogs.nasa.gov/artemis/ Live footage from the Orion spacecraft: https://go.nasa.gov/ArtemisLive Twitter: https://twitter.com/NASAArtemis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nasaartemis Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NASAArtemis Get the latest from NASA weekly: www.nasa.gov/subscribe
Artemis I, the first flight of a human-rated spacecraft to orbit the Moon in almost 50 years, is being controlled at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston by specialists who have trained for years to execute this vital test flight in the Artemis program to return American astronauts to the Moon. They’re doing that work under the leadership and guidance of flight directors who built the mission plan and now have the responsibility to execute that plan safely and successfully. Join Rick LaBrode and Judd Frieling for a quick explanation of the roles and the mission goals they’re executing right now. Follow the mission: Twitter: https://twitter.com/NASAArtemis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nasaartemis Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NASAArtemis Get the latest from NASA weekly: www.nasa.gov/subscribe
NASA’s Artemis I Mission Splashes Down in Pacific Ocean 3:56:20
On Dec. 11, the Artemis I mission will conclude with the entry, descent, and splashdown of the Orion spacecraft. After 25.5 days in space, and a 1.3-million-mile (2.1-million-km) journey around the Moon, Orion is expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California at 12:39 p.m. EST (17:39 UTC) on Sunday, Dec. 11. The exploration ground systems recovery team from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, working with the U.S. Navy, will recover the spacecraft. Live coverage for this event begins at 11 a.m. EST (16:00 UTC). Orion launched aboard the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at 1:47 am EST (06:47 UTC) on Nov. 16 from historic Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The Artemis I mission is the first integrated test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, the SLS rocket, and Kennedy Space Center’s Exploration Ground Systems. More: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis-i Credit: NASA
Artemis launches early today from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Photo: Red Huber/Getty Images
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket took flight for the first time early this morning, ushering in a new era of exploration for the space agency, Axios Space author Miriam Kramer writes.
Why it matters:This uncrewed launch — called Artemis I — is expected to pave the way for NASA to one day send astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in the 1970s.
The SLS — which took flight at 1:47 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral — launched an Orion capsule that will journey around the Moon before coming back to Earth for a splashdown expected in December.
Photo: Chris O’Meara/AP
This is effectively a technology test before putting people on board.
NASA aimsto land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon using the SLS and Orion in 2025.
1 big thing: Tonight’s beacon of hope
11.15.2022 PM AXIOS
Source: NASA; Note: Not to scale and simplified for clarity; Graphic: Kavya Beheraj and Sarah Grillo/Axios
After multiple delays, NASA is set to launch its Artemis I mission in tonight’s wee hours on a trip to circle the Moon, Axios Space author Miriam Kramer reports.
Why it matters: It will be the first launch of the huge Space Launch System rocket, which is a key component of the space agency’s plans to one day return people to the surface of the Moon by 2025.
How to watch: The SLS is expected to take flight from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:04 a.m. ET.
· You can watch the launch live starting at 10:30 p.m. ET via NASA TV.
Anthony T. Buckner (1845-1923) was born into slavery in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. By the time he commissioned this portrait of himself and his granddaughter, Eileen Buckner (1909-1985), he had become one of the most respected merchants in the Charlottesville. His son, George W. Buckner, who was Eileen’s father, wrote the New Negro manifesto that was published in the Charlottesville Messenger in 1921.
Viola Green Porter (1898-1985) commissioned this portrait to commemorate her graduation from the eighth grade at Charlottesville’s segregated Jefferson Graded School. The white dress and diploma make this photo similar to other Holsinger Studio graduation portraits of young women, both Black and white.
Stacey Evans, an imaging specialist and project coordinator for UVA Library, led a team in rephotographing the Holsinger Studio glass-plate negatives for the exhibition.
Evans and her team took their photographic reproductions of the glass-plate negatives and created “artist’s renderings” of the portraits using Photoshop, dramatically improving their tonal range.
UVA Today spotlights study of African Americans in photos from Library Holsinger Collection
Preserving a piece of African American history
John Edwin Mason and others are on a mission to share these images of local African Americans via the Holsinger Portrait Project. (Photos by Sanjay Suchak, University Communications)
Snapshots of Local History, Displayed Anew
The Holsinger Studio’s portraits of African Americans were made around the same time as the New Negro movement, described in the exhibit.
Individuals and families usually posed in the Holsinger Studio.
John Edwin Mason, UVA associate professor of history, co-directs the Holsinger Portrait Project and curated this exhibit at Northside Library.
Evan Stankovics, adult programming and supervising reference librarian at Northside, helped set up the exhibit.
Many of the Holsinger Studio’s portrait subjects from the early 20th century are unidentified.
Photos: Powerful Portraits for a Powerful Site
Exhibit Celebrates Black Sisterhood Through the Centuries
Holsinger Studio | Portrait Project – The University of Virginia
Portraits of African American families in the early 1900s | Daily Mail Online
Portraits of African American families in the early 1900s | Daily Mail Online
Mayors Message E-News Updates – <h3>African American History in Nyack</h3>
440 Blast from the Past ideas | history, african american history, american history
The Historical Legacy of Juneteenth | National Museum of African American History and Culture
Juneteenth celebrations underway across the country today
Juneteenth: why celebrating the holiday is more important now than ever – Vox
The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance | The Phillips Collection
Harlem Renaissance – Definition, Artists & How It Started – HISTORY
Heroes of The Harlem Renaissance | Welcome to the Harlem Standard
Photos of African Americans in early 1900s Nebraska are colorized | Daily Mail Online
Black History Milestones: Timeline – HISTORY
