Louis Braille

popular name: Jefferson Davis

date_of_death: December 6, 1889

age: 81

cause_of_death: Acute bronchitis complicated by malaria

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Jefferson F. Davis was an American politician who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party before the American Civil War. He was the United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857. During the Civil War, Davis guided the Confederacy's policies and served as its commander in chief. When the Confederacy was defeated in 1865, Davis was captured, accused of treason, and imprisoned at Fort Monroe. He was released without trial after two years. Immediately after the war, Davis was often blamed for the Confederacy's defeat, but after his release from prison, he became a hero of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. In the late 19th and the 20th centuries, his legacy as Confederate leader was celebrated in the South. In the twenty-first century, he is frequently criticized as a supporter of slavery and racism, and many of the memorials dedicated to him throughout the United States have been removed. Unlike the past, only a handful of tourist visit the grave of Jefferson Davis in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

popular name: Paul Robeson

date_of_death: January 23, 1976

age: 77

cause_of_death: Complications of a stroke

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Paul Robeson was an American actor, singer, and activist. Some of his best know work on stage included The Emperor Jones, All God's Chillun Got Wings, and Othello. Robeson best known movies include Show Boat (1936), Sanders of the River (1935), and The Proud Valley (1940). He became active in the Civil Rights Movement and other social justice campaigns. His sympathies for the Soviet Union and for communism, and his criticism of the United States government and its foreign policies, caused him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

popular name: Patrick J. Kennedy

date_of_death: May 18, 1929

age: 71

cause_of_death: Liver disease

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Patrick Joseph Kennedy (P.J. to his friends and grandfather to President John F. Kennedy) was the son of Irish immigrants. His father, Patrick Kennedy, died of cholera ten months after he was born while his mother, Bridget Kennedy, who also had three daughters, found work as a clerk in a shop. Working in the shipyards after high school, Kennedy borrowed money from his mother and sisters to purchase a run-down saloon in a poor area of Boston. Although he was himself a teetotaler, the business venture was a success and he was soon able to obtain a second saloon. Kennedy purchased a third bar in an upscale East Boston hotel, the Maverick House. Before he was thirty, his growing prosperity allowed him to buy a whiskey and fine liquors importing business, P.J. Kennedy and Company. In 1887 Kennedy married Mary Augusta Hickey, the daughter of a prosperous businessman in the city. A member of the Democratic Party Kennedy was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1892 where he worked behind the scenes as a party boss. After leaving state politics, Kennedy held various appointed positions in the city including elections commissioner, fire commissioner, and wire (electricity) commissioner. He continued his business career by helping to incorporate two Boston financial institutions, the Columbia Trust Company and the Sumner Savings Bank.