Free Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters by Barack Obama

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE (1887–1986) is one of America’s best-known artists. Born in Wisconsin, she also lived in New York City; near Lake George, New York; and in New Mexico, and is most famous for her exquisite large paintings of flowers and bones that she saw in the Southwest.
    ALBERT EINSTEIN (1897–1955) was born in Germany, immigrated to America in 1933, and became a U.S. citizen in 1940. A recipient of the Nobel Prize, this esteemed physicist and Princeton University professor is best known for his special theory of relativity, which made famous the equation E = mc 2 .
    JACKIE ROBINSON (1919–1972) was born to a family of sharecroppers in Georgia. He excelled at athletics early on and in 1947 became the first African American to play major league baseball since the sport had become segregated in the nineteenth century. He was chosen as the National League’s most valuable player in 1949.
    SITTING BULL (c. 1831–1890) was a Sioux leader who spoke out and led his people against many policies of the United States government. He is most famous for his stunning victory in 1876 over Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
    BILLIE HOLIDAY (1915–1959) rose from a difficult childhood to become one of the defining singers of American popular music and jazz. Holiday is known for the rich emotion in her voice. Her most famous performances include “What a Little Moonlight Can Do,” “God Bless the Child,” “Summertime,” and “Stormy Weather.”
    HELEN KELLER (1880–1968) became deaf and blind as a toddler and later achieved world renown as an author and activist. She received a bachelor’s degree from Radcliffe College and remained an unrelenting voice for the disabled and for many other causes throughout her life. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.
    MAYA LIN (1959– ) is an artist and architect who is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. She won a nationwide competition to design the memorial at the age of twenty-one, when she was an undergraduate at Yale. The memorial includes a granite wall with the names of fallen and missing soldiers. Millions of people visit the memorial every year.
    JANE ADDAMS (1860–1935) was a social reformer dedicated to helping children, eradicating poverty, and promoting peace. Hull House, the settlement house she founded in Chicago, was internationally recognized in its day for its work to house the poor. Jane Addams was the second woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931.
    DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. (1929–1968) was a Baptist minister in Atlanta and an icon of the civil rights movement. His inspiring leadership of the nonviolent movement for social change, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–56 and the March on Washington in 1963, paved the way for the desegregation of America. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
    NEIL ARMSTRONG (1930– ) was an aviator and astronaut who became the first person to walk on the moon, which he did on July 20, 1969, as part of the Apollo 11 mission. When he set foot on the lunar surface, he famously declared, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom that same year, along with fellow crewmember Buzz Aldrin.
    CESAR CHAVEZ (1927–1993), a farmworker since childhood, was a major leader of the nonviolent movement for the rights and dignity of farmworkers, using techniques such as strikes, boycotts, and fasts to implement social change. He cofounded the National Farm Workers Association, which became United Farm Workers, and won many crucial labor reforms. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994.
    ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809–1865) was the sixteenth president of the United States. He held office during the Civil War, which broke out on the eve of his inauguration, and he saw the nation restored to unity in 1865. In 1863 he signed the