title: History of condoms

text: Still, there were many prominent opponents of condoms. Marie Stopes objected to the use of condoms ostensibly for medical reasons. Founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud opposed all methods of birth control on the grounds that their failure rates were too high. Freud was especially opposed to the condom because it cut down on sexual pleasure. . Some feminists continued to oppose male-controlled contraceptives such as condoms. Many moralists and medical professionals opposed all methods of contraception. In 1920 the Church of England's Lambeth Conference condemned all "unnatural means of conception avoidance." London's Bishop Arthur Winnington-Ingram complained of the number of condoms discarded in alleyways and parks, especially after weekends and holidays.


title: History of condoms

text: In the U.S., condom advertising was legally restricted to their use as disease preventatives. They could be openly marketed as birth control devices in Britain, but purchasing condoms in Britain was socially awkward compared to the U.S. They were generally requested with the euphemism "a little something for the weekend." Boots, the largest pharmacy chain in Britain, stopped selling condoms altogether in the 1920s, a policy that was not reversed until the 1960s. In post-World War I France, the government was concerned about falling birth rates. In response, it outlawed all contraceptives, including condoms. Contraception was also illegal in Spain. European militaries continued to provide condoms to their members for disease protection, even in countries where they were illegal for the general population.


title: History of condoms

text: Around 1920 patent lawyer, inventor and vice-president of the United States Rubber Company Ernest Hopkinson invented a simple new technique of converting latex into rubber without a coagulant (demulsifier), which featured using water as a solvent, spraying the solution and drying it with warm air, as well as optionally preserving liquid latex with ammonia. To distinguish from the earlier technologies, the rubber products made with this technology eventually started to be called "latex" products.


title: History of condoms

text: Youngs Rubber Company was the first to manufacture a latex condom, an improved version of their Trojan brand. Latex condoms required less labor to produce than cement-dipped rubber condoms, which had to be smoothed by rubbing and trimming. Because it used water to suspend the rubber instead of gasoline and benzene, it eliminated the fire hazard previously associated with all condom factories. Latex condoms also performed better for the consumer: they were stronger and thinner than rubber condoms, and had a shelf life of five years (compared to three months for rubber). Europe's first latex condom was an export from Youngs Rubber Company in 1929. In 1932 the London Rubber Company, which had previously served as a wholesaler for German-manufactured condoms, became Europe's first manufacturer of latex condoms, the Durex. The Durex plant was designed and installed by Lucian Landau, a Polish rubber technology student living in London.


title: History of condoms

text: Until the twenties, all condoms were individually hand-dipped by semiskilled workers. Throughout the 1920s, advances in automation of condom assembly line were made. Fred Killian patented the first fully automated line in 1930 and installed it in his manufacturing plant in Akron, Ohio. Killian charged $20,000 for his conveyor system ($ in dollars). Automated lines dramatically lowered the price of condoms. Major condom manufacturers bought or leased conveyor systems, and small manufacturers were driven out of business. The skin condom, now significantly more expensive than the latex variety, became restricted to a niche high-end market. In Britain, the London Rubber Company's fully automated plant was designed in-house by Lucian Landau and the first lines were installed from 1950 onward.


title: History of condoms

text: In 1927, senior medical officers in the American military began promoting condom distribution and educational programs to members of the army and navy. By 1931, condoms were standard issue to all members of the U.S. military. This coincided with a steep decline in U.S. military cases of sexually transmitted disease. The U.S. military was not the only large organization that changed its moral stance on condoms: in 1930 the Anglican Church's sanctioned the use of birth control by married couples. In 1931 the Federal Council of Churches in the U.S. issued a similar statement.


title: History of condoms

text: The Roman Catholic Church responded by issuing the encyclical "Casti connubii" affirming its opposition to all contraceptives, a stance it has never reversed. Semen analysis was first performed in the 1930s. Samples were typically collected by masturbation, another action opposed by the Catholic Church. In 1930s Spain, the first use of collection condoms was documented; holes put in the condom allowed the user to collect a sample without violating the prohibitions on contraception and masturbation.


title: History of condoms

text: In 1932, Margaret Sanger arranged for a shipment of diaphragms to be mailed from Japan to a sympathetic doctor in New York City. When U.S. customs confiscated the package as illegal contraceptive devices, Sanger helped file a lawsuit. In 1936, a federal appeals court ruled in "United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries" that the federal government could not interfere with doctors providing contraception to their patients. In 1938, over three hundred birth control clinics opened in America, supplying reproductive care (including condoms) to poor women all over the country. Programs led by U.S. Surgeon General Thoman Parran included heavy promotion of condoms. These programs are credited with a steep drop in the U.S. STD rate by 1940.


