text: In May 1966 Forman was replaced by Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson, who was determined "to keep the SNCC together." But Forman recalls male leaders fighting "her attempts as executive secretary to impose a sense of organizational responsibility and self-discipline," and "trying to justify themselves by the fact that their critic was a woman" In October 1967 Smith-Robinson died, aged just 25, "of exhaustion" according to one of her co-workers, "destroyed by the movement."


title: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

text: Replacing John Lewis as chairman in May 1966 was the 24-year old Stokely Carmichael. When on the night of June 16, 1966, following protests at the shooting of solo freedom marcher James Meredith, Carmichael walked out of jail (his 27th arrest) and into Broad Street Park in Greenwood, Mississippi, he asked the waiting crowd "What do you want?." They roared back "Black Power! Black Power!"


text: For Carmichael Black Power was a "call for black people to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations."We have to organize ourselves to speak from a position of strength and stop begging people to look kindly upon us. We are going to build a movement in this country based on the color of our skins that is going to free us from our oppressors and we have to do that ourselves.


text: A new direction SNCC was evident in the Atlanta, Georgia, "Vine City" Project, SNCC's first effort at urban organizing. Co-directed by William "Bill" Ware and Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons (Robinson), it took up the challenge of the Georgia State Legislature's refusal to seat Julian Bond because of SNCC opposition to the Vietnam War.


text: Ware, who had been greatly affected by his experience of newly independent Ghana, emphasized racial solidarity. Black people, he argued, needed to work "without the guidance and/or direction and control of non-Blacks". Without control over their affairs, he warned, "Black people will know no freedom, but only more subtle forms of slavery." A Vine Street Project position paper on Black Power, which Simmons helped write, suggested that:


text: Negroes in this country have never been allowed to organize themselves because of white interference. As a result of this, the stereotype has been reinforced that Blacks cannot organize themselves. The white psychology that Blacks have to be watched, also reinforces this stereotype. Blacks, in fact, feel intimidated by the presence of whites, because of their knowledge of the power that whites have over their lives. One white person can come into a meeting of Black people and change the complexion of that meeting ... People would immediately start talking about "brotherhood", "love", etc.; race would not be discussed.


text: This was "not to say that whites have not had an important role in the Movement." If people now had "the right to picket, the right to give out leaflets, the right to vote, the right to demonstrate, the right to print," the Vine City paper allowed that it was "mainly because of the entrance of white people into Mississippi, in the summer of '64." But their "role is now over and it should be," for what would it mean "if Black people, once having the right to organize, are not allowed to organize themselves? It means that Blacks' ideas about inferiority are being reinforced."


text: What was needed now for "people to free themselves" was an "all-Black project" and this had to "exist from the beginning." Future cooperation with whites had to be a matter of "coalition". But there could be "no talk of 'hooking up' unless Black people organize Blacks and white people organize whites." Those "white people who desire change" should go "where the problem (of racism) is most manifest," in their own communities where power has been created "for the express purpose of denying Blacks human dignity and self-determination."


text: Even without embracing an explicitly separatist agenda, many veteran project directors accepted the case that the presence of white organizers undermined black self-confidence. (Although overridden, on that basis Oretha Castle Haley already in 1962 had suspended whites from the CORE chapter in New Orleans). Julian Bond later reflected:


text: the successes Freedom Summer achieved resulted from its embrace of a paradox — it tried to fight bigotry by appealing to people more concerned about whites, not blacks. Appealing to the nation's racism accepted white supremacy. By acknowledging its dependence on whites to popularize the civil rights struggle in the South, SNCC contradicted its rhetorical belief in the equal worth of all races, and undermined its insistence that indigenous blacks were best prepared to lead the struggle for their deliverance from white dominance.


text: Yet like Forman (now urging the study of Marxism), Carmichael hesitated to accept the implication that whites should be excluded from the movement. It was in December that he led the SNCC national executive in a narrow decision (19 in favor, 18 against and 24 abstentions) to ask white co-workers and volunteers to leave. In May 1967 the Coordinating Committee formally asked its non-black staff to resign. Whites should concentrate on organizing poor white communities and leave SNCC to promote African-American self-reliance.


text: Carmichael had been working with a voter registration project in Alabama that had taken what, at the time, may have seemed an equally momentous step. In the face of murderous Klan violence, organizers for the Lowndes County Freedom Organization openly carried arms. Participating in the Selma to Montgomery march, Carmichael had stopped off in the county in March 1965. Local registration efforts were being led by John Hulett who that month, with John C. Lawson, a preacher, became the first two black voters in Lowndes County in more than six decades.


text: Carmichael gained the confidence of local residents when, handing out voter registration material at a local school, he refused to be intimidated by local police: they were either to arrest him or leave. With SNCC workers then "swarmed" by young people, Carmichael took the initiative to help form the LCFO with Hulett, its first chair. The organization would not only register voters but, as a party, run candidates for office—its symbol, a rampant black panther, representing black "strength and dignity".


text: Hulett warned the state of Alabama that it had a last chance to peacefully grant African Americans their rights: "We're out to take power legally, but if we're stopped by the government from doing it legally, we're going to take it the way everyone else took it, including the way the Americans took it in the American Revolution." Certain the federal government was not going to protect him and his fellow LCFO members, Hulett told a federal registrar, "if one of our candidates gets touched, we're going to take care of the murderer ourselves."


text: While other white SNCC activists in the Broad Street Park, Greenwood, crowd that affirmed Carmichael's call for Black Power were bewildered, Peggy Terry recalls "there was never any rift in my mind or my heart. I just felt Black people were doing what they should be doing. We reached a period in the civil rights movement when Black people felt they weren't being given the respect they should have, and I agreed. White liberals ran everything." The message to white activists, "organize your own", was one that Terry took home with her to uptown, "Hillbilly Harlem", Chicago. This was the neighborhood in which, having taken the prompt the year before, Casey Hayden had already been working, organizing welfare mothers into a union. She was "on loan" from SNCC to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Like other new left groups, SDS did not view a self-consciously black SNCC as separatist. Rather it was seen as the vanguard of a prospective "interracial movement of the poor". Accepting the Vine Street challenge, the goal was no longer integration but what Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was to project as the "rainbow coalition".


text: In the South, as SNCC began turning them away white volunteers moved over to the New Orleans-based Southern Conference Education Fund with which Ella Baker had been working since the 1950s. There, in effort to advance a coalition agenda, they joined Bob Zellner, the SNCC's first white field organizer and son of a former Klansman, in working with Carl and Anne Braden to organize white students and poor whites.


text: The Meredith shooting in June 1966 had been preceded in January by the killing of Sammy Younge Jr., the first black college student to be killed as a result of his involvement in the civil rights movement, and by the acquittal of his killer. SNCC took the occasion to denounce the Vietnam War, the first statement of its kind by a major civil rights organization.


text: "The murder of Samuel Young in Tuskegee, Alabama," SNCC proposed, "is no different than the murder of peasants in Vietnam, for both Young and the Vietnamese sought, and are seeking, to secure the rights guaranteed them by law. In each case, the United States government bears a great part of the responsibility for these deaths." In the face of a government that "has never guaranteed the freedom of oppressed citizens, and is not yet truly determined to end the rule of terror and oppression within its own borders," where," it asked, "is the draft for the freedom fight in the United States." It could longer countenance the "hypocrisy" of a call upon "negroes ... to stifle the liberation of Vietnam, to preserve a 'democracy' which does not exist for them at home."


text: At an SDS-organized conference at UC Berkeley in October 1966, Carmichael challenged the white left to escalate their resistance to the military draft in a manner similar to the black movement. Some participants in the August 1965 Watts Uprising and in the ghetto rebellions that followed had already associated their actions with opposition to the Vietnam War, and SNCC had first disrupted an Atlanta draft board in August 1966. According to historians Joshua Bloom and Waldo Martin, SDS's first Stop the Draft Week of October 1967 was "inspired by Black Power [and] emboldened by the ghetto rebellions." SNCC appear to have originated the popular anti-draft slogan: "Hell no! We won't go!"


text: By early 1967, SNCC was approaching bankruptcy. The call for Black Power and the departure of white activists did not go down well with the liberal foundations and churches in the North. This was at a time when SNCC organizers were themselves heading North to the "ghettoes" where, as the urban riots of the mid-1960s had demonstrated, victories at lunch counters and ballot boxes in the South counted for little. Julian Bond recounts projects being:established in Washington, D.C., to fight for home rule; in Columbus, Ohio, where a community foundation was organized; in New York City's Harlem, where SNCC workers organized early efforts at community control of public schools; in Los Angeles, where SNCC helped monitor local police and joined an effort at creating a 'Freedom City' in black neighborhoods; and in Chicago, where SNCC workers began to build an independent political party and demonstrated against segregated schools.As part of this northern community-organizing strategy, SNCC seriously considered an alliance with Saul Alinsky's mainstream-church supported Industrial Areas Foundation. But Alinsky had little patience or understanding for SNCC's new rhetoric. On stage with Carmichael in Detroit, Alinsky was scathing when, pressed for an example of "Black Power", the SNCC leader cited the IAF's-mentored FIGHT community organization in Rochester, New York. The example was proof that Carmichael and his friends needed to stop "going round yelling 'Black Power!'" and "really go down and organize." It is simple, according to Alinsky: it's "called...community power, and if the community is black, it's black power."


text: In May 1967, Carmichael relinquished the SNCC chairmanship and speaking out against U.S. policy traveled to Cuba, China, North Vietnam, and finally to Ahmed Sékou Touré's Guinea. Returning to the United States in January 1968 he accepted an invitation to become honorary Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Inspired by John Hulet's stand and borrowing the LCFO's black panther moniker, the party had been formed by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland, California, in October 1966. For Carmichael the goal was a nation-wide Black United Front.


