#But Lucille and Roland were RIGHT THERE

[101flavoursofweird]

Head LMJ anime writer: Ok, folks, Layton’s going to disappear on his mystery journey, but we don’t want him to look irresponsible leaving his ten-year-old daughter behind. So, who’s going to babysit Kat for the next ten years?

The one good writer: What about Flora— the other girl Layton agreed to look after? I know her age has never been confirmed but surely she’d be older than Kat! We can keep their relationship vague but she could still be like an older sister to Kat—

That writer who’s a LBMR stan: What about her olde brother, Alfendi? We referenced him in the LMJ game, right? He’s canon—

The writer who’s a Descole stan: What about Kat’s uncle, Desmond? Layton and his brother don’t need to be estranged forever! They could have reunited after Azran Legacy— you don’t even have to reference what happened in Azran Legacy—

The writer who’s an Emmy stan: SAME WITH EMMY! Layton forgave her and surely she has forgiven herself by this point. She would want to search for Layton and help look after his kids!

The logical writer: Why not just use Layton’s parents— Roland and Lucille? Kat’s grandparents! They’re hardly spoiler characters… Layton is still on good terms with them. They really are the most logical choice!

Head LMJ anime writer: …

Head LMJ anime writer: Didn’t Layton have a cleaning lady that was never referenced again after PL4…?

[nesiacha]

Camille Desmoulins and Antoine-François Momoro

Antoine-François Momoro Camille Desmoulins

I couldn't say exactly how, but I have the impression that the printer-bookseller Antoine-François Momoro and the pamphleteer Camille Desmoulins had very opposite paths and were very different despite having similarities, if you know what I mean. Camille Desmoulins was a republican from the start, while Momoro was cautious on the matter and hesitated to publish Desmoulins' pamphlet "La France Libre" in June 1789, only releasing it on July 17, 1789. However, Momoro increasingly engaged in the revolution, eventually becoming one of its key figures and a regular at the Cordeliers Club. He was arrested after the Flight to Varennes, having signed the Champ de Mars petition. Desmoulins, on the other hand, had to go into exile. In this regard, they shared the common ground of being among the harshest critics of the monarchy, although Desmoulins had been vocal much earlier, opposing the property-based suffrage in 1789 and circulating 3,000 copies of his journal "Les Révolutions de France et de Brabant." During the Varennes episode, Momoro ensured that many issues of the Cordeliers Club Journal, which became virulent towards the king due to his escape, were distributed.

Both Camille Desmoulins and Momoro participated in the events of August 10, 1792. While Desmoulins left his mark as a key figure of July 14, 1789, Momoro, alongside Mayor Pache, inscribed the words "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" on public buildings in the summer of 1793. Both played roles in the expulsion of the Girondins. Desmoulins was elected to the Convention, whereas Momoro, though not elected, played a significant role in the Paris Commune, overseeing supplies and soldier morale, among other tasks. He recruited volunteers from various departments and regions and was sent to Vendée alongside Charles Philippe Ronsin. Both men remained actively involved in what was considered a faction until the end, in contrast to their leaders Danton and Hébert, who were less ardent or coherent (although there were no real leaders, if you understand my point).

Their wives played more significant political roles alongside their companions than often portrayed in films. Lucile Desmoulins' journal shows her as a fervent critic of the monarchy, writing dark texts about Marie-Antoinette, approving the King's execution, and defending Camille when the future Marshal Brune asked him to temper his critiques in "Le Vieux Cordelier." Sophie Fournier, Momoro's wife, played a crucial role in her husband's dechristianization campaign, representing the Goddess of Reason armed with a pike at each ceremony (when you consider the struggle of the women of the Revolution to bear arms, in my opinion, it only demonstrates her great determination ). Both Momoro and Desmoulins had only one son from their marriages, and their wives were subject to sexist attacks, similar to Manon Roland, Louise Gély, Marie Françoise Goupil, and even Marie-Antoinette.

However, their paths diverged significantly. Initially cautious, Momoro became increasingly revolutionary, ultimately considered an ultra-revolutionary, while Desmoulins became more moderate. Momoro began to advocate for property rights redistribution, a stance not shared by Desmoulins or many Montagnards, who were moderate on this issue. Momoro supported de-Christianization, while Desmoulins opposed it. Momoro called for harsher measures against counter-revolutionary suspects, whereas Desmoulins, in "Le Vieux Cordelier," called for leniency (except for approve the mock trial of the Hébertists) and advocated for the mass release of counter-revolutionary suspects, many of whom were innocent. During the harsh winter of 1793-1794, Momoro prioritized the suffering of the Parisian masses, a concern Desmoulins did not share.

Despite this, Momoro and many considered Hébertists were sent to the guillotine. It is said that Momoro died bravely, like most of his colleagues except Hébert (his bravery was remarkable given that his wife Sophie was arrested ten days after him, and he knew she could die, yet he refused to show fear in public). Desmoulins, calm when preparing for death, panicked when Lucile was arrested (as unjustly as the arrests of the Hébert and Momoro wives) and expressed his despair all the way to the scaffold. The most horrifying part is that Desmoulins and Momoro learned of their wives' arrests the day before their execution.

My personal reflections: Honestly, I believe there is a golden legend about Camille Desmoulins, which he does not deserve, and a black legend about Momoro's faction, which is also undeserved . As I mentioned in this post https://www.tumblr.com/nesiacha/744960791081631744/the-difference-in-treatment-between-the-indulgents?source=share, in my eyes, Camille Desmoulins is highly overrated. While I do not deny his talents, I do not think he was fit for great responsibilities, unlike men he mocked, like Ronsin, Saint-Just, or Momoro, who worked tirelessly during the revolution's most challenging period. I must say in my eyes that once Desmoulins became a Convention deputy, he seemed to rest more than other revolutionaries. Consider Sonthonax, labeled a Girondin, who accepted a mission to Saint Domingue to better fight against colonizers who denied equal rights between people of color and whites, or Condorcet, who worked with Carnot on women's education with Pastoret and Guilloud, or Charles Philippe Ronsin. Many members of the Committee of Public Safety had grueling schedules in addition to their missions. Other Convention deputies, unlike Desmoulins, were sent on missions, such as Charles Gilbert Romme (and many others). While Desmoulins advocated leniency in "Le Vieux Cordelier," he approves the mock trial that led to the Hébertists' guillotining and said nothing about their wives' arrests (perhaps he planned to call for their release to be fair, but I don't know). Besides being partly responsible for the fall of the Brissotins, he remained silent on the illegal harassment Jacques Roux faced, leading to his suicide, and once said he understood the need to curb liberty for the people's salvation. Nonetheless, Camille Desmoulins should never have been arrested, let alone executed, as he only wrote articles.

In comparison, Momoro, a victim of a black legend, was clearly more honest about following a consistent line. Initially more cautious than Desmoulins in 1789, he ultimately advocated for more social rights. Despite not being elected to the Convention, he played a significant role in the Paris Commune, carrying out various missions during the revolution's most challenging period, from late 1792 to early 1794. During the Convention's invasions, he was among those who demanded vital laws for the revolution, such as the maximum or the revolutionary army's levy. His attempted insurrection was mainly due to the severe suffering of the Parisian masses in the winter of 1793-1794 and the frequent attacks on the Hébertists by the Convention (the arrests of Ronsin and Vincent in 1793), while dubious characters like Danton were free. Momoro was never rehabilitated, unlike Desmoulins, who was falsely accused of sabotaging supplies and destroying his reputation by accumulating 190,000 livres in cash, although he always refused to elevate himself, leaving behind only 26 livres and 400 livres in assignats. As Mathiez Albert, a historian harsh on Robespierre's opponents, said, "One of the main leaders of this Hébertist party, who first tried to translate and represent the popular aspirations against the wealthy bourgeois of the Convention [...] He died poor, as he had lived."

However, Momoro also had his faults, and Desmoulins was right on some points. Nothing is entirely black or white, especially among revolutionaries. The dechristianization campaigns often caused problems for the French Revolution. I understand the anger of incorruptible revolutionaries like Momoro, given the religious intolerance of that time, but intolerance cannot be fought with more intolerance. These campaigns also alienated many French people.

Moreover, if Desmoulins had dubious political allies in Danton, Momoro could be worst. He counted as an ally the horrible Nantes drowner, Carrier (Momoro didn't drown people by the way, but still a bad point for him...). Many French Revolution characters made alliances with dubious figures (like Robespierre, who knew the criticisms against Danton were well-founded but largely allied with him until a certain point), but it's still a big no for me for the alliance with Carrier. Not with one of the most hateful characters of the French Revolution. His last insurrection attempt, which led to his guillotining, was understandable, but the Convention was at a critical point and could not afford a new insurrection. Unlike Hanriot and Chaumette, he was not lucid enough on this point. He should have been more lenient with the suspect laws. Plus let's not forget that the faction call hebertist who after denunce the faction call enragés took them petition.

Even if I am harsh on Camille Desmoulins, I must acknowledge his great courage and contributions to the French Revolution, and like Momoro, he never betrayed his principles. Moreover, I fully agree with him on press freedom and often highlight his reasoning on freedom of expression. It's worth noting that Camille Desmoulins' father died shortly after his son's execution, heartbroken by his loss, just as Momoro's mother, a servant in Besançon, died a week or two after her son's death. Regardless of what one might say, both revolutionaries earned the right to be considered important figures in the 1789-1794 period.

I would like to end with two phrases these two revolutionaries reportedly said shortly before their deaths:

Momoro, during his condemnation: "I am accused, I who gave everything for the Revolution!"

Camille Desmoulins in jail : "I had dreamed of a republic that everyone would have adored."

P.S.: I have searched everywhere for a biography of Sophie Fournier, Momoro's wife. I found it in PDF and French, but I don't know its value.

Here is the link : https://www.sh6e.com/images/publications/Lettre_d_information/2023_05_Lettre_info_Sh6.pdf

[multiversal-madness]

Professor Layton - Second Chances Au

Hershel died in the Azran Sanctuary. Then he woke up in Stansbury, 19 years before their adventure had started.

The only proof of the time jump aside from his memory? Aurora’s pendant and a large almost star shaped burn across his chest.

Now Hershel has to stumble through his day to day life as a teenager and try to act normal while he figures out what to do with his foreknowledge.

Here’s some additional details about Hershel’s first day in the past:

On the night/very early morning he wakes up, he ends up telling Lucille and Roland that he remembers his older brother and the fact that he was adopted. They confirm this and even add on that they’re still in contact with him, which has Hershel feeling all kinds of betrayed (mostly because of the 30 years they’d gone without telling him any of this).

