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Freedmen's Bureau

(Encyclopedia)Freedmen's Bureau, in U.S. history, a federal agency, formed to aid and protect the newly freed blacks in the South after the Civil War. Established by an act of Mar. 3, 1865, under the name “bureau...

natural rights

(Encyclopedia)natural rights, political theory that maintains that an individual enters into society with certain basic rights and that no government can deny these rights. The modern idea of natural rights grew ou...

Kingston, cities, United States

(Encyclopedia)Kingston. 1 City (1990 pop. 23,095), seat of Ulster co., SE N.Y., on the Hudson River at the mouth of Rondout Creek; inc. as a village 1805, and as a city through the union (1872) of Kingston and Rond...

Sanders, Bernie

(Encyclopedia)Sanders, Bernie (Bernard Sanders), 1941–, American politician, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. The son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, he spent a year at Brooklyn...

Rhode, Deborah Lynn

(Encyclopedia)Rhode, Deborah Lynn, 1952-2021, American legal ethicist and educator, b. Evanston, IL, Yale (BA, 1974), Yale Law (JD, 1977). Raised in the Chicago ...

Dukakis, Michael Stanley

(Encyclopedia)Dukakis, Michael Stanley do͞okäkˈĭs [key], 1933–, American political leader, b. Brookline, Mass. He was a Democratic member of the Massachusetts house of representatives (1963–70) and was twic...

curlew

(Encyclopedia)curlew kûrˈlo͞o [key], common name for large shore birds of both hemispheres, generally brown and buff in color and with decurved bills. There are eight species, belonging to the genus Numenius. Th...

Common Cause

(Encyclopedia)Common Cause, U.S. organization that seeks a “reordering of national priorities and revitalization of the public process to make our political and governmental institutions more responsive to the ne...

Lynch, John Roy

(Encyclopedia)Lynch, John Roy, 1847–1939, African-American politician, b. near Vidala, La. Born a slave, he became active in the Republican party after the Civil War in Natchez, Miss., and served (1869–73) in t...

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