text: Carmichael's replacement, H. Rap Brown (later known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) tried to hold what he now called the Student "National" Coordinating Committee to an alliance with the Panthers. Like Carmichael, Rap Brown had come to view nonviolence as a tactic rather than as a foundational principle. Violence, he famously quipped, was "as American as cherry pie".


text: In June 1968 the SNCC national executive emphatically rejected the association with the Black Panthers. This was followed in July by a "violent confrontation" in New York City with James Forman, who had resigned as the Panther's Minister of Foreign Affairs and was then heading up the city's SNCC operation. In the course of a "heated discussion" Panthers accompanying Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver, the Panthers' Minister of Information, reportedly thrust a pistol was into Forman's mouth. For Forman and SNCC this was "the last straw". Carmichael was expelled ("engaging in a power struggle" that "threatened the existence of the organization")—and "Forman wound up first in hospital, and later in Puerto Rico, suffering from a nervous breakdown".


text: The "New York Times" reported that it was the "opinion of most people in the movement" that the SNCC Carmichael had left was "pre-Watts", while the Panthers were "post-Watts". The 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles, they believed, had marked "the end of the middle-class-oriented civil right movement".


text: Rap Brown himself resigned as SNCC chairman after being indicted for inciting to riot in Cambridge, Maryland, in 1967. On March 9, 1970, two SNCC workers, Ralph Featherstone and William ("Che") Payne, died on a road approaching Bel Air, Maryland, when a bomb on the front floorboard of their car exploded. The bomb's origin is disputed: some say the bomb was planted in an assassination attempt, and others say Payne was intentionally carrying it to the courthouse where Brown was to be tried.


text: Ella Baker said that "SNCC came North at a time when the North was in a ferment that led to various interpretations on what was needed to be done. With its own frustrations, it could not take the pace-setter role it took in the South."


text: These "frustrations" may in part have been fed by undercover agents. Like other potentially "subversive" groups, SNCC had become a target of the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's general COINTELPRO directive was for agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities and leadership of the movements they infiltrated.


text: By the beginning of 1970, surveillance had everywhere effectively ceased for lack of SNCC activity—save in New York City from where the last FBI report was filed in December 1973.


text: Experienced organizers and staff had moved on. For many the years of "hard work at irregular, subsistence-level pay, in an atmosphere of constant tension" had been as much as they could bear. Some went over to the Black Panthers. Others were to follow Forman into the Black Economic Development Council (whose key demand was reparations for the nation's history of racial exploitation). A greater loss had been to the Democrats (it was after merging with the Alabama Democratic Party in 1970 that LCFO candidates began winning public offices, Hulett becoming county Sheriff) and to Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Charlie Cobb recalls: After we got the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and Voting Rights Act in 1965, a lot of groups that we had cultivated were absorbed into the Democratic Party ... a lot more money came into the states we were working in. A lot of the people we were working with became a part of Head Start and various kinds of poverty programs. We were too young to really know how to respond effectively. How could we tell poor sharecroppers or maids making a few dollars a day to walk away from poverty program salaries or stipends?


text: As their numbers diminished, SNCC veteran Clayborne Carson found staff cultivating the skills for "organizational infighting" rather than "those that had enabled SNCC to inspire thousands of people outside the group during its years of greatest influence." Attempting to gain the trust of beleaguered communities, "develop indigenous leadership, and build strong local institutions," was no longer regarded as sufficiently "revolutionary."


text: The judgement of Charles McDew, SNCC's second chairman (1961–1963), is that the organization was not designed to last beyond its mission of winning civil rights for blacks, and that at the founding meetings most participants expected it to last no more than five years:


text: First, we felt if we go more than five years without the understanding that the organization would be disbanded, we run the risk of becoming institutionalized or being more concerned with trying to perpetuate the organization and in doing so, giving up the freedom to act and to do. ... The other thing is that by the end of that time you'd either be dead or crazy …


text: By the time of its dissolution, many of the controversial ideas that once had defined SNCC's radicalism had become widely accepted among African Americans.


text: In impressing upon the young student activists the principle "those who do the work, make the decisions," Ella Baker had hoped the SNCC would avoid the SCLC's reproduction of the organization and experience of the church: women form the working body and men assume the headship. In SNCC black women did emerge as among the movement's most dynamic and courageous organizers and thinkers.


text: In addition to Diane Nash, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Oretha Castle Haley, and others already mentioned, these women included Tuskegee student-body president, Gwen Patton; Mississippi Delta field secretary, Cynthia Washington; Sammy Younge's teacher, Jean Wiley; head of COFO's Mississippi operations, Muriel Tillinghast; Natchez, Mississippi, project director Dorie Ladner, and her sister Joyce who, in the violence of Mississippi (and having worked with Medgar Evers), regarded their own arrests as "about the least harmful thing" that could occur; Annie Pearl Avery, who when organizing in Natchez carried a gun; MDFP state-senate candidate Victoria Gray; MFDP delegate Unita Blackwell; leader of the Cambridge Movement Gloria Richardson; Bernice Reagon of the Albany Movement's Freedom Singers; womanist theologian Prathia Hall; LCFO veteran and "Eyes on the Prize" associate producer Judy Richardson; Ruby Sales, for whom Jonathan Daniels took a fatal shot-gun blast in Hayneville, Alabama; Fay Bellamy, who ran the Selma, Alabama office; the singer Bettie Mae Fikes ("the Voice of Selma"); playwright Endesha Ida Mae Holland; Eleanor Holmes Norton, first chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and sharecroppers' daughter and author ("Coming of Age in Mississippi") Anne Moody.


text: Anne Moody recalls it was the women did the work: young black women college students and teachers were the mainstay of voter registration and of the summer Freedom Schools. Women were also the expectation when looking for local leadership. "There was always a 'mama'," one SNCC activist recalled,"usually a militant woman in the community, outspoken, understanding and willing to catch hell."


text: From the outset white students, veterans of college-town sit-ins, had been active in the movement. Among them were Ella Baker's YWCA proteges Casey Hayden and Mary King. As a Southerner, Hayden regarded the "Freedom Movement Against Segregation" as much hers as "any one else's"—"It was my freedom." But when working full-time in the black community, she was nonetheless conscious of being "a guest." (For this reason it was important to Hayden that an opportunity in 1963 to work alongside Doris Derby in starting a literacy project at Tougaloo College, Mississippi, had come to her "specifically" because she had the educational qualifications). Having dropped out of Duke University, Freedom Rider Joan Trumpauer Mulholland graduated from Tougaloo, the first white student to do so. The majority of white women drawn to the movement, however, would have been those from the north who responded to the call for volunteers to help register black voters in Mississippi during the summer of 1964. Among the few that might have had obvious qualifications was Susan Brownmiller, then a journalist. She had worked on a voter registration drive in East Harlem and organized with CORE.


text: Among the Position Papers circulated at Waveland conference in 1964, number 24 ("name withheld by request") opened with the observation that the "large committee" formed to present "crucial constitutional revisions" to the staff "was all men." After cataloguing a number of other instances in which women appear to have been sidelined, it went on to suggest that "assumptions of male superiority are as widespread and deep rooted and every much as crippling to the woman as the assumptions of white supremacy are to the Negro."


text: This paper was not the first time women had raised questions about their roles in SNCC. In the spring of 1964, a group of black and white SNCC staffers had sat-in at James Forman's office in Atlanta to protest at being burdened, and stymied in their contributions, by the assumption that it was they, the women, who would see to minute taking and other mundane office, and housekeeping, tasks: "No More Minutes Until Freedom Comes to the Atlanta Office" was Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson's placard. Like Mary King, Judy Richardson recalls the protest as being "half playful (Forman actually appearing supportive), although "the other thing was, we're not going to do this anymore." The same might be said of the Waveland paper itself. With so many women themselves "insensitive" to the "day-to-day discriminations" (who is asked to take minutes, who gets to clean Freedom House), the paper concluded that, "amidst the laughter," further discussion might be the best that could be hoped for.


text: At the time, and in "the Waveland setting," Casey Hayden, who with Mary King was soon outed as one of the authors, regarded the paper as "definitely an aside." But in the course of 1965, while working on leave for the SDS organizing women in Chicago, Hayden was to reconsider. Seeking to further "dialogue within the movement," Hayden circulated an extended version of the "memo" among 29 SNCC women veterans and, with King, had it published in the War Resisters League magazine "Liberation" under the title "Sex and Caste". Employing the movement's own rhetoric of race relations, the article suggested that, like African Americans, women can find themselves "caught up in a common-law caste system that operates, sometimes subtly, forcing them to work around or outside hierarchical structures of power." Viewed as a bridge between civil rights and women's liberation, "Sex and Caste" has since been regarded as a "key text of second-wave feminism."


text: The two other women subsequently identified as having direct authorship of the original position paper on women (which has sometimes been mistakenly attributed to Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson), Elaine Delott Baker and Emmie Schrader Adams, were also white. This, it has been suggested, was the reflection of a movement culture that gave Black women greater opportunity "to protest directly". That white women chose an anonymous paper was testimony, in effect, to the "unspoken understanding of who should speak up at meetings" that Delott Baker had identified when she joined Hayden in Mississippi in 1964. But many black women were to dispute the degree and significance of male-domination within the SNCC, denying that it had excluded them from leadership roles. Joyce Ladner's recollection of organizing Freedom Summer is of "women's full participation," and Jean Wheeler Smith's of doing in SNCC "anything I was big enough to do."


text: Historian Barbara Ransby dismisses, in particular, the suggestion that in its concluding Black Power period SNCC diminished the profile of women within the movement. She points out that Stokely Carmichael appointed several women to posts as project directors during his tenure as chairman, and that in the latter half of the 1960s, more women were in charge of SNCC projects than during the early years. On the other hand, Hayden, in the position paper she presented under her own name at Waveland, "On Structure", had seen herself defending Ella Baker's original participatory vision in which women's voices are heard precisely because decision making is not dependent on formal rank position but rather on actual work and commitment, and a movement culture that she recalls as "womanist, nurturing, and familial."


