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Howard Dean served as governor of Vermont from 1991 until 2003, and was a Democratic candidate for president in 2004. Dean had previously worked as a physician; he earned an undergraduate degree from Yale in 1971 and a medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1978. He then moved to Vermont and opened a medical practice with his wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg.

James A. Baker was appointed Secretary of State on January 22, 1989, and served until August 23, 1992. Baker brought almost two decades of experience in politics, both behind the scenes and in key administration positions with him to the State Department. As Secretary of State, Baker successfully oversaw United States foreign policy during the end of the Cold War, as well as during the First Persian Gulf War. Born in Texas on April 28, 1930, Baker attended prep school in Pennsylvania, and went on to graduate from Princeton University in 1952. Following a two-year active rotation in the United States Marine Corps from 1952 to 1954, Baker received his law degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1957. He practiced law at the firm of Andrews and Kurth, but it was not until the early 1970s that he became involved in politics. Through the influence of his first wife, Baker became involved in the Republican Party and began a long political relationship with George H.W. Bush. Baker chaired Bush's unsuccessful Senate campaign in 1970. In 1971 Baker became the Finance Chairman of the Republican Party and played a significant regional role in President Nixon's reelection. During the Ford Administration he was appointed Under Secretary of Commerce. During the second Reagan Administration, Baker simultaneously served as Secretary of the Treasury and as Chairman of the President's Economic Council. Baker served as Secretary of State in George H.W. Bush's cabinet from January 22, 1989 until August 23, 1992, when he was appointed Senior Counselor and White House Chief of Staff for President Bush. Baker continues to be active in politics and U.S. foreign policy.

Joan Baez was born in Staten Island, New York. She grew up in New York and California, and when her father took a faculty position in Massachusetts, she attended Boston University and began to sing in coffeehouses and small clubs. Bob Gibson invited her to attend the 1959 Newport Folk Festival where she was a hit. In 1960, Vanguard Records signed Baez and released her first album, *Joan Baez*. Baez was known for her soprano voice, her haunting songs, and, until she cut it in 1968, her long black hair. Early in her career she performed with Bob Dylan, and they toured together in the 1970's. Subjected to racial slurs and discrimination in her own childhood because of her Mexican heritage and features, Joan Baez became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and nonviolence. She was sometimes jailed for her protests. Early in her career, Joan Baez stressed historical folk songs, adding political songs to her repertoire during the 1960s. Later, she added country songs and more mainstream popular music, though always including many songs with political messages. She supported such organizations as Amnesty International and Humanitas International. Joan Baez continues to speak and sing for peaceful solutions to violence in the Middle East and Latin America.

In 1961, George Geesey became the first manager of WAMU-FM in Washington, DC. He brought this network experience with him when he became the Director of Operations (and Engineering) at National Public Radio. In 1976, he was assigned to the Satellite Interconnection System Project Office (SISPO) as Radio Coordinator.

Edmund Barry Gaither is the founding Director and Curator of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA), an organization that he developed from a concept to an institution with collections exceeding three thousand objects and a thirty-two year history of exhibitions celebrating the visual arts heritage of black people worldwide. Gaither is also Special Consultant at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston where he has served as curator for eight exhibitions including a ground breaking show in l970, Afro-American Artists: New York and Boston. A world-wide traveler, Gaither has studied and lectured in Europe, Africa, Russia and the Caribbean. He has published many articles and essays and has been a leader In the Museum field. He was the first president of the African American Museums Association. Gaither headed the national committee that commissioned the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. for the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. and has consulted to the National Endowment for the Arts. Gaither was educated at Morehouse College, Georgia State University and Brown University. Among his many honors is the Commonwealth Award for Organizational Leadership, Massachusetts’ highest award in the arts. Gaither has received honorary doctorates from Northeastern University, Framingham State College and Rhode Island College.

President Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after his father died in a traffic accident. When he was four years old, his mother wed Roger Clinton, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. In high school, he took the family name. Clinton was graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and entered politics in Arkansas. Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until he defeated incumbent George Bush and third party candidate Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race.

A. Philip Randolph was a prominent 20th century African-American civil rights leader and the founder of both the March on Washington Movement and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a landmark for labor and particularly for African-American labor organizing.

Bob Dylan was born on May 24, 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota. Bob Dylan is a towering figure of late 20th century pop music, known for such songs as "All Along The Watchtower", "Like a Rolling Stone," "Tangled Up in Blue," "The Times They Are A-Changin'" and "Lay Lady Lay." Dylan has been recording and performing since 1962, mixing folk, country, blues and rock; he sometimes startles his fans but almost always pleases the critics. During the '80s he toured extensively, and in the '90s his songs found a new audience and more acclaim from the music industry. In 1991 he was given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy; his 1997 album *Time Out of Mind* won three Grammys; and in 2001 Dylan won an Oscar for "Things Have Changed," from the movie *Wonder Boys* (2000). In 2006 he released his first album in five years, *Modern Times*.

Born in Asheville, North Carolina on March 9, 1922, McKissick did his undergraduate work at Morehouse and North Caroline colleges, and later graduated form the University of North Caroline Law School. During World War II McKissick served in the European Theater as a sergeant. After the war, he began legal practice in Durham, North Caroline, where he once represented his own daughter in her successful bid to gain admission to a previously all-white public school. Despite the victory, McKissick later decided that "integration" itself only magnified the perils faced by many black children, McKissick bitterly recalled that his children had been taunted and harassed: "Patches cut out of their hair, pages torn out of books, water thrown on them in the dead of winter, ink down the front of their dresses"-a demoralizing array of constant and relentless pressures designed to crack their composure and destroy their will to learn. The adversity no doubt deepened McKissick's nascent radicalism and militant zeal. As a lawyer, McKissick's most publicized efforts involved a segregated black local in the Tobacco Workers International, an AFL-CIO member. McKissick pressed to have black workers admitted to the skilled scale without loss of their seniority rating. McKissick also successfully defended "sit-in" protestors in the South. It was at this time the rupture widened between the older, established civil rights groups, dependent for their programming on a coalition of educated blacks and affluent whites liberals, and the younger, more rancorous black militants who turned their backs on most institutional whites support. The militants argued that the civil rights groups did not appreciate the urgency of many problems affecting black urban majorities, particularly in the job area where technology often reduced people to ciphers. When Floyd McKissick replaced James Farmer as head of CORE on January 3, 1966, the organization completed a 180-degree turn that saw it change from an interracial integrationist civil rights agency pledged to uphold nonviolence into a militant and uncompromising advocate of the ideology of black power. McKissick and Roy Innis, who at that time was the head of the Harlem chapter of CORE, were close allies, and when McKissick left CORE in 1968, Innis took over. After leaving CORE, McKissick launched a plan to build a new community, Soul City, on Warren County North Carolina farmland. McKissick saw Soul City as an integrated community with sufficient industry to support a population of 55,000. For his venture, he received a $14 million bond issue guarantee from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and a loan of $500,000 form the First Pennsylvania Bank. Soul City, however, ran into difficulties and despite the best offers of McKissick, the project never developed as he had anticipated. Finally, in June 1980, the Soul City Corporation and the federal government reached an agreement that would allow the government to assume control the following January. Under the agreement, the company retained 88 acres of the project, including the site of a mobile home park and a 60,000 square foot building that had served as the project's headquarters. The Department of Housing & Urban Development paid off $10 million in loans and agreed to pay an additional $175,000 of the project's debts. In exchange, McKissick agreed to drop a lawsuit brought to block HUD from shutting down the project.