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Andrew Carnegie to run for re-election as its leader in 1967. His political emphasis was shifting. He spoke out against the Vietnam War. While he was abroad that year, he spoke out so strongly against U.S. policies and actions that some politicians talked of charging him with treason. Indeed, upon his return in 1968, U.S. marshals confiscated his passport. Meanwhile, the radical Oakland, California-based Black Panther Party made him its honorary prime minister. He resigned from that post the following year, rejecting Panther coalitions with white activists. Moves to Africa In 1968, Carmichael married South African singer-activist Miriam Makeba (1932–). The next year, he left the United States for Conakry, Republic of Guinea, in West Africa. There he worked for the restoration to power of the deposed Ghanaian leader Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), who shared many of his views about U.S. imperialism. In Guinea, Carmichael took the name Kwame Turé. Over the next decades, he founded the All-African Revolutionary Party and continued to promote the idea of a black revolution to answer the problems of racism and injustice. In 1996, Carmichael was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The government of Trinidad and Tobago awarded him a $1,000 per month grant to help with medical bills. Groups of his American supporters also pitched in. He died in Guinea in late 1998. Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland in 1835. He and his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1848. By that time, Pittsburgh was already a heavily industrialized city. Smog hovered over the streets and buildings, and black soot filled people’s noses and covered their clothes. Carnegie began working full time at the age of thirteen, and he continued to work until the age of sixty-five. With a start in the cotton mills, he moved to hold various positions with telegraph agencies, the railroad industry, and other enterprises. Having wisely invested his money, Carnegie saved enough to start his own business in the 1870s. With Pittsburgh being one of the major industrial cities in America at the time, it only made sense for him to get involved in a key industrial business: the steel industry. U•X•L Encyclopedia of U.S. History 241 Andrew Carnegie Carnegie established Carnegie Steel in the 1870s, and by employing a keen sense of business and understanding of technology, his personal net worth reached $400,000 (about $5 million in twenty-first century money) by the time he was thirty-three years old. In April 1887, Carnegie married Louise Whitfield; ten years later, their one and only child—a daughter—was born. Carnegie’s steel mills were the most modern of their time, models for those yet to come. His determination to undersell the competition and rule the industry made him incredibly wealthy, but his employees were paid unjustly low wages and worked in unsafe conditions. Injuries were common occurrences in the Carnegie mills, even though his mills had the latest and most advanced equipment. In order to pay for that equipment, the steel magnate underpaid his laborers and cut corners wherever he could regarding safety. Writes “The Gospel” Carnegie’s instinctive business sense and rags-to-riches story made him one of the most respected men in America. And yet his wealth troubled him. Having grown up in poverty, he understood the struggles and suffering of the poor. Despite this concern, he continued to keep his workers in poverty, and so his was a life of paradox (inconsistency). In 1889, Carnegie published “The Gospel of Wealth,” an essay in which he explained his philosophy on wealth and how to distribute it after death. He believed the wealthy had a responsibility to give back to society and work for its greater good. Such a philosophy attracted much attention at a time when the bulk of society’s wealth was concentrated in the hands of very few, and those very few believed for the most part that they deserved their wealth. They also believed that those living in poverty did so because God willed it. Homestead strike Personal philosophy aside, Carnegie’s mills were operated by unhappy laborers. These employees belonged to a union (a formally organized association of workers that advances its members’ views on wages, work hours, and labor conditions). Carnegie and his business partner, Henry Clay Frick (1848–1919), had managed to keep union laborers under 242 U•X•L Encyclopedia of U.S. History Andrew Carnegie control at their other steel mills. But the mill in Homestead, Pennsylvania, was different; the union still had power. In late June 1892, the union expressed its dissatisfaction with conditions at the Homestead mill but indicated they were willing to negotiate. Carnegie was in Scotland at the time, so Frick was in charge. Instead of negotiating, he shut down the mill and locked out thirty-eight hundred workers. On July 6, workers seized the mill and sealed off the town from strikebreakers (temporary workers who would do the job the strikers would not). Frick called in three hundred Pinkerton Detective Agency men, and what ensued was twelve hours of mayhem and violence. While the detectives used rifles, the laborers used whatever else was at their disposal, including cannons. Four times the detectives tried to surrender; four times their white flag was shot down. Finally, their surrender was accepted. Both sides had suffered fatalities, and the surviving detectives were brutally beaten by townspeople. Frick, still unwilling to negotiate, called in eighty-five hundred National Guard troops to allow strikebreakers to go to work at the mill. Although many businesses in town refused to serve the strikebreakers, public sentiment outside of Homestead was against the union workers, mostly because they had used violence. Carnegie got word of what was happening. Although he publicly supported Frick’s decisions, in private, he berated him for his lack of good judgment. The partnership ended, as did the friendship. In the end, the union workers failed to achieve any of their goals. Three hundred of them reapplied and were hired again. An angry Carnegie slashed their wages even further and completely crushed the union in that mill. Retires to a life of philanthropy Carnegie sold his steel empire to U.S. Steel in 1901 for $250 million, the equivalent of about $4.5 billion in twenty-first century money. With that sale, he became the wealthiest man in the world. He was sixty-five years old. Within ten years, Carnegie had donated more than $43 million to libraries and other causes. In 1911, he founded the Carnegie Corporation to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding. That foundation remains one of the largest philanthropic groups in the twenty-first century. U•X•L Encyclopedia of U.S. History 243 Carpetbaggers By the time of his death in 1919, Carnegie had given away $350 million, with instructions to give away the remaining $30 million to various foundations and charities. His legacy lives on in the many diverse charitable foundations he established. Carpetbaggers The term carpetbagger arose in the South after the American Civil War (1861–65). At first, people used it to refer to any unwelcome stranger. The term soon evolved, however, to refer particularly to a northern businessman or politician who came south to take advantage of the postwar environment. Many northerners became politically active in the South during the Reconstruction years—the time when the states that had separated from the Union were reorganized after the Civil War—and many local southerners strongly resented them. Carpetbags were a common suitcase made of strong fabric resembling carpet. The term carpetbaggers indicated that the northerners were so transitory that all they brought with them could fit into a carpetbag. In hopes of preventing northerners from building a lasting political presence, southern Democrats used the term to accuse Republican northerners of taking advantage of the economic and social challenges facing the South. Southern foes hoped to create an image of poor, meddling northerners who were working only for their own selfish interests. Many northern Republicans were sincere and played important roles in southern politics during the first few years of Reconstruction. The efforts of the southern Democrats to oppose them, however, eventually paid off. Carpetbaggers disappeared as Democrats reclaimed political power throughout the South. Cars See Automobile Industry Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, into a farming family in Plains, Georgia. His father was a farmer and local business owner, his mother a nurse, and there were three other children in the family. When the young Carter, known as Jimmy, was four, the family moved to 244 U•X•L Encyclopedia of U.S. History