Hershel decided (against his parent’s suggestion to take a day off) that he’d go to school on the day he woke up. This goes about as well as you’d expect because dealing with multiple crises at once makes it quite difficult to act like your teenage self.

He has to stop himself from commenting on what a gentleman would do and more than once he reached to fix his hat which wasn’t there.

When him and Randall fence, he has to make a conscious effort to hold back because of how much he’s improved since he was 17. When he gets lost in though he ends up winning easily.

Randall, Angela and even Dalston notice something isn’t quite right with Hershel, but he brushes off their concern, insisting that he’s fine.

By the end of the day, Hershel is barely holding it together. When the end of school arrives, Hershel quietly slips out while Randall is mid discussion/argument with mr Collins

He pretends not to hear Dalston calling out to him as he leaves campus, same for Henry’s greeting when he walks past him in town. He doesn’t want to go home yet, so he ends up heading to the Wall of Norwell to brood

Sometime later, the whole Stansbury gang shows up to check on him, leading Hershel to remember just how close they were before everything went wrong

He doesn’t tell them about the time travel, but he does tell them about how he found out he’s adopted, he has an older brother and that Hershel wasn’t even his name (and uses his discovery of this to excuse his behaviour)

(Angela has to elbow Randall into silence when Hershel mentions his father being the archeologist to find proof of the Azran and his older brother being Desmond Sycamore)

Even though Hershel is keeping the true extent of his current crisis secret, the four of them help him through it

After that day things fall somewhat back into a normal routine, but it only get more complicated when the day Randall tells them about the mask comes along…

[alto-tenure]

seeing as it's sycamore sunday and all, I feel it's only right to ask for him in the ask game

ask game

1) three facts about them from my personal headcanons

Des knows Tagalog (Rachel's native language) better than Hershel or Leon; Des went to boarding school after the Bronevs were kidnapped; enjoys historical fiction

2) a reason they suck

really awful at concealing his identity when he's not pretending to be someone completely different

3) a reason they are great

he is very much a jack of all trades in many regards

4) a reason I relate to them

uhhhh. we're both into history?

5) (what I consider to be) the top tier otp/ ot3 for that character

him and his significant other. all the other people I ship him with are varying levels of "for the bit"

6) five things that never happened to that character that I believe should have happened

he should have told Hershel they were brothers in London

post-canon weird teenager adoption scenario. I can't find my fangame proposal but basically that.

he changes his last name to Layton, not for Hershel but for Roland and Lucille

HE SHOULD HAVE MET CLAIRE.

undercover in targent arc before last specter. this could be cool. idk I'm spitballing here anon I really don't think about him that much

7) five people that character never fell in love with and why

Emmy. Even without their bonds to Leon, I don't really get where this one comes from.

Randall. Even if you think they did something together, they probably weren't in love.

Dimitri. Even if you think they knew each other at some point, I think it leans more "recognition of self in the other (derogatory)" than "recognition of self in the other (affectionate)"

Henry. This is funny but like any romantic expression from Des towards Henry while he's disguised as Angela are out of misguided obligation rather than true affection.

Jakes. "What an ugly little man you are" etc etc.

[quibbs126]

Why do you think Hershel forgot about his birth family? Was it because he was so young when it happened (he had to have been about 4 or 5 when it happened, right?), or did he repress the memories out of trauma, or what?

Well personally I’d say repression from trauma, given that according to what I can gather of the timeline, he would have been around 6 at the time (Layton is 36 in AL, and Lucille and Roland talk about how it’s been 30 years since they adopted him, 36-30=6). Also, in the Mysteries tab for AL, when the Desmond/Descole tab is fully revealed, it says “Delving into his repressed memories, Layton remembers growing up with a brother, whom it transpires was Descole” (or something to that effect), implying that yes, it was repression

Though for the sake of headcanon and my au, I say that he hasn’t entirely forgotten them? Or at least not initially. Like yes, soon after being adopted by the Laytons, he repressed his memories of his parents and what happened to them, as well as convincing himself that his name was Hershel, but it took a bit longer for him to forget his brother, since he was still around after the incident. However his memory of his brother was still rather faded, and the only thing he can really remember is seeing him at the doorway of a house, over the years he started to forget him and/or convinced himself that his brother was merely a figment of his imagination, and by the time we see him in the flashbacks in Miracle Mask, he’s completely forgotten about it

And this is just complete headcanon, but I like to think that somewhere in his mind those memories still exist, and they only manifest in strange dreams Layton has, where he finds himself in the body of a young boy who has two parents and an older brother, though essentially acting as a spectator in this body as the boy moves and talks without any input from Layton, but the visuals are so blurry and the voices so distant and muddled that he can’t ever tell what’s going on or what anyone’s saying. Over the years these dreams got less and less frequent, until one day they stopped. However the day he met Descole, he had another one of those dreams and they start happening again

Edit: oh yeah, bc I forgot to mention, after AL and his memories come back, he still has those dreams, only now everything is clear, and he realizes those dreams were just his repressed memories

So yeah, for the sake of canon interpretation, I say repression, but in terms of headcanon I like to bend the rules a little

[runningwolf62]

The Brennan Trevelyan Family Tree!

The * denotes who inherited the title of Bann.

Brennan's sister was named for their Great-grandmother.

Osher is the cousin that gets involved in some matter involving milk cows at the War table. She's inheriting one of the Trevelyan farms, the one that specializes in dairy products as exports. This is a recent addition to the family's holdings.

Cecil and Lucille are twins, and Lucille inherited the title. When she decided to retire to hold balls and visit the opera (events Brennan and Josephine mention in game) she had no children of her own so she passed the title to her brother's eldest, Roland.

Irene and Irvin are ALSO twins, and Irvin takes care of the other family farm, this one breeds horses and is the one the Trevelyan family is best known for. After Brennan was disgraced at 18 he was sent to live with Irvin and help with the ranch. Irvin is distant from his nephew, he has his own children (that I left off because it was getting crowded) that he favors to inherit, though Brennan has learned a good deal about horse care and breeding. Some of his cousins had discussed being generous and giving him the title of head of the stables, as he was good with the horses and that would keep him out of trouble near as they could tell.

As of right now, the heir after Evelyn is Maxwell of course, but as she's unmarried, most expect she will chose Rosa to inherit, and Sylvia will need to inherit her mother's holdings.

Albrecht is a distant relative that starts the entire affair at the War Table, and from a distant branch family known for throwing the Trevelyan name around even before Brennan became Inquisitor. Afterwards he milks it for all it is worth.

Philliam, or Philliam, a Bard! I decided to make his brother because I decided lumping the distant relatives together was easier, and they're already known for making up tales.

Dorian is obviously Dorian, but I'm not letting him live down randomly opening a conversation with Brennan by telling him they were related.

[evalieena]

Six Times Hershel Layton Remembered, Plus The One Time He Didn't - a Professor Layton fanfic

“Everything was fine. They lived happy together as a family. But the next moment, everything disappeared, as if gone up in smoke. Hershel Layton felt lost, and then he was lonely. There was a new family around him, but it was not the one he wanted. And then everything slowly started to fade away. Until he remembered once more.“

(available here as well: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28770816)

- -

Later That Day

Confusion ran through Theodore’s head. Who were these strange-looking men who just left with Mum and Dad? Where were Mum and Dad? When would they come back? And why had he overheard people screaming so loudly? He didn’t like it when people were fighting; it only meant that something bad had happened.

Soon, hours had passed, and still there was no sign of their parents.

He kept asking Hersh about their parents’ sudden departure. Every time, the same answer. Hersh only said that everything would be okay. He needn’t worry. Everything would be okay…

The four year old didn’t understand a single thing of what just happened. Why should everything be okay if people had screamed?

Mum and Dad were in trouble. He just knew it. Still, Hersh didn’t want to acknowledge it so Theo wouldn’t be worried—everything to take care of the little one. But even everything didn’t seem to be enough.

Nothing happened the way it should have. But perhaps it was a bad dream. That was what Mum always said when he woke up crying and afraid that everyone had left without him; nothing was real. Everything is going to be okay.

Nothing could be okay and Theo was still confused.

Two Days Later

Theo was sad. He’d noticed a change in Hersh’s heart—he didn’t behave the way he used to only two days back. There was no optimism left in him. He didn’t say Everything will be okay Theo you just have to wait they will come back you don’t worry and we can play together if you’d like they’ll be back before you know it anymore.

Their parents were gone. It didn’t look like they were about to come back anytime soon. They’d never left them alone for so long. Sure, Hersh could take care of his little brother for a while, but there was only so much he could manage to do in their parents’ stead. He was no father, no mother. He was just the older brother. He was the one rushing to Theodore’s side whenever the youngest showed that he needed it; he was the one ready to provide comfort at night, when he heard Theo crying after a bad dream and didn’t want their parents to be woken up.

But now, the both of them sat in the couch in the living room, side by side, in the dark. Alone. There were no laughs, no cries, no warm atmosphere anymore. Even the most caring brother wouldn’t replace the past—a past which seemed to be so close, yet it was already so far. The brothers waited endlessly for something that, one of them had started to get used to it, would never happen.

Hershel was sad, and so was Theodore. They had nothing else left.

One Week Later

Theo was afraid. Who were the Laytons? And why did Hersh start packing his bag? Why did he look so relieved, in spite of the awful nights they’d just spent?

Something was not right. Something was about to change. Hersh couldn’t stop talking about this family who would be so happy to have him, and how he needed to be careful, always remember that he’s Hershel now, and not Theodore. He acted like such a grown-up; it was a lot to take in.

Theo couldn’t understand. He was Theodore—that was the name he’d been given all his short life. Why should he pretend he was named Hershel all of a sudden? And why his brother wasn’t packing his own bag as well?

So much questions, yet so little answers.

A while later, a couple was standing on their porch. They looked awfully happy for people who were about to intrude into the brothers’ lives.

Before Theo realized it, he was taken away by that odd couple; he was taken away from Hersh, and nothing felt right. He didn’t want to go away. He didn’t want to go with them. And why didn’t Hersh move an inch? Why wasn’t he going with them? Why-

“I hope you’ll feel at home with us, Hershel.”

Theodore Bronev, or whoever he was supposed to be, was afraid.

One Month Later

Theo was angry. For a month he’d been following the ones who wanted him to call them Ma and Pa all around, but he just couldn’t get used to it. He hadn’t heard from Hersh in a while, either. Whenever would he join them? Where was he?

He didn’t want to stay here. All his life had been peaceful, and all of a sudden, everything started collapsing right under his nose. And there still wasn’t anyone able to provide him with answers he couldn’t dare to ask. Because he did not understand.

