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Culture of South Africa

South Africa is known for its ethnic and cultural diversity. Almost all South Africans speak English to some degree of proficiency, in addition to their native language, with English acting as a lingua franca in commerce, education, and government. South Africa has eleven official languages, but other indigenous languages are spoken by smaller groups, chiefly Khoisan languages.

Members of the middle class, who are predominantly white and Indian but whose ranks include growing numbers of other groups, have lifestyles similar in many respects to that of people found in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

The Apartheid state legally classified South Africans into one of four race groups, determined where they could live, and enforced segregation in education, work opportunities, public amenities and social relations. Although these laws were abolished by the early 1990s, the apartheid racial categories remain ingrained in South African culture,  with South Africans continuing to classify themselves, and each other, as belonging to one of the four defined race groups (blacks, whites, Coloureds and Indians)  making it difficult to define a single South African culture that doesn't make reference to these racial categories.

Art
The oldest art objects in the world were discovered in a South African cave. Dating from 75,000 years ago, these small drilled snail shells could have no other function than to have been strung on a string as a necklace. South Africa was one of the cradles of the human species. One of the defining characteristics of our species is the making of art (from Latin 'ars' meaning worked or formed from basic material).

The scattered tribes of Khoisan peoples moving into South Africa from around 10,000 BC had their own fluent art styles seen today in a multitude of cave paintings. They were superseded by Bantu and Nguni peoples with their own vocabularies of art forms. In the 20th century, traditional tribal forms of art were scattered and re-melded by the divisive policies of apartheid.

New great forms of art evolved in the mines and townships: a dynamic art using everything from plastic strips to bicycle spokes. The Dutch-influenced folk art of the Afrikaner Trekboer and the urban white artists earnestly following changing European traditions from the 1850s onwards also contributed to this eclectic mix, which continues to evolve today.

One form of art developed during the period of apartheid. This new characterization was termed "township art" and became common in the 1960s and 1970s. This art style tended to depict scenes from everyday life of poor black individuals in South Africa. Common visual elements in this art style are dilapidated houses, women washing clothes, penny whistlers, and black mother-and-child tableaux. Contemporary South Africa has a vibrant art scene, with artists receiving international recognition. The recent 'Figures and Fictions' exhibition of South African photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London included the work of Mikhael Subotzky, Zanele Muholi, David Goldblatt, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Guy Tillim. Contemporary South African artists whose work has been met with international acclaim include Marlene Dumas, William Kentridge and John Smith.

Architecture
The architecture of South Africa mirrors the vast ethnic and cultural diversity of the country and its historical colonial period. In addition, influences from other distant countries have contributed to the variety of the South African architectural landscape.

Herbert Baker, among the country's most influential architects, designed the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Other buildings of note include the Rhodes memorial and St George's Cathedral in Cape Town, and St John's College in Johannesburg.

Cape Dutch architecture was prominent in the early days (17th century) of the Cape Colony, and the name derives from the fact that the initial settlers of the Cape were primarily Dutch. The style has roots in medieval Holland, Germany, France and Indonesia. Houses in this style have a distinctive and recognizable design, with a prominent feature being the grand, ornately rounded gables, reminiscent of features in townhouses of Amsterdam built in the Dutch style.

The rural landscape of South Africa is populated with traditional and European-influenced African architecture.

Literature
There are 11 national languages in South Africa. South Africa's unique social and political history has generated a rich variety of literatures, with themes spanning pre-colonial life, the days of apartheid, and the lives of people in the "new South Africa".

Many of the first black South African print authors were missionary-educated, and many wrote in either English or Afrikaans. One of the first well known novels written by a black author in an African language was Solomon Thekiso Plaatje's Mhudi, written in 1930.

Notable white English-language South African authors include Nadine Gordimer who was, in Seamus Heaney's words, one of "the guerrillas of the imagination", and who became the first South African and the seventh woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Her novel, July's People, was released in 1981, depicting the collapse of white-minority rule.

Athol Fugard, whose plays have been regularly premiered in fringe theatres in South Africa, London (The Royal Court Theatre), and New York City. Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) was a revelation in Victorian literature: it is heralded by many as introducing feminism into the novel form.

Alan Paton published the acclaimed novel Cry, the Beloved Country in 1948. He told the tale of a black priest who comes to Johannesburg to find his son, which became an international best-seller. During the 1950s, Drum magazine became a hotbed of political satire, fiction, and essays, giving a voice to urban black culture.

Afrikaans-language writers also began to write controversial material. Breyten Breytenbach was jailed for his involvement with the guerrilla movement against apartheid. Andre Brink was the first Afrikaner writer to be banned by the government after he released the novel A Dry White Season about a white South African who discovers the truth about a black friend who dies in police custody.

John Maxwell (JM) Coetzee was also first published in the 1970s, and became internationally recognize in 1983 with his Booker Prize-winning novel Life & Times of Michael K. His 1999 novel Disgrace won him his second Booker Prize as well as the 2000 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He is also the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

English writer J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, was born in Bloemfontein in 1892.

Poetry
South Africa has a rich tradition of oral poetry. Several influential African poets became prominent in the 1970s such as Mongane Wally Serote, whose most famous work, No Baby Must Weep, gave insight into the everyday lives of black South Africans under apartheid. Another famous black novelist, Zakes Mda, transitioned from poetry and plays to becoming a novelist in the same time period. His novel, The Heart of Redness won the 2001 Commonwealth Writers Prize and was made a part of the school curriculum across South Africa.

Cinema
While many foreign films have been produced about South Africa (usually involving race relations), few local productions are known outside South Africa itself. One exception was the film The Gods Must Be Crazy in 1980, set in the Kalahari. This is about how life in a traditional community of San (Bushmen) is changed when a Coke bottle, thrown out of a plane, suddenly lands from the sky. The late Jamie Uys, who wrote and directed The Gods Must Be Crazy, also had success overseas in the 1970s with his films Funny People and Funny People II, similar to the TV series Candid Camera in the US. Leon Schuster's You Must Be Joking! films are in the same genre, and hugely popular among South Africans. Schuster's most successful film internationally is Mr Bones, which was also the best performing film locally at the time of its release, grossing 35m USD. This was surpassed by the sequel, Mr Bones 2: Back from the Past.

The most high-profile film portraying South Africa in recent years was District 9. Directed by Neill Blomkamp, a native South African, and produced by Peter Jackson, the action/science-fiction film depicts a sub-class of alien refugees forced to live in the slums of Johannesburg in what many saw as a creative allegory for apartheid. The film was a critical and commercial success worldwide, and was nominated for Best Picture at the 82nd Academy Awards.

Other notable exceptions are the film Tsotsi, which won the Academy Award for Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006 as well as U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha, which won the Golden Bear at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival.

Music
There is great diversity in music from South Africa. Many black musicians who sang in Afrikaans or English during apartheid have since begun to sing in traditional African languages, and have developed a unique style called Kwaito. Of note is Brenda Fassie, who launched to fame with her song "Weekend Special", which was sung in English. More famous traditional musicians include Ladysmith Black Mambazo, while the Soweto String Quartet performs classic music with an African flavour. White and Coloured South African singers are historically influenced by European musical styles.

South Africa has produced world-famous jazz musicians, notably Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Abdullah Ibrahim, Miriam Makeba, Jonathan Butler, Chris McGregor, and Sathima Bea Benjamin. Afrikaans music covers multiple genres, such as the contemporary Steve Hofmeyr and the punk rock band Fokofpolisiekar. Crossover artists such as Verity (internationally recognised for innovation in the music industry) and Johnny Clegg and his bands Juluka and Savuka have enjoyed various success underground, publicly, and abroad. Don Clarke who wrote Sanbonani , a local hit for P J Powers and Hotline in 1986 wrote much of the music for Leon Schuster's films including Till You're Free Again which he recorded for the film Frank and Fearless in 2018. Rap-rave group Die Antwoord have also found international success.

The South African music scene includes Kwaito, a new music genre that had developed in the mid-1980s and has since developed to become a popular socio-economic form of representation among the populace. However, some argue that the political aspects of Kwaito have since diminished after Apartheid, and the relative interest in politics has become a very minor aspect of daily life. Others argue that in a sense, Kwaito is in fact a political force that shows activism in its apolitical actions.

Today, major corporations like Sony, BMG, and EMI have appeared on the South African scene to produce and distribute Kwaito music. Due to its popularity, as well as the general influence of DJs, who are among the top 5 most influential types of people within the country, Kwaito has taken over radio, television, and magazines.