text: Frances M. Beal (who worked with SNCC's International Affairs Commission and its National Black Antiwar Antidraft Union) is in no doubt that as the SNCC moved away from "sustained community organizing toward Black Power propagandizing that was accompanied by increasing male dominance." (Beal and others objected to the James Forman's initial enthusiasm for the Black Panther Party, judging Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice", which he brought back to the office, to be the work of a "thug" and a rapist). "You're talking about liberation and freedom half the night on the racial side," she recalls of her time in the SNCC, "and then all of a sudden men are going to turn around and start talking about putting you in your place. So in 1968 we founded the SNCC Black Women's Liberation Committee to take up some of these issues."


text: With the SNCC's breakup, the Black Women's Liberation Committee became first the Black Women's Alliance and then, following an approach by revolutionary Puerto-Rican women activists, the Third World Women's Alliance in 1970. Active for another decade, the TWWA was one of the earliest groups advocating an intersectional approach to women's oppression—"the triple oppression of race, class and gender."


text: Gwendolyn Delores Robinson/Zoharah Simmons, who co-authored the Vine Street Project paper on Black Power, was struck by the contrast between the SNCC and her subsequent experience of the Nation of Islam: "there was really no place for a woman to exercise what I considered real leadership as it had been in SNCC." Breaking with the NOI's strict gendered hierarchy, she went on to identify, teach and write as an "Islamic feminist."


text: On top of seeking to increase African-American access to land through a pioneer Freedom Farm Cooperative, in 1971 Fannie Lou Hamer co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus. She emphasized the power women might have acting as a voting majority in the country regardless of race or ethnicity: "A white mother is no different from a black mother. The only thing is they haven't had as many problems. But we cry the same tears." The NWPC continues to recruit, train and support "women candidates for elected and appointed offices at all levels of government" who are "pro-choice" and who support a federal Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution.


title: Lamar University

text: Lamar University (Lamar or LU) is a public university in Beaumont, Texas. Lamar has been a member of the Texas State University System since 1995. It was the flagship institution of the former Lamar University System. As of the fall of 2021, the university enrollment was 16,191 students. Lamar University is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The university is named for Mirabeau B. Lamar, the second president of the Republic of Texas.


title: Lamar University

text: Lamar is most prominent for its intercollegiate athletic teams, the Cardinals. It has an urban setting, and the core campus of LU is 299+ acres. LU is organized into five undergraduate colleges including the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Business, Engineering, Education and Human Development, and Fine Arts and Communication; one graduate college, the College of Graduate Studies; and an honors college, the Reaud Honors College.


title: Lamar University

text: Louis R. Pietzsch founded a public junior college in Beaumont's South Park. Lamar University started on September 17, 1923 as South Park Junior College, operating on the unused third floor of the new South Park High School. Pietzsch acted as the first president of the college. South Park Junior College became the first college in Texas to receive Texas Department of Education approval during the first year of operation, and became fully accredited in 1925.


title: Lamar University

text: In 1932, the college administration, recognizing that the junior college was serving the region rather than just the community, renamed it as Lamar College. It was named for Mirabeau B. Lamar, the second president of the Republic of Texas, who arranged to set aside land in counties for public schools. A statue of him was installed in the quadrangle of the campus near the Setzer Student Center. In 1933, the college was moving toward independence from South Park High School when construction began on new facilities. By 1942, the college was completely independent of the South Park school district, and operations moved to the current campus.


title: Lamar University

text: With the end of World War II, an influx of veterans boosted enrollment. The Lamar board of trustees asked the Texas Legislature to promote Lamar College to a four-year state college. The initial attempt in 1947, led in the Texas House of Representatives by Jack Brooks and in the Texas Senate by W. R. Cousins Jr., failed, but the following year the two sponsors again advanced the bill through both houses. On June 14, 1949, Governor Beauford Jester signed the bill creating Lamar State College of Technology.


title: Lamar University

text: Enrollment continued to grow throughout the 1950s and 1960s, reaching 10,000 students. Graduate work was authorized in 1960, when master's degrees were offered in several fields. In 1969, Lamar State College opened its first branch at a center in Orange, Texas. In 1970, Lamar State College began offering its first doctoral program, the Doctor of Engineering. In 1971 the college's name was officially changed to Lamar University.


title: Lamar University

text: A group of African American veterans of World War II, barred from admission on the grounds of race and calling themselves the Negro Goodwill Council, protested to Governor Beauford Jester about the exclusion of blacks from Lamar State College. They attempted to block passage of the bill to change Lamar into a state-supported senior college, which resulted in John Gray, Lamar's president, creating a black branch of Lamar called Jefferson Junior College. It opened with evening classes at Charlton-Pollard High School. In 1952, James Briscoe, a graduate of Charlton-Pollard High School, applied to Lamar. His parents were laborers and members of the Beaumont chapter of the NAACP. The admissions office notified him that on the basis of his transcript, he was qualified to enroll for the spring term of 1951. On January 29, when Briscoe went to register for classes, Lamar's acting president G. A. Wimberly explained that a mistake had been made and suggested he apply to TSUN, now named Texas Southern University. State law, he said, created Lamar for whites only. In the summer of 1955, Versie Jackson and Henry Cooper Jr. became the lead plaintiffs of a class action lawsuit, Jackson v. McDonald, which sought to end Lamar's policy of racial segregation. Lamar Cecil, federal judge, ruled on July 30, 1956, that Lamar's “white youth” only admissions policy was unconstitutional and that September, a total of twenty-six blacks were admitted to the college amid violent protests at the campus gates and throughout the region for a number of weeks until Texas Rangers arrived and the rule of law restored.


title: Lamar University

text: In 1975, the university merged with Port Arthur College in Port Arthur, Texas, creating Lamar University-Port Arthur. In 1983, state Senator Carl A. Parker sponsored a bill creating the Lamar University System. In 1986, Lamar University-Orange and Lamar University-Port Arthur were granted accreditation separate from the main campus. Lamar Institute of Technology was created in 1990 in Beaumont to provide technical, business, health, and industrial education through programs two years or fewer in length.


title: Lamar University

text: In 1995, the Lamar University System was incorporated into the Texas State University System. In the fall of 1998, the Lamar University faculty numbered 423 and student enrollment was 8,241. Total enrollment reached 15,000 students in Fall 2012. In the late 1990s, Lamar began undertaking campus improvement projects.


title: Lamar University

text: In 2001, the university began replacing its 1960s-vintage residence halls with new apartment-style housing facilities, dubbed "Cardinal Village."


title: Lamar University

text: In March 2005, the gym underwent extensive renovation and adjacent to it, a new recreational sports center was built. The $19 million center, named the Sheila Umphrey Recreational Sports Center, opened in April 2007.


title: Lamar University

text: In August 2007, the university completed construction on Cardinal Village IV, a $16-million expansion of its residence halls. The University completed construction of Cardinal Village Phase V in August 2010 bringing on-campus housing capacity to 2,500 students.


title: Lamar University

text: The university, in anticipation of the return of football program in 2010, renovated and upgraded Provost Umphrey Stadium (formerly Cardinal Stadium) and a new state-of-the-art Dauphin Athletic Complex. In October 2014, Lamar broke ground for an administration building to be named the Wayne A. Reaud Building. The building houses the newly established Reaud Honors College. Another recent project included renovation of the Setzer Student Center. The renovation project had a $28,000,000 cost. The renovated building was opened on April 12, 2018.


title: Lamar University

text: Lamar offers 96 undergraduate, 50 master's and eight doctoral degree programs in seven academic colleges. The academic colleges are the College of Engineering, College of Education and Human Development, College of Business, College of Fine Arts and Communication, the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Graduate Studies, and the Reaud Honors College. Lamar is classified as a Doctoral Research University by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education and is one of only two universities classified as such within the Texas State University System. Lamar and Kunming University of Science and Technology in southwest China have an exchange program that allows Chinese students to attend Lamar for one year while pursuing their bachelor's degree.


title: Lamar University

text: The university also has many academic units that fall outside of the five main colleges. The College of Graduate Studies handles graduate students. The Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement offers training and support to faculty and runs the university's Active and Collaborative Engagement for Students (ACES) Program. The ACES program is designed to provide support to high risk students and integrate active learning methods into all core courses at LU. The university also provides secondary education through the Texas Academy for Leadership in the Humanities, stateu.com and the Texas Governor's School.


title: Lamar University

text: In the summer of 2009, Lamar University partnered with the University of Texas at Arlington to create an online dual credit program for high school students in Texas, stateu.com. The partnership between the two universities operates at the website stateu.com. Online dual credit courses are available for free to high school students through state funding via House Bill 3646.


title: Lamar University

text: The BAAS online degree completion program, an expansion of a degree the university has offered for almost 20 years, is offered online through Lamar University Academic Partnerships.


title: Lamar University

text: In August 2010, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) released a study on core curriculum standards for 715 four-year institutions. The study compared colleges on their commitment to core subjects deemed essential to a well-rounded, competitive education. Lamar was one of only 16 institutions to receive an A rating. The study was featured in "The Washington Post" with a tag line "Forget Harvard and think Lamar." In October 2010, the university announced they would raise admission standards for the second time in two years because of the increased enrollment. The enrollment standards increase took effect in the fall of 2011.


title: Lamar University

text: Lamar was ranked in Tier Two of "National Universities" by the U.S. News & World Report's 2015 ranking. According to the site, 76.6% of students who applied to Lamar in 2013 were admitted. Lamar is ranked in several 2015 "U.S. News & World Report" categories.


title: Lamar University

text: The College of Engineering has 10 research centers under its authority. These are coordinated under the Texas Centers for Technology Incubation (TCTI). The college also participates in the Texas Space Grant Consortium, which sponsors research on space based technologies.


