Al Capp
Alfred Gerald Caplin (September 28, 1909 – November 5, 1979), better known as Al Capp, was an American cartoonist and humorist best known for the satirical comic strip "Li'l Abner", which he created in 1934 and continued writing and (with help from assistants) drawing until 1977. He also wrote the comic strips "Abbie an' Slats" (in the years 1937–45) and "Long Sam" (1954). He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 1947 for Cartoonist of the Year, and their 1979 Elzie Segar Award, posthumously for his "unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning". Comic strips dealt with northern urban experiences until the year Capp introduced "Li'l Abner," the first strip based in the South. Although Capp was from Connecticut, he spent 43 years teaching the world about Dogpatch, reaching an estimated 60 million readers in over 900 American newspapers and 100 foreign papers in 28 countries. M. Thomas Inge says Capp made a large personal fortune on the strip and "had a profound influence on the way the world viewed the American South".
Philip D. Curtin
Philip De Armind Curtin (May 22, 1922 Philadelphia – June 4, 2009) was a Professor Emeritus of Johns Hopkins University and historian on Africa and the Atlantic slave trade. His most famous work, 1969's "The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census" was one of the first estimates of the number of slaves transported across the Atlantic Ocean between the 16th century and 1870, yielding an estimate of 9,566,000 African slaves imported to the Americas. Although subsequent authors have disputed this number (Joseph E. Inikori, for example, argues for an estimate of about 15 million), his work remains the most commonly cited. He also wrote about how many Africans were taken and from what location, how many died during the middle passage, how many actually arrived in the Americas, and to what colonies/countries they were imported.