South African rock music is a very popular subculture, especially within the Johannesburg region. The alternative rock and metal band Seether gained international popularity in the early 2000s, with five of their albums achieving Gold or Platinum certification in the United States. Four other alternative rock bands, KONGOS, Civil Twilight, Prime Circle and the Parlotones have also achieved success abroad in the late 2000s.

Cuisine
The cuisine of South Africa is heavily meat-based and has spawned the distinctively South African social gathering known as a braai. A variation of the barbecue, braais often feature boerewors or spicy sausages, and mielies (maize) or Mielie-meal, often as a porridge, or pearl millet, a staple food of black South Africans. Pastries such like koeksisters and desserts like melktert (milk tart) are also universally popular.

Indian food like curry is also popular, especially in Durban with its large Indian population. Another local Indian Durban speciality is the 'bunny' or bunny chow, which consists of a hollowed-out loaf of white bread filled with curry.

The Portuguese community has also made its mark, with spicy peri-peri chicken being a favourite. The South African Portuguese-themed restaurant chain Nando's now has restaurants in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Malaysia, Kenya and the United Arab Emirates.

Wine
South Africa has developed into a major wine producer, with some of the best vineyards lying in valleys around Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, Paarl and Barrydale. South African wine has a history dating back to 1659, and at one time Constantia was considered one of the greatest wines in the world. Access to international markets has unleashed a burst of new energy and new investment. Production is concentrated around Cape Town, with major vineyard and production centres at Paarl, Stellenbosch and Worcester.

There are about 60 appellations within the Wine of Origin (WO) system, which was implemented in 1973 with a hierarchy of designated production regions, districts and wards. WO wines must be made 100% from grapes from the designated area. "Single vineyard" wines must come from a defined area of less than 5 hectares. An "Estate Wine" can come from adjacent farms, as long as they are farmed together and wine is produced on site. A ward is an area with a distinctive soil type and/or climate, and is roughly equivalent to a European appellation.

Education
Learners have twelve years of formal schooling, from grade 1 to 12. Grade R is a pre-primary foundation year. Primary schools span the first seven years of schooling. High School education spans a further five years. The Senior Certificate examination takes place at the end of grade 12 and is necessary for tertiary studies at a South African university.

Public universities in South Africa are divided into three types: traditional universities, which offer theoretically oriented university degrees; universities of technology (formerly called "Technikons"), which offer vocational oriented diplomas and degrees; and comprehensive universities, which offer both types of qualification. Public institutions are usually English medium, although instruction may take place in Afrikaans as well. There are also a large number of other educational institutions in South Africa – some are local campuses of foreign universities, some conduct classes for students who write their exams at the distance-education University of South Africa and some offer unaccredited or non-accredited diplomas.

Public expenditure on education was at 6.1% of the 2016 GDP.

Under apartheid, schools for blacks were subject to discrimination through inadequate funding and a separate syllabus called Bantu Education which was only designed to give them sufficient skills to work as labourers. Redressing these imbalances has been a focus of recent education policy; see Education in South Africa: Restructuring.

See also: Matriculation in South Africa; High school in South Africa

Scouting
South Africa has also had a large influence in the Scouting movement, with many Scouting traditions and ceremonies coming from the experiences of Robert Baden-Powell (the founder of Scouting) during his time in South Africa as a military officer in the 1890s-1900s. Scouts South Africa (then known as Boy Scouts of South Africa) was one of the first youth organisations to open its doors to youth and adults of all races in South Africa. This happened on 2 July 1977 at a conference known as Quo Vadis.

Sexual orientation
South Africa enacted same-sex marriage laws in 2006 allowing full marriage and adoption rights to same-sex couples. Although the Constitutional and legal system in South Africa theoretically ensures equality, social acceptance is generally lacking, especially outside of urban areas. Lesbian women from smaller towns (especially the townships) are often victims of beating or rape. This has been posited, in part, to be because of the perceived threat they pose to traditional male authority. Although evidence of hatred may influence rulings on a case-by-case basis, South Africa has no specific hate crime legislation; human rights organisations have criticised the South African police for failing to address the matter of bias-motivated crimes.

For example, the NGO ActionAid has condemned the continued impunity and accused governments of turning a blind eye to reported murders of lesbians in homophobic attacks in South Africa; as well as to so-called "corrective" rapes, including cases among pupils, in which cases the male rapists purport to raping the lesbian victim with the intent of thereby "curing" her of her sexual orientation.

Science and technology
Several important scientific and technological developments have originated in South Africa. The first human-to-human heart transplant was performed by cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in December 1967. Max Theiler developed a vaccine against Yellow Fever, Allan McLeod Cormack pioneered x-ray Computed tomography, and Aaron Klug developed crystallographic electron microscopy techniques. These advancements were all (with the exception of that of Barnard) recognised with Nobel Prizes. Sydney Brenner won most recently, in 2002, for his pioneering work in molecular biology.

Mark Shuttleworth founded an early Internet security company Thawte, that was subsequently bought out by world-leader VeriSign.

South Africa has cultivated a burgeoning astronomy community. It hosts the Southern African Large Telescope, the largest optical telescope in the southern hemisphere. South Africa is currently building the Karoo Array Telescope as a pathfinder for the $20 billion Square Kilometer Array project to be built in South Africa and Australia.

Sports
The most popular sports in South Africa are association football, rugby, and cricket. Other sports with significant support are field hockey, swimming, athletics, golf, boxing, tennis, netball and softball. Although association football commands the greatest following among the youth, other sports like basketball, surfing, judo and skateboarding are increasingly popular.

Famous boxing personalities include Baby Jake Jacob Matlala, Vuyani Bungu, Welcome Ncita, Dingaan Thobela, Gerrie Coetzee and Brian Mitchell. Footballers who have played for major foreign clubs include Lucas Radebe and Philemon Masinga, (both formerly of Leeds United), Quinton Fortune (Atlético Madrid and Manchester United), Benni McCarthy (Ajax Amsterdam, F.C. Porto, Blackburn Rovers and West Ham United), Aaron Mokoena (Ajax Amsterdam, Blackburn Rovers and Portsmouth), Delron Buckley (Borussia Dortmund) and Steven Pienaar (Ajax Amsterdam and Everton). South Africa has also produced 1979 Formula One World Champion, Jody Scheckter, along with his son, two time Indycar Series race winner, Tomas Scheckter, who led the most laps in both his first two Indianapolis 500 starts during the 2002 and 2003 running of the race. Durban Surfer Jordy Smith won the 2010 Billabong J-Bay competition making him the No.1 ranked surfer in the world. Famous current cricket players include Herschelle Gibbs, Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis, JP Duminy, etc. Most of them also participate in the Indian Premier League.

South Africa has also produced numerous world class rugby players, including Francois Pienaar, Joost van der Westhuizen, Danie Craven, Frik du Preez, Naas Botha and Bryan Habana. South Africa hosted and won the 1995 Rugby World Cup and won the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France as well as the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan. It followed the 1995 Rugby World Cup by hosting the 1996 African Cup of Nations, with the national team going on to win the tournament. It also hosted the 2003 Cricket World Cup, the 2007 World Twenty20 Championship, and it was the host nation for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which was the first time the tournament was held in Africa. FIFA president Sepp Blatter awarded South Africa a grade 9 out of 10 for successfully hosting the event.

In 2004, the swimming team of Roland Schoeman, Lyndon Ferns, Darian Townsend and Ryk Neethling won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Athens, simultaneously breaking the world record in the 4x100 freestyle relay. Penny Heyns won Olympic Gold in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

In golf, Gary Player is generally regarded as one of the greatest golfers of all time, having won the Career Grand Slam, one of five golfers to have done so. Other South African golfers to have won major tournaments include Bobby Locke, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman and Louis Oosthuizen.

title: Culture of South Africa


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Namib-Naukluft National Park

The Namib-Naukluft Park is a national park in western Namibia, situated between the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the edge of the Great Escarpment. It encompasses part of the Namib Desert (considered the world's oldest desert), the Naukluft mountain range, and the lagoon at Sandwich Harbour. The best-known area of the park and one of the main visitor attractions in Namibia is Sossusvlei, a clay pan surrounded by dunes, and Sesriem, a small canyon of the Tsauchab. The desert research station of Gobabeb is situated within the park.

