William Shakespeare – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

More than 50 years later, streets filled with a new generation, with new demands

A *Time* magazine signed by Martin Luther King Jr. realized $6,875 at an October 2013 Heritage auction. The issue is dated Feb. 18, 1957, two months after the end of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

By Jim O’Neal

In the two decades following WW2, the African-American struggle for civil rights lacked focus and broad support. Americans had spent four long years fighting a bitter war to free the world from tyranny and were now intent on resuming a peaceful recovery. However, in the process of restoring a normal life, they became disgusted by racial segregation and systemic exploitation of minorities. As important legal victories increased, protesters and marchers were helping change attitudes as the basis for faster, more sincere progress.

Alas, irrespective of the legal triumphs and the changes in public opinion, Jim Crow segregation was deeply embedded in the Deep South and portions of the West. Discriminatory laws generally targeted Latinos and American Indians, in addition to African-Americans. All levels of state government often failed to honor court decisions, while civil rights workers were subjected to mob violence that even included law enforcement officers.

Finally, on Aug. 28, 1963, the largest civil rights protest in American history occurred when 250,000 people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to begin “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” (later known simply as “The March”). The highlight of the day was a 15-minute closing speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In it, King offered his version of the American Dream, drawing on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Emancipation Proclamation. It was quickly to become known as the “I Have a Dream” speech. The Dream included a hope that people “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” that black and white children could “join hands … and walk together as sisters and brothers,” and that “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

MLK cautioned the nation there was still a long way to go. He cited the broken promises Americans made after the Civil War. Slavery was gone, but vicious racism still existed in general society. He said bluntly, “One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” King also highlighted the curse of widespread poverty during an era of postwar prosperity. He closed by exhorting white Americans to strive for a realization of the cherished phrase “Let Freedom Ring” and join in the old Negro spiritual that proclaimed “Free at last! Free at last! Great God a-mighty, we are free at last!”

The March on Washington was pivotal in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which eliminated segregation and began dismantling Jim Crow practices.

On Nov. 21, 1963, Lyndon Baines Johnson, the eighth vice president to assume the nation’s highest office following the death of a president, was better prepared to take command than any of his predecessors. Despite the personal disrespect and abuse from the elitist Kennedy crowd (especially RFK), LBJ was a master politician, serving 24 years as a representative and 12 years as a senator. As Majority Leader, he was truly “Master of the Senate,” as biographer Robert Caro has written so carefully.

The new president stayed in the background as the nation grappled with the enormous grief that engulfed Kennedy’s family and the people during funeral services for the slain president. Then, five days after the assassination – on the day before Thanksgiving – Johnson addressed a special joint session of Congress. He challenged them to honor Kennedy’s memory by carrying forward the dead president’s New Frontier program, saying “Let us continue.”

He asked for early passage of a new civil rights bill “to eliminate from the nation every trace of discrimination and oppression that is based on color or race.” Congress responded by passing every law LBJ pleaded for. Yet, over 50 years later, our streets are filled with a new generation, with new demands, as Congress is deadlocked once again. So, no new laws…

Perhaps Cassius was right after all: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” (William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar).

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Buffalo Bill and troupe created Wild West myth that remains with us today

A rare matched pair of A. Hoen & Co. posters promoting Buffalo Bill’s Wild West sold for $31,070 at a June 2012 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In 1601, William Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

In Shakespearean times, greatness was often equated with fame. But, as the Bard pointed out, although people may become famous in a myriad of ways, fame (per se) was predicated most often on the idea of “greatness.” People were famous because they were important in some way.

For most of human history, few individuals in each generation actually achieved great fame. And that fame was usually derived from actions of consequence in politics, war, religion, science or other ways that deeply affected society. However, being famous is not the same as being a celebrity. Many celebrities will never do anything important at all, unless entertainment is loosely interpreted.

Modern celebrity is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before the 20th century, few people were famous without accomplishment. That changed with the advent of national magazines, followed by radio, movies, television and, most recently, the internet and social media. Yet even as the 20th century debuted, many Americans began to look back with a lingering nostalgia for the past. People in the new industrial cities of the Midwest and East began yearning for the fading vision of the Old West. It enveloped even those who had never ventured West of the Mississippi, perhaps as a wistful item to see before it disappeared.

Right on cue was a ready-made version of that romanticized history by one of the 20th century’s first celebrities. William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846-1917) was intimately familiar with the often brutal reality of the 19th century. As a boy in Kansas, he witnessed firsthand his father being attacked and stabbed for his vocal anti-slavery views. At 15, he was one of the short-lived Pony Express riders, followed by stints as a fur trapper, bullwhacker, “Fifty-Niner” (in Colorado), Army scout and, of course, buffalo hunter.

After the Civil War, Cody worked for the Army, sometimes helping to track, fight and even kill American Indians. He worked as a buffalo hunter (technically American bison) on the Great Plains, slaughtering the great beasts to help feed the troops. But he also had a keen eye on fame and a flair for self-promotion. In his late 20s, this led to working as an actor in travelling Wild West road shows.

