Titanic Survivor Lady Lucy Duff Gordon 1863 – 1935

Clothing designer, Titanic survivor. Born Lucy Christiana Sutherland on June 13, 1863. A well-known fashion designer, Lady Lucy Duff Gordon was one of the survivors of the 1912 Titanic disaster. The daughter of a British engineer, she lived with her mother and sister on her grandparents’ farm in Canada for a time after her father’s early death.

At the age of 18, Duff Gordon married for the first time. It was a brief union that ended in divorce and produced one child, a daughter named Esmé. To support herself and her child, Duff Gordon became a dressmaker. The business was eventually known as Maison Lucile and she took to calling her “Lucile” professionally. At first, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon was an investor in her company and later their relationship turned personal. The couple was married in 1900.

By 1910, Duff Gordon had also opened a shop in New York to sell her designs. The demand for her clothing was increasing, and she began traveling a lot between New York, London, and Paris. It was business that led her and her husband to book passage on the Titanic in 1912. Much had been written about the Titanic, the latest addition to the White Star Line and how it was supposed to the largest and most luxurious passenger ship at the time. But Duff Gordon had some reservations about traveling on the new, untested ship.

On April 10, 1912, the Duff Gordons boarded the ship in Cherbourg, France. The couple was traveling under the name “Mr. & Mrs. Morgan,” for some unknown reason. For the first few days, the trip was pleasant, which may have eased some of Duff Gordon’s fears about the vessel.

Unfortunately, Duff Gordon’s concerns about the Titanic were not without merit. On the night of April 14, 1912, around 11:40 p.m., the mighty vessel struck an iceberg. Duff Gordon heard the collision and then people outside of her cabin running about. She went to her husband’s cabin and eventually convinced him to go investigate. He ran into John Jacob Astor and the two decided to return to their wives to tell them to get dressed and go up to the deck.

Punctured in places by the ice, the Titanic was damaged and began to fill with water. Soon after Captain Edward J. Smith ordered the lifeboats readied and prepared to evacuate the ship, starting with women and children first. But neither the ship nor the crew were prepared for such an emergency. There were not enough room in the lifeboats for everyone and some of the boats were put into the water when they were not even half full.

The Duff Gordons made their way onto Lifeboat 1, which held only 12 passengers when it lowered into the water. The craft had been built to hold 40 people. In later inquiries, this fact came under a lot of scrutiny as did the Duff Gordons. Lucy Duff Gordon drew the ire of her fellow passengers by complaining about her ruined nightdress at a time when other people were dying.

In response to her comment, a crew member said that they had lost everything including their pay when the ship went down. Cosmo Duff Gordon then impulsively promised the seven crew members on the boat five pounds each to cover the cost of their lost possessions. This action was later viewed as a bribe to encourage the crew not to return to pick up more survivors.

On the morning of April 15, the passengers of Lifeboat 1 were taken aboard the Carpathia, a ship that answered Titanic’s distress call. The Duff Gordons’ behavior on board seemed odd to many. Lucy Duff Gordon asked the crew from her boat to sign her lifebelt as a souvenir and pose for a group photograph.

Not long after the disaster, the Duff Gordons were back in England. They became the subject of much ridicule in the press, with their lifeboat being called the “money boat” because the perceived bribe by Cosmo. The reports indicated that the money was offered to the crew to prevent them from returning to the wreckage site.

In May, both Cosmo and Lucy Duff Gordon were called to testify at a British inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic. While Cosmo found to be innocent of any wrongdoing, the whole incident cast a dark shadow over the rest of his life. Lucy returned to her fashion work and even had a column in Harper’s Bazaar for a time. Not a skilled business manager, Duff Gordon had to close up Maison Lucile because financial mismanagement in the mid-1920s.

A year after Cosmo’s death in 1931, Duff Gordon wrote her memoirs, Discretions and Indiscretions. She died on April 21, 1935, in London.

Political Leader Medgar Evers 1925 – 1963

Civil rights activist. Born July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi. After growing up in a Mississippi farming family, Evers enlisted in the United States Army in 1943. He fought in both France and Germany during World War II before receiving an honorable discharge in 1946. In 1948, he entered Alcorn Agricutural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University) in Lorman, Mississippi. During his senior year, Evers married a fellow student, Myrlie Beasley; they later had three children: Darrell, Reena, and James.

