100 World Leaders Who Left Their Mark

By WD Palmer

The lives of 100 historical and contemporary world leaders, documenting the impact that they had on the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665550017

WD Palmer

W. D. Palmer is the founder and director of the W. D. Palmer Foundation (est. 1955), a repository of information-gathering on racism in health, education, employment, housing, courts, prisons, higher education, military, government, politics, law, banking, insurance, etc. He is also the founder of the Black People’s University of Philadelphia (1955) Freedom School, which was the grassroots organizing and training center for grassroots community and political leadership in Philadelphia and nationally. These organizations were run as nonprofit unincorporated associations from 1955 until 1980, when the Palmer Foundation received its 501(c)(3) federal tax exemption status. W. D. Palmer has also been a professor, teaching American Racism at the University of Pennsylvania since the 1960’s and today he is a member of the Presidents Commission on 1619, the 400-year anniversary of African slavery in America. Professor Palmer has been a social activist leading the fight against racial injustice for over seventy years in Philadelphia and around the nation. In 2018, Philadelphia honored him for the organizing work he did to reform the Philadelphia school system in 1967.

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© 2022 WD Palmer. All rights reserved.

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by any means without the written permission of the author.

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ISBN: 978-1-6655-4998-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5001-7 (e)

Published by AuthorHouse 02/02/2022

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Public Appeal

Walter D. Palmer Leadership School

About the Artist

A Brief Biography of Professor Walter Palmer

1. Abraham Lincoln

2. Albert Einstein

3. Albert Schweitzer

4. Andrew Young

5. Angela Davis

6. Anwar Sadat

7. Barack Obama

8. Bayard Rustin

9. Benazir Bhutto

10. Benjamin Franklin

11. Bessie Smith

12. Billie Holiday

13. Bob Marley

14. Charles Darwin

15. Christopher Columbus

16. Colin Powell

17. Corazon Aquino

18. Count Basie

19. Daniel Hale Williams

20. Dizzy Gillespie

21. Duke Ellington

22. Dwight D. Eisenhower

23. Eartha Kitt

24. Ed Bradley

25. Eleanor Roosevelt

26. Ernesto Che Guevara

27. Eunice Kennedy Shriver

28. Father Divine

29. Fidel Castro

30. Franklin D. Roosevelt

31. Frantz Fanon

32. Frederick Douglass

33. Friedrich Engels

34. George Washington

35. George Washington Carver

36. Golda Meir

37. Haile Selassie

38. Harry Truman

39. Ho Chi Minh

40. Huey P. Newton & Bobby Seale

41. Hugh Masekela

42. Indira Gandhi

43. Jack Johnson

44. James Baldwin

45. Jesse Jackson

46. Jesse Owens

47. Jimmy Carter

48. Joe Louis

49. John F. Kennedy

50. John Johnson

51. Jomo Kenyatta

52. Karl Marx

53. Kwame Nkrumah

54. Lech Wałęsa

55. Lena Horne

56. Leon Trotsky

57. Leontyne Price

58. Louis Armstrong

59. Lyndon B. Johnson

60. Malcolm X

61. Mao Zedong

62. Marcus Garvey

63. Margaret Thatcher

64. Marquis de LaFayette

65. Martin Luther King Jr.

66. Matthew Henson

67. Maya Angelou

68. Michael Collins

69. Michael Jackson

70. Miles Davis

71. Milton Friedman

72. Mohandas Gandhi

73. Mother Teresa

74. Muhammad Ali

75. Napoleon Bonaparte

76. Nelson Mandela

77. Noble Drew Ali

78. Oprah Winfrey

79. Patrice Lumumba

80. Paul Robeson

81. Pope John Paul

82. Princess Diana

83. Princess Liliuokaloni

84. Ralph Bunche

85. Russell Means

86. Sammy Davis Jr.

87. Sargent Shriver

88. Shirley Chisholm

89. Sidney Poitier

90. Simon Bolivar

91. Sojourner Truth

92. Stokely Carmichael

93. Ted Kennedy

94. Thomas Jefferson

95. Toni Morrison

96. Toussaint Louverture

97. Vladimir Lenin

98. W.E.B. Du Bois

99. Winston Churchill

100. Yasser Arafat

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge from the beginning of the Palmer Foundation, 1955, the many contributors who helped to gather information, organize, and write the leadership, self-development, and social awareness curricula.

