Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Americanization

(Encyclopedia)Americanization, term used to describe the movement during the first quarter of the 20th cent. whereby the immigrant in the United States was induced to assimilate American speech, ideals, traditions,...

direct action

(Encyclopedia)direct action, theory and methods used by certain labor groups to fight employers, capitalist institutions, and the state by direct economic action, without using intermediate organizations. Political...

District of Columbia, University of the

(Encyclopedia)District of Columbia, University of the, at Washington, D.C.; coeducational; land-grant and federally supported; est. 1976 with the merger of three existing colleges; predominantly African American. I...

Field of the Cloth of Gold

(Encyclopedia)Field of the Cloth of Gold, locality between Guines and Ardres, not far from Calais, in France, where in 1520 Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France met for the purpose of arranging an alliance...

Protocols of the Elders of Zion

(Encyclopedia)Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fraudulent document that reported the alleged proceedings of a conference of Jews in the late 19th cent., at which they discussed plans to overthrow Christianity thr...

Debs, Eugene Victor

(Encyclopedia)Debs, Eugene Victor, 1855–1926, American Socialist leader, b. Terre Haute, Ind. Leaving high school to work in the railroad shops in Terre Haute, he became a railroad fireman (1871) and organized (1...

Murmansk

(Encyclopedia)Murmansk mo͝ormänskˈ [key], city (1989 pop. 468,000), capital of Murmansk region, NW European Russia, on the Kola Gulf of the Barents Sea. It is the terminus of the Northeast Passage and the world'...

Schindler, Oskar

(Encyclopedia)Schindler, Oskar, 1908–74, German industrialist who saved more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust. A Catholic and a member of the National Socialist (Nazi) party, Schindler relocated (1939) t...

Reuther, Walter Philip

(Encyclopedia)Reuther, Walter Philip ro͞oˈthər [key], 1907–70, American labor leader, b. Wheeling, W.Va. A tool- and diemaker, he became shop foreman in a Detroit automobile plant, meanwhile completing his hig...

Kirkland, Lane

(Encyclopedia)Kirkland, Lane (Joseph Lane Kirkland) kûrˈklənd [key], 1922–99, American labor leader, president (1979–95) of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)...