Upon graduation from college in 1952, Evers moved to Philadelphia, Mississippi, where he began working as an insurance salesman. He and his older brother, Charles Evers, also worked on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), organizing local affiliates in Philadelphia.

In 1954, the year of the momentous Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which purportedly ended segregation of schools, Medgar quit the insurance business; he subsequently applied and was denied admission to the University of Mississippi Law School. His unsuccessful effort to integrate the state’s oldest public educational institution attracted the attention of the NAACP’s national office. Later that year, Evers moved to the state capital of Jackson and became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi.

As state field secretary, Evers recruited members throughout Mississippi and organized voter-registration efforts, demonstrations, and economic boycotts of white-owned companies that practiced discrimination. He also worked to investigate crimes perpetrated against blacks, most notably the lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who had allegedly been killed for talking to a white woman.

As early as 1955, Evers’ activism made him the most visible civil rights leader in the state of Missisippi. As a result, he and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. At 12:40 a.m. on June 12, 1963, Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson. He died less than a hour later at a nearby hospital.

Evers was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, and the NAACP posthumously awarded him their 1963 Spingarn Medal. The national outrage over Evers' murder increased support for legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Immediately after Evers' death, the NAACP appointed his brother Charles to his position. Charles Evers went on to become a major political figure in the state; in 1969, he was elected the mayor of Fayette, Mississippi, becoming the first African-American mayor of a racially mixed Southern town since the Reconstruction.

A police and FBI investigation of the murder quickly unearthed a prime suspect--Byron De La Beckwith, a white segregationist and founding member of Mississippi's White Citizens Council. Despite mounting evidence against him, a rifle found near the crime scene was registered to Beckwith and had his fingerprints on the scope, and several witnesses placed him in the area—Beckwith denied shooting Evers. He maintained that the gun had been stolen, and produced several witnesses to testify that he was elsewhere on the night of the murder.

Novelist Charles Kingsley 1819 – 1875

(born June 12, 1819, Holne Vicarage, Devon, Eng.—died Jan. 23, 1875, Eversley, Hampshire) English clergyman and novelist. After studies at Cambridge, he became a parish priest and later chaplain to Queen Victoria, professor of modern history at Cambridge, and canon of Westminster. An enthusiastic advocate of Christian socialism, he published several novels about social problems before writing the very successful historical novels Hypatia (1853), Westward Ho! (1855), and Hereward the Wake (1866). Fearing the Anglican church's trend in the direction of Catholicism, he engaged in a famous controversy with John Henry Newman. His wholehearted acceptance of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution inspired his popular children's book The Water-Babies (1863).

Musician Jimmy Dorsey 1904 – 1957

Musician and bandleader. Born James Francis Dorsey, on February 29, 1904, in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. His father, Thomas Francis Dorsey, was a coal miner who later became a music teacher and led a brass band; all three of his children studied music with him. When they were only teenagers, Dorsey and his younger brother, Tommy, formed their first band, Dorsey's Novelty Six, later known as Dorseys’ Wild Canaries. During the 1920s, both brothers worked in various bands and as freelance and studio musicians, mostly in New York City. While both brothers had begun on the cornet, Jimmy became known for his playing of the clarinet and alto saxophone, while Tommy played the trombone and trumpet. The Dorsey brothers played with all the big names in big band and swing music, including the California Ramblers, the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, Vincent Lopez, Joe Venuti, and Ted Lewis; they also recorded as accompanying musicians with Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, and Ruth Etting, among others.

In 1927, the Dorsey brothers began to record under their own label, 'The Dorsey Brothers and Their Concert Orchestra.' The Dorsey Brothers Orchestra did not make its formal debut, however, until 1934, when it began a long residency at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York. With its sweet-toned instrumental style, the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra combined a big band orchestral sound with the popular appeal of dance music, and quickly emerged as one of the most innovative bands of the developing Swing Era. In 1935, persistent sibling rivalry led the Dorsey brothers to split; Jimmy remained with the band, and Tommy, wanting to strike out on his own, formed a new band. Before long, the two Dorsey brothers' orchestras - similar on the surface but each with its own distinct musical style - were two of the most popular bands in America. Tommy's records eventually outsold Jimmy's, especially by the time the swing craze reached its height, in 1938, and Tommy Dorsey was promoted as "That Sentimental Gentleman of Swing." Tommy's popularity only increased when, in 1940, he hired the rising young singer, Frank Sinatra.