Theo didn’t talk much, but Roland and Lucille had gathered from the way the child looked at them that he didn’t like it, here. He barely managed to tell anything other than yes, no, maybe, where is my brother – and the couple had started to fear that nothing would ever change.

Theo was angry and uncomfortable. The only way he’d found to express all these feelings was to throw a tantrum, one his parents would never forget.

Two Years Later

Hershel was happy. The weather was calm and sunny, and they were about to go out for a walk in the center of London. He’d go out and play in the park with other children.

He liked the Laytons. He liked his parents. They were always so patient, so kind-hearted; they were ready to sacrifice everything for their child’s well-being.

Hershel didn’t ask for much. He was always a collected and lovely boy. The beginning had been tough, but little by little, his parents had been able to see him smile even more often. His anger and his fear seemed to have left him. Nothing months, then years of patience and love couldn’t erase, as they’d predicted and hoped.

Hershel loved it here, in London. He’d felt like he had lived here all his life. That day, Roland and Lucille knew they’d won the fight. But there was still a long path waiting ahead of the three of them.

The only thing that ever mattered though was that Hershel Layton was happy.

Thirty Years Later

Hershel Layton was puzzled. A funny emotion to feel for someone who loved puzzles that much, but nothing could ever describe better the way he’d felt for hours now, hours that seemedlike ages.

So much did happen in the span of a few hours.

First he’d learned his parents could be targeted by Targent, then Aurora had made it clear that she didn’t want to live anymore, all so she could protect them. Then Desmond—no, Descole—had taken the key from her hands, and revealed himself as the dangerous scientist Layton knew him to be.

Then they’d fought. Despair was filling the air, though Hershel didn’t understand what Descole meant when he cried that the Azran legacy was all he had to live for.

And as if there hadn’t been enough betrayals as it was, Emmy was soon to follow. Luke had been abducted. He’d had no other choice than siding with Descole to prevent Bronev from unleashing doom on Earth. Misery didn’t seem to end.

Just when he’d thought he’d finally be able to change things, Descole had been ready to sacrifice himself to save Luke. And then…

Then everything just collapsed.

He held his agonizing brother in his arms; the one who’d wanted so hard to take him down only a few hours back was now confessing, fearing death was on the way.

Some images were flowing through his head, though he didn’t yet understand quite clearly what it was supposed to mean. But he had a brother. Ma and Pa… they weren’t his true parents. Leon Bronev was his biological father? Nothing made any sense. Hershel—or whoever he was supposed to be—just wanted this to end.

Confusion, sadness, anger, happiness, shock. And so much more—so much thoughts and sensations he couldn’t voice. He’d started experiencing a bunch of emotions he wasn’t used to feeling anymore. But such a puzzling state of mind would not last. It was a true gentleman’s duty to figure out every mystery, even the thickest ones; even the ones that involved himself.

Except this time, he’d sworn to himself that he would not forget.

[teenytinyapprentice]

(same headcanons anon) honestly i'd die for that kind of long post sdhfbsjhgbjfd but how about the main cast? layton, luke, flora, and emmy (and perhaps others you'd consider as part of the main cast), i'd really love to hear your thoughts!

GhKdjsfhds UH sure I’m not even sure how to go about organizing any of my thoughts so how about I just give you a whole bunch of random thoughts about the puzzle family + co  in jot note form (sorta)  and you can take from it what you will … disclaimer: Im sure some of these contradict canon and I’ll forget I even came up with them/said them in this and contradict myself but also I am just having fun here and don’t care sfdhkjfhskjglgf

Hershel has an unusually small appetite and prefers lighter dishes to anything heavy or too rich

Emmy and Desmond are both pretty artistic. Emmy mostly focuses on her photography but also enjoys drawing while Desmond actually enjoys painting (mostly water colour) although he’d loathe to let anyone but Raymond know about his hobby until he’s much older - Hershel on the other hand can’t draw For SHIT.

Desmond hair turns totally grey pretty much overnight when he hits his mid 60s while Hershel’s hair doesn’t turn white (slowly but surely) until he’s almost 80. It’s a sore spot.

Luke has his picture on walls of restaurants pretty much everywhere he goes from winning those “eat this giant meal and get it for free” competitions - he wins them on accident most of the time and has forgotten about a lot of them

The Puzzle family will spend at least one major holiday in Monte d’Or with Randall, Angela and Henry - it’s always a huge event and they all look forward to it

Emmy reunites with Layton and the rest of the puzzle family shortly after the events in Unwound Future having heard about the attack on London and realizing delaying seeing the Professor again might mean she just /never/ sees him again (considering his preoccupation for danger) - she just misses Luke leaving but does get to meet Flora and is a huge influence on her becoming more independent and standing up to the Professor

Desmond reunites with the Puzzle family partially on accident after Diabolical Box. He sort of planned to drop in on Hershel and give his little brother a heart attack but it ends up being less smooth and more awkward and difficult than expected… he drops in on occasion but doesn’t make a habit of sticking around too long until much later (influenced by rebuilding some kind of fragile relationship with Lucille and Roland)

Alfendi grew up in orphanages - he’s aware of his biological mother but has no relationship with her. He meets Layton and Flora as part of an investigation (no I haven’t put much thought into exactly what) - he and Flora strike up a funny friendship and when Layton hesitates to have Flora really join in on the investigation Alfendi and Flora do a mini-investigation of their own. They both end up proving to be formidable investigators, but mostly really befriend one another… which in turn strongly influences Hershel to ask Alfendi’s permission to foster and eventually adopt him

Flora does learn to cook later in life but excels more in baking - Katrielle helped her often in the kitchen growing up which is why she loves sweets so much

Flora has a growing interest in robotics that really kicks off when Gizmo (the robot dog from Curious Village) first breaks down when she’s home alone and she has to repair him - Desmond specifically encourages this and helps teach her, Hershel signs her up for a robotics camp upon her request realizing how much she enjoys it

Hershel thinks it’s HILARIOUS that Lucy calls Alfendi “Prof” and literally never stops giving him a hard time over it 

Flora and Alfendi learn to fence, Flora is the better of the two of them. Luke takes up karate inspired by Emmy’s fighting style (and is a terrible, terrible fencer. Just plain awful). Katrielle tried a variety of sports growing up (acrobatics, track and field teams, soccer, floor hockey, variety of dance classes etc.) but never really stuck to anything

Alfendi used to smoke but quit after Forbodium and was never able to get back into it

Emmy used to sneak Alfendi and Flora into horror movies against Hershel’s wishes before Flora was old enough to sneak Alfendi in herself

Flora hit a major growth spurt bout a year after UF and towers over Hershel (and most of the family) at 6”0 tall. Alfendi is a bastard and stole her thunder by matching her height by the time he was 15

Hershel and Flora are both autistic

Flora still visits St. Mystere on occasion - more so when Bruno passes to keep an eye on the residents of her hometown. Her and Lady Dahlia have a complicated but still loving relationship

Luke writes a LOT of letters when he first moves to America to keep up with his friends in England (and all over) - this dwindles down over time but he sends monthly letters to Hershel, Flora, Arianna and Crow until he eventually moves back

Alfendi used to dye his hair black as a teenager but had terrible upkeep and lots of roots showing so he grew out of it in a year or so

Alfendi suffers from chronic migraines and pain exacerbated by Forbodium, which is why he really hates leaving the house/office unless absolutely necessary (he also just isn’t a people person) 

The amount of people the Layton’s refer to as their aunt/uncle is confusing as hell. Lots of the Professor’s old friends get aunt/uncle status (for example Uncle Randall, Uncle Henry, Aunt Angela, Uncle Desmond, Aunt Emmy, Uncle Wright, Aunt Maya, Uncle Andrew, etc.) - specifically confusing around Luke who’s referred to as both brother and uncle

Raymond and Alfendi are actually very close

Luke moves back to London to officially work as Layton’s assistant after he graduates high school in America but also travels independently more often

Raymond has been Desmond’s primary caretaker since his pre-teens. He’s the closest thing he has to a father-figure but they’d never call it that, but it certainly a strong familial love and loyalty - and Des did end up adopting Raymond’s last name “Sycamore” and keeps it post canon when he officially hangs up his persona Descole for good

Flora works a variety of odd jobs before she follows through on her passion of robotics and electronic design

Hershel and Alfendi both have terrible fashion sense

Hershel eventually does tell all of his children (and Desmond, Emmy, Randall) about Claire. It doesn’t get much easier to talk about, but he’s always relieved when he says it

Hershel still has some kind of relationship with Dimitri and Clive. It’s… complicated. Real complicated. But present.

Emmy doesn’t have a relationship with Bronev after the events of AL - she does try but ends up needing to cut it off for her own sake

Luke writes stories inspired by his and the Professor’s adventures - but he tries to keep it a secret while he’s writing, too self-conscious to think of letting anyone let alone Layton read them just quite yet

Desmond actually really likes working with children, finds their presence refreshingly honest (even when they’re little shits) - and really only remembers this when he’s surrounded by Layton’s children in the future

Flora calls Hershel “Dad” or “Professor”, Luke alternates between “Professor” “Hershel” (occasionally “Dad”), Alfendi calls him “Father” or “Hershel” (occasionally “Dad” as well) while Katrielle almost exclusively calls him “Papa” 

Hershel actually once genuinely almost forgot his name was Hershel because of how many people in his day to day just call him “Professor” or “Layton” and its a little jarring hearing his first name sometimes 

Flora was homeschooled while Alfendi and Katrielle attended classes at public school - Alfendi and Katrielle were both notorious trouble makers but for very different reasons

All of the Puzzle kids (Luke, Flora, Alfendi and Katrielle) are trans and are like the perfect sliding scale of The Type of Name You Choose For Yourself When You’re Trans from exceedingly normal to obscure

Luke’s full name is Lucas but literally no one calls him that 

Alfendi’s two personalities go by “Al” and “Fendi” (the latter being the post-Forbodium personality) respectively, but will respond to “Alfendi” regardless of who’s fronting 

Hershel, Emmy and Katrielle have lovely singing voices. Alfendi cannot sing at all.

Luke and Flora both learn to drive while Alfendi and Katrielle never do - Luke learns to ride motorcycles but will still scream the whole time if Emmy takes the wheel of ANY vehicle

Luke in all sincerity owns hiking heels and its the worst thing he owns probably

AND OK. thats all I feel like writing right now but sure take that hopefully some of these are at least a bit funny or interesting to read fhdskjghsd

[call-me-rucy]

Questions on Layton’s past

Yesterday I had an exam that went pretty terrible and to relax, I played a bit of Miracle Mask in the evening. 