Location and description
With an overall area of 49768 km2, the Namib-Naukluft National Park was at the time of its last expansion the largest game park in Africa and the fourth largest in the world. It consists of a strip of land on the Atlantic Ocean, including 1609 km of sea, that extends roughly 600 km north-to-south from the Swakop River to the B4 road to Lüderitz.

Wildlife

A surprising collection of creatures survives in the hyper-arid region, including snakes, geckos, unusual insects, hyenas, gemsboks, springboks, leopards, African wildcats, cape foxes, baboons, caracals, bat-eared foxes and jackals.

Geography
The region is characterised by high, isolated inselbergs and kopjes (the Afrikaans term for rocky outcrops), made up of dramatic blood-red granites, rich in feldspars and sandstone. The easternmost part of the park covers the Naukluft Mountains.

More moisture comes in as a fog off the Atlantic Ocean then falls as rain, with the average of 106 millimeters of rainfall per year concentrated in February and April.

The winds that bring in the fog are also responsible for creating the park's towering sand dunes, whose burnt orange color is a sign of their age. The orange color develops over time as iron in the sand is oxidized, like rusty metal; the older the dune, the brighter the color.

These dunes are the tallest in the world, in places rising more than 300 meters (almost 1000 feet) above the desert floor. The dunes taper off near the coast, and lagoons, wetlands, and mudflats located along the shore attract hundreds of thousands of birds.

'Namib' means "open space", and the Namib Desert gave its name to form Namibia – "land of open spaces".

History
The park was established in 1907 when the German Colonial Administration proclaimed three game reserves in German South West Africa. Today's Namib-Naukluft park was proclaimed as "Game Reserve No. 3". The other two were the Omuramba Omatako and Etosha. The northern border of the reserve was 5 km south of the Swakop River, and the southern border was 10 km south of the Kuiseb River, so that the park included the Kuiseb but excluded the Swakop due to the economic activities at its banks. After World War I the South African administration of South West Africa confirmed the proclamation of the Germans. For the Namib-Naukluft Park, the area of Sandwich Harbour was added in 1941, and a small extension of the southern border followed in 1962.

In 1966 "Game Reserve No. 3" was deproclaimed, and the Namib Desert Park was established in its stead. The Namib Desert Park included a small area north of the Swakop River where Welwitschia grow, as well as the Moon Landscape east of Swakopmund. In 1979 two more large areas were added. The Naukluft Mountain Zebra Park was included so that the Naukluft Mountains now formed part of the protected area. It previously comprised 14 commercial farms that were bought by the government to protect the Hartmann mountain zebra. The second area added was a 1000 mi strip of the Atlantic Ocean, making the Namib-Naukluft Park Namibia's first marine reserve.

The park's present boundaries were established in 1986 when the government was given control over parts of the Sperrgebiet, an area restricted for diamond mining. This vast strip of land has remained inaccessible to the general population but is now part of the Namib-Naukluft Park.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Namib-Naukluft National Park


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Talk:Račak massacre

Račak "massacre" ?
sadly moslty nationalist and hating people write down these wiki articles that reffer to war times on ex-yugoslavia lands. The račak "massacre" article... totally un-neutral. That incident has been solved years ago already, as an KLA setup. Even the investigators from those times revealed those people were actually Albanian guerilla fighters killed in action, after which their bodies were planted on the field (as they were massacred), but the bullet hit marks reveal the true secret... only that secret wasnt to be used in the war time it had to wait until USA would get their base on Kosovo, then they would admit anything eventough their whole excuse for bombing was that same set-up massacre (prepared together with KLA members). (Правичност (talk) 02:49, 10 February 2013 (UTC))

Weasel wording
The source says: "A major turning point took place on January 15, 1999, when forty-five ethnic Albanians were killed in the village of Racak. Although the attack was possibly provoked by a KLA ambush that killed three Serbian policeman a few days before, government forces responded by shooting at civilians, torturing detainees, and committing summary executions." That's not equivocal. Adding weasel words like "alleged" is a bad move. bobrayner (talk) 18:46, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily if there are other sources which support the assertion that people who were shot were actually members of KLA.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 19:14, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * None of the sentences referenced in the lede are in the source. Unless you point them here, i will remove it. This looks like source misrepresentation. We do not have deliberate massacre, widely recognised, or any other term that you try to push here in the sources. Obvious source misrepresentation. -- WhiteWriterspeaks 19:37, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The lede represents a summary of the article body and as such it is not required for each and every adjective in it to be a direct quotation from some reliable source. "Widely recognised" seems self-explanatory given the plethora of sources describing the event as a crime committed by Serb/Yugoslav forces:

 * Human Rights Watch describes it as a war crime committed by the "Yugoslav Government"
 * BBC described it as "Massacre at the village of Racak... ...where about 45 Albanians were murdered by Serb forces
 * OSCE says "40 Albanian civilians were killed in Racak"
 * The Guardian said "Serb forces entered the villages and shot anyone who tried to flee. Later they found a group of men in hiding and removed them for execution. The bodies of 45 of men, many of them mutilated, were found lying on a hillside."
 * Washington Post said "In a Kosovo village called Racak, nearly four dozen civilians lay freshly dead in a Serb massacre that would change everything."
 * ABC article described the events as "Racak was the scene of the massacre of 45 people, their bodies dumped in a ravine."
 * As for "deliberate massacre" - I have yet to see it described as a non-deliberate massacre :-)  Timbouctou ( talk ) 13:28, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Nobody says there are no sources which present this event as massacre of the civilians. You could probably find much better sources than press releases (all except first which I don't find claimimg that 45 killed people were civilians). The point is there are reliable sources for different position which should be presented according to WP:NPOV, both in the text of the article and its lede. "non-deliberate massacre :-)" comment is attempt to ridicule opponents position which is not constructive.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 13:43, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In fact the HRW piece is the only press release here (written by HRW), all others are news articles (written by journalists) published by reliable media outlets. Your assumption that HRW does not claim that 45 killed were civilians leads me to believe you did not read it all, as none of the Albanians mentioned by name and surname are described as combatants, and the article itself is titled Yugoslav Government War Crimes in Racak. As for your assumption that "there are reliable sources" for a "different position" - why don't you list some instead of assuming that they must be out there? ALL sources agree that there was a killing of 40+ people, and that it was the Serb forces who did the killing. The only point which is "disputed" is whether or not people killed were civilians - most of the world seems to think they were, while the Serbian media and assorted conspiracy theorists tend to disagree - because the event was used as a pretext for NATO intervention (which btw may be true but still does not negate any of the forensic facts related to the massacre itself). And since you and WhiteWriter have yet to present reliable sources disputing what is already widely believed about the event, I consider edits like these disruptive.  Timbouctou ( talk ) 14:57, 29 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The lede does not adequately summarize the last part of this article of 3,107 characters. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 15:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Antidiskriminator, where do you feel the neutrality problems are? bobrayner (talk) 22:19, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

State representation
I've added 'Yugoslav' to a number of segments which formerly stated 'Serb'. Obviously not everywhere, not where people have quoted things nor where it is certainly the case that it had been a Serbian measure rather than national. The word 'Serb' was over-presented on the article including where authorities denied access to William Walker. That much is plausible until you look at the source which not only adequately mentions 'Yugoslav' within article (not headline), it states "border guards" which was a national entity. It is very hard to sift through every "perpetrator" listing to know whether it was Yugoslav or Serb because among those tried for the incident include Serb authority figures such as Sreten Lukić and Yugoslav national figures such as Defence Minister Ojdanić, needless to say Milošević. Janjušević (talk) 19:21, 15 November 2013 (UTC) Struck out comments by sockpuppet. bobrayner (talk) 22:07, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

The point listed above is valid. "She said that before she joined them, a Yugoslav forensic team had performed autopsies on 16 bodies". . --185.10.140.19 (talk) 14:48, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Official report states the conclusion is "undertemined"
Copying conversation from user page []

Being involved in an edit war can result in you being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you do not violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly. Bbb23 (talk) 13:29, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

I am not engaged in edit war but the other user who is constantly forcing subjective opinion and ignoring official reports. If needed I will go thru arbitration process to stop this one-side propaganda. Sasa778 (talk) 13:39, 12 April 2022 (UTC)

 * Sasa778 if your edit is challenged (as it was - by me) the position is that we go back to the long-term version until the matter is resolved. The balance of sources (I believe) now accept that the Račak massacre occurred, finding one or two from 20 years ago that imply otherwise is not surprising! There is always a time when any allegation is unproven.
 * I could be wrong about this, but either way, the place to resolve the matter is on the talk page, not by edit-warring your own opinion, or that of a smallish minority, that the massacre didn't occur. Pincrete (talk) 16:57, 12 April 2022 (UTC)
 * For me, and I believe the rest of wikipedia community, quality of sources precedes sheer quantity of them. I am not claiming that massacre *did not* happened, just quoting the official report made by official EU forensic expert team (EU-FET) that results of their findings are *undetermined*. I don't find valid your stance that it is old report and there by automatically outdated and invalid because this is *the only* official report, first and last, a conclusion of more than 2 years of official research.
 * So I am not edit-warring my own opinion but the findings of EU-FET team responsible for settling this matter. Also, "small minority" argument is not accepted for me because this is completely subjective and, again, not valid argument by itself anyway.
 * I am waiting your response so will not revert back for now. Sasa778 (talk) 10:47, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
 * if your edit is challenged (as it was - by me) the position is that we go back to the long-term version until the matter is resolved.. That is policy - there is no exception just because you happen to think the old version is wrong.