Of the two brothers, Jimmy Dorsey was a far more gentle, easygoing bandleader. The Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra played for motion picture soundtracks and on radio broadcasts, most notably Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall. With two extremely popular singers, Bob Eberly and Helen O'Connell, the band scored such hit singles as 1940's "Contrasts," as well as "Amapola," "Tangerine," "Green Eyes," and "Maria Elena," all recorded in 1941. In 1938, Dorsey was included in Ripley's Believe It or Not after he played "Flight of the Bumblebee" in two breaths -- he later played the tune in only one breath on the CBS television program Swing Session.

The demise of the big bands in the 1940s, spurred by the focus on vocal performers, led the careers of both Dorsey brothers to decline. Both men disbanded but later reformed their orchestras, and they worked together briefly on the 1947 film, The Fabulous Dorseys. In 1953, the two musicians were reunited in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra Featuring Jimmy Dorsey. They gained a good deal of notice for their regular appearances on The Jackie Gleason Show, witnessing the beginning of a new musical era when they introduced the young Elvis Presley. From 1955 to 1956, the Dorsey brothers co-hosted their own television program, Stage Show, on CBS.

When Tommy died suddenly and unexpectedly in November 1956, Jimmy took over the band, recording a new version of one of his much earlier songs, "So Rare," that went to the top of the charts and gave Dorsey the biggest hit of his career. He died on June 12, 1957, less than a year after his brother.

Fashion Designer Bill Blass 1922 – 2002

(born June 22, 1922, Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.—died June 12, 2002, New Preston, Connecticut) American designer who helped define the relaxed, pared-down elegance that would characterize American fashion in the late 20th century.

Blass left home at age 17 to attend the Parsons School of Design in New York City. He served more than three years in the U.S. Army during World War II, and then, about 1946, at a time when American fashion began to receive the international attention that was once only afforded to French design, he joined the fashion house of Anna Miller and Co. in New York. In 1959, after the company had merged with Maurice Rentner, Ltd., Blass became the head designer of Rentner. His work became popular among high-society women in New York, and he quickly became part of a fashionable postwar scene that included Diana Vreeland, then a fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar and later the influential editor of American Vogue.

Building upon the innovations of European designers such as Coco Chanel, Blass made clothes that allowed women a modern sense of ease and comfort. He made sportswear, but he glamourized the concept by making clothes that possessed a new American casual chic sensibility, which he achieved by merging simple styles with luxurious materials. Classic Blass designs included a pea coat he fashioned from white mink in 1966, a strapless gray flannel day dress that he paired with a cashmere sweater tied over the shoulders, and a simple yet sharply cut dress that he transformed with feminine ruffles (his signature style). In a sense, Blass became his own best model: he featured himself and a female model wearing matching houndstooth-checked suits in a 1965 advertisement. Two decades later, designers Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein would similarly feature themselves in their own ads and would similarly market their brands around the image of a sophisticated, modern American lifestyle.

In 1970 Blass became owner of Rentner, which he renamed after himself. Blass was a pioneer in employing the business strategy of licensing his designs and name to a huge array of fashion accessories, including home furnishings, jeans, eyewear, and luggage. As his business expanded, his name became synonymous with classic good taste. Throughout his long career, his clients—including socialites and prominent figures such as Katharine Graham and Nancy Reagan—remained devoted customers. Blass sold his company in 1999 and retired the following year; Bill Blass Ltd. continued under the leadership of new designers.

One of the founders of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Blass served as its honorary president from 1979 to 1981. He was appointed to the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1987.

Biography of Novelist Harriet Martineau 1802 – 1876

(born June 12, 1802, Norwich, Norfolk, Eng.—died June 27, 1876, near Ambleside, Westmorland) English essayist, novelist, and economic and historical writer. She first gained a large reading public with a series popularizing classical economics, published in several collections (1832–34). Her chief historical work was The History of the Thirty Years' Peace, A.D. 1816–1846 (1849), a widely read popular treatment. Her most scholarly work is a condensed translation of The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853). Her best-regarded novel is Deerbrook (1839).