So I got to this part where Hershel has to get Roland, who has gone with suspicious, dressed in black people (that we all know are members of Targent, even maybe Bronev himself). He claims, to not alarm Lucille that they were old friends of his, and they asked to see Hershel.

Now, the thing. When Hershel asks why did they want to see him, Roland replies “You were a baby when they last saw you, they wanted to see you all grown up.”

A baby. Hershel. No baby had ever the name Hershel Layton.

And I went to the Japanese version. And same, it says “baby”.

So. Did Roland Layton just tell him the worst ever lie?? I mean, it’s clear from Azran Legacy that he knows he is adopted and remembers at least a little bit of before. Did he know all his life? Did Froshel not know he was adopted? 

If so, imagine the professor telling the story to Emmy and Luke, “So I found my father and he told me those men wanted to see how much I had grown since I was a b... Wait, that’s not right.”

Also, what if is Roland telling some of the truth? If Bronev was among those men, he would certainly have seen him as a baby, and wanted to know how much he had grown. How much does Roland know about Targent?

Ahhh, this is so complicated. What do you guys think?

[hylianmaria]

The Legend of (the) Legendary Heroes

Is there a second “the” in that title?

Anyway,

“I offer up this contract to spill the salt contained within this post.”

I try to make a review post of every anime I watch and since I watched this recently I feel like it deserves a review tho it’s more or less dead.

Plot.

The plot was pretty interesting. You had me at the Hero Relics and the alleged cinnamon roll king trying his best to not be like the corrupt nobles before him. I even got more interested when said king ascended to the throne by episode three and I just knew it,

“The tragedy of Sion Astal!” I’m in!!

Except... not really

Characters:

Over the course of the show I came to love this guy! I’m sitting here like “Can he do it?” Even though I knew how it would go since i’m familiar with the trope, but still! Then the last four episodes or so throw some s**ty backstory of Lonely Demon X Mad Hero ship and it turns out good ol’ Sion is EVEN MORE special than just being a rightful heir to Roland. Like... I think i would have been happier seeing him fall on his own, not just because some stupid spirit thing made him do it, that’s Ryner’s deal,

Like you knew Sion was starting to stray away from his intended goal the moment this dude showed up.

But, back to the good stuff.

Ryner Lute is great.

He’s hilarious and he deserves all the naps. He makes me think of a Manakete from Fire Emblem, where he sleeps so much because it serves as a way to keep his Alpha Stigma power in check? That’s a headcanon, tho other Alpha Stigma sleep like that too. Hmm...

Yes, I did watch this show because it gives me massive Fire Emblem vibes!

I’m one for strong female characters but I gotta say I don’t really like Ferris’s personality. I mean I get it, you like the guy you’re traveling with and you feel the need to tell every woman he’s a perv so you can have him for yourself but, that joke got old.

I honestly find Kiefer to be better.

Iris is annoying

Lucil is scary

Miran don’t even get me started!

The World:

It’s beautiful. It’s actually really well built and very interesting. The conflict between countries is very realistic and it seems like Roland has some breathtaking landscapes. I’m sure other countries do too. There’s a map! Yes, I say this because every story about this sort of thing needs a coherent map and not everyone has them.

There are some things about religion too that were lightly brushed on during Arua’s arc.(?) How Alpha Stigma are treated by religious figures. We see Ryner struggling with the higher being’s purpose and his own existence and thrn...nothing *sigh*

So as much as I enjoyed the journey leading up to a stupid cliffhanger i think i have to still give this a low rating. It’s a story that could have been told in about 30-50 episodes. Focus more on the hero relics and why they are the reason Runa and Gestark(?) are invading, they’re obviously connected to the legendary heroes of old we hear from at the beginning so it really doesn’t need more omnipotent beings reincarnated as old school BFFs that didn’t speak for two years and weren’t that close to begin with.

Yes, Sion and Ryner share a traumatic experience where everyone except Kiefer died, but that doesn’t make you BFFs.

I love the characters I really do, but their stories do take a turn for the worse.

[nesiacha]

do you have some good sources about how women during the frev thought about universal male suffrage? (i've been uncomfortable with some claims about how the frev was not feminist enough because women got the rights to vote in the 20th century, but cannot back up this discomfort.)

"I am quite limited on certain subjects and this is one of them (I am currently researching the exact thoughts of women during the French Revolution on universal suffrage).

Unfortunately, it has been a great shame that the French Revolution was misogynistic despite the meager rights that were gradually taken away from them over time. Even the greatest progressives like Sylvain Maréchal, who was an important disciple of Babeuf, had as a project to ensure that women did not have a say in the learning of reading.

The fact that misogyny was already present during the Ancien Régime (Marie Antoinette is blamed for all evils when in reality she did not have much say during her husband's reign, to better absolve Louis XVI and the policy of France under this absolute regime) or that Napoleon made the condition of women worse than that of Italy or Spain (I mentioned this in my post 'Women's Rights Suppressed') while being a great hypocrite does not absolve the revolutionaries for what they did in their misogyny.

There was a habit of attacking the wives of their adversaries to better discredit them (like Manon Roland, Marie Françoise Goupil, wife of Hébert, Lucile Duplessis, wife of Desmoulins), which is an interesting parallel on this point with the attacks against Marie Antoinette.

Olympe de Gouges spoke about the rights of women and citizens. Pauline Léon, Claire Lacombe, who demanded the right to organize in the national army. Théroigne de Méricourt, Louis Reine Audu, and again Claire Lacombe fought in the Tuileries and yet, despite being rewarded with a civic crown, they would not have the right to speak on universal suffrage.

Chaumette was a great misogynist, Robespierre too (one could tell me that he supported Louise de Keralio's candidacy for her entry into the academy, but in political matters, it was another story), Danton, Sylvain Maréchal, Amar, etc. I am not here to blame Robespierre and I deplore that there is a black legend about him, but one can see a certain purely political gesture in my opinion for the action he will take towards Simone Evrard.

As much as Simone Evrard is a very intelligent woman, with an extraordinary destiny very underestimated, capable of making very good political speeches (one of the people of the French Revolution that I admire the most), I wonder if the fact that Robespierre personally introduced her into the Assembly was just an opportunistic gesture because he would have had an additional reason to discredit Jacques Roux and Théophile Leclerc thanks to the speech she made while he was among the revolutionaries who approved the restriction of women's rights. Respect towards Simone Evrard regarding her dignity and intelligence (maybe even surely) opportunism, I would be tempted to answer on this by affirmative.

Risking repeating myself, Napoleon being a greater oppressor towards women by taking away the few rights they had, enacting oppressive and hypocritical laws, and even bloody ones concerning them, does not absolve the other revolutionaries of their sexism.

And there is no excuse that it was of their time (in fact, I noticed that this lie is used in my opinion to absolve Napoleon but not the revolutionaries, but forced to see that it fits into the same idea)... First of all, Charles Gilbert Romme was more progressive in women's rights, Marat and Charlier too, Camille Desmoulins thought that women could have the right to vote, Condorcet demanded gender equality, Carnot worked with him in women education with Pastoret and Guilloud , Guyomar opposed the exclusion of women from universal suffrage. Worse than anything, while the clubs and societies of women ended up being banned, which is a regression.

In 1795, for attempting to revolt against the Assembly which abolished the social policies of the Montagnards, they were prohibited from attending assemblies and even from gathering in the streets in groups of more than 5. Moreover, the term 'tricoteuse' to insult women was not invented during the Napoleonic era or the royalist era but in 1795.

What did women think about this? This is where I am quite limited because besides the answers I have given about these women and their actions, unfortunately, there is not much else I can say due to my limited knowledge.

In any case, I hope I have helped a bit to support the aforementioned statements.

In the meantime, I can provide some of my sources: the historian Mathilde Larrère, Antoine Resche who made very good summarized portraits of some revolutionary women on the website 'veni vidi sensi', I would also recommend reading the book by the writer Claude Guillon on Robespierre, women, and the Revolution (even though I completely disagree with some of his books that have been legally condemned, this one is rather good and he had a quite good blog on the French Revolution that I recommend checking out), and the historian Jean-Clément Martin, 'La révolte brisée'."

Reedit: Thank you to aedesluminis for inform me the role that Carnot Pastoret and Guilloud did with women's education.

[cryinglayton]

I just realized something: Remember the first Miracle Mask flashback part where a group of Strangers came to Layton's home? Layton's mom was panicking since a bunch of strangers came looking for Layton (luckily Layton was out at the time) and his dad went with them and claim that they were old friends. In hindsight, she had every right to worry since it is highly possible that the strangers was Targent agents looking for him and it is also likely that Layton's dad was lying to protect him.

I always thought that too anon, she must have been absolutely terrified that they were going to take hershel away and return him to his blood father. Its probably why roland took the men to see the norwell wall, to try and divert their attention. Given what happened to desmonds family when targent came calling, lucille and roland were in considerable danger when they stopped the men from seeing hershel

[blackkudos]

Josh White

Joshua Daniel "Josh" White (February 11, 1914 – September 5, 1969) was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names Pinewood Tom and Tippy Barton in the 1930s.

White grew up in the South during the 1920s and 1930s. He became a prominent race records artist, with a prolific output of recordings in genres including Piedmont blues, country blues, gospel music, and social protest songs. In 1931, White moved to New York, and within a decade his fame had spread widely. His repertoire expanded to include urban blues, jazz, traditional folk songs, and political protest songs, and he was in demand as an actor on radio, Broadway, and film.

White became the closest black friend and confidant of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, White's anti-segregationist and international human rights political stance presented in many of his recordings and in his speeches at rallies were subsequently used by McCarthyites as a pretext for labeling him a communist to slander and harass him. From 1947 through the mid-1960s, White was caught up in the anti-communist Red Scare, and as a consequence his career was damaged. However White's musical style would go on to influence several generations of musical artists.

Career

Early years

White was born on February 2, 1914, in the black section of Greenville, South Carolina, one of the four children of Reverend Dennis and Daisy Elizabeth White. His father told him that he was named after the Biblical character Joshua of the Old Testament. His mother introduced him to music when he was five years old, at which age he began singing in his church's choir. White's father threw a white bill collector out of his home in 1921, for which he was beaten so badly that he nearly died, and then was locked up in a mental institution, where he died nine years later.