 * The EU-FET team were not responsible for "settling the matter" - they were responsible for assessing the forensic evidence only. They concluded that forensically, a definitive conclusion was not possible, because of actions taken prior to them being brought in to investigate. They also said that the balance of probability was that these were civilians, and other probabilities - so it wasn't simply a "we cannot conclude anything". We state details of the team's conclusions already. What you are doing is working backwards from one aspect of that conclusion to try to imply something which is, broadly speaking, uncontested AFAIK. That killings occurred, which have come to be referred to as a massacre. The details of those killings DO remain contested. Forensic evidence is frequently non-definitive, but it is not the only kind of evidence and most sources treat the killings as historical fact.

 * There are various routes to settling this, but simply edit warring your preferred version isn't one of them. Your defence boils down to "I know I'm right, so I'm going to do what I like".

 * Any further discussion should take place on the article talk page - where other editors can contribute. Pincrete (talk) 13:40, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
 * continued on article page. Sasa778 (talk) 14:56, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

"The details of those killings DO remain contested" - so why you are claiming in the article definitive statement that this is a massacre?

"That killings occurred, which have come to be referred to as a massacre. " is not correct because massacre is defined in wikipedia as "the killing of multiple individuals and is considered to be morally unacceptable, especially when perpetrated by a group of political actors against defenseless victims.". The EU-FET te am did not concluded they were "defenseless victims" so the possibility they were armed KLA fighters remains.

"Forensic evidence is frequently non-definitive, but it is not the only kind of evidence and most sources treat the killings as historical fact" - most sources do not have scientific background but only propaganda. You cannot claim it is "historical fact" by only counting sheer number of (one-sided) sources.

I see your only strategy here is to put this article in limbo by claiming "the position is that we go back to the long-term version until the matter is resolved" and never to actually resolve it. From my stance, you are edit-warring this article by not having real arguments and only making discussion just for sake of it.
 * Unsigned post by Sasa778

 * What you are doing is examining the evidence and concluding that it doesn't satisfy YOU. That isn't what we do here. Almost all sources accept that the massacre took place, even if some details are unknown, and now unknowable. The report is much more conclusive than you are trying to argue "The report concluded that "there was no evidence that the victims had been anything other than unarmed civilians and that they had probably been killed where they were later found by the international monitors."[37] Addressing the claims that the dead had been killed wearing KLA uniforms which had then been replaced with civilian clothes, the report states that "...the clothing [of the dead] bore no badges or insignia of any military unit. No indication of removal of badges of rank or insignia was evident. Based on autopsy findings (e.g. bullet holes, coagulated blood) and photographs of the scenes, it is highly unlikely that clothes could have been changed or removed."[38] Ranta testified at the subsequent ICTY trial of Slobodan Milošević, stating that retrieved bullets, bullet casings and entry and exit wounds indicated that the victims were killed where their bodies were found and at approximately the same time. Of course it is possible that the EU team and numerous sources, monitors, journalists and witnessess who reported the matter immediately after the killings are all wrong - I wasn't there so don't know for certain - but the overwhelming weight of judgement is that the massacre took place. Finding single sentences in official investigations that could conceivably be read in such a way as to imply that the main facts are not known doesn't alter that fact. Pincrete (talk) 16:29, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

 * No, I am just quoting the official report while you are examining the evidence and looking for what you like to see.
 * "...but the overwhelming weight of judgement is that the massacre took place" - which overwhelming weight of judgement? Phrases like "most sources", "historical facts", "accepted truth" are totally subjective terms.
 * "Finding single sentences in official investigations that could conceivably be read in such a way as to imply that the main facts are not known doesn't alter that fact" - this "single sentence" is the conclusion of the official research.
 * "Of course it is possible that the EU team and numerous sources, monitors, journalists and witnessess who reported the matter immediately after the killings are all wrong..." - this is exact reason why you *cannot* put in the article definitive statement that it was a massacre.
 * So, even you accept that there is not enough evidence to support *definitive* statement to claim there was the massacre but still refuses to make a change in the article... Is that what you do here? Sasa778 (talk) 21:47, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia is not a court of law and you should look up the meaning of irony. It's possible that everybody is wrong and the earth is really flat and was made in 6 days, with one day off, it's just that most experts disregard this possibility. The EU forensic team believed and stated that the preponderance of evidence was that these people were civilians, The exact circumstance of their death were unknowable - largely because those accused of committing the massacre had refused timely access to the evidence. Almost all sources accept that the killings occurred and that those killed were wholly or largely civilian, no serious source refers to it as 'alleged'. The only thing that is subjective is you trying to imagine this is a court of law where you personally have to be convinced before WP is allowed to record what the overwhelming proponderance of sources have accepted happened. Take this to an RfC if you want to change the text. Pincrete (talk) 06:58, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
 * No, you are behaving like a court of law by explicitly claiming that there was the massacre. By the way, if some day some official body responsible for determining Earth's shape conclude that their findings are "undetermined", I will change the article about Earth's shape to be "allegedly round", don't worry... Sasa778 (talk) 17:50, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
 * You keep referring to the EU team as the official investigation - it wasn't except in the limited forensic sense - and refer to one word in their conclusion, ignoring the bits you don't want to acknowledge. You also ignore the UN, Russia, the monitoring team and almost every historian and commentator, who all acknowledge that most of those killed were unarmed civilians. You are focusing on one word taken out of context to attempt to overturn an ocean of agreement and circumstantial evidence. Pincrete (talk) 05:13, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I am focusing on the fact that forensic expert team, who had given a official mandate to scientifically find what happened, said "we don't have any hard evidence to make a conclusion". And your stance: "yes, we don't really know what happened but "everyone" claim it was a massacre so it must be" does not quite meet neutral point of view. Let me remind you that I have just put word "alleged" to cover the fact that we don't really know, while you are claiming that it was a massacre while recognizing that we don't really know. Your arguments are contradictory and far from a neutral point of view. Sasa778 (talk) 16:21, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
 * "You also ignore the UN, Russia,..." - not quite: https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1507078695940501514 Sasa778 (talk) 16:44, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
 * "Later a special group was assigned to investigate the incident. It established that the dead were not civilians but militants who were dressed in civilian clothes after they had been killed in battle. The holes in their clothes did not align with the wounds. Yes, the case was investigated very thoroughly." - https://t.me/MFARussia/12109 Sasa778 (talk) 16:46, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
 * "Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States issued a joint statement condemning "the massacre of Kosovo Albanians in Račak on 15 January. All members expressed their revulsion at this act of mass murder" Are you really contrasting that joint UN contact group statement with two recent tweets by Lavrov citing a completely discredited Serbian/Belorussian forensic report? You are misrepresenting the purpose of the EU forensic team and ignoring 9/10 of its conclusions. Take this to an RfC or similar. Pincrete (talk) 18:20, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
 * "Are you really contrasting that joint UN contact group statement with two recent tweets by Lavrov..." - this tweet is official statement from Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia (and Russia's stance regarding this matter, full info here: https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1799343/), and I referenced it to show you that not "everyone" is believing in what you are saying, but I think you already know that...
 * "...completely discredited Serbian/Belorussian forensic report" - who discredited it? or this is another "historical fact" and "accepted truth"?
 * "You are misrepresenting the purpose of the EU forensic team..." - no, you are, by constantly neglecting their role and making subjective terms as arguments
 * "...and ignoring 9/10 of its conclusions" - The only conclusion is: "The manner of death remained undetermined by the EU-FET, because the scene investigation and the chain of custody for the bodies from the site of the incident to the autopsy were impossible to verify by the team." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11182269/ Sasa778 (talk) 20:21, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
 * You are misrepresenting the purpose of the EU forensic team and ignoring 9/10 of its conclusions. Take this to an RfC or similar. Your chances of getting this changed based on a selective misinterpretation of what the EU forensic report says, ignoring what the balance of other sources say and two recent tweets by Lavrov are about zero IMO. You are entitled to believe anything you want, but WP simply records what the balance of WP:RS say and that is that most, if not all of those killed were civilians. If a few were KLA members or supporters - which has never been reliably established either way - that does not alter the fundamental character of the event.
 * The EU forensic report addresses and dismisses both the 'clothes changed' and 'moved from elsewhere' claims. You cannot claim it to be authorative when it suits your purpose and then dismiss it when it doesn't. In terms of its science it has never been challenged AFAIK - it specifically avoids coming to legal or political conclusions, it's science not a court. Pincrete (talk) 06:12, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Serbia
Hello. The link you post leads to an article about a country created in 2008, which definitely did not exist in 1999. Also, no province is ever added, only a state within a country. — Ruach Chayim (talk) 18:43, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija is almost always referred to simply as 'Kosovo' in English - just as Republic of Serbia is called Serbia and 100s of other names are shortened. It would be wholly misleading to imply that Račak was geographically within 'core' Serbia, even if Kosovo has 'disputed' status. I believe that there is a WP policy about how to refer to Kosovo - whether as a region or an independent state, but couldn't find it immediately. Pincrete (talk) 18:55, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Račak massacre