From the Palmer Foundation’s inception, these contributors have been composed of community members, elementary, middle- and high-school students, as well as college student volunteers and interns, along with professional contributors.

We chose this method and process because it was consistent with our history, vision, philosophy, mission, and goals of always developing leadership in practice.

These groups, who have helped to produce our materials, are the same cohorts who over the years have helped to teach and train others as well as helped to develop a national database through which these curriculum and training materials can be distributed.

The story of the Palmer Foundation is the story of building community and leadership at the same time, and the Palmer Foundation wants to give an enthusiastic endorsement in recognition of the thousands of people who have been with us on this long and arduous journey.

We want to thank the many community leaders and people that have invited us into their communities to help them reclaim and restore the many values, properties, and people who may have been threatened with the loss of finance, property, and life, for they are the true heroes and heroines that made the Palmer Foundation the success that it has become.

Public Appeal

The Palmer Foundation is a federal 501(c)(3) organization that has spent over 65 years educating and fighting for social justice in the most underserved at-risk communities around the country. Our goals have always been to use education for human liberation and encourage at-risk families and children to help gather, write, produce, publish, and teach others in a similar situation.

Our mission is to disseminate our leadership, self-development, social justice, and grassroots-organizing books, manuals, and learning materials across America and around the world.

Our goals are to sell these publications or to offer them in exchange for a suggested tax-exempt donation that would allow us to continue producing our leadership training, as well as grassroots community and political organizing efforts.

Ultimately, we would like to create a satellite school as a model or prototype of the Walter D. Palmer Leadership School that could be replicated around the world, and we appeal for your enthusiastic and sustained support going forward.

Walter D. Palmer Leadership School

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W. D. Palmer is the founder and director of the W. D. Palmer Foundation (est. 1955), a repository of information-gathering on racism in health, education, employment, housing, courts, prisons, higher education, military, government, politics, law, banking, insurance, and more.

He is also the founder of the Black People’s University of Philadelphia Freedom School (1955), which was the organizing and training center for grassroots community and political leadership in Philadelphia and nationally. These organizations were run as nonprofit unincorporated associations from 1955 until 1980 when the Palmer Foundation received its 501(c)(3) federal tax exemption status.

W. D. Palmer has also been a professor, teaching American Racism at the University of Pennsylvania since the 1960s and today he is a member of the President’s Commission on 1619, the 400-year anniversary of African slavery in America.

Professor Palmer has been a social activist leading the fight against racial injustice for over 70 years in Philadelphia and around the nation. In 2018, Philadelphia honored him for the organizing work he did to reform the Philadelphia school system in 1967.

In 2020, Philadelphia honored him for 65 years of fighting for social justice throughout the country. In 1980, he led the fight for parental school choice which helped the Governor of Pennsylvania get a law passed in 1997, and in 2000 he created the Walter D. Palmer Leadership Charter School.

In 2005, he borrowed $11,000,000 to build a 55,000 square-foot two-story building on two acres of land in North Philadelphia, which was donated to the school by the City of Philadelphia, and because of the school’s rapid growth, in 2010 he acquired the Saint Bartholomew Catholic High School, for his middle and high school.

In ten years, the school grew from 300 elementary and middle school students to 200 preschoolers and over 1,000 kindergarten to twelfth graders. In 2005, Palmer commissioned a muralist to paint over 400 pre-selected portraits on the school walls, corridors, and stairwells, with a goal to paint 30 fifteen-foot murals in the gymnatorium.

Although the Walter D. Palmer Leadership School recruited at-risk children that were from 17 of the poorest zip codes in Philadelphia and 300% below poverty, the school boasted a 95% daily attendance, 100% high school graduation, and 100% post-graduate placement in four-year and two-year colleges, trade and technology schools, or military, until the school’s closing in 2015.

About the Artist

Cavin_Painting.jpg

My Life in The Sunshine

Colored pencil, gouache, marker, collage on paper

34 x 26

1987

Cavin Jones is a painter and muralist from Philadelphia. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Tyler School of Art in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. He then went on to receive his Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

He has a unique style, including collage, which he says allows him to distill his various ideas and interests into a single painting. Cavin sees his work as a way to stimulate dialogue about issues surrounding race and environmentalism. He has been featured in many prestigious collections and exhibitions. Cavin’s art is inspired by American history, environmental exploitation, and the African American experience.

