Some context: Polly Jean Harvey was born on 9 October 1969 in Bridport, Dorset, the second child of Ray and Eva Harvey, who owned a stone quarrying business, and grew up on the family's farm in Corscombe. During her childhood, she attended school in nearby Beaminster, where she received guitar lessons from folk singer-songwriter Steve Knightley, and her parents introduced her to music that would later influence her work, including blues music, Captain Beefheart and Bob Dylan. Her parents were avid music fans and regularly arranged get-togethers and small gigs; among their oldest friends was Ian Stewart. As a teenager, Harvey began learning saxophone and joined an eight-piece instrumental group Bologne, based in Dorset.
In July 1988, Harvey became a member of Automatic Dlamini, a band based in Bristol with whom she gained extensive ensemble-playing experience. Formed by John Parish in 1983, the band consisted of a rotating line-up that at various times included Rob Ellis and Ian Oliver. Harvey had met Parish in 1987 through mutual friend Jeremy Hogg, the band's slide guitarist. Providing saxophone, guitars and background vocals, she travelled extensively during the band's early days, including performances in West Germany, Spain and Poland to support the band's debut studio album, The D is for Drum. A second European tour took place throughout June and July 1989. Following the tour, the band recorded Here Catch, Shouted His Father, their second studio album, between late 1989 and early 1990. This is the only Automatic Dlamini material to feature Harvey, but remains unreleased, although bootleg versions of the album are in circulation. In January 1991, Harvey left to form her own band with former bandmates Ellis and Oliver; yet she had formed lasting personal and professional relationships with certain members, especially Parish, whom she has referred to as her "musical soulmate." Parish would subsequently contribute to, and sometimes co-produce, Harvey's solo studio albums and has toured with her a number of times. As a duo, Parish and Harvey have recorded two collaborative albums where Parish composed the music and Harvey penned the lyrics. Additionally, Parish's girlfriend in the late 1980s was photographer Maria Mochnacz. She and Harvey became close friends and Mochnacz went on to shoot and design most of Harvey's album artwork and music videos, contributing significantly to her public image. Harvey has said of her time with Automatic Dlamini: "I ended up not singing very much but I was just happy to learn how to play the guitar. I wrote a lot during the time I was with them but my first songs were crap. I was listening to a lot of Irish folk music at the time, so the songs were folky and full of penny whistles and stuff. It was ages before I felt ready to perform my own songs in front of other people." She also credits Parish for teaching her how to perform in front of audiences, saying "after the experience with John's band and seeing him perform I found it was enormously helpful to me as a performer to engage with people in the audience, and I probably did learn that from him, amongst other things."
Were her years with the band successful?
A:
Some context: Francis "Frank" Hague, born in Jersey City, was the fourth of eight children to John D. and Margaret Hague (nee Fagen), immigrants from County Cavan, Ireland. He was raised in Jersey City's Second ward, an area known as The Horseshoe due to its shape which wrapped around a railroad loop. The ward was created when the Republican-controlled legislature gerrymandered a district within Jersey City in 1871 to concentrate and isolate Democratic, and mostly Catholic, votes. By age 14, Hague was expelled from school prior to completing the sixth grade for poor attendance and unacceptable behavior.
Hague's use of voter fraud is the stuff of legend. In 1937, for instance, Jersey City had 160,050 registered voters, but only 147,000 people who were at least 21 years old--the legal voting age. In 1932, Governor Moore appointed a lawyer named Thomas J. Brogan, who had served as Hague's personal attorney in corruption hearings, to an associate Justice seat on the state's Supreme Court. Less than a year later Brogan was named as Chief Justice. In at least two instances of alleged voting fraud in the 1930s (Ferguson v. Brogan, 112 N.J.L. 471; Clee v. Moore, 119 N.J.L. 215; In re Clee, 119 N.J.L. 310), Brogan's court issued extraordinary rulings in favor of the Democratic machine, in one case asserting that the district superintendent of elections had no authority to open ballot boxes, and in another case ruling that the boxes could be opened, but no one had the right to look inside. Brogan also assigned himself to the Hudson County jurisdiction, thereby controlling the local grand jury process and squelching other election fraud cases. Although Hague, like other political bosses of the time, was not above outright fraud at the polls, the keys to Hague's success were his matchless organizational skills and demand for complete loyalty from his subordinates. His command over the Democratic voters of Hudson County, a densely populated urban area in a state that was still mostly rural, made him a man to reckon with among state Democrats and Republicans alike. He was a close friend of Al Smith, the New York governor who would become the first Irish-American presidential candidate in 1928. In addition, Hague's support of Roosevelt for President was rewarded with a steady stream of perks that sustained Hague's organization throughout the Depression.
Was Brogan crooked too?
A: Brogan's court issued extraordinary rulings in favor of the Democratic machine,
Some context: Liuzzo was born Viola Fauver Gregg on April 1, 1925, in the small town of California, Pennsylvania, the elder daughter of Eva Wilson, a teacher, and Heber Ernest Gregg, a coal miner and World War I veteran. He left school in the eighth grade but taught himself to read. Her mother, Eva Wilson Gregg, had a teaching certificate from the University of Pittsburgh.
In 1941, the Gregg family moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan, where her father sought a job assembling bombs at the Ford Motor Company. Viola's strong-willed nature led her to drop out of high school after one year, and elope at the age of 16. The marriage did not last and she returned to her family. Two years later the Gregg family moved to Detroit, Michigan, which was starkly segregated by race. Tension between whites and blacks in Detroit was very high and the early 1940s saw violence and rioting. Witnessing these horrific ordeals was a major motivator that influenced Viola's future civil rights work. In 1943, she married George Argyris, the manager of a restaurant where she worked. They had two children, Penny and Evangeline Mary, and divorced in 1949. She later married Anthony Liuzzo, a Teamsters union business agent. They had three children: Tommy, Anthony, Jr., and Sally. Liuzzo sought to return to school, and attended the Carnegie Institute in Detroit, Michigan. She then enrolled part-time at Wayne State University in 1962. In 1964, Liuzzo began attending the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, and joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). A large part of Viola's activism, particularly with the NAACP, was due to a close friendship with an African-American woman, Sarah Evans. After initially meeting in a grocery store where Liuzzo worked as a cashier, the two kept in touch. Evans eventually became the housekeeper of Liuzzo, while still maintaining a close, friendly relationship in which they shared similar views including support for the civil rights movement. In the aftermath of Liuzzo's death, Evans would go on to become the permanent caretaker of Liuzzo's five young children. Liuzzo so passionately believed in the fight for civil rights, that she helped organize Detroit protests, attended Civil Rights conferences, and worked with the NAACP. Liuzzo had a strong desire to make a difference on as large a scale as she could.
Why did they move to Michigan?
A:
where her father sought a job assembling bombs at the Ford Motor Company.