title: Lamar University

text: The Dan F. Smith Department of Chemical Engineering was established with a $5 million donation from Dan F. Smith in 2009. The program continually produces the same or more M.S. in Chemical Engineering graduates than universities such as Stanford, IIT and MIT. The building housing the Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering program was dedicated the Charles and Eleanor Garrett Engineering Center in Fall 2012.


title: Lamar University

text: The Philip M. Drayer Department of Electrical Engineering was endowed with a $5 million gift from Philip M. Drayer in 2007. The department has many successful alumni in the industry including Phil Drayer (LUEE ’67), and Charles Garrett (LUEE ’59) inventor and founder of Garrett Metal Detectors.


title: Lamar University

text: The Industrial Engineering department offers two undergraduate degrees: B.S. Industrial Engineering, and B.S. in Industrial Technology; and four graduate degrees: Master of Engineering Industrial Engineering, Master of Science Industrial Engineering, Doctor of Engineering in Industrial Engineering, and Master of Engineering Management.


title: Lamar University

text: The Mechanical Engineering department offers both undergraduate degree (B.S) as well as graduate degrees, consisting of degrees programs in Master of Engineering ( M.E.), Master of Engineering Science (M.E.S) and Doctor of Engineering (D.E.). The department is affiliated with ASME and ASTM.


title: Lamar University

text: The University established the College of Business in 1972. Prior to this time, degrees in business and economics were granted by the Division of Business, which was established in 1951, and the School of Business, established in 1954. All undergraduate and graduate degree programs of the College of Business are accredited by AACSB International.


title: Lamar University

text: Four departments – Accounting and Business Law; Economics and Finance; Information Systems and Analysis; and Management and Marketing – make up the


title: Lamar University

text: College of Business. The Bachelor of Business Administration degree is granted in all areas. A Bachelor of Science degree is granted in Economics. In Fall 2008, the College of Business acquired a new program, the Reese Construction Management program, with a $1.25 million donation from Jerry and Sheila Reese. The program is headed by Steve McCrary Ph.D.


title: Lamar University

text: The Aspen Institute Center for Business Education's 2011–2012 edition of Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranked Lamar's MBA program in the top 100 in the world for the third consecutive year. In November 2010, Janie Nelson Steinhagen and Mark Steinhagen created the Janie Nelson Steinhagen and Mark Steinhagen Global Fellows Endowment in the College of Business. The endowment will provide graduate students and faculty with opportunities to gain first-hand knowledge of the global marketplace. Students taking advantage of the Steinhagen Global Fellows Endowment will travel abroad accompanied by a College of Business faculty Steinhagen Global Fellow. They will participate in classes and seminars with other students, visit businesses and experience the culture of the country – all at an advanced level.


title: Lamar University

text: Through the Entrepreneurship Lecture Series, endowed by a business alumnus, students and faculty have the opportunity to be inspired by the world's leading entrepreneurs. The series brings high profile and dynamic speakers to the campus yearly.


title: Lamar University

text: The College of Education and Human Development comprises five departments: Educational Leadership, Family & Consumer Sciences, Health & Kinesiology, Counseling and Special Populations and Professional Pedagogy.


title: Lamar University

text: The teacher preparation and education graduate programs of the College of Education and Human Development are accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) at both the initial teacher preparation and advanced preparation levels. Lamar is among the largest educators of teachers in the nation due to its large Masters in Education program.


title: Lamar University

text: The College hosts the Governor's School of Texas, a three-week summer program for gifted high school students.


title: Lamar University

text: The College of Arts and Sciences' fields of study include Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Biology, Chemistry, Nursing, Music, English, Earth Science, Foreign Language, History, Political Science, Criminal Justice and Psychology. The College is home to the JoAnne Gay Dishman School of Nursing. The nursing department consists of BSN and ADN degrees. The master of nursing online program in the Lamar University JoAnne Gay Dishman Department of Nursing has been ranked second in the nation for excellence in faculty credentials and training by U.S. News & World Report in Fall 2012.


title: Lamar University

text: The College of Fine Arts and Communication offers degree programs in communication fields such as Journalism and Broadcasting, Speech and Hearing sciences, Sign Language, and Deaf Education. Lamar University is one of five universities in Texas which offer a clinical doctorate in audiology program. Fine arts degree programs such as Art, Theater, Music and Dance department programs are housed in the Music, Theater, and Art buildings. The college is home to the Mary Morgan Moore Department of Music. The department of communications operates LUTV, a local educational access television station, and KVLU (FM 91.3) a National Public Radio station. The Department of Art's faculty includes internationally acclaimed artists Keith Carter and Prince Varughese Thomas.


title: Lamar University

text: The Reaud Honors College, established in the fall of 2014, became the ninth honors college in the state of Texas. The honors program has been part of the university's academic offering since 1963. The 45,000 sq ft Wayne A. Reaud Building, which houses the honors college as well as university administration offices, broke ground on October 7, 2014. The honors college is a member of the National Collegiate Honors Council and the Great Plains Honor Council.


title: Lamar University

text: The Lamar University campus is located off of Martin Luther King Boulevard, near U.S. Highway 69, in the southeast part of Beaumont, Texas. The campus is from the Jack Brooks Regional Airport, from the Neches River and from Downtown Beaumont. The Big Thicket National Preserve, Village Creek State Park, and the Gulf of Mexico are all located within 30 minutes of the school. Facilities include the 10,080 seat Montagne Center, the eight-story Mary and John Gray Library and the 16,000 seat Provost Umphrey Stadium.


title: Lamar University

text: Cardinal Village is the university's community of apartment-style dormitories, part of Lamar University's investment in student life on campus. As of 2010, there were five "Phases" of Cardinal Village with the capacity to house 2500 students. Each room includes a private bedroom, furnished with the necessities of college life such as a mini-refrigerator, microwave, computer desk, telephone outlets, cable TV access, and easy connectivity to the University's network. Cardinal Village housing also offers community centers, study areas, meeting rooms, fitness centers, a swimming pool, on-site laundry facilities, basketball and volleyball courts, social lounges, and parking. During the summer of 2011 all five phases of Cardinal village were renamed for previously-demolished residence halls on campus: Phase I – Gentry Hall, Phase II – Morris Hall, Phase III – Combs Hall, Phase IV – Campbell Hall and Phase V – Monroe Hall.


title: Lamar University

text: The tallest structure on campus at eight stories, the Mary and John Gray Library serves as a landmark for the university. Named after Mary and John Gray, considered to be the “first couple” of the university, the red brick structure took two and a half years to complete. The library holds extensive physical and digital collections, including 395,003 physical books, 99,548 e-books, and 142 digital databases, and provides access to current journal content from 48,851 journals. The library provides its users with a variety of digital tools, such as the online catalog and EBSCO EDS, an integrated search discovery system that allows single searches across multiple databases. Faculty and students can gain access to materials not held by our library through a robust interlibrary loan service and document delivery, in which we purchase journal articles on demand at no cost to the user. A service-oriented staff provides face-to-face, phone, and chat research assistance, as well as extensive subject guides and self-paced online tutorials to assist all Lamar users in using library resources to best advantage.


title: Lamar University

text: The Sheila Umphrey Recreational Sports Center was completed in 2007 at a cost of $19 million. The construction included renovation of the McDonald Gym, which had previously served as the university's sports center and home of the volleyball program. The naming of the center was made possible by a $5 million donation by local attorney Walter Umphrey in 2005. The center includes a cardiovascular room, a one-tenth-mile walking/jogging track, a climbing wall, basketball, indoor floor hockey/soccer arena, volleyball, badminton courts, and racquetball courts. The center also sports a wellness and fitness center, health food café and juice bar. The lounge areas include pool tables, putting green, air hockey, foosball, video games and large screen TV. The center is home to the Recreational Sports Office, which organizes and hosts intramural sports leagues and sport clubs teams such as volleyball, basketball, flag football, cricket, badminton, indoor soccer, pool, ultimate frisbee, and tennis. The tennis club made back-to-back appearances at the national tournament as they won 'Club of the Year' for 2015 and 2016.


title: Lamar University

text: The University's Brooks-Shivers Dining Hall was completed in 2006 for $6.2 million and is named for Southeast Texas congressman Jack Brooks and former Texas governor Allan Shivers. The hall is set on a food court-style floor plan that offers a variety of seating areas from barstools to booths. Dining options range from a salad bar, grill and central bakery to pizza, stir fry, Mexican food, pasta, deli and soup stations. The facility has interiors which include artwork created by Lamar University art students and faculty. On-campus food services are provided by external company Chartwells, which, in addition to the dining hall, provides options including franchised fast food chains and coffee shops.


title: Lamar University

text: The Setzer Student Center, known colloquially "The SET", hosts social and cultural activities throughout the year and is the hub for campus student organizations. The lounge areas, Mirabeau's Café and the Cardinal's Nest eatery provide students with a place to socialize and relax. The Setzer Center also houses the bookstore, which stocks textbooks, school supplies, and Lamar University/Lamar Cardinals merchandise. Administrative divisions located in the Set include the Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement and the Office of Planning and Assessment.


title: Lamar University

text: During the Spring 2012 semester, the Student Government Association, led by then-president Andrew Greenberg, passed a student-wide referendum to finance renovation and remodeling the Setzer Student Center. The vote was passed with 81% approval. The $28 million project was completed in 2018 with reopening of the center on April 12, 2018.


title: Lamar University

text: The Dishman Art Museum serves as a teaching facility and art museum for Lamar. It was established in 1983. The museum offers students an opportunity to experience diverse styles that reflect international trends, as well as a chance to exhibit their own work. Admission is free. The museum's permanent collection includes 19th- and 20th-century paintings from American and European artists, as well as tribal art from Africa, New Guinea, and Pre-Columbian Mexico.