A Brief Biography of Professor Walter Palmer

After a tumultuous juvenile life, Professor Palmer graduated from high school and was hired by the University of Pennsylvania hospital as a surgical attendant and was later recruited into the University of Pennsylvania School of Inhalation and Respiratory (Oxygen) Therapy.

After his certification as an inhalation and respiratory therapist, he was hired by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia as the Director of the Department of Inhalation and Respiratory (Oxygen) Therapy, where he spent ten years helping to develop the national field of cardiopulmonary therapy.

In 1955, Professor Palmer created the Palmer Foundation and the Black People’s University of Philadelphia Freedom School and would spend the next 70 years developing leaders for social justice nationally.

Professor Palmer has also pursued further education at Temple University for Business Administration and Communications, Cheyney State University for a Teacher’s Degree in History and Secondary Education. At age 40, acquired his Juris doctorate in law from Howard University.

Between 1965 and 1995, he produced and hosted radio programs on Philadelphia WDAS, Atlantic City WUSS, and WFPG Radio, in addition to Philadelphia NBC-TV 10 and New Jersey Suburban Cable Television.

In 2006, he was inducted into the Philadelphia College of Physicians as a Fellow for the body of work he had done over the past 70 years, after having spent ten (1980-1990) years as a licensed financial officer teaching poor people how to overcome poverty by saving and investing three dollars per day.

During that entire period, Professor Palmer led the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Afrocentric movements in Philadelphia, around the country as well as the Caribbean and West Indies.

From the 1980s to 2015, he led the school choice movement, organized a state-wide parental school choice group which collected 500,000 petitions in 1997, which were used to create a charter and cyber school law in Pennsylvania, and in 2000 the Walter D. Palmer School was named after him.

In 1962, he created a school without walls on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus and became a visiting lecturer in the Schools of Medicine, Law, Education, Wharton School, History, Africana Studies, Engineering, and he currently is a lecturer in the Schools of Medicine, Social Work, and Urban Studies, where he teaches courses on American racism.

In 1969, he helped the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Social Work students and faculty create required courses on American racism, making the University of Pennsylvania the first school in American academia to have such courses.

In 2019, Professor Palmer was appointed to the President’s Commission commemorating the 400 year (1619) anniversary of American slavery.

Over his many years of teaching, he has received the title of Teacher Par Excellence and has amassed over 1,000 medals, trophies, plaques, certificates, and awards across multiple disciplines.

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1. Abraham Lincoln

16th American President Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 near Hodgenville, Kentucky to Nancy and Thomas Lincoln. His father remarried Sarah Bush Johnston, to whom he became very close. From a young age, he preferred literary activities as opposed to his designated farm chores.¹ Despite having less than one year of total formal education, Lincoln was an avid reader. He left home at 17 and went to work on a ferry on the Anderson River.² While working on a flatboat that delivered goods to Louisiana, Lincoln was first introduced to slavery. During this time Lincoln courted Ann Rutledge, who passed away in 1935, likely from typhoid fever. He later met and courted Mary Owens, with whom a marriage also did not transpire. Finally, Lincoln met Mary Todd in 1839, who he married in 1842 and went on to have four sons with.³ His oldest son, Robert Todd, was the only who survived to adulthood.

Lincoln entered politics in 1832 when he ran for the Illinois General Assembly, but his lack of social and economic status, or formal education led to his ultimate loss in the election.⁴ In his next campaign, he finished eighth out of 13 candidates.⁵ He soon decided to become a lawyer, and taught himself the law. In 1834, Lincoln campaigned as a Whig and finally won, serving four terms in the Illinois House of Representatives for Sangamon County.⁶ He focused his efforts on the Illinois and Michigan Canal construction, suffrage expansion to all white males, and maintained a neutral stance between slavery and abolition.⁸ In 1836, he was admitted to the Illinois bar and earned a reputation as a skilled and intimidating lawyer. In 1846, Lincoln won the nomination for the Illinois’ 7th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives on his second attempt, and won the election.