text:
Ernst August von Hannover (born 1954)

Ernst August von Hanover (Ernst August Albert Paul Otto Rupprecht Oskar Berthold Friedrich-Ferdinand Christian-Ludwig Prinz von Hannover Herzog zu Braunschweig und Lüneburg Königlicher Prinz von Großbritannien und Irland; born 26 February 1954) is the head of the House of Hanover, members of which reigned in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Great Britain and Ireland were separate kingdoms, 1714 to 1801) from 1714 to 1901, the Kingdom of Hanover from 1814 to 1866 (electorate, from 1714 to 1814), and the Duchy of Brunswick from 1913 to 1918. As the husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, he is the brother-in-law of Albert II, Prince of Monaco.

Education
He left secondary school at the age of 15 to work on a farm, but returned to education a bit later to study at the Royal Agricultural College in England and the University of Guelph in Canada.

Ancestry and name
Ernst August was born in Hanover, the eldest son of Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover (1914–1987), the former Hereditary Prince of Brunswick and his first wife, Princess Ortrud of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (1925–1980). He was christened Ernst August Albert Paul Otto Rupprecht Oskar Berthold Friedrich-Ferdinand Christian-Ludwig. As the senior male-line descendant of George III of the United Kingdom, Ernst August is head of the House of Hanover. He is a first cousin of Queen Sofía of Spain and King Constantine II of the Hellenes.

The title of Prince of Great Britain and Ireland was recognised ad personam for Ernst August's father and his father's siblings by George V of the United Kingdom on 17 June 1914. The hereditary Dukedom of Cumberland and Teviotdale and the Earldom of Armagh, borne in 1917 by his paternal great-grandfather, were suspended under the Titles Deprivation Act 1917. However, the title Royal Prince of Great Britain and Ireland had been entered into the family's German passports, together with the German titles, in 1914. After the German Revolution of 1918–19, with the abolition of the privileges of nobility, titles officially became parts of the last name. So, curiously, the British prince's title is still part of the family's last name in their German passports, while it is no longer mentioned in their British documents. Ernst August continues to claim the style, "Royal Prince of Great Britain and Ireland". However, in addition to being a German, Ernst August also has British citizenship since his father had successfully claimed it under the Sophia Naturalization Act 1705 (in the case of Attorney-General v. Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover). Since foreign royal titles can't be entered into a British passport, his father ended up being named Ernest Augustus Guelph, with the addition of His Royal Highness. His children, including Ernst August, inherited British nationality under this name.

Family
By a 24 August 1981 declaration issued by his father as the Head of House, pursuant to Chapter 3, §§ 3 and 5 of the House laws of 1836, Ernst August was authorised to marry dynastically, and did firstly marry, civilly in Pattensen on 28 August 1981 and religiously on 30 August 1981, Chantal Hochuli (born 2 June 1955 in Zürich), the daughter and heiress of a Swiss German architect and real estate developer, Johann Gustav "Hans" Hochuli (14 March 1912 in Switzerland – ?), and his German wife Rosmarie Lembeck (8 April 1921, in Essen, Rhine, Prussia, Germany – 12 December 2011). They have two sons, Prince Ernst August (born 19 July 1983) and Prince Christian (born 1 June 1985). Ernst August and Chantal Hochuli divorced in London on 23 October 1997.

In 1988, Ernst August unsuccessfully claimed custody of his infant nephew Otto Heinrich, son of his younger brother, Prince Ludwig Rudolph of Hanover. The infant's mother, Countess Isabella von Thurn und Valsássina-Como-Vercelli, died of a cocaine overdose on 28 November 1988. Ludwig Rudolph placed a call to his brother in London, imploring him to take care of the couple's 10-month-old son, and shortly afterwards died by suicide. Custody of Otto Heinrich was eventually awarded, contrary to the expressed wishes of Ludwig Rudolph as the surviving parent and Ernst August's legal efforts, to the child's maternal grandparents, Count Ariprand (1925–1996) and Countess Maria von Thurn und Valsassina-Como-Vercelli (born 1929), to be raised at their family seat, Bleiburg Castle in southern Austria.

Ernst August married secondly, civilly in Monaco on 23 January 1999, Princess Caroline of Monaco, who was at the time expecting their daughter, Princess Alexandra (born 20 July 1999). As he was descended from George II of Great Britain in the male line, Ernst August sought and received permission to marry pursuant to the British Royal Marriages Act 1772, which would not be repealed until the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 took effect on 26 March 2015. Similarly the Monégasque court officially notified the government of France of Caroline's marriage to Ernst August, receiving assurance that there was no objection in compliance with the (since defunct) Franco-Monegasque Treaty of 1918. Moreover, in order for Caroline to retain her claim to the throne of Monaco and to transmit succession rights to future offspring, the couple were also obliged to obtain the approval of yet a third nation, in the form of official consent to the marriage of Caroline's father, Prince Rainier III as the sovereign of Monaco.

After their marriage, Ernst August and Caroline moved to Le Mée-sur-Seine, France, where they had purchased an 18th-century manor house from their friend Karl Lagerfeld. In 2009, it was reported that Caroline had separated from Ernst August and returned to live in Monaco.

Turkish Pavilion
Ernst August was photographed urinating on the Turkish Pavilion at the Expo 2000 event in Hanover, causing a diplomatic incident and a complaint from the Turkish embassy accusing him of insulting the Turkish people. He successfully sued those who published (Bild-Zeitung) the photograph for invasion of privacy, obtaining an award of 9,900 euros.

Assault charge
In 2004, he was convicted of aggravated assault and causing grievous bodily harm after supposedly beating a German man, Joe Brunnlehner, with a knuckleduster on the Kenyan island of Lamu in January 2000. In 2008, he successfully applied for a retrial of the case on the basis of false evidence. His lawyers have publicly stated that he has never owned a knuckleduster nor held one in his hand. The retrial was held in 2009. During retrial, he was convicted of battery in 2010; this verdict was upheld in 2011 by the Higher Regional Court of Celle and has become final.

Family property dispute
In 2004, Ernst August had signed over his German property to his elder son, including Marienburg Castle, the agricultural estate of Calenberg Castle, the "Princely House" at Herrenhausen Gardens in Hanover and some forests near Blankenburg Castle (Harz) which he had repurchased in former East Germany after the German reunification of 1990. At the time, Ernst-August's wealth was estimated as high as $250 million. Since then, the younger Ernst August has taken over many representative tasks on behalf of his father. The latter remained in charge of the Austrian family assets. In 2013, however, Ernst August was removed from the chairmanship of a family foundation based in Liechtenstein, the Duke of Cumberland Foundation, which holds the properties near Gmunden in Austria, the Hanovers' main residence in exile after 1866 when their Kingdom of Hanover was annexed by Prussia. Instead, the younger Ernst August was put in charge, reportedly for negligence on part of his father, at the initiative of the foundation's trustee Prince Michael of Liechtenstein. The foundation manages vast forests, a game park, a hunting lodge, the Queen's Villa and other property. In 2017, Ernst August filed legal action to recover his chairmanship, and he intends to revoke the bestowal of his German property. Due to this dispute over family assets, he also declared his intention to withhold consent for his son's marriage to Ekaterina Malysheva which he did not attend.