title: History of condoms

text: Two of the few places where condoms became more restricted during this period were Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Because of government concern about low birth rates, contraceptives were made illegal in Italy in the late 1920s. Although limited and highly controlled sales as disease preventatives were still allowed, there was a brisk black market trade in condoms as birth control. In Germany, laws passed in 1933 mandated that condoms could only be sold in plain brown wrappers, and only at pharmacies. Despite these restrictions, when World War II began Germans were using 72 million condoms every year. The elimination of moral and legal barriers, and the introduction of condom programs by the U.S. government helped condom sales. However, these factors alone are not considered to explain the Great Depression's booming condom industry. In the U.S. alone, more than 1.5 million condoms were used every day during the Depression, at a cost of over $33 million per year (not adjusted for inflation). One historian explains these statistics this way: "Condoms were cheaper than children." During the Depression condom lines by Schmid gained in popularity: that company still used the cement-dipping method of manufacture. Unlike the latex variety, these condoms could be safely used with oil-based lubricants. And while less comfortable, older-style rubber condoms could be reused and so were more economical, a valued feature in hard times.


title: History of condoms

text: More attention was brought to quality issues in the 1930s. In 1935, a biochemist tested 2000 condoms by filling each one with air and then water: he found that 60% of them leaked. The condom industry estimated that only 25% of condoms were tested for quality before packaging. The media attention led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to classify condoms as a drug in 1937 and mandate that every condom be tested before packaging. Youngs Rubber Company was the first to institute quality testing of every condom they made, installing automatic testing equipment designed by Arthur Youngs (the owner's brother) in 1938. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act authorized the FDA to seize defective products; the first month the Act took effect in 1940, the FDA seized 864,000 condoms. While these actions improved the quality of condoms in the United States, American condom manufacturers continued to export their rejects for sale in foreign markets.


title: History of condoms

text: During World War II condoms were not only distributed to male U.S. military members, but enlisted men were also subject to significant contraception propaganda in the form of films, posters, and lectures. A number of slogans were coined by the military, with one film exhorting ""Don't forget — put it on before you put it in."" African-American soldiers, who served in segregated units, were exposed to less of the condom promotion programs, had lower rates of condom usage, and much higher rates of STDs. America's female military units, the WACs and WAACs, were still engaged with abstinence programs. European and Asian militaries on both sides of the conflict also provided condoms to their troops throughout the war, even Germany which outlawed all civilian use of condoms in 1941. Despite the rubber shortages that occurred during this period, condom manufacturing was never restricted. In part because condoms were readily available, soldiers found a number of non-sexual uses for the devices, many of which continue to be utilized to this day.


title: History of condoms

text: Post-war American troops in Germany continued to receive condoms and materials promoting their use. Nevertheless, rates of STDs in this population began to rise, reaching the highest levels since World War I. One explanation is that the success of newer penicillin treatments led soldiers to take syphilis and gonorrhea much less seriously. A similar casual attitude toward STDs appeared in the general American population; one historian states that condoms "were almost obsolete as prophylaxis by 1960". By 1947, the U.S. military was again promoting abstinence as the only method of disease control for its members, a policy that continued through the Vietnam War.


title: History of condoms

text: But condom sales continued to grow. From 1955 to 1965, 42% of Americans of reproductive age relied on condoms for birth control. In Britain from 1950 to 1960, 60% of married couples used condoms. For the more economical-minded, cement-dipped condoms continued to be available long after the war. In 1957, Durex introduced the world's first lubricated condom. Beginning in the 1960s, the Japanese used more condoms per capita than any other nation in the world. The birth control pill became the world's most popular method of birth control in the years after its 1960 debut, but condoms remained a strong second. A survey of British women between 1966 and 1970 found that the condom was the most popular birth control method with single women. New manufacturers appeared in the Soviet Union, which had never restricted condom sales. The U.S. Agency for International Development pushed condom use in developing countries to help solve the "world population crises": by 1970 hundreds of millions of condoms were being used each year in India alone.


title: History of condoms

text: In the 1960s and 1970s quality regulations tightened, and legal barriers to condom use were removed. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court case "Griswold v. Connecticut" struck down one of the remaining Comstock laws, the bans of contraception in Connecticut and Massachusetts. France repealed its anti-birth control laws in 1967. Similar laws in Italy were declared unconstitutional in 1971. Captain Beate Uhse in Germany founded a birth control business, and fought a series of legal battles continue her sales. In Ireland, legal condom sales (only to people over 18, and only in clinics and pharmacies) were allowed for the first time