title: Lamar University

text: The Spindletop-Gladys City Museum is an open-air museum. The museum commemorates the 1901 discovery of oil by the Lucas Gusher in Beaumont. The oil discovery was located on Spindletop salt dome in South Beaumont. The boomtown that sprung up around the well was known as Gladys City. 100,000 barrels of oil were soon produced per day, making it the most productive in the world at that time. This productivity sparked an oil boom in Texas that continues to this day.


title: Lamar University

text: The "Lamar Cardinals" (or "Cards") refers to the collegiate athletic teams of Lamar University. The inception of the nickname "Cardinals" dates back to the school's name change to Lamar in 1932. The teams compete in NCAA Division I athletics for all of its varsity sports. Lamar has participated in practically every level of collegiate athletics from its inception as a junior college in 1923 to its gaining university status in 1971. Lamar fields teams in seventeen sports in the Southland Conference. A founding member of the Southland, Lamar has competed in the conference in several stints ranging from 1963-1987, 1998-2021, and then again beginning in 2022 following a single year in the WAC.


title: Lamar University

text: Lamar sponsors fifteen teams (seven men's and eight women's). The newest teams are the reinstated football team beginning in 2010, and women's softball which began play in the 2013 season. The Cardinals participate in men's and women's basketball, golf, indoor and outdoor track and field, cross country, tennis, women's soccer, softball and volleyball, and men's baseball and football.


title: Lamar University

text: Under former head coach Larry Kennan, Cardinal fans responded when he delivered a 6-3-2 club in 1979, his first season with the team. Lamar set all-time attendance records under Kennan by averaging 16,380 in 1980. Games against Louisiana Tech (17,600) and West Texas State (17,250) rank second and third, respectively, behind the standing-room-only 18,500 Baylor drew for the 1980 opener. The football program's signature win came on September 5, 1981 in Waco; the Cardinals triumphed with an 18–17 win over the UPI #20 ranked Baylor Bears. In 1987 Lamar football went independent to join the American South Conference, and the program was dropped altogether in 1989.


title: Lamar University

text: On January 30, 2008, 78% of Lamar students voted to approve the athletics fee required for football's resurrection. This vote set in motion the football team's return for the 2010 season. Regents of The Texas State University System approved the athletics fee to reinstate football at its regular meeting February 20, 2008. On May 19, 2008, Ray Woodard was chosen as head coach for the football program. Thanks to a major gift from an anonymous donor, the football field now bears the name W.S. “Bud” Leonard Field, named for a former player and longtime Lamar advocate and regent.


title: Lamar University

text: The Lamar University Cardinals football team returned to the gridiron after a 21-year hiatus, on September 4, 2010. The first-year squad compiled a respectable 5–6 record. The Cardinals opened Southland Conference play in 2011. The return of football to Lamar University is in part due to a generous donation from Beaumont-based law firm Provost Umphrey. To help renovate the stadium, Walter Umphrey and his wife Sheila also made a personal donation. The stadium is now named Provost Umphrey Stadium.


title: Lamar University

text: In December 2016, Mike Schultz was named the program's second head coach since its return. After recording just one winning record in its first nine seasons since being brought back, Schultz guided the Cardinals to a 7–5 record and a third-place finish in the Southland Conference in just his second season. After a 1–4 start to the year, LU closed the regular season by rattling off six-straight wins to earn the program's first berth in the NCAA FCS Playoffs where it faced Northern Iowa.


title: Lamar University

text: Founded in 1924, the men's and women's basketball teams at Lamar have both advanced deep into the NCAA tournament. The men's team has four NIT appearances, six NCAA tournament appearances, four second round appearances, and one sweet 16 appearance. The women's team has four WNIT appearance, two NCAA tournament appearances, and one Elite Eight appearance.


title: Lamar University

text: The men's program has been coached by fourteen head coaches including Billy Tubbs, Pat Foster, Pat Knight and Tic Price, the current head coach. The women's team has been coached by thirteen head coaches including current head coach, Aqua Franklin.


title: Lamar University

text: Over the years, both the men's and women's programs have had the highest average attendance in the Southland Conference. Both play in the 10,080-seat Montagne Center.


title: Lamar University

text: The Lamar Cardinals baseball team represents Lamar University and competes in the Southland Conference, and is an NCAA Division I program. Current head coach Will Davis was hired from LSU in January 2016 to replace legendary coach Jim Gilligan. A former player, Gilligan guided the program for all but five seasons (1987–91) from 1973 through 2016. The LU Hall of Honor and Texas Baseball Hall of Fame member won more than 1,300 games during his career. The Cardinals baseball teams lead the Southland Conference with 10 regular season titles and has participated in the NCAA Division I Regionals 13 times.


title: Lamar University

text: In fall 2021, Lamar enrolled over 17,000 students. The student body was 36% male and 64% female. Ethnically, 47% identified as White, 25% Black/African-American, 18% Hispanic or Latino, 4% Asian, 3% International, and 2% Other.


title: Lamar University

text: The "University Press", also known as the "UP", is the student newspaper of Lamar. The paper was previously known as the "S'Park Plug" and the "Red Bird" before becoming the "University Press" in recognition of Lamar gaining university status in 1971.


title: Lamar University

text: "91.3 FM KVLU public radio is an NPR affiliate station broadcasting throughout southeast Texas. It is licensed to Lamar University with studios located on campus and a transmitter site located in Rose City. Launched in 1974, the station operates independently and features a diverse 24/7 schedule of programs including NPR news morning, midday and afternoon as well as locally produced music programs, local features and radio documentaries, etc. As part of the University's College of Fine Arts and Communication and the Lamar University Media Alliance, KVLU also serves as a real world laboratory, providing training in audio broadcasting and radio production for students interested in pursuing careers in communication. The station is largely member supported with additional support coming from the University and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as well as program underwriters."


title: Lamar University

text: LUTV News is the weekly newscast produced by students in the Department of Communication at Lamar University. Broadcast journalism students are required to pitch, shoot, write and edit news content for each week's 30-minute program. Production is led by student producers, directors and crew members, which gives students practical news production experience. LUTV News is broadcast via Spectrum Cable on LUTV-7 in Beaumont, Texas.


title: Lamar University

text: Airing on Time Warner Digital Cable channels 0007 and 6.7, LUTV is the official channel of Lamar University and is owned and operated by the Department of Communication and Media. Ch. 7 airs a wide array of programming such as student/faculty films and artworks, promotional videos, distinguished lectures and events, sports games, talk shows, student produced newscasts, public domain films, and documentaries.


title: Lamar University

text: The Lamar University Media Alliance (LUMA), consisting of KVLU public radio (91.3 FM); LUTV Productions and LUTV 7 Cablecasting provides outreach programming to serve the general public and hands-on instructional opportunities for students.


title: Lamar University

text: Lamar boasts 19 national fraternities and sororities. College Panhellenic Council (CPC) is the governing body for the three National Pan-Hellenic Council chapters at LU. National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) governs the nine historically African American fraternities and sororities. The Inter-Fraternity Council (IFC) governs men's fraternities. The Multicultural Greek Council (MGC) governs three multicultural Greek-letter organizations, two sororities and one fraternity.


title: Lamar University

text: The Alumni of Lamar University have gone on to distinguish themselves in every aspect of society. The school has an alumni base numbering over 75,000.


title: Lamar University

text: Lamar has the highest median starting and mid-career salary of the four universities in the Texas State University System.


title: Lamar University

text: Several Cardinals have gone on to distinguish themselves nationally and internationally in sports, such as PGA Tour golfer Chris Stroud, MLB player Kevin Millar, and college coaches such as Billy Tubbs and Jim Gilligan.


title: A Tout le Monde

text: "A Tout le Monde" is a song by American heavy metal band Megadeth, featured on their 1994 studio album "Youthanasia". It was released as a single in February 1995 through Capitol Records. The song was later remade and reissued as "À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)", featuring Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil, on Megadeth's 2007 studio album "United Abominations". The song's chorus, ""à tout le monde, à tous mes amis, je vous aime, je dois partir"", translated into English is, "to the whole world, to all my friends, I love you, I have to go", which prompted controversy after accusations that it was pro-suicide.


title: A Tout le Monde

text: The music video for "A Tout le Monde" was banned by MTV, who claimed it was pro-suicide. However, in an interview conducted around 1994, Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine stated: It's not a suicide song. What it is, it's, you, it's when people have a loved one that dies and they end on a bad note, you know, they wish that they could say something to them. So this is an opportunity for the deceased to say something before they go. And it was my impression of what I would like to say to people, if I had say, 3 seconds to do so in life before I died I'd say to the entire world, to all my friends, I love you all, and now I must go. These are the last words I'll ever speak, and they'll set me free. I don't have to say I'm sorry, I don't have to say I'm going to miss you, or I'll wait for ya. You know, I'll just say I loved you all, good, bad, indifferent, I loved you all.


title: A Tout le Monde

text: The song's title, ""A tout le monde"", is French for ""To all the world"" or ""To everyone"". The song's chorus, ""à tout le monde, à tous mes amis, je vous aime, je dois partir"", translated to English is respectively: "To everyone, to all my friends, I love you, I have to leave".


title: A Tout le Monde

text: The original release of the song does not feature a grave accent on the letter "à" anywhere within the title, liner notes, lyrics or cover art. This was later rectified on the 2007 version.


title: A Tout le Monde

text: The song was remade in 2007 on the album "United Abominations" as "À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)", sung as a duet between Mustaine and Cristina Scabbia, singer of Italian metal band Lacuna Coil. The guitars for the song are all in standard tuning (bringing the song to F-sharp minor), whereas the original was recorded a half-step down in E♭ tuning (which put the song in F minor). The new version is also slightly faster, and the guitar solo performed by Glen Drover is musically 4 bars longer than the original by Marty Friedman. "À Tout le Monde (Set Me Free)" was the first single released from the album, with a new music video made for it. The song's title has been revised in order to distinguish it from the original, although this alteration does not appear on some pressings of the album. The title also features the aforementioned grave accent on the letter "à", which was omitted on the original version.


title: A Tout le Monde

text: On June 11, 2007, the video for the single won its sixteenth victory in the context of the one-on-one video show, "L'Ultime Combat des Clips", aired Monday to Thursday on the French-Canadian music channel, Musique Plus. Winning sixteen consecutive times earned them a star in the show's hall of fame. Despite the accolades, both the original music video for "A Tout le Monde" and its remake remain banned by MTV, possibly for lyrical content that they deem to be pertaining to committing suicide. The duet version did, however, air on MTV2's "Headbangers Ball" upon release.