Assault on police
In 2020, under the influence of alcohol and medication, Ernst August injured a police officer at his hunting lodge in Austria. Five days later, he threatened another police officer with a baseball bat. In September 2020, he was arrested on charges of threatening employees. He later received a ten-month suspended jail sentence from an Austrian court.

Health
On Monday, 3 April 2005, Ernst August was admitted to hospital with acute pancreatitis. The next day, he fell into a deep coma, two days before the death of his father-in-law, Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. On Friday, 8 April 2005, hospital officials reported that he was no longer in a coma but remained in intensive care. A report the same day on BBC World described his condition as "serious but not irreversible." After his release he was subsequently seen in public with his wife. In an interview he admitted at the time that his health crisis was caused by his hyperactive lifestyle and problems with alcohol.

His health deteriorated in subsequent years. He was hospitalized again in 2011, 2017 and 2018 for problems related to alcohol. In February 2019 he had another emergency surgery for pancreatitis. One week later, it was reported that he is suffering from throat cancer. In July 2020, he was taken to the psychiatric unit of a hospital after calling the police for immediate help, which was followed by a physical fight between him and the police upon their arrival.

Titles and arms
In Germany, the legal privileges of royalty and nobility were abolished in 1919; thereafter, for legal purposes, hereditary titles form part of the name only.

title: Ernst August von Hannover (born 1954)


text:
Theodore Dwight Weld

Theodore Dwight Weld (November 23, 1803 – February 3, 1895) was one of the architects of the American abolitionist movement during its formative years from 1830 to 1844, playing a role as writer, editor, speaker, and organizer. He is best known for his co-authorship of the authoritative compendium American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, published in 1839. Harriet Beecher Stowe partly based Uncle Tom’s Cabin on Weld's text; the latter is regarded as second only to the former in its influence on the antislavery movement. Weld remained dedicated to the abolitionist movement until slavery was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.

According to Lyman Beecher, the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Weld was "as eloquent as an angel, and as powerful as thunder." His words were "logic on fire".

In 1950, Weld was described as being "totally unknown to most Americans".

"His obscurity was of his own choosing. Weld would never accept an office of authority or honor in any antislavery organization. He refused to speak at antislavery conventions or anniversaries, or even to attend them if he could avoid it. He shunned the cities, and chose to labor in the country districts, where newspapers were few, and his activities were seldom reported except by abolition journals. His writings were published anonymously, and he would seldom allow the content of his speeches or his letters from the field to appear in print at all."

Early life
Weld was born in Hampton, Connecticut, the son and grandson of Congregational ministers. He was descended from Thomas Welde, one of the original trustees of Harvard College. His mother owned slaves. At age 14 Weld took over his father's hundred-acre (forty-hectare) farm near Hartford, Connecticut, to earn money to study at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, attending from 1820 to 1822, when failing eyesight caused him to leave. After a doctor urged him to travel, he started an itinerant lecture series on mnemonics, traveling for three years throughout the United States, including the South, where he saw slavery first-hand. In 1825 Weld moved with his family to Fabius, in upstate New York. At the time of the Weld-Grimké marriage they were living in Manlius, New York.

College education
Weld then (1825) attended classes at Hamilton College in Clinton, Oneida County, New York,  though he did not enroll as a student and does not appear in the College's published lists of students. About 1825 he stayed at the College in the suite of tutor William Kirkland, and not only attended classes but was "something of a leader among the students". The famous evangelist Charles Grandison Finney was based in Oneida County, and according to him, Weld "held a very prominent place among the students of Hamilton College, and had a very great influence." He described himself as "educated at Hamilton College." However, Hamilton turned down his proposal of a manual labor program.

While a student Weld attended some of Finney's many revivals, for he became Finney's disciple. In Utica, intellectual capital of western New York, center of abolitionism, and county seat of Oneida County, he met and became a good friend of Charles Stuart, an early abolitionist, who at that time (1822–1829) was head of the Utica Academy. They spent several years as members of Finney's "holy band".

In the winter of 1827, he and his brother Charles worked on a whaling vessel in Labrador.

Later in 1827, abandoning Hamilton on Stuart's recommendation, he enrolled in the new Oneida Institute of Science and Industry in nearby Whitesboro, New York, the most abolitionist school in the country, his fees paid for him by Stuart, after first participating in a pilot program, staying at the farmhouse of founder George Washington Gale in Western, New York, working in exchange for instruction. While at the Oneida Institute, where he was in charge of the cow-milking operation, he would spend two weeks at a time traveling about, lecturing on the virtues of manual labor, temperance, and moral reform. "Weld...had both the stamina and charisma to hold listeners spellbound for three hours." As a result, by 1831 he had become a "well known citizen" of Oneida County, according to a letter of Joseph Swan published in the Utica Elucidator.

Weld was described thus by James Fairchild, who knew him from when they were students together at Oberlin (of which Fairchild would later be President):

"Among these students was Theodore D. Weld, a young man of surpassing eloquence and logical powers, and of a personal influence even more fascinating than his eloquence. I state the impression which I had of him as a boy, and it may seem extravagant, but I have seen crowds of bearded men held spell-bound by his power for hours together, and for twenty evenings in succession."

In an editorial comment in The Liberator, presumably by its editor Garrison, "Weld is destined to be one of the great men not of America merely, but of the world. His mind is full of strength, proportion, beauty, and majesty. ...[In his writing] there is indubitable evidence of intellectual grandeur and moral power."

In his reminiscences of that period Dr. Beecher observed: "Weld was a genius. ...In the estimation of the class, he was president. He took the lead of the whole institution. The young men had, many of them, been under his care, and they thought he was a god. We never quarreled, however."

In a completely different forum, William Garrison said that in a convention of antislavery "agents", who travelled from town to town giving abolitionist lectures and setting up new local anti-slavery societies, "Weld was the central luminary around which they all revolved".

His future wife Angelina Grimké said in 1836, when she first laid eyes on him and heard him speak for two hours on "What is slavery?", that "I never heard so grand & beautiful an exposition of the dignity & nobility of man in my life".

Manual labor and education agent
His reputation as a speaker had reached New York, and in 1831, at the age of 28, Weld was called there by the philanthropists Lewis and Arthur Tappan. He declined their offer of a ministerial position, saying he felt himself unprepared. Since he was "a living, breathing, and eloquently-speaking exhibit of the results of manual-labor-with-study," the brothers then created, so as to employ Weld, the Society for Promoting Manual Labor in Literary Institutions [non-religious schools], which promptly hired him as its "general agent" and sent him on a factfinding and speaking tour. (The Society never carried out any activities except hiring Weld, hosting some of his lectures, and publishing his report.)

Weld carried out this commission during the calendar year 1832. His 100-page report on his activities, accompanied by 20 pages of letters received, is dated January 10, 1833. It received a review of 21 pages in the Quarterly Christian Spectator, and an abridgement was soon published.

In it he states that "In prosecuting the business of my agency, I have traveled during the year four thousand five hundred and seventy-five miles [7,364 km]; in public conveyances [boat and stagecoach], 2,630 [4,230 km]; on horseback, 1,800 [2,900 km]; on foot, 145 [233 km]. I have made two hundred and thirty-six public addresses." He was nearly killed when a high river swept away the coach he was in.

"Weld had also been commissioned to find a site for a great national manual labor institution where training for the western ministry could be provided for poor but earnest young men who had dedicated their lives to the home missionary cause in the 'vast valley of the Mississippi.' Such an institution would undoubtedly attract many of Weld's associates who had been disappointed in the failure to establish theological instruction at the Oneida Institute. Cincinnati was the logical location. Cincinnati was the focal center of population and commerce in the Ohio valley."

During his year as a manual labor agent, Weld scouted land, found the location for, and recruited the faculty for the Lane Seminary, in Cincinnati. He enrolled there as a student in 1833, although he was informally the head, to the point of telling the trustees whom to hire. He had this power because on his recommendation the Tappans' subventions would continue, or go elsewhere (as they soon did, to Oberlin).

