A veteran of many European military campaigns, Captain John Smith is best known for his presidency of the governing council of Jamestown in Virginia colony.
Read the full storySmith was the first U.S. politician to build a national reputation by appealing to ethnic groups and was the first Roman Catholic to run for president.
Read the full storyThe founder of the Pennsylvania colony, William Penn brought religious tolerance and cultural diversity to the English colonies in America.
Read the full storyThe first Italian-American governor and U.S. senator, John Pastore represented the post–World War II shift in public opinion that enabled politicians of southern and eastern European descent to play a more prominent role in statewide and national politics.
Read the full storyThe election of John F. Kennedy, a Catholic of Irish descent, as president in 1960 marked both an ethnic victory—80 percent of both Catholics and Jews voted for him, but only 38 percent of Protestants—and the beginning of the end of the old age of European immigration.
Read the full storyHawaii’s first U.S. congressman and the first member of Congress of Japanese descent, Daniel Inouye has represented, for more than 40 years, the patriotism of Japanese Americans.
Read the full storyHenry Gonzalez was the first Mexican American to be elected to the Texas state senate in the modern era, setting an example for Hispanics in the political mainstream.
Read the full storyOne of the chief architects of the Pilgrim migration from Holland to Plymouth in 1620, William Bradford served as Plymouth Colony’s governor between 1622 and 1656 (excepting 1633–34, 1636, 1638, and 1644).
Read the full storyAs Puritan leader and first governor of Massachusetts Bay, John Winthrop played a fundamental role in establishing both the Puritan cultural ethos that characterized the leading English colonists in America and England’s actual political control of the Atlantic seaboard.
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