This new form of entertainment was a live, open-air variety show where crowds were awed by noisy displays of skill involving trick riding, sharp shooting and rope tricks. But the primary crowd-pleasers were large-scale dramatizations of daring Western stories. These were typically battles between “Americans” and Indians in full war paint with galloping horses.

While promoters made wild claims about the authenticity of the battle stories, in general they were greatly fictionalized or, at a minimum, highly exaggerated. Audiences were enthralled by these largely false, heroic re-enactments of the cruel, brutal conquest of American Indians as the United States “tamed” the West. They inspired Cody, then a youngish 33, to publish his memoir, The Life and Adventures of Buffalo Bill.

It provided a handy springboard for his own road show in 1883: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Earlier, his life and adventures had been sensationalized in a series of dime novels by E.Z.C. Judson (alias Ned Buntline) and his fame gained an international flair as just “Buffalo Bill.” Cody then spent the better part of three decades touring the United States with a large company of entertainers. Among them were American Indian people from the West, which resulted in a somewhat complicated relationship. However, the shows provided them with decent wages and a welcome escape from the grinding poverty of the reservations they eschewed.

Meanwhile, white performers like “Wild Bill” Hickok and Annie Oakley were developing their own celebrity status. Annie regarded Buffalo Bill as “the kindest, simplest, most loyal man I ever knew.” He called her the “Champion Shot of the World.” Unlike much of the highly fictionalized show, Oakley was the real deal. Born Phoebe Ann Mosey in 1860, she learned to shoot as a child to help feed the family. Years later, while competing in a shooting contest, she met her future husband, traveling-show sharpshooter Frank E. Butler (whom she defeated when he missed the last of 25 balls and Annie hit all 25). When the couple joined Buffalo Bill’s extravaganza, Annie took the spotlight and Frank became her manager. They were married for 50 years and he died three weeks before her death.

In one example of her dazzling act, Butler would swing a glass ball at the end of a string, and Annie, with her back turned, sited the moving target and shot it with her gun slung over her shoulder. She was universally admired and Chief Sitting Bull (another star of the show) called her “Miss Sure Shot.”

Buffalo Bill sensed there was a big opportunity in Europe and in 1887 his troupe sailed off to London with 180 horses, 18 buffalo, 97 American Indians and a full-size Western stagecoach. The show was an exceptional success in England, where enormous crowds had gathered for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The queen even attended a performance and reportedly called Annie “a very clever little girl.”

A second trip to Paris in 1889 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution was even more successful. Millions attended the Paris Exposition with Cody’s “Buffalodrum” the clear favorite. The tour was extended to include the Pope and then on to Berlin, where Kaiser Wilhelm reportedly had Annie shoot a cigar out of his mouth. Annie later quipped a fatal miss could have prevented World War I (the young Kaiser played a major role in launching the war). She was such a success that the King of Senegal wanted to buy her for 100,000 Francs.

By 1900, Buffalo Bill was one of the most famous Americans in the world. He had achieved his celebrity by offering people an idealized version of the complicated and tumultuous 19th century American West. Perhaps more than anyone else, Bill, Annie and their troupe of cowboys and Indians created the myth of the Wild West that remains with us today.

Here’s Why Shakespeare Might Be a Part of You

William Shakespeare’s The Poems of Shakespeare [Cosway-Style Binding], London: William Pickering, 1837, realized $2,868 at an October 2009 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman on the atom from his “Six Easy Pieces” lecture series:

“If, in some cataclysm, all scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?

“I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms – little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”

Personally, I would have a bit of a problem rebuilding if that was the extent of all knowledge! And, although I can use more than one sentence, the following may not add enough for you to do it either.

To begin, atoms are simply everywhere and constitute every single thing. Not only stuff like a wall or your refer, but the air in between.

They combine to make molecules and molecules combine to make elements. Chemists think of molecules rather than elements just as writers think in terms of words and not letters.

Molecules are numerous, beyond comprehension. A cubic centimeter of air (the size of a sugar cube) contains 45 billion-billion molecules. Now think about how many sugar cubes it would take to replace all the matter in the universe. Multiply that number by 45 billion, then multiply that by another billion. Well, you get the idea. And, of course, atoms are by definition more abundant than molecules.

Atoms are also very durable and have been around sooo long that every atom in your body has passed thru several stars and been a part of millions of organisms. They are so anatomically numerous and vigorously recycled at our death that it has been suggested 1 billion of my atoms (and yours) were once part of Shakespeare … and of Ghengis Kahn. An odd thought, but statistically probable (not just possible).

Atoms are also tiny … very, very tiny. It is hard to describe just how tiny, but here is a crude attempt:

A millimeter thickness is like comparing a single sheet of paper to the height of the Empire State Building. Got it?

Well, atoms are only one-ten millionth as thick as a millimeter. That is tiny.

When we die, our atoms will simply disassemble and move on to become other things like a rock, another human being, or a Doritos tortilla chip. It is somehow comforting to know that someday, I will be a Doritos chip rather than a Pringles.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].