Two months after his father had been taken away from the family, White left home with Blind Man Arnold, a black street singer, whom he agreed to lead across the South and for whom he would collect coins after performances. Arnold would then send White's mother two dollars a week. Arnold soon realized that he could profit from this gifted boy, who quickly learned to dance, sing, and play the tambourine. Over the next eight years, he rented the boy's services to other blind street singers, including Blind Blake and Blind Joe Taggart, and in time White mastered the varied guitar stylings of all of them. In order to appear sympathetic to the onlookers tossing coins, the old men kept White shoeless and in ragged short pants until he was sixteen years old. At night he slept in cotton fields or in horse stables, often on an empty stomach, while his employer slept in a black hotel.

While guiding Taggart in 1927, White arrived in Chicago, Illinois. Mayo Williams, a producer for Paramount Records, recognized White's talents and began using him as a session guitarist. He backed many artists for recordings before recording his first popular Paramount record as the lead vocalist and lead guitarist on "Scandalous and a Shame", billed as "Blind Joe Taggart & Joshua White", thus becoming the youngest artist of the "race records" era. He was still shoeless and sleeping in horse stables, with all his payments for recordings going to Taggart and Arnold. After Williams left Paramount to start his own label in Chicago, he threatened that if Taggart did not pay White for his recording services he would call the authorities and have Taggart arrested for indentured servitude and keeping the boy out of school. For a few months after Taggart released him from servitude, White shared a room with Blind Blake at Williams's home before finding his own room in a boarding house. Finally, he was being paid for his recordings and for the first time in his life was able to buy proper clothes and shoes. For the next two years, White continued an active recording schedule in Chicago, until he had saved enough money to return to Greenville and take care of his mother and younger siblings.

1930s: The Singing Christian and Pinewood Tom

Late in 1930, ARC Records, basec in New York, sent two A&R men to find White, the lead boy who had recorded for Paramount in 1928. After several months of searching, they found him recovering from a broken leg at his mother's home in Greenville. They persuaded her to sign a recording contract for her underage son, promising that they would record only religious songs and not the "devil's music" (the blues). White then moved to New York City and recorded religious songs for ARC, billed as "Joshua White, the Singing Christian".

In a few months, having recorded his repertoire of religious songs, White was persuaded by ARC to record blues songs and to work as a session musician for other artists. White, 18 years old and still underage, signed a new contract under the name Pinewood Tom in 1932. This name was used only on his blues recordings. ARC used his birth name for new gospel recordings and soon added "The Singing Christian". ARC also released his recordings under the name Tippy Barton during this period. As a session guitarist, White recorded with Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, Buddy Moss, Charlie Spand, the Carver Boys, Walter Roland, and Lucille Bogan.

In February 1936, he punched his left hand through a glass door during a bar fight, and the hand became infected with gangrene. Doctors recommended amputation of the hand, which White repeatedly refused. Amputation was averted, but his chording hand was left immobile. He retreated from his recording career to become a dock worker, an elevator operator, and a building superintendent. During the time when his hand was lame, he squeezed a small rubber ball to try to revive it.

One night during a card game, White's left hand was revived completely. He immediately began practicing playing the guitar and soon put together a group, Josh White and His Carolinians, with his brother Billy and close friends Carrington Lewis, Sam Gary, and Bayard Rustin. They soon began playing private parties in Harlem. At one of these parties, on New Year's Eve 1938, Leonard De Paur, a Broadway choral director, was intrigued by White's singing. For the past six months, DePaur and the producers of a Broadway musical in development, John Henry, had been searching America for an actor, singer, and guitarist to play the lead role of Blind Lemon, a street minstrel who wandered back and forth across the stage narrating the story in song. Their initial auditions with native New York singers were unsuccessful, so they looked through previous race record releases to find a suitable artist. They eventually narrowed their search down to two people, Pinewood Tom and The Singing Christian, both pseudonyms used by White.

1940s: "Josh White and His Guitar"

After months of rehearsals and out-of-town productions in Philadelphia and Boston, John Henry opened on Broadway on January 10, 1940, with Paul Robeson as John Henry and White as Blind Lemon Jefferson. The musical did not have a long run, but it boosted White's career. He began working with Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Burl Ives, and the Golden Gate Quartet in the CBS radio series Back Where I Come From, written by folk-song collector Alan Lomax and directed by Nicholas Ray. Ray later produced live engagements and recordings for two historic duos of which White was a member. The first of these was the duo of White and Lead Belly, who had a six-month engagement at New York's Village Vanguard nightclub, teaming the young and virile city blues singer—the "Joe Louis of the Blues Guitar"—with the older, white-haired country blues singer—the "King of the 12 String Guitar" (appellations given to them by Woody Guthrie in his Daily Worker newspaper review of their show). "Josh White & Lead Belly" achieved great publicity, the excitement of sold-out shows, positive reviews, recordings, and film shorts. Forty-five years after the event, Max Gordon, the owner of the Village Vanguard, wrote in his memoir Live at the Village Vanguard, "The greatest conversations ever heard at the Vanguard was the carving out of the guitars between Lead Belly and Josh White."

The second duo produced by Ray teamed White with Libby Holman, a white "torch singer" of the 1920s, who was branded an immoral woman for allegedly killing her millionaire husband. Their pairing created more publicity and controversy for White, as they were the first mixed-race male and female artists to perform together, record together and tour together in previously segregated venues across the United States. They continued performing off and on for the next six years, while making an album and a film together. White and Holman frequently requested that the War Department send them overseas during World War II to give USO concert performances for the troops. Despite a letter of recommendation from Eleanor Roosevelt, they were repeatedly rejected as "too controversial", considering that the U.S. Armed Forces were still segregated throughout World War II. Meanwhile, White's album Harlem Blues: Josh White Trio (with Sidney Bechet and Wilson Myers, on the Blue Note label) produced the hit single "Careless Love", and his controversial Columbia Records album Joshua White & His Carolinians: Chain Gang, produced by John Hammond, was the first race record ever forced upon the white radio stations and record stores in America's South and caused such a furor that it reached the desk of President Franklin Roosevelt. On December 20, 1940, White and the Golden Gate Quartet, sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt, gave a historic concert in Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery (the live recording of this concert was released on CD in 2005).

One month later, White and the Golden Gate Quartet performed at the inauguration of President Roosevelt in Washington. White refashioned his music, performance and image with his re-emergence on the entertainment scene in 1939 and 1940. The industry and audiences alike no longer saw a southern black country boy, but instead a mature, self-educated, articulate, outspoken and sophisticated 26-year-old man, who possessed a strikingly handsome and sexual bearing and personality both on and off the stage. He soon became the first blues performer to attract a large white and middle-class African-American following and was the first African-American artist to perform in previously segregated venues in the US, as he transcended the typical racial and social barriers of the time who associated blues with a rural and working-class African-American audience, while performing in nightclubs and theaters during the 1930s and 1940s.

During the 1940s, as a matinee idol with magnetic sexual charisma and a commanding stage presence, White not only was an international star of recordings, concerts, nightclubs, radio, film, and Broadway but also achieved a unique position for an African American of the segregated era by becoming accepted and befriended by white society, aristocracy, European royalty, and America's ruling family, the Roosevelts. One of his most popular recordings during the 1940s was "One Meatball", lyrics a song about a "little man" who could afford only one meatball. The song is an adaptation by the American songwriters Hy Zaret and Lou Singer of a song called "Lay of the One Fishball" lyrics by Harvard professor George Martin Lane, which was to the tune of an English folk song called "Sucking Cider Through a Straw" lyrics. When offered the song he immediately recorded it, and it became the first million-selling record by a male African-American artist; according to his biographer, Elijah Wald, it was "Josh's biggest hit by far". The Andrews Sisters and Jimmy Savo soon recorded their own versions, which also became hits (other cover versions were recorded in subsequent years by Bing Crosby, Lightnin' Hopkins, Lonnie Donegan, Dave Van Ronk, Ry Cooder, Washboard Jungle, Tom Paxton, and Shinehead).

White's hits from the 1940s include "Jelly, Jelly", a song with sexually charged lyrics, composed by Earl Hines and Billy Eckstine; "The House I Live In (What Is America to Me)", a patriotic American song during World War II, written by Earl Robinson and Lewis Allan, with lyrics describing what White hoped America would become after the war and government-sanctioned segregation ended (White had the first hit record with the song, which he then taught to Frank Sinatra for his MGM film short about the song, which won an Academy Award); "Waltzing Matilda", an Australian folk song taught to White by an Australian sailor backstage at the Cafe Society (White re-arranged the song in a waltz tempo and then donated his services to the government by recording it the next week for the government's V Disc label to boost the morale of the troops overseas; it was an immediate hit); "St. James Infirmary", with new words and music by White; the old English folk song "Lass with the Delicate Air"; "John Henry", with new words and music by White; "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho", with new words and music by White; "The Riddle Song (I Gave My Love a Cherry)", a traditional English folk song; "Evil Hearted Man", with words and music by White; "Miss Otis Regrets", by Cole Porter; "The House of the Rising Sun", with new words and music by White (subsequently recorded by Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, and the Animals, who set it to a rock beat in 1964); and "Strange Fruit".

White recorded in various contexts, sometimes accompanied only by his guitar and sometimes playing with others backing him on guitar and string bass or piano or with jazz ensembles, gospel vocal groups, or a swing jazz band, as in his popular 1945 recording "I Left a Good Deal in Mobile". He performed and recorded with the jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams, and besides his duets with Libby Holman and with Lead Belly, he recorded and performed duets with Buddy Moss and often performed duets with his friend Billie Holiday. He also recorded songs of social and political protest with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, and Lee Hays in their folk cooperative group the Almanac Singers and in the later group People's Songs, which consisted of the core of musicians and activists who formed Almanac Singers.

In 1945, with the success of his hit single "One Meatball", in addition to his national radio show, his appearance in the film Crimson Canary, and publicity from Café Society, White became the first African-American popular music artist to make a national concert hall tour of America, with the Jamaican singer and dancer Josephine Premice as his opening act. Subsequent concert tours included Ethel Waters, Willie Bryant, Timmie Rogers, the Katherine Dunham Company, the Hall Johnson Choir, Mary Lou Williams, Lillian Fitzgerald, the Chocolateers, and the Three Poms. The success of this tour created a demand for a return tour of American concert halls the following year. On this second tour, the opening act was the innovative dancer and choreographer Pearl Primus, who had worked with him at the Café Society. Primus had choreographed several performance pieces to the music of White, and on this tour they performed these numbers together. She performed these pieces in concerts for the rest of her career.