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!" (also written "Hey Hey Rise Up") is a song by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on streaming and downloading platforms on . It is based on a 1914 Ukrainian anthem, "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow", and features vocals in Ukrainian by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the Ukrainian band BoomBox. The track is the first entirely new piece of music recorded by Pink Floyd since "Louder than Words" was released with "The Endless River" in 2014. Guitarist David Gilmour was inspired to record it in support of Ukraine during the 2022 Russian invasion. The band both released the track as a single commercially and also put out a music video, directed by Mat Whitecross, centered around images of life struggling amidst warfare. A physical edition of the single on CD and vinyl was released on 15 July 2022, which also included a new version of "A Great Day for Freedom".


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: It is Pink Floyd’s first song consisting of entirely new material since the recording of "The Division Bell".


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: In February 2022, the Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk, who had abandoned a US tour by his band BoomBox to serve in the Ukrainian military in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, recorded an a capella version of the first verse of the Ukrainian anthem "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow" (). The anthem was written by Stepan Charnetskii in 1914 to commemorate the Sich Riflemen. Khlyvnyuk, wearing fatigues and carrying an automatic rifle, videoed his performance in Sophia Square in Kyiv, with the Bell Tower of Saint Sophia Cathedral in the background, and posted it on Instagram on 27 February.


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour was shown the Instagram post by the Ukrainian artist Janina Pedan, who is married to his son Charlie, and was inspired to record something in support of Ukraine in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. He contacted Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and suggested they collaborate. Pink Floyd had been inactive for several years, and Gilmour had said several times that the band would not reunite; however, the war encouraged him to release the track as Pink Floyd as it was a "big platform" and it was "vitally" important to raise awareness about the war. He said: "It's a really difficult and frustrating thing to see this extraordinarily crazy, unjust attack by a major power on an independent, peaceful, democratic nation."


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: Khlyvnyuk, while recovering in hospital from a shrapnel wound sustained in defence of Ukraine, gave Gilmour his blessing to use his vocals. Gilmour wrote extra music, including a guitar solo.


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: Gilmour had previously been backed by BoomBox—without Khlyvnyuk—in 2015, at Koko, London, in support of the Belarus Free Theatre.


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: Pink Floyd had already removed music from streaming services in Russia and Belarus. Their work with Roger Waters remained, leading to speculation that Waters had blocked its removal; Gilmour said only that "I was disappointed ... Read into that what you will."


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: In an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, David Gilmour said the song was a "one-off for charity and Pink Floyd has no plans to reform".


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!" was recorded on 30 March 2022 at Gilmour's home by Gilmour and Mason with Guy Pratt, bassist with Pink Floyd since 1987, and keyboardist Nitin Sawhney. It was Sawhney's first work with Pink Floyd. Gala Wright, the daughter of late Pink Floyd keyboardist and founding member Richard Wright, was also present during the recording.


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: The song—whose title comes from the last line of "Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow", which some translations give as "Hey, hey, rise up and rejoice"—opens with a sample from another recording of Charnetskii's anthem, by the Veryovka Ukrainian Folk Choir.


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: The music video was directed by Mat Whitecross, also on 30 March, on a set designed by Pedan. In the video, the band play while Khlyvnyuk's Sophia Square video is projected behind them. The performance is intercut with scenes of war damage, survivors and refugees in Ukraine. Mason's drums are decorated with reproductions of a painting by Maria Primachenko, a Ukrainian artist, several of whose works were destroyed in a fire caused by Russian shelling during the invasion.


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: The single's artwork depicts a band logotype (in the style of Gerald Scarfe's lettering for "The Wall" patterned after the Ukrainian flag alongside a sunflower, the national flower of Ukraine, in a 2019 painting by Cuban artist Yosan Leon. The choice of flower also references a remark from a Ukrainian woman who was seen handing sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers in the early days of the invasion, telling them to carry the seeds in their pockets so that sunflowers will grow from their dead bodies.


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: The song was released on digital platforms and streaming services on 8 April 2022; it is Pink Floyd's first newly recorded material since 2014's "Louder Than Words". It additionally is their first release since 1983's "The Final Cut" to be released without the inclusion of the late musician Richard Wright. A physical version of the single on both CD and vinyl was released on 15 July 2022, which included a newly reworked version of "A Great Day for Freedom" as a b-side. Proceeds from "Hey, Hey, Rise Up!" will go to the charitable organization Ukraine Humanitarian Relief Fund.


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: The music journalist Mark Savage of BBC News praised the song, saying that it was "built around a spine-tingling refrain" by Khlyvnyuk. Khlyvnyuk said the song was "fabulous" and thanked Pink Floyd for their efforts. Some fans felt that it was improper for the group to release music as Pink Floyd without the late member Richard Wright or former member Roger Waters. "Classic Rock" journalist Fraser Lewry disagreed, writing: "When thousands have been killed and millions have fled their homes, moaning about the absence of a band member [Waters] who left 37 years ago is churlish at best. At worst, it's contemptuous of the suffering."


title: Hey, Hey, Rise Up!

text: Based on downloads and sales in its first two days, the single appeared on the midweek UK Singles Chart at number 5. However, it debuted at number 49 on the final chart.


title: Sophie Anderton

text: Sophie Louise Balinska-Jundzillova (born 14 May 1977) is an English model and reality television personality.


title: Sophie Anderton

text: Her modelling career included a campaign for Gossard bras in 1996, and later included appearances for a range of other brands. Since 2000 she has also appeared in television programmes including "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!" and "Celebrity Big Brother".


title: Sophie Anderton

text: Anderton was born in Bristol, England. In 1996 she appeared in the Gossard Glossies and Gossard Wonderbra "Girl in the grass" national advertising campaign shot by Herb Ritts, which included the strapline "Who said a woman couldn't get pleasure from something soft?" The campaign attracted a record number of complaints (321) to the Advertising Standards Authority, none of which were upheld.


title: Sophie Anderton

text: Anderton has modeled for Gossard (1998), the Flora London Marathon, British Berries summer fruits (2006), "Maxim", Peacocks and La Senza and graced the cover of British "GQ".


title: Sophie Anderton

text: In 2004, Anderton was a contestant on the fourth series of ITV's "I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!". She appeared in the TV series "Simply the Best" and a celebrity edition of the UK version of "Fear Factor". In 2005, she appeared on the programme "Cold Turkey", which documented her attempts to quit smoking cigarettes; she later became a representative for a smoking cessation program called QS7D (Quit Smoking in 7 Days).


title: Sophie Anderton

text: In 2006, Anderton was a contestant on ITV's "Love Island". In the same year, she appeared on Sky1's "Cirque de Celebrité" but withdrew after sustaining ligament damage.


title: Sophie Anderton

text: In August 2013, Anderton became a housemate on the twelfth series of "Celebrity Big Brother". She was eliminated from competition in an episode that aired on 3 September 2013.


title: Sophie Anderton

text: From 2004 until 2007, Anderton was a Patron of the original Action on Addiction in London, a charity and addiction research center investigating drug and alcohol dependence.


title: Sophie Anderton

text: In 2011, Anderton told the Belfast Telegraph that she had been misdiagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder in 2006. She said, "I had depression. They wrongly diagnosed me and put me on a bucket load of blood pills. It was absolutely bonkers."


title: Sophie Anderton

text: In June 2009, Anderton complained to the police about dozens of text messages left on her mobile phone. A man was eventually charged with harassment and, in March 2010, convicted.


title: Sophie Anderton

text: In an August 2013 interview, conducted just before she entered the house for her participation in "Celebrity Big Brother 12", Anderton acknowledged past difficulties with substance abuse.


title: Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party

text: The Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party () was the leader of the Chinese Communist Party. The position was established at the 8th National Congress in 1945 and abolished at the 12th National Congress in 1982, being replaced by the general secretary. Offices with the name Chairman of the Central Executive Committee and Chairman of the Central Committee existed in 1922–1923 and 1928–1931, respectively.


title: Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party

text: Between 1922 and 1925, Chen Duxiu (still Party Secretary) served as chairman of the Central Executive Committee (), but the name was changed to "General Secretary of the Central Executive Committee" in 1925. The post was first introduced in March 1943, when the Politburo decided to discharge Zhang Wentian as General Secretary. As his replacement, Mao Zedong, who had been the "de facto" leader of the party since the Long March, was named Chairman of the Politburo of the CCP Central Committee (). The seventh CCP National Congress introduced the post of Chairman of the Central Committee into the party constitution, and in 1956 the General Secretary was given the day-to-day management of the Party Secretariat. The chairman was elected by the Central Committee in a plenary session and had full powers over the Central Committee, the Politburo, and its Standing Committee.


title: Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party

text: The 1956 Party Constitution introduced the multiple Vice-chairman post; since 1945, actual vice-chairmanship had been exercised by the Secretariat members. Liu Shaoqi was the highest-ranking vice-chairman from 1956 to 1966.


title: Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party

text: The 1969 Party Constitution (adopted by the 9th Congress) introduced the post of a single vice-chairman, in order to give more authority to Lin Biao as Mao's successor. The 1973 Constitution (adopted by the 10th Congress) re-introduced the collective vice-chairmanship. In 1976, Hua Guofeng was named First Vice-chairman of the Central Committee, a post previously held unofficially by Liu Shaoqi from 1956 to 1966; Zhou Enlai from 1973 to 1975; and Deng Xiaoping in 1975 in the capacity of "Vice-Chairman in charge of the day-to-day work of the Central Committee".


title: Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party

text: The 1975 Chinese Constitution reinforced the influence of the party on the state. The Central Committee (and, by extension, its chairman) was placed before the National People's Congress. Article 15 made the Chairman the commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army ("the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party leads all the armed forces of the country"). These changes were reversed by the 1982 Constitution of the People's Republic of China which placed the Party below the State and created a state CMC in parallel to the Party CMC.


title: Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party

text: Although Hua Guofeng succeeded Mao as party chairman, by 1978 he had lost power to vice chairman Deng Xiaoping, who at that point had become the "de facto" leader of China.


title: Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party

text: By the 1980s, the CCP leadership desired to prevent a single leader from rising above the party, as Mao had done. Accordingly, the post of chairman was abolished in 1982. Most of its functions were transferred to the revived post of General Secretary. The party's last chairman, Hu Yaobang, transferred to the post of General Secretary.