Abolitionist
Some of his travel was in slave states. What he saw there, together with what he read in Garrison's newspaper The Liberator (1831) and book Thoughts on African Colonization (1832), turned him into a committed abolitionist. He first worked, in 1833, at convincing the other students at Lane that immediatism, ending slavery completely and immediately, was the only solution and what God wanted. Successful, he next, with the Tappans' connivance, sought to bring immediatism to a larger audience. He announced that the public was invited to a series of public debates, over 18 evenings in February 1834, on abolition versus colonization. In fact, the debates were not debates at all, as no one spoke in favor of colonization. They were instead presentations of the horrors of American slavery, together with an exposé of the inadequacy of the American Colonization Society's project of helping free black people migrate to Africa and its intent to protect, rather than eliminate, slavery. At the end, the audience's views were highly supportive of immediate abolition.

The debates were then local events. However, during the Seminary's summer vacation of 1834, some of the students started teaching classes for, and in other ways working to help, the 1500 free African Americans of Cincinnati, with whom the students mixed freely. Given the pro-slavery sentiment in Cincinnati, many found his behavior unacceptable. After rumored threats of violence against the Seminary, the trustees passed rules abolishing the seminary's colonization and abolition societies and forbidding any further discussion of slavery, even at mealtimes. Weld was threatened with expulsion. A professor was fired. What happened was the mass resignation of almost all of Lane's student body, along with a sympathetic trustee, Asa Mahan. Later known as the Lane Rebels, they enrolled at the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute, insisting as conditions of their enrollment that they be free to discuss any topic (academic freedom), that Oberlin admit blacks on the same basis as whites, and that the trustees not be able to fire faculty for any or no reason. The fired professor was hired by Oberlin, and Mahan became its first president. Weld declined an appointment at Oberlin as professor of theology, saying abolitionism was a higher priority; he directed Shipperd to Charles Finney. Instead, he took a position as agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society for Ohio. "He has, with characteristic disinterestedness, accepted this agency at one half the salary he was offered by another institution."

Anti-slavery activity
Starting in 1834, Weld was an agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society, recruiting and training people to work for the cause, making converts of James G. Birney, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Henry Ward Beecher. Weld became one of the leaders of the antislavery movement, working with the Tappan brothers, New York philanthropists James G. Birney and Gamaliel Bailey, and the Grimké sisters. "Public awareness of abolition [in New York State] reached its peak with the activities of Theodore Weld from February to early July, 1836."

In 1836, Weld discontinued lecturing when he lost his voice, and was appointed editor of its books and pamphlets by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Among the books he edited was James Thome and J. Horace Kimball's Emancipation in the West Indies : a six months' tour in Antigua, Barbadoes, and Jamaica, in the year 1837.

In 1838, Weld married Angelina Grimké. He was a strong abolitionist and women's rights advocate; at the marriage there were two ministers, one white and one black. He renounced any power or legal authority over his wife, other than that produced by love. Two former slaves of the Grimkés' father were among the guests. Weld and Grimké would go on to have three children: Charles, Theodore, and Sarah.

Their first home as newlyweds was in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he, his wife, and her sister researched and co-wrote the very influential 1839 book American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses. Angelina's unmarried older sister Sarah (Angelina's godmother) resided with them for many years. In 1840, they moved to a farm in Belleville, New Jersey,  where Weld ran a school.

In June 1840, the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London denied seats to Lucretia Mott and other women, mobilizing them to fight for women's rights. This led to a split in the U.S. abolitionist movement between the nonviolent (but wanting it immediately) "moral suasion" of William Lloyd Garrison and his American Anti-Slavery Society, which linked abolition with women's rights, and Weld, the Tappan brothers, and other "pragmatic" (gradualist) abolitionists, who formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (AFASS) and entered politics through the anti-slavery Liberty Party (ancestor of the Free-Soil Party and Republican Party), founded by James Birney, their U.S. presidential candidate in 1840 and 1844, who also founded the National Anti-Slavery Society. In 1841–43, Weld relocated to Washington, D.C., to direct the national campaign for sending antislavery petitions to Congress. He assisted John Quincy Adams when Congress tried him for reading petitions in violation of the gag rule, which stated that slavery could not be discussed in Congress.

Schools
In early 1853, Weld was offered the position of Director of a school of the Raritan Bay Union at Eagleswood in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The school accepted students of all races and sexes. In 1862, the school having closed, they moved to Perth Amboy. In 1864 they moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where Weld helped open another school, this one in Lexington, Massachusetts, dedicated to the same principles. Here, Weld had "charge of Conversation, Composition, and English Literature", and Angelina taught history. The school burned in 1867, and the Welds were then in retirement.

Family

Weld was the son of Ludovicus Weld and Elizabeth (Clark) Weld. His brother Ezra Greenleaf Weld, a famous daguerreotype photographer, was also involved with the abolitionist movement (see Fugitive Slave Convention).

A member of the Weld family of New England, Weld shares a common ancestry with Bill Weld, Tuesday Weld, and others. This branch of the family never achieved the wealth of their Boston-based kin.

Weld died at his home in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, aged 91, on February 3, 1895.

Writings

 * Weld received a published reply.
 * American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (with the Grimké sisters; 1839)
 * An excerpt, "Slavery a System of Inherent Cruelty", appeared on pp. 127–140 of the Boston, 1850, edition of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth : a northern slave, emancipated from bodily servitude by the state of New York, in 1828 : with a portrait.
 * American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (with the Grimké sisters; 1839)
 * An excerpt, "Slavery a System of Inherent Cruelty", appeared on pp. 127–140 of the Boston, 1850, edition of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth : a northern slave, emancipated from bodily servitude by the state of New York, in 1828 : with a portrait.
 * An excerpt, "Slavery a System of Inherent Cruelty", appeared on pp. 127–140 of the Boston, 1850, edition of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth : a northern slave, emancipated from bodily servitude by the state of New York, in 1828 : with a portrait.

Archival material
Papers of Weld and the Grimké sisters are at the Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Additional letters were published in the two-volume set Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké 1822-1844, published by Appleton with funding of the American Historical Association/Albert J. Beveridge Memorial Fund.

The original letters were held at the time of publication by Dr. L.D.H. Weld, Smith Collection at Syracuse University, Garrison collection at the Boston Public Library, Oberlin College, the Archaeological and Historical Society of Ohio, and in the James Gillespie Birney and Weld collections at the Library of Congress

Legacy

 * Another Lane Rebel, Huntington Lyman, named his son Theodore Weld Lyman (born 1840) for Weld.
 * In 2009 Weld was inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame, in Peterboro, New York.

title: Theodore Dwight Weld


text:
The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God

The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (and Some Lesser Tales) is a book of short stories written by George Bernard Shaw, published in London by Constable and Company in 1932. The title story is a satirical allegory relating the experiences of an African black girl, freshly converted to Christianity, who takes literally the biblical injunction to "Seek and you shall find me." and attempts to seek out and actually speak to God.

Synopsis
After she becomes dissatisfied with the inconsistencies of the answers the missionary who has converted her gives to her questions, the girl leaves to wander in the forest, searching for God. One by one, she actually meets several versions of "God"—from the vengeful deity of the early books of the Bible, to the philosophical version of the Book of Job. She also meets two versions of Jesus—a kindly but ineffective young man, and another who makes a living by posing for an artist depicting him on a cross. Muhammad, and the Muslim view of God, fare no better.

She then meets an atheist behaviourist (with a strong resemblance to Ivan Pavlov) and a coterie of intellectuals who explain that speculations about God are passé, and that a better quest lies in abstract mathematics. She disposes of them all, first and last, by trenchant logic and the occasional skilled use of her knobkerry (wooden club).

Eventually she meets an old gentleman who (like Voltaire) persuades her to seek God by working in a garden. He eventually persuades her to abandon her quest, settle down with a "coarse" red-headed Irishman and rear a "charmingly coffee-coloured" family. Only after the children are grown and gone does she resume her searching, and by then her "strengthened mental powers take her far beyond the stage at which there is fun in smashing idols".

Satire
The Black Girl, as protagonist, serves the same purpose as Christian in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress; that is to say her own "inner", or "spiritual" life is represented as a series of physical events and encounters. The over-all tone of the argument is agnostic: through all the rejection of false gods there remains an implied conviction that there is a true god to find: at the end of the work the girl, now an old woman, resumes her search rather than finally abandoning it.

She may also be viewed as an emerging feminist figure, able to defend herself with her knobkerry and—although apparently naïve—having a powerful intellect capable of formulating searching theological questions, and exposing vapid answers.