As an actor between 1939 and 1950, White appeared in dozens of radio dramas, including the classic Norman Corwin plays, and star or co-star on the New York stage in three musicals and three dramatic plays, in addition to appearing in several films. In February 1945, Paramount Pictures in Hollywood optioned John Lomax’s projected autobiography, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, with Bing Crosby to star as Lomax and White as Lead Belly. Lead Belly stayed in California until the end of the year, hoping to be involved in the project, but the film never got past the preproduction stage. White appeared in other films, including The Crimson Canary (1945), in which he portrayed himself; the Hans Richter film Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947), in which he co-starred with Libby Holman (the film won the Special Prize at the Venice Film Festival and was a contribution to the avant-garde film movement); and the John Sturges film The Walking Hills (1949), in which White co-starred with Randolph Scott, John Ireland, Ella Raines, and Arthur Kennedy, in one of Hollywood's first films in which an African American was portrayed as an equal character in the story.

As a leading artist and activist of the era, who had begun writing and recording political protest songs as early as 1933 and who would speak and sing at human rights rallies, White was prominently associated with the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1940s. This activism made White's politics suspect in Hollywood during the McCarthy era and, accordingly, The Walking Hills was his final film role.

At the Café Society

The Café Society nightclub, located in New York's Greenwich Village, was the first integrated nightclub in the United States, where blacks and whites could sit, socialize and dance in the same room and enjoy entertainment. It opened in late 1938 with a three-month engagement of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, Billie Holiday and comedian Jack Gilford, immediately making it New York's hottest club.

One day, John Hammond asked White to meet Barney Josephson, the owner of the club. As soon as Josephson heard White and saw the charisma he exuded, he told Hammond that White was going to become the first black male sex symbol in America. It was Josephson who decided at that first encounter, on the stage apparel he would have designed for White—which would become a trademark for years to come—a black velvet shirt open to the stomach and silk slacks. While starring at the Café Society over the next decade and becoming exposed to audiences, performers and beautiful music from around the world, White expanded his musical interests and repertoire to include various styles which he would subsequently record. He had remarkable success in popularizing recordings in diverse musical genres, which ranged from his original repertoire of Negro blues, gospel and protest songs to Broadway show tunes, cabaret, pop, and white American, English and Australian folk songs.

The Greenwich Village club was so successful that Josephson soon opened a larger Café Society Uptown, at which White also performed, gaining him recognition by the New York Times as the "Darling of Fifth Avenue". The Roosevelt family, New York society, international royalty, and Hollywood stars regularly came to see White at the Café Society, and he used his fame and visibility to create, foster and develop relations between blacks and whites, making him a national figure and voice of racial integration in America.

He was thought to have had numerous romantic liaisons with wealthy society women, singers, and Hollywood actresses, but the rumors were never substantiated. The women in question always referred to White as their close friend, and Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt also referred to him as a mentor.

The Café Society made White a star and put him in a unique position as an African American. However, because of the club's unique social status of mixing the races, it also became a haven for New York's social progressives, whose politics leaned to the left. As it played a vital role in White's ascendancy to stardom, it would also one day play a crucial role in his fall from grace.

White and the Roosevelts

Beginning in 1940, White established a long and close relationship with the family of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and would become the closest African American confidant to the President of the United States; and the Roosevelts were the godparents of Josh White, Jr. (born November 30, 1940). In January 1941, White performed at the President's Inauguration, and two months later, he released another highly controversial record album, Southern Exposure, which included six anti-segregationist songs with liner notes written by the African-American writer Richard Wright, and the subtitle of which was An Album of Jim Crow Blues. Like the Chain Gang album, and with revelatory yet inflammatory songs such as "Uncle Sam Says", "Jim Crown Train", "Bad Housing Blues", "Defense Factory Blues", "Southern Exposure", and "Hard Time Blues", it also was forced upon the southern white radio stations and record stores, caused outrage in the South and also was brought to the attention of President Roosevelt. However, instead of making White persona non grata in segregated America, it resulted in Roosevelt asking White to become the first African-American artist to give a command performance at the White House, in 1941.

After that first White House command performance ended, the Roosevelts invited White into their private chambers, where they spent more than three hours talking about White's life story of growing up in Jim Crow South, listening to his songs written about those experiences, and drinking Café Royale (coffee and brandy). At one point during that evening, the President said to White, "You know, Josh, when I first heard your song 'Uncle Sam Says,' I thought you were referring to me as Uncle Sam....Am I right?" White responded, "Yes, Mr. President, I wrote that song to you after seeing how my brother was treated in the segregated section of Fort Dix army camp.... However that wasn't the first song I wrote to you.... In 1933, I wrote and recorded a song called 'Low Cotton,' about the plight of Negro cotton pickers down South, and in the lyrics I made an appeal directly to you to help their situation." The President, interested and impressed at the candor of his response, then asked White to sing those songs to him again. A friendship developed, and five more command performances followed, in addition to two appearances at the Inaugurations of 1941 and 1945; and the White family would spend many Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with the Roosevelts at their Hyde Park, New York mansion (now the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum). The President sent White to give concerts overseas as a "goodwill ambassador", and he was often referred to in the press as the "Presidential Minstrel". More importantly, it was White's songs of social protest, such as "Uncle Sam Says"listen and "Defense Factory Blues",listen which caused the President to begin exploring how to desegregate the U.S. armed forces. Meanwhile, White's recordings of "Beloved Comrade" (the President's favorite song), "Freedom Road", "Free and Equal Blues", and "House I Live In (What Is America to Me)", were great songs of inspiration to the Roosevelts and the country during World War II. After the President's death, White's younger brother William White became Eleanor Roosevelt's personal assistant, house manager and chauffeur for the remainder of her life.

In 1949, Fisk University honored White with an honorary doctorate; and the local Chicago NBC radio series Destination Freedom, written by Richard Durham, aired a half-hour dramatized biography of White's life entitled "Help the Blind". In 1950, Eleanor Roosevelt (then the United Nations ambassador in charge of war relief) and White made a historical speaking and concert tour of the capitals of Europe to lift the spirits of those war-torn countries. The tour built to such proportions that when they arrived in Stockholm, the presentation had to be moved from the Opera House to the city's soccer stadium where 50,000 came out in the pouring rain to hear Mrs. Roosevelt speak and White perform. All during this tour, audiences across Europe enthusiastically requested White to sing his famed anti-lynching recording of "Strange Fruit", but on each occasion he would respond, "My mother always told me that when you have problems in your background you don't give those problems to your neighbor....So, that's a song I will sing back home until I never have to sing it again, but for you, I would now like to sing its sister song, written by the same man ('The House I Live In')."

Movies and theater

As an actor, White acted several more times on Broadway in the late 1940s. In 1947 he appeared in German artist and avant-garde filmmaker Hans Richter's Dreams that Money Can Buy, co-starring Libby Holman along with the participation of Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Darius Milhaud and Fernand Léger. It won an award at that year's Venice Film Festival. He also appeared in John Sturges' 1949 western The Walking Hills with Randolph Scott, Ella Raines, Edgar Buchanan, and Arthur Kennedy, in which his character, an itinerant musician, was not a stereotype but on an equal footing with the white characters. He was still young and very handsome and it hard not to speculate on what might have been had the blacklist not put an end to his budding movie career.

1950s: White and the blacklist

White had reached the zenith of his career when touring with Eleanor Roosevelt on a celebrated and triumphant Goodwill tour of Europe. He had been hosted by the continent's prime ministers and royal families, and had just performed before 50,000 cheering fans at Stockholm's soccer stadium. Amidst this tour, while in Paris in June 1950, White received a call from Mary Chase, his manager in New York, telling him that Red Channels (who had been sending newsletters to the media since 1947 about White and other artists who they warned were subversive) had just released and distributed a thick magazine with subversive details regarding 151 artists from the entertainment and media industries whom they labeled communist sympathizers. White's name was prominent on this list. There never had been an official blacklist—until now. White immediately went to discuss the situation with Mrs. Roosevelt—to ask her advice and help. With great empathy, she told him that her voice on his behalf would hinder his efforts to clear his name. She explained that if she wasn't the widow of the president they would also be crucifying her. She continued that the right-wing press had been calling her a "pinko", citing her social activism and friendships with non-whites. That night, White called his manager and alerted her that he would be flying back to America the next day so that he could clear his name. Upon arriving at New York's Idlewild Airport, the FBI met him, took him into a customs holding room, interrogated him, and held him for hours while waiting word from Washington as to whether White, who was born in the United States, would be deported to Europe.

For a decade, White had been a leading voice of black America and a voice that reminded Americans of social injustices, while also becoming a major pop star and sex symbol from his platform at the Cafe Society. However, when Barney Josephson's brother and attorney Leon, who was also a lawyer for the communist-created International Labor Defense, was brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 and refused to testify, he was sent to prison. The right-wing media publicity centered on the Cafe Society as a hotbed of communists. By December of that year, the original downtown club had to close, and by 1949, the uptown club was forced to shut its doors. Virtually every artist who regularly worked at the club had contributed to left-leaning benefits and was suspected as being a communist sympathizer.

White was not a communist and was not active in any political party. However, when he was told that people's human rights were being threatened and asked to participate in a benefit or a rally, he was always willing to lend his voice to the cause. Whether it was the plight of African Americans in the South or oppressed people in Yugoslavia, it was all the same to him. Since his return from Europe in June 1950, White had been interrogated every week, and was threatened that his career would be finished and that he would lose his family. Controversially, in a fervent desire to defend his reputation, and challenge his accusers and the blacklist (while under intense pressure from his manager and his family), White told the FBI that he would go to Washington, appear before HUAC and set the record straight.

With the assistance of his daughter Bunny, White began writing a lengthy letter about his life and his beliefs that he would plan to read as a statement at his HUAC appearance. Before going to Washington, he made trips to visit two trusted friends and ask them read his statement—Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Robeson. Bunny accompanied him on his trip up to Hyde Park to visit Mrs. Roosevelt. She recalled the visit in an interview with Josh White Estate Archival biographer Douglas Yeager: "Mrs. Roosevelt told Daddy that he had written a good letter. However, she cautioned him not to go to Washington, explaining that the HUAC Committee would turn his testimony against him if he appeared and they weren't satisfied with his statement." A few days later, White drove up to Paul Robeson's Connecticut home by himself.

