Henry clay anderson biography of donald
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As a Commissioner, Clay pressed to prevent the British from gaining free navigation on the Mississippi River. His bid for the Presidency in the election of 1824 ended with no clear majority for any candidate. Nor do these things matter to the children, mostly girls, who watch with admiration. It was not until 1970 that the first African American contestant reached the national Miss America competition, two years after the Miss Black America Pageant had been inaugurated in protest.
However, neither the informal setting nor the implied segregation seems to bother the beautiful contestants as they stride confidently in their high heels.
Yet this pageant, with its asphalt stage and chain-link and barbed-wire backdrop, is a far cry from glitzy televised contests. By capturing everyday events, photographers who lived in these vibrant towns in the South tell a little-known story about mid-twentieth-century African American life.
Biographies of the Secretaries of State: Henry Clay (1777–1852)
Influence on American Diplomacy
Clay’s appointment as Secretary of State stirred controversy.
In 1827 the United States and Great Britain merely agreed to the joint occupation of Oregon. Clay lent his support to John Quincy Adams instead of Andrew Jackson, thereby violating the instructions of the Kentucky legislature. The Government of Mexico opted to expel Clay’s minister, Joel Poinsett, after Poinsett offered to purchase Texas.
Furthermore, U.S. delegates arrived too late to attend an important diplomatic event in Latin America, the Inter-American Congress at Panama in 1826.
Another disappointment came when Clay failed to settle continuing boundary disputes with Great Britain. Rev. Henry Clay Anderson
These women proudly strut their stuff in an African American beauty contest in segregated Mississippi.
Adams was then selected as President by the House of Representatives.
Due to the informal precedent that the Secretary of State would eventually assume the presidency, Jackson supporters portrayed Clay’s subsequent appointment as Secretary of State as a “corrupt bargain.” Nonetheless, Clay had diplomatic experience and an agenda to pursue as Secretary of State.
He had served on the Peace Commission following the War of 1812 that negotiated the Treaty of Ghent with Great Britain in 1814.
His life’s work is presented for the first time in the book by Shawn Wilson and Charles Schwartz, Separate, But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson. Local beauty contests, including the one pictured here in the flourishing black community of Greenville, Mississippi, celebrated African American beauty and encouraged racial pride. Greenville was thoroughly segregated throughout most of Anderson’s career, and his photographs open the door to a world that precious few whites have ever seen and many blacks have forgotten. The British Government agreed to pay an indemnity for slaves freed during the War of 1812. Clay’s political negotiations, however, produced ample frustration. Clay based his foreign policy plan on the so-called “American System,” emphasizing federal support of national economic development. His work can be found in the National Museum of African American History and Culture (Washington, DC), Harn Museum of Art (Gainesville, FL), and Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery (Washington, DC). Oh Freedom! The shadow at the bottom left, whether included accidentally or deliberately, is likely Anderson's.
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In fact, many beauty pageants at that time, including Miss America, allowed only white women to compete.Instead, Anderson's photograph depicts a community that is, at that moment, entirely unconcerned with what lies beyond—a mood Anderson could capture because he lived and worked there. To this end, Clay achieved a number of important successes as Secretary of State.
Clay oversaw the settlement of twelve commercial treaties, more than all earlier administrations, and developed economic ties with the newly independent Latin American republics.
In the face of Jim Crow laws, which insulted and humiliated African Americans in the broader society, Greenville and other black middle-class enclaves—with their own schools, businesses, churches, restaurants, hospitals, and nightclubs—were a vital source of self-respect and optimism. Photographer Henry Clay Anderson portrays these contestants similar to the way a national contest would have appeared on live TV—by shooting his photograph as if from the best seats along the runway.
Despite such setbacks and the remaining bitterness over Clay’s appointment as Secretary of State, Clay's emphasis upon U.S. economic expansionism would prove to be a harbinger of modern U.S. diplomacy.
Henry Clay Anderson
Henry Clay Anderson (1911-1998) photographed the African Americans of Greenville, a majority-black town on the banks of the Mississippi River and at the edge of the Mississippi Delta, for close to forty years.