Her intellectual powers and red-blooded humanity are contrasted with the "white" characters—especially the insipid missionary woman who "converted" her in the first place, and her thoroughly non-intellectual husband. This use of a superior person supposed by popular prejudice to be inferior, both by her sex and her race, is paralleled by the character of "The Negress"—a powerful figure in The Thing Happens, which is the third part of Shaw's Back to Methuselah.

Publishing history
The book was first published in 1932, as Short Stories, Scraps and Shavings. In December 1932 Constable and Company published an edition engraved and designed by John Farleigh with the title The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God.

A 1934 reprinting including Black Girl, already serialized in 1932, along with a companion essay that disclaimed the supernatural origin of the Bible. In the essay, Shaw declares the Bible to be a book without divine authority—but still important for its ethical messages and valuable as history.

Reaction
Both the story and the essay outraged the religious public, creating a demand that supported five reprintings. Shaw was greatly distressed when the perceived "irreligious" tone of Black Girl caused a rift in his long-term friendship with Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook; although eventually they reconciled. Shaw exacerbated the general furore by proposing intermarriage of blacks and whites as a solution to racial problems in South Africa. This was taken as a bad joke in Britain and as blasphemy in Nazi Germany. The full text of this story is available on-line.

Several books used variations on the title as satirical or serious replies to Shaw. A light-hearted riposte appeared in a similarly-presented volume, The Adventures of the White Girl in her Search for God by Charles Herbert Maxwell, which showed a modern young woman wielding a niblick (golf club) on the cover. This book advanced different views of what is really taught by Christianity, defending orthodox Christian doctrine, and deflected the racial construct presented by Shaw. The story involves the modern white girl meeting Shaw and the black girl. She follows Shaw to meet H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley and other authors, discussing their various views of God. Every so often she hits Shaw with her niblick.

Another response, the Adventures of the Brown Girl (companion to the Black girl of Mr. Bernard Shaw) in her Search for God by Mr and Mrs I. I. Kazi was published in 1933 by A. H. Stockwell. This was a liberal Muslim reply which argued that the monotheistic view of the divine existed throughout history, and thus that "every prophet preached Islam in its theistic aspects". Other titles include W. R. Matthews' The Adventures of Gabriel in his Search for Mr. Shaw (1933) and The Adventures of the White Girl in her Search for Knowledge (1934) by Marcus Hayman. In Matthews' book God sends the Archangel Gabriel to seek out the real Shaw, discovering four "sham" Shaws (his public personas) that hide the real individual. Hayman's book was a left-wing criticism of Shaw's religious ideology. In 1973 Brigid Brophy published The Adventures of God in his Search for the Black Girl, in which Shaw himself appears.

In 1968 the story was adapted into a play, which was first produced at the Mermaid Theatre under the direction of Basil Ashmore. Passages from the story were read out by a narrator (Edith Evans) and the Black Girl was played by Mona Hammond. Hammond later said that she had to push to get the part, as the casting director objected that she was not sufficiently black to play the character.

Mabel Dove's satirical response, entitled The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for Mr Shaw (1933), was included in the British Library's 2015–16 exhibition West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song.


text:
Prince Pierre, Duke of Valentinois

Prince Pierre of Monaco, Duke of Valentinois (born Count Pierre Marie Xavier Raphaël Antoine Melchior de Polignac; 24 October 1895 – 10 November 1964) was the father of Rainier III of Monaco. He was a promoter of art, music, and literature in Monaco and served as the head of the country's delegation to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and to the International Olympic Committee.

Background and early life
Count Pierre Marie Xavier Raphaël Antoine Melchior de Polignac was born at the Château de Kerscamp, Hennebont, Morbihan, France. He was the fourth son and youngest child of Count Maxence Melchior Edouard Marie Louis de Polignac (1857–1936) and his Mexican-born wife, Susana Mariana Estefanía Francisca de Paula del Corazón de Jesús de la Torre y Mier (1858–1913), whom he wed in Paris in 1881 Mexican politician Ignacio de la Torre y Mier was Pierre's maternal uncle. Pierre was a member of a cadet branch of the House of Polignac, one of France's most renowned ducal families, noble since at least the 12th century, duke in 1780, peer in 1817.

Pierre was a descendant of Marie Antoinette's favourite, Yolande de Polastron, duchesse de Polignac. A veteran of World War I, Pierre had fraternized in artistic social circles in France, becoming a good friend of Marcel Proust and Jean Cocteau.

Prince
Pierre married civilly on 19 March and religiously on 20 March 1920, in Monaco, Princess Charlotte of Monaco, the illegitimate but adopted daughter of Louis II of Monaco by Marie Juliette Louvet. He changed his name and coat of arms to those borne by the House of Grimaldi by Monegasque ordinance issued on 18 March 1920, the day before his wedding. He had become a subject of the Sovereign Prince of Monaco, also by Monegasque Sovereign Ordinance, on 29 February 1920. From the date of the religious wedding the court of Monaco referred to him, jure uxoris, as Duke of Valentinois. That title had been conferred upon his wife as heiress presumptive on 20 May 1919. His surname and arms were altered by ordinance shortly after he became a Monegasque citizen, to ensure that his dynastic issue would bear the surname of Grimaldi in compliance with Article I of Monaco's house law. Pierre remained in succession to the French title Duke of Polignac, as do his legitimate male-line descendants.

Civic role
Initially, the couple inaugurated a new focus in the principality on culture, as patrons of the arts. Serge Diaghilev and the prince agreed that financial sponsorship of the former's dance troupe, the Ballets Russes, offered an opportune means to raise the national prestige of Pierre and the international prestige of the principality. In 1922 the Société des bains de mer de Monaco (SBM), the Blanc family corporation licensed to operate Monaco's casinos, contracted with the impresario and his dancers to become Monte Carlo's resident ballet corps, eventually bringing the resort city international renown for entertainment beyond gambling.

In 1926 Pierre solicited press agent Elsa Maxwell to improve the image of the principality. She conducted a media operation to pivot the principality's reputation from that of an "interior" site of fancy gaming tables and midnight catering for wealthy adults to a family-oriented outdoors venue, offering roomy beachside cabanas, golfing, a circus and, in 1929, the first Monaco Grand Prix. Pierre persuaded his father-in-law to allow the nation's streets to be converted annually into an auto race course for the event.

While the increased tourist traffic swelled SBM's 1928 profits to 98 million French francs, it also drove up citizen and worker demand for reforms, which Louis II publicly decried, while delegating Pierre to meet with the leaders of the National Council, all of whose members resigned that year in protest. Infuriated by failure to obtain workplace improvements at SBM, on 24 March 1929 600 Monegasques stormed the palace, prompting Pierre to negotiate with them and present their demands for constitutional and labor reform to the monarch, who agreed to fresh elections and other concessions that forestalled revolution.

In 1953 he was among the royal guests at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II representing his son, the Prince of Monaco.

Marriage and family
According to James Lees-Milne, a British writer and friend of Pierre's, his unhappy arranged marriage was complicated by his homosexuality and Princess Charlotte's affairs. In the mid-1920s, the couple unofficially separated.

Prince Pierre and Princess Charlotte were judicially separated on 20 March 1930 at Paris, and in a case titled "Princesse héréditaire Grimaldi de Monaco c. Prince Pierre Grimaldi de Polignac" were divorced by ordinance of Prince Louis II on 18 February 1933. The divorce was confirmed by a Paris tribunal in December of that year. One magazine story reported that "The union ended ... under circumstances which prompted the temperamental father-in-law to vow he would call out the Monégasque army if the prince ever set foot in the principality again." The banishment from Monaco was lifted in April 1933, and Prince Pierre thereafter received an annuity of 500,000 francs a year.

He and his wife had two children:

 * Princess Antoinette, Baroness of Massy (1920–2011)
 * Rainier III, Prince of Monaco (1923–2005)

Death
Prince Pierre died on 10 November 1964, of cancer, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, France.

Life magazine in 1947 described Prince Pierre as "a slender and graceful gallant who wears his coat cape-fashion across his shoulders. His manners are exquisite; his voice so cultivated as to be practically inaudible".

Honours

 * 🇫🇷 France: Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour
 * 🇮🇹 Italy: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
 * 🇲🇨 Monaco: Grand Officer of the Order of Saint-Charles
 * 🇸🇪 Sweden: Commander Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar Star – 1923

title: Prince Pierre, Duke of Valentinois