Paul Robeson, a former All-American football player, was a Columbia University-trained African-American attorney fluent in 12 languages, who lived most of the 1920s and 1930s in London and was active in world human rights and the movement to decolonize Africa. However, he was best known as an international star of recordings and film, the most celebrated stage Othello in history, and the highest-paid concert performer in the world. He also was the most respected and admired artist-activist throughout the world, with friendships that included the leaders of many countries including the Soviet Union, where Robeson was considered a cultural and social giant and iconic figure. To the social progressives in America, he was the most respected and important voice of truth and social justice in the world. In 1939, at the onset of World War II in Europe, Paul Robeson and his family returned to America and maintained a residence in Connecticut. Robeson had been White's friend and artistic collaborator for many years and was the godfather to White's daughter Beverly. They did not always agree on everything politically, however White held great respect for Robeson. Years later in a radio interview, White stated that Robeson never once mentioned the Communist Party to him, and in fact advised White not to get too involved with any political party. Robeson supported America's war effort and was considered a patriotic champion of freedom and liberty after his national radio broadcast concert performance and subsequent record album Ballad for Americans. However, when American Negro soldiers returning from the war were still confronted with government sanctioned segregation, racism and even lynchings, it became evident that Robeson was greatly disappointed with the American government. In the postwar years, his socialist belief structure seemed better aligned to the Soviet Union, which had been America's ally in the war, but by 1947 had become their bitter enemy. In 1949, America's media and press reported a speech Robeson had made in [Paris], alleging that he said if a war would ever take place between the USSR and America that American Negroes would not fight in America's army (the U.S. media and press version of the speech has since been found to be inaccurate and slanted).

Before going to Washington, White felt he had to meet with Robeson, ask him read his statement, and tell him of decision to go to Washington. One paragraph out of the long biographical letter referred to Robeson: "I have great admiration for Mr. Robeson as an actor and a great singer, and if what I read in the papers is true, I feel sad over the help he's been giving to people who despise America. He has a right to his own opinions, but when he, or anybody, pretends to talk for a whole race, he's kidding himself. His statement that the Negroes would not fight for their country, against Soviet Russia or any other enemy, is both wrong and an insult: because I stand ready to fight Russian or any enemy of America." In the biography Robeson: Lives of the Left, Martin Duberman wrote about the encounter. Apparently White and Robeson went up to the bathroom of Robeson's master bedroom, turned on all the faucets so that the FBI listening devices couldn't hear their conversation, and began discussing White's statement and his upcoming appearance before HUAC. Robeson read the prepared statement and told White that he personally felt it would be wrong to go to Washington and appear before HUAC. He continued that he would never appear before the Committee, but that this was a decision White would have to make on his own. Reportedly, White painfully told him, "I feel like a heel Paul, but they've got me in a vise... I have to go." White was called into the FBI offices dozens of times between 1947 and 1954, but no one is absolutely certain what special vise they had him in, besides threatening to destroy his career and family, as many of the pages found in his FBI files (via the Freedom of Information Act) are still blacked out by the government. It is the belief of White, Jr., and many others however, that the FBI, displeased with White's prowess with white women, used it against him (as they had done with Jack Johnson years earlier), by threatening him with imprisonment and saying that they would concoct a trumped-up charge of violating the Mann Act, "for transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes".

On September 1, 1950, White, appearing with only his wife Carol at his side, sat down before HUAC in Washington, D.C., regarding communist influence in the entertainment industry and African American community. He did not give the HUAC Committee names of Communist Party members. At length, he told them of his life story as a child, seeing his father beaten and dragged through the streets of Greenville by white authorities, and having to leave home at the age of seven to lead street singers across America in order to feed his family. He defended his right and responsibility as a folksinger to bring social injustices to the attention of the public through his songs, and then passionately read the chilling lyrics of one of his most famous recordings, the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" (written by Abel Meeropol) which was then placed into the Congressional Record. He also included his words about Paul Robeson regarding the alleged statement Robeson had made in Paris.

White would later defend his testimony as a "friendly witness" (a term applied to those who appeared voluntarily before HUAC) by claiming that he had a right to defend his name against unjust accusations, that the scope of his testimony was limited, that he did not state anything that was not already known, that he never gave the FBI or HUAC names of members of the Communist Party, and that he was sincerely opposed to communism. However, testifying before the committee and speaking out against Paul Robeson angered his large socially progressive fan base, who believed that testifying before the HUAC Committee acknowledged their right to exist. Not being privileged to know the details of his FBI interrogations, many of this group also suspected that he had given the FBI names of Communist Party members, which he had not. The fact that the future career and reputation of baseball legend Jackie Robinson was not hampered when he appeared before the HUAC Committee one year earlier, while expressing virtually the same words as White had about Robeson's alleged statement in Spain, did not seem to matter to White's detractors. Robinson's fan base did not derive from the political left as White's had. White's HUAC appearance greatly affected his posthumous reputation in America, causing him to become the only artist of the era to be blacklisted by both the Right and Left. He felt immense pressures from several sides to appear before the HUAC Committee, and based upon his harsh early life experiences learned in Jim Crow South, it was apparent that White believed his only option to protect the lives of his family and career and to survive, was to figuratively "ride the fence post"—go to Washington, denounce the Communist Party, but not name any names of Communist Party members. In the end, Mrs. Roosevelt had an astute understanding of the political climate in Washington and in America when she warned White that the government would turn his testimony against him. Indeed, this was the case, and White's blacklisting would not be lifted for years.

With work rapidly drying up in America, White relocated to London for much of 1950 to 1955, where he hosted his own BBC radio show, My Guitar Is Old as Father Time, resumed his recording career, with new successes, such as "On Top of Old Smokey", "Lonesome Road", "I Want You and Need You", "Wanderings", "Molly Malone" and "I'm Going to Move to the Outskirts of Town", and gave concert tours throughout Europe and beyond. However, back in the United States—the country of his birth—the McCarthy anti-communist hysteria had already greatly dismembered White's career as early as 1947, when he lost his record contract and his national radio show, and was barred from appearing on other radio shows. His Hollywood blacklisting began in 1948, after completing his final film role in The Walking Hills, and he would not be allowed to appear on U.S. television from 1948 until 1963. Meanwhile, the 1940s politically Left-leaning social progressives who had survived the Red Scare, had begun reviving the folk music industry in America. They would keep White shut out from their folk festivals, their folk magazines, their emerging record companies, and their media and press for most of the remaining years of his life. However, in 1955, the brave young owner of a new American record company, Jac Holzman, who wasn't afraid of the political pressure from the right or the left, offered White the opportunity to record again in his home country. He could only offer him $100, but he promised him artistic control and the best recording equipment available. They recorded the Josh White: 25th Anniversary album, which established Elektra Records and slowly began reviving White's career by finding a young, new audience who made it possible for him to work again in America. Accordingly, his name and reputation in America has only begun to recover in recent years.

White's blacklisting in the television industry in America was finally broken in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy invited him to appear on the national CBS Television's civil rights special "Dinner with the President". Kennedy told him how his records had inspired him when he was a college student in the Roosevelt era.

Later life

From the mid-1950s until his death in Manhasset, New York, in 1969 of heart disease, White primarily performed in concert halls, nightclubs, and folk music venues and festivals around the world. In 1961 he starred in The Josh White Show for Granada Television (a franchise holder for the commercial ITV network) in the United Kingdom. White's blacklisting in the television industry in America was finally broken in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy invited him to appear on the national CBS Television's civil rights special "Dinner with the President". Later that year he was seen again on national television performing for the masses on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the historic March on Washington. In 1964, White gave a command performance for Lester Pearson, the Prime Minister of Canada, and in January 1965 he performed at the inauguration of President Lyndon Baines Johnson. In his final years, he would make American television appearances on The Merv Griffin Show, Hugh Hefner's Playboy's Penthouse and Hootenanny, among others. Meanwhile, he starred in two concert specials for national Swedish television in 1962 and 1967; starred in the 1965 ITV Network special Heart Song: Josh White in the United Kingdom (with guest artists Julie Felix and Alexis Korner); was a guest star on the Canadian CBC-TV program Let's Sing Out with Oscar Brand in 1967; and made his final television appearance in May 1969 on the CBC-TV variety show One More Time.

The UK guitarist and entrepreneur Ivor Mairants worked with White to create The Josh White Guitar Method (Boosey & Hawkes) in 1956. It was an influential book for the fledgling UK blues and folk scene and was the first blues guitar instruction book ever published. The UK guitarist John Renbourn and the American guitarist Stefan Grossman (who was living in the UK at the time) have cited it as a critical influence on their playing.

Signature guitars

The success of the book The Josh White Guitar Method prompted Mairants to commission a Zenith "Josh White" signature guitar based on White's Martin 0021 from German guitar maker Oscar Teller. The Scottish guitarist Bert Jansch owned one of these models in his early playing years. On the last page of Josh White Guitar Method (printed in 1956) is a photo of this Zenith Josh White signature guitar and some text about it.

The Guild Guitar Company in the US worked with White on a signature model in 1965. This fact was confirmed in a TV program, The History Detectives, by Mark Dronge, whose father, Al, was one of the founders of Guild Guitars. Mark Dronge took White to the Guild factory in 1965. A guitar made to White's specifications was meant to become a signature guitar for White, but it was never mass produced. Mark Dronge explained that "The scene was starting to change. The Beatles were so influential and all these bands came out and the electric music was getting bigger and the plans for Josh White model just kind of fell by the wayside, unfortunately."

Carol White would vividly recount to White's archival biographer, Douglas Yeager, that in 1963 and 1964 the engineers of a new guitar company in development spent several months with their paperwork and drawings on her dining room table, as White and the engineers designed the first round-bodied guitar. Upon completion, the first Ovation Guitar was called the Josh White Model. White used this custom-made guitar when he performed the song "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" on YouTube with his daughter on Swedish television in one of his last filmed performances.

According to the "Ovation Original Program" White played the Josh White Model Ovation guitar at the Hotel America, in Hartford, Connecticut, on November 14, 1966.

In 1965–1967, the Ovation Guitar Company made a signature guitar for White, which was the first made for an African American. White was the first official Ovation endorser.

An article in Music Trades magazine in December 1966 stated that

"Earlier this year, the present double parabolic form was perfected after extensive consultations with professional guitarists including the pioneering guitar folk singer, Josh White.

"Ovation Instruments unveiled their new line of acoustical guitars at a reception and dinner held last month at the Hotel America, Hartford, Conn. In a program which featured demonstrations by White, one of Americas best-known folk singers, and the Balladeers, a new, young, singing group; and remarks by Charles Kaman, president of Kaman Aircraft Corporation, parent company of Ovation Instruments, and Jim D. Gurley, program manager of Ovation Instruments, the features of the Ovation guitar models were presented to 300 representatives of the press and the music industry.