He served in the House from 1847 to 1849. Lincoln argued 175 cases before the Illinois Supreme Court which earned him the nickname Honest Abe as a lawyer in Springfield,⁷,⁸ In the debates over slavery with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln argued for a gradual emancipation, but Douglas’ Kansas-Nebraska narrowly ended up passing instead. The five years prior to his presidential campaign, Lincoln spent little time in politics, but in 1860 he was nominated at the Republican National Convention. The Republicans had a united front, unlike the Democrats, and Lincoln won the election. Soon after, the Civil War broke out in 1861. After the Union defeat at the Battle of Bull Run, Lincoln prepared for a long conflict. Lincoln suspended certain civil liberties during the war, including the right of habeas corpus, which drew criticism. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in the Confederate states but not Union states.⁹ The war turned in favor of the Union after the Battle of Gettysburg and another Union victory in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Lincoln delivered the famous Gettysburg address in 1863. In 1864, he ran for reelection and won. He focused efforts on Reconstruction even before the end of the war. On April 21, 1865, Lincoln was shot at the Ford Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, and passed away the next morning.¹¹

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2. Albert Einstein

Renowned physicist Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany. His father was an engineer and businessman who co-founded an electrical equipment production company, and his mother managed the household. As a child he had speech challenges and rubbed against the education style of grade school, though he excelled at playing the violin and was naturally curious.¹⁰ By 12 he was teaching himself calculus, and by 14 he was proficient in integral and differential calculus.¹¹ Einstein was sent to a boarding house to study in Munich, but he dropped out and came home intent on dodging the military draft.¹² Thanks to his exceptional physics and math scores, and on the condition that he finish his formal school,¹³ he was able to enroll at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich in 1896, to earn a degree in teaching math and physics.¹⁴ Earning his diploma in 1901, Einstein faced many issues. Due to animosity with his professors, he could not obtain letters of recommendation, and was rejected from every academic position he sought. He could not marry his love or support himself. His father’s business bankrupted. A friend of his father helped him secure a position as a technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office analyzing patent applications.¹⁴

In 1903, Einstein and Maric finally got married, and went on to have two sons. Einstein was so efficient at his job that he had plenty of time left over to explore his intellectual pursuits. He and a few friends formed an informal group called The Olympia Academy that discussed science and philosophy. In 1905 he put out four groundbreaking scientific papers that detailed Brownian motion, special relativity, the photoelectric effect, and mass-energy equivalence.¹⁴ His ideas did not gain traction until Max Planck commended him on his theories, after which Einstein was invited to events like the Solvay Conferences. After this, he finally gained renown and was offered positions at a number of prestigious institutes such as the Universities of Zürich and Prague. In 1915, Einstein completed his theory of general relativity, though his Nobel Prize in 1921 was awarded for his photoelectric effect work rather than his relativity theories. In 1919, he and Maric divorced, whom he had agreed his Nobel Prize winnings to years before he ever received the award.¹⁴

Einstein became acquainted with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Sigmund Freud, and Rabindranath Tagore — the former on his visit to California, when he made a film debut in City Lights, and the latter two in his correspondences with influential thinkers of the time.¹⁴ After becoming the target of Nazi hostility on account of his Jewish physics, Einstein moved to the United States in 1933, where he went on to teach at Princeton University. During World War II, he encouraged President Roosevelt to approve funding for the development of uranium before Germany could. In 1952, he declined an offer to become President of Israel. While spending the rest of his life searching for a unified field theory, his last article remained unfinished due to his death by an aortic aneurysm in 1955.¹⁴

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3. Albert Schweitzer

Albert Schweitzer was born on January 14, 1875, into an Alsatian family. His father and maternal grandfather were ministers, both of his grandfathers were talented organists, and many of his relatives had made scholarly achievements.¹⁵ Schweitzer entered the University of Strasbourg in 1893 and obtained a doctorate in philosophy in 1899. He received his licentiate in theology in 1900, and soon after began preaching at St. Nicholas Church in Strasbourg and serving in administrative posts in the Theological College of St. Thomas, the college he had attended at the University of Strasbourg. He published The Quest of the Historical Jesus in 1906, a book on which much of his fame as a