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: Lullabies to Paralyze is the fourth studio album by American rock band Queens of the Stone Age, released on March 22, 2005. The album debuted at #5 on the "Billboard" 200, and sold 97,000 copies in America during its first week of release, eventually topping over 342,000 copies as of March, 2007 according to Nielsen Soundscan. The album has been certified gold in the UK, where it has sold over 100,000 units. It is also the band's first album to be released after bassist Nick Oliveri was fired from the band. Singer/guitarist Josh Homme and singer Mark Lanegan are the only members from the previous album, "Songs for the Deaf", to play on this album and it is the first album to feature drummer Joey Castillo and guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen.


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: The album title "Lullabies to Paralyze" was intended to bridge "Lullabies" with its predecessor "Songs for the Deaf" by naming it after a line in "Mosquito Song", the final track on "Songs for the Deaf". The "deluxe limited edition" of the album includes a bonus track and a bonus DVD containing "a look behind the scenes and special bonus footage". Videos were produced for singles "Little Sister", "In My Head" and "Burn the Witch", and the song "Someone's in the Wolf". The video for "Someone's in the Wolf" was featured on the bonus DVD of "Lullabies to Paralyze".


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: The album was delayed during 2004 because of some changes to the line-up: bassist, vocalist, and co-songwriter Nick Oliveri was fired and on-off vocalist Mark Lanegan went on tour with his own band.


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: Lanegan can still be heard singing on several songs of the album as well as contributing lyrics. Because of this turmoil, there had been rumours that Lanegan had left the band, which Josh Homme eventually clarified in several interviews was never the case. Nevertheless, he encouraged these rumours to draw the attention off the band by giving the press "something to focus on while I was just making the record".


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: The album has three LP pressing runs. The first pressing was released by AntAcidAudio and contains a different cover to the CD version. The sides are named "Once", "You", "Were" & "Lost", after a line from "Someone's in the Wolf", with each containing a mixture of the CD's album and bonus tracks (with the exception of "Once", only the standard tracks are present).


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: The second pressing is a reissue by Dutch record label Music On Vinyl, released on September 22, 2011. The reissue is different from the first pressing in that it does not have its sides named after the line from "Someone's in the Wolf," and it uses the cover art from the CD release. The reissue omitted bonus tracks "Infinity" and "Precious and Grace" from the track listing, and listed "Like a Drug" as the last track. Side four contains an etching of one of the album's artwork.


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: The third pressing is due for release in November 2019 and features the tracklist from the original 2005 LP release and the cover art from the original CD release.


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: The album received generally positive reviews, although slightly lower than its predecessor, the average score being 78 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 31 professional reviews.


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: Kevin Forest Moreau awarded it 3rd best album of the year 2005, Billboard magazine ranked it 7th best album, Magnet magazine ranked it 9th, and Filter magazine considered it 10th best album of the year 2005.


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: JustPressPlay ranked it #31 on its list of the Top 100 Albums of the 2000s and named "Tangled Up in Plaid" the 19th best song of the decade.


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: "Lullabies to Paralyze" peaked at number four on the UK Albums Chart and was certified gold in the UK on April 15, 2005 with sales exceeding 100,000 copies. It also became the band's first album to reach the top ten on the US "Billboard" 200, where it peaked at number seven.


title: Lullabies to Paralyze

text: All tracks written by Joshua Homme, Troy Van Leeuwen and Joey Castillo, except where noted. All lyrics written by Homme, except additional lyrics on "Medication", "Tangled Up in Plaid" and "Long Slow Goodbye" by Mark Lanegan.


title: Minibus

text: A minibus, microbus, minicoach, or commuter (in Zimbabwe) is a passenger-carrying motor vehicle that is designed to carry more people than a multi-purpose vehicle or minivan, but fewer people than a full-size bus. In the United Kingdom, the word "minibus" is used to describe any full-sized passenger-carrying van or panel truck. Minibuses have a seating capacity of between 12 and 30 seats. Larger minibusses may be called midibuses. Minibuses are typically front engine step in vehicles, although low floor minibuses do exist and are particularly common in Japan.


title: Minibus

text: It is unknown when the first minibus vehicle was released but it is possible that the first one was the 1935-1955 Chevrolet Suburban or the Volkswagen Transporter, even though the Suburban is thought by most to be an SUV, the first generation to the third generation could have theoretically be classified as minibusses today.


title: Minibus

text: Minibuses are used for a variety of reasons. In a public transport role, they can be used as fixed route transit buses, airport buses, flexible demand responsive transport vehicles, share taxis or large taxicabs. Accessible minibuses can also be used for paratransit type services, by local authorities, transit operators, hospitals or charities. Private uses of minibuses can include corporate transport, charter buses, tour buses. Schools, sports clubs, community groups and charities may also use minibuses for private transport. Individual owners may use reduced seating minibuses as cheap recreational vehicles.


title: Minibus

text: By size, microbuses are minibuses smaller than long. Midibuses are minibuses bigger than microbuses but smaller than full-size buses.


title: Minibus

text: There are many different types and configurations of minibuses, due to historical and local differences, and usage. Minibus designs can be classified in three main groups, with a general increase in seating capacity with each type:


title: Minibus

text: The most basic source of minibuses is the van conversion, where the minibus is derived by modifying the existing van design. Conversions may be produced completely by the van manufacturer, sold as part of their standard model line-up, or be produced by specialist conversion companies, who source a suitably prepared base model from the van manufacturer for final completion as a minibus.


title: Minibus

text: Van conversions involve adding windows to the bodywork, and seating to the cargo area. Van conversion minibuses outwardly look the same shape as the parent van, and the driver and front passenger cabin remains unchanged, retaining the driver and passenger doors. Access to the former cargo area for passengers is through the standard van side sliding door, or the rear doors. These may be fitted with step equipment to make boarding easier. Optional extras to van converted minibuses can include the addition of a rollsign for transit work, and/or a full-height walk-in door, for passenger access to the former cargo area. For public transport use, this door may be an automatic concertina type. For other uses, this may be a simple plug style coach door. Depending on the relevant legislation, conversions may also involve wheelchair lifts and tachograph equipment. A van conversion with a passenger area in the front and a storage area in the back, behind a fixed bulkhead, is called a splitter bus.


title: Minibus

text: Another method of building a minibus is for a second stage manufacturer to build a specific body for fitting to a semi-completed van or light truck chassis. These allow a higher seating capacity than a simple van conversion. Often, the second stage manufacturer is a bus manufacturer.


title: Minibus

text: In a body-on-chassis minibus, a cabin body is installed on a van or light truck chassis encompassing the drivers area. These designs may retain some outward signs of the original van, such as the hood and grill. Other designs are visually a complete bus design, and it is merely the chassis underneath that is from the van design.


title: Minibus

text: The body-on-chassis approach gives the advantage of higher seating capacity, or more room for passenger comfort, through a larger cabin area. There is also the advantage of being able to have the drivers seat positioned in a small cubicle, next to the main passenger entrance, allowing the driver to collect fares in a transit bus role.


title: Minibus

text: A next generation approach to the van-derived or cutaway chassis approach, is for manufacturers to produce an integral design, where the whole vehicle is purposely designed and built for use as a minibus. This is usually done by an integral bus manufacturer, although large automotive groups also produce their own models. These designs are often available in long high capacity versions, and may attract different designations, such as midibus, or light bus.


title: Minibus

text: Following the development of low-floor technology, some low-floor purpose built minibuses have been created. Some offer a low floor access through a centre door. Some short versions of low floor midibuses are sometimes also called minibuses.


title: Minibus

text: There are many different form of public transportation services around the world that are provided by using vehicles that can be considered as minibus:


title: Minibus

text: Some countries may require an additional class of driving licence over a normal private car licence, and some may require a full commercial driving licence. The need for such a licence may depend on:


title: Minibus

text: "The holder of an ordinary car driving licence which was obtained prior to January 1997, once aged 21 years minimum, may drive a Minibus with a capacity of 16 passengers. Where the "ordinary car driving licence" is obtained after December 1996, they will have to take a separate test to drive a vehicle with a capacity of more than 8 passengers. However, there is an exemption for certain volunteer drivers, where the vehicle does not exceed 3500 kg GVW (or 4250 kg GVW if the vehicle is designed to be wheelchair accessible). Driving licence source


title: Minibus

text: A driving licence issued in Ontario, Canada, for an equivalent of a UK class B or class B-auto driving licence (in the case of Ontario, a class G licence), allows its holder to drive vehicles with:


title: Minibus

text: Anyone wanting to drive a vehicle in Ontario, with the same MAM limits as for class G vehicles, with fewer than 25, but at least 10, passenger seats, must obtain a bus licence. This licence will allow, for example, its holder to drive 12- and 15-passenger vans that Transport Canada defines as large passenger vans.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: The Kayan are a sub-group of Red Karen (Karenni people), Tibeto-Burman ethnic minority of Myanmar (Burma). The Kayan consists of the following groups: Kayan Lahwi (also called Padaung, ), Kayan Ka Khaung (Gekho), Kayan Lahta, Kayan Ka Ngan. Kayan Gebar, Kayan Kakhi and, sometimes, Bwe people (Kayaw). They are distinct from, and not to be confused with, the Kayan people of Borneo.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: Padaung (Yan Pa Doung) is a Shan term for the Kayan Lahwi (the group in which women wear the brass neck rings). The Kayan residents in Mae Hong Son Province in Northern Thailand refer to themselves as Kayan and object to being called Padaung. In "The Hardy Padaungs" (1967) Khin Maung Nyunt, one of the first authors to use the term "Kayan", says that the Padaung prefer to be called Kayan.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: On the other hand, Pascal Khoo Thwe calls his people Padaung in his 2002 memoir, "From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey."


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: In the late 1980s and early 1990s due to conflict with the military regime in Myanmar, many Kayan tribes fled to the Thai border area. Among the refugee camps set up there was a Long Neck section, which became a tourist site, self-sufficient on tourist revenue and not needing financial assistance.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: According to U Aung Roe (1993:21ss) Kayan number about 80,000 in Shan State (around the Pekon Township area) and 70,000 in Kayah State (around Demawso and Loikaw). A 2004 estimate puts the population at approximately 170,000. About 600 Kayan reside in the three villages open to tourists in Mae Hong Sorn, or in the Ban Mai Nai Soy refugee camp.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: According to Kayan tradition the Kayan settled in the Demawso area of Karenni State (Kayah State) in 739 AD. Today, they reside in Karenni (Kayah) State around Demawso and Loikow, in the southern region of Shan State and in Mandalay’s Pyinmana and Karen’s Than Daung township.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: There are three Kayan villages in Mae Hong Son province in Thailand. The largest is Huay Pu Keng, on the Pai river, close to the Thai Myanmar border. Huai Seau Tao is a commercial village opened in 1995. Many of the residents of Ban Nai Soi Kayan Longneck village moved into the Karenni refugee camp in September 2008, but 20 families and 104 residents remain there, according to the sign at the entrance as of February 2001.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: Women of the Kayan tribes identify themselves by their forms of dress. Women of the Kayan Lahwi tribe are well known for wearing neck rings, brass coils that are placed around the neck, appearing to lengthen it.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: Over the years, the coil is replaced by a longer one and more turns are added. The weight of the brass pushes the collar bone down and compresses the rib cage. The neck itself is not lengthened; the appearance of a stretched neck is created by the deformation of the clavicle.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: Many ideas regarding why the coils are worn have been suggested. Anthropologists have hypothesized that the rings protected women from becoming slaves, making them less attractive to other tribes. It has also been theorised that the coils originate from the desire to look more attractive by exaggerating sexual dimorphism, as women have more slender necks than men. It has also been suggested that the coils give the women resemblance to a dragon, an important figure in Kayan folklore. The coils might be meant to protect from tiger bites, perhaps literally, but probably symbolically.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: Kayan women, when asked, acknowledge these ideas, and often say that their purpose for wearing the rings is cultural identity (one associated with beauty).


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: The coil, once on, is seldom removed, as the coiling and uncoiling is a lengthy procedure. It is usually only removed to be replaced by a new or longer coil. The muscles covered by the coil become weakened. Many women have removed the rings for medical examinations. Most women prefer to wear the rings once their clavicle has been lowered, as the area of the neck and collarbone often becomes bruised and discolored. Additionally, the collar feels like an integral part of the body after ten or more years of continuous wear.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: In 2006, some of the younger women in Mae Hong Son started to remove their rings, either to give them the opportunity to continue their education or in protest against the exploitation of their culture and the restrictions that came with it. In late 2008, most of the young women who entered the refugee camp removed their rings. One woman who had worn the rings for over 40 years removed them. After removing the rings, women report discomfort that fades after about three days. The discoloration is more persistent.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: The government of Myanmar began discouraging neck rings as it struggled to appear more modern to the developed world. Consequently, many women in Myanmar began breaking the tradition, though a few older women and some of the younger girls in remote villages continued to wear rings. In Thailand, the practice has gained popularity in recent years, because it draws tourists who bring revenue to the tribe and to the local businessmen who run the villages and collect an entry fee of 500 to 600 baht per person. The Karenni National People's Liberation Front (KNPLF), an armed cease-fire group, have made attempts to invite the Kayan to return to Kayah State to set up their own tourist villages.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: In January 2008, the UNHCR expressed reservations about tourists visiting the Kayan villages in Northern Thailand due to the provincial government’s refusal to allow registered Kayan refugees to take up offers of resettlement in developed countries. It is believed this policy was linked to their economic importance to the area. This policy was relaxed in late 2008 and a small group of Kayan have left for New Zealand in August 2008.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: Others entered the main Karenni refugee camp (which is not open to tourists) in September 2008 and they are now eligible for resettlement.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: In the past, the choice of marriage partners was usually the responsibility of the parents; today, young people often select their own partner. The rule of marriage is only those genetically related are allowed to marry. It is preferable for first cousins to get married. However, marriage between different generations is taboo. Marriages with in-laws or conflicting clans who have sworn not to marry for several generations is forbidden. It is believed that if these rules are violated, misfortune falls upon all their relatives.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: When a young man has decided upon a girl, his parents will approach her parents with a gift. If the girl accepts then the couple are now engaged. The young man’s family have to provide a dowry to seal the contract. Usually the daughter-in-law will move in with her husband upon marriage and in that case, the price is higher than if the man moves in with his wife. The contract ceremony may be ended by the families eating together chicken provided by the groom’s family. In this way, the couple will love each other forever. The bride price consists of several parts:


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: The Kayans' traditional religion is called Kan Khwan, and has been practiced since the people migrated from Mongolia during the Bronze Age. It includes the belief that the Kayan people are the result of a union between a female dragon and a male human/angel hybrid.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: The major religious festival is the three-day Kay Htein Bo festival, which commemorates the belief that the creator god gave form to the world by planting a small post in the ground. During this festival, held in late March or early April, a Kay Htoe Boe pole is erected and participants dance around the pole. This festival is held to venerate the eternal god and creator messengers, to give thanks for blessings during the year, to appeal for forgiveness, and pray for rain. It is also an opportunity for Kayan from different villages to come together to maintain the solidarity of the tribe.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: The Kayan have a strong belief in augury and nothing is done without reference to some form of divination, including breaking thatch grass, but most importantly consulting the chicken bones.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: In present times, the annual Kay Htein Bo festival is always accompanied by a reading of the chicken bones to predict the year ahead. Fowl bone prognostication can be witnessed in the Kayan villages in Thailand's Mae Hong Son province during the annual festival, and during "cleansing ceremonies" that a family holds when it has encountered ill fortune. They also use dreams to make predictions.


title: Kayan people (Myanmar)

text: Although many of the Kayan still participate in these traditional festivals, in the 19th century Italian missionaries worked amongst them for many years and today the majority of Kayan and Kayaw people are Roman Catholics. Statistics published in 2005 list 306 Kayan villages, out of which 209 are Roman Catholic, 19 Kan Khwan, 32 Baptist, and 44 Buddhist, of which 2 belong to the Byamaso civil society organization.


title: London Borough of Hillingdon

text: The London Borough of Hillingdon () is the largest and westernmost borough in West London, England. It was formed from the districts of Hayes and Harlington, Ruislip-Northwood, Uxbridge, and Yiewsley and West Drayton in the ceremonial county of Middlesex. Today, Hillingdon is home to Heathrow Airport (which straddles the border between Hillingdon and Hounslow) and Brunel University, and is the second largest of the 32 London boroughs by area.


title: London Borough of Hillingdon

text: The main towns in the borough are Hayes, Ruislip, Northwood, West Drayton and Uxbridge. Hillingdon is the second least densely populated of the London boroughs, due to a combination of large rural land in the north, RAF Northolt Aerodrome, and the large Heathrow Airport.


title: London Borough of Hillingdon

text: The borough was formed in 1965 from the Hayes and Harlington Urban District, Municipal Borough of Uxbridge, Ruislip-Northwood Urban District, and Yiewsley and West Drayton Urban District, all formerly in the ceremonial county of Middlesex. The councils involved were initially unable to decide upon a name, with Keith Joseph suggesting "Uxbridge" in October 1963, later revised to Hillingdon.


title: London Borough of Hillingdon

text: The coat of arms for the London Borough of Hillingdon was granted on 22 March 1965. Between 1973 and 1978, the borough's civic centre was built in Uxbridge.


title: London Borough of Hillingdon

text: Hillingdon Council provides local government services in the borough, with its headquarters in the Civic Centre in Uxbridge. For administrative purposes, the borough is split into North and South Hillingdon.


title: London Borough of Hillingdon

text: The borough has an elected council, known either by the full name or as Hillingdon Council. It is split into wards represented by 65 Conservative and Labour councillors. A cabinet and leader are elected annually. The present leader of the council is Cllr. Ian Edwards of the Conservative Party. Elections for councillors are held every four years.


title: London Borough of Hillingdon

text: A Mayor is chosen yearly by councillors; the role is largely ceremonial. The present mayor is Councillor Roy Chamdal (Brunel Ward), who was elected on 20 May 2021.


title: London Borough of Hillingdon

text: In the London assembly elections, Ealing and Hillingdon Borough form a geographical constituency with one member as there are eleven London-wide members, currently from the four biggest parties. Conservative candidate Richard Barnes won the 2000, 2004 and 2008 elections, and since the 2012 election the Labour candidate Onkar Sahota has served as the area's designated member on the London Assembly.