"Josh White, playing Ovation's "Josh White" model—declared to be the first guitar which the famous folk singer has ever endorsed - held the crowd spellbound. His thirty-minute performance brought forth every nuance of the instrument's unique capability to render clear treble and deep resonant bass notes. Closing the show with a family ensemble with his two daughters, Mr. White brought down the house. It was one of the rare occasions when he and his children, though all professionals, have played together as a group. Also featured were the Balladeers, a bright, young singing group from the Connecticut Valley..."

Fingernail problems

White had a hands-on influence on Ovation. White used to come to the factory. His fingernails were brittle and prone to cracking, a condition that got worse as he grew older. Ovation's subassembly foreman, Al Glemboski, made a cast of White's fingers, from which he made a set of fiberglass nails. White glued on these false nails with an industrial glue, Eastman 910, which would later be marketed as Super Glue. He returned to the factory every other month for a new set of nails.

Death

In 1961, White's health began a sharp decline after he had the first of the three heart attacks and the progressive heart disease that would plague him over his final eight years. As a lifelong smoker he also had progressive emphysema, in addition to ulcers, and severe psoriasis in his hands and calcium deficiency, which caused the skin to peel from his fingers and left his fingernails broken and bleeding after every concert. During the last two years of his life, as his heart weakened dramatically, his wife put him in the hospital for four weeks after he completed each two-week concert tour. Finally, his doctors felt his only survival option was to attempt a new procedure to replace heart valves. The surgery failed.

White died on the operating table on September 5, 1969, at the North Shore Hospital in Manhasset, New York.

Harry Belafonte, after learning of White's death, said in an interview with the Associated Press, "I can't tell you how sad I am. I spent many, many hours with him in the years of my early development. He had a profound influence on my style. At the time I came along, he was the only popular black folk singer, and through his artistry exposed America to a wealth of material about the life and conditions of black people that had not been sung by any other artist."

Legacy

White was in many senses a trailblazer: popular country bluesman in the early 1930s, responsible for introducing a mass white audience to folk-blues in the 1940s, and the first black singer-guitarist to star in Hollywood films and on Broadway. On one hand he was famous for his civil rights songs, which made him a favorite of the Roosevelts, and on the other he was known for his sexy stage persona (a first for a black male artist).

He was the first black singer to give a White House command performance (1941), to perform in previously segregated hotels (1942), to get a million-selling record ("One Meatball", 1944), and the first to make a solo concert tour of America (1945). He was also the first folk and blues artist to perform in a nightclub, the first to tour internationally, and (along with Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie) the first to be honored with a US postage stamp.

White and Libby Holman became the first mixed-race male and female artists to perform together, record together and tour together in previously segregated venues across the United States. They continued performing off and on for the next six years, while making an album and a film together.

White was seen as an influence on hundreds of artists of diverse musical styles, including: Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Oscar Brand, Ed McCurdy, Lonnie Donegan, Alexis Korner, Cy Coleman, Elvis Presley, Merle Travis, Joel Grey, Bob Gibson, Dave Van Ronk, Phish, Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Shel Silverstein, John Fahey, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Judy Collins, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Mike Bloomfield, Danny Kalb, Ry Cooder, John Fogerty, Don McLean, Robert Plant and Eva Cassidy; in addition to those African American artists, such as Blind Boy Fuller, Robert Johnson, Brownie McGhee, Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Pearl Primus, Josephine Premice, Eartha Kitt, Harry Belafonte, Odetta, Ray Charles, Josh White, Jr., Jackie Washington, the Chambers Brothers, and Richie Havens, who in the footsteps of White were also able to break considerable barriers that had hampered African-American artists in the past.

Song and poetry tributes

The folk singer Bob Gibson and his writing partner, Shel Silverstein, wrote and recorded the song "Heavenly Choir" in 1979, a tribute to three of their most beloved artists, White, Hank Williams and Janis Joplin. The first verse is about White.

Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul & Mary and a protégé of White's, eulogized him in the song "Goodbye Josh", which was included on his first solo album, Peter.

Jack Williams wrote and recorded "A Natural Man", a tribute to White, on his album Walkin' Dreams in 2002.

The poet and historian Leatrice Emeruwa published the poem "Josh White Is Dead" in 1970.

Personal life

In 1933, White married Carol Carr, a New York gospel singer. They raised Blondell (Bunny), Julianne (Beverly), Josh Jr., Carolyn (Fern), Judy, and a foster daughter, Delores, in their home in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, New York. White's younger brother Billy (who he moved up from Greenville) and Carol's mother lived with them in the White household. His father died in a South Carolina mental institution in 1930, the result of beatings at the hands of Greenville deputies a decade earlier. His mother, Daisy Elizabeth, a stern and religious woman, remained in her hometown of Greenville and lived into her 80s. She came to visit White in New York several times a year, and he traveled to see her in South Carolina, but she didn't allow his nonreligious recordings in her home. Except for his childhood performances in her Greenville church in the 1920s, she never again saw her son perform, refusing to attend concerts where he sang non-sacred songs. His brother Billy and (future civil rights leader) Bayard Rustin, Sam Gary and Carrington Lewis performed and recorded with White as Josh White and His Carolinians (from 1939 to 1940) and appeared with him in the Broadway musical John Henry. After World War II, Billy became Eleanor Roosevelt's house manager and chauffeur for the remainder of her life.

On occasion in the early 1940s, when the grandmother watched the children, Carol would join White in singing, performing and recording with the folk collaborative group, the Almanac Singers. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Carol was a guest on Eleanor Roosevelt's television talk show, and in 1982 she was a featured speaker at the Smithsonian Institution's 100th anniversary celebration of the birth ofFranklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, while her son, Josh White, Jr., performed a musical program of songs his father had presented at one of his White House command performances. Josh White, Jr., a successful singer-songwriter, guitarist, actor, educator, and social activist for the past 60 years, performed and recorded with his father as a duet from 1944 to 1961 and performed with him in two Broadway plays (Josh White, Jr., won a 1949 Tony Award for the play How Long Till Summer). At various times in the 1950s and 1960s, White's daughters Beverly, Fern, and Judy also performed, recorded and appeared on radio and television with him. In 1964, when new anti-segregationist legislation made it easier for African Americans to purchase real estate in previously all-white neighborhoods, White and his wife bought a duplex in the Rosedale, Queens section of New York City. His daughter Beverly and her family lived upstairs, and White and his wife couple lived downstairs. White lived in this semi-suburban home for the rest of his life. Carol White continued to live there and worked until she was in her 80s, first as manager of a clothing boutique manager and then as a social worker serving people in nursing homes, until her sudden death in 1998. One week before her fatal heart attack, she received final confirmation that the United States Postal Service would honor White in 1998 with a postage stamp. When shown a mock-up photograph of the stamp by White's estate manager, Douglas Yeager, she expressed joy, gratitude and a long-awaited satisfaction that after all those painful years of social isolation in the McCarthy era, White would be receiving this recognition. She felt that she could finally go in peace.

Posthumous honors

In 1983, Josh White, Jr., starred in the long-running and rave-reviewed biographical dramatic musical stage play on his father's life, Josh: The Man & His Music, written and directed by Broadway veteran Peter Link, which premiered at the Michigan Public Theatre in Lansing, Michigan. Subsequently, the State of Michigan formally proclaimed April 20, 1983, as "Josh White & Josh White, Jr. Day".

In 1984, when asked why his father's recordings were so hard to find, Josh White, Jr. said, "Normally, when a person of my old man's stature passes away, a flood of re-releases and best-of packages are dumped on the market. But when he died [...] there was only one memorial album that Elektra put out and, after that, there was nothing. That's why in my performances I never omit a section devoted to my father's songs, his interpretations of other people's songs, and his style of guitar playing."

In 1987, the Josh White, Jr. tribute album to his father's music, Jazz, Ballads and Blues (RYKODISC, produced by Douglas Yeager), received a Grammy nomination.

In 1996, Josh White, Jr. released a well received second tribute album to his father's music, entitled House of the Rising Son (Silverwolf, produced by Josh White, Jr., Douglas Yeager and Peter Link).

On June 26, 1998, the United States Postal Service issued a 32-cent postage stamp honoring White, unveiling it on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall, followed by a concert tribute of his songs by Josh White, Jr. This same year, Smithsonian Folkways released an album of White's work, entitled Free and Equal Blues, his only solo album released on the label (though he was featured on several compilation works both before and after).

From 2002 to 2006, the historic Americana show Glory Bound, which starred Odetta, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Oscar Brand, and Josh White, Jr., toured America, in a salute to the first three folk and blues artists to be honored with U.S. postage stamps, Josh White, Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie.

On February 27, 2010, a 36" high bust of White was unveiled at the LeQuire Gallery in Nashville, Tennessee. It is part of an exhibit by the sculptor Alan LeQuire entitled "Cultural Heroes", which will tour museums across America in the Fall of 2010. The exhibit's other cultural heroes, whose busts are honored alongside White, were: Bessie Smith, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie and Billie Holiday.

August 20, 2016 was declared Josh White Day by White's hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville is also planning to place a bronze sculpture honoring White downtown sometime in 2017.

Filmography

1945 - The Crimson Canary. Directed by John Hoffman.

1947 - Dreams That Money Can Buy. Directed by Hans Richter.

1949 - The Walking Hills. Directed by John Sturges.

1998 - The Guitar of Josh White. Homespun Videos. (An instructional video featuring Josh White, Jr. showing his father's pioneering guitar techniques.)

2000 - Josh White: Free and Equal Blues / Rare Performances. DVD. Vestapol.

2010 - ``Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel``. Written and Directed by Brigitte Berman

Other films containing recordings by White

1994 - Earl Robinson: Ballad of an American. Directed by Bette Jean Bullett.

2001 - Jazz, Episode Seven: "Dedicated to Chaos". Directed by Ken Burns.

2003 - Strange Fruit. Directed by Joel Katz.

2006 - Red Tailed Angels: The Story of the Tuskegee Airmen. Directed by Pare Lorentz.

2006 - Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams and Black Power. Directed by Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts.

2009 - History Detectives. Episode: "In Search of Josh White's Guitar".

2009 - American Folk. Part 3, of BBC4's five-part series

2010 - Our World War II Fathers. Directed by Les Easter

Wikipedia

[call-me-rucy]

People that have seen Hershel Layton without a hat.

It can’t be so many people, right...?

Roland and Lucille Layton

Leon Bronev

Desmond Sycamore

Randall Ascot

Angela

Henry Ledore

Basically everyone in Stansbury

Claire Foley

Luke Triton

Anthony Herzen (during the fight)

Emmy; highly probable (I think they sleep in the same room in LS)

Probably Flora  (because I guess she doesn’t disappear into thin air at the end of LF)

I’m probably forgeting people, but I definitely didn’t think there were this many...