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Curated playlist

Activists from New York (state)

  • Langston HughesLangston Hughes's ashes rest beneath the floor of a Harlem research center.
  • Martin SheenMartin Sheen was born Ramón Gerard Antonio Estévez. In a 2009 speech at Oxford University, he said he had been arrested 66 times. The human rights activist Craig Kielburger gave that tally a memorable comparison. He said Sheen had "a rap…
  • Hayden PanettiereHayden Panettiere was eleven months old when she first appeared on screen, in a 1990 advertisement for a Playskool toy train. That commercial was the start of a working life that now spans several decades. How does an infant in commercials…
  • Alicia KeysAlicia Keys was fifteen years old when Columbia Records tried to win her signature with a $26,000 white baby grand piano. She took the deal. It began a long struggle over who would decide what her music sounded like. Years later she summed…
  • Tom MorelloTom Morello, the American guitarist behind Rage Against the Machine, once made an entire festival crowd listen to nothing but noise. At Lollapalooza in 1993, his band walked onstage naked. Their mouths were covered with duct tape, and…
  • Louis FarrakhanLouis Farrakhan has led the Nation of Islam since 1981, longer than any other leader in the organization's history. The group blends black nationalism with Islamic teaching. Over a long public life he has carried several different names,…
  • Philip SheridanUnion general Philip Sheridan rose from captain to major general in six months.
  • Neil deGrasse TysonNeil deGrasse Tyson was nine years old when he visited the sky theater of the Hayden Planetarium in New York. He grew up to be an American astrophysicist, author and science communicator, born on the 5th of October 1958. Looking back, he…
  • Jim SimonsJim Simons, born James Harris Simons, once explained his dislike of publicity by borrowing a line from Benjamin the Donkey in Animal Farm. "God gave me a tail to keep off the flies. But I'd rather have had no tail and no flies. That's kind…
  • Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford argued the clock, not the steam engine, drove the Industrial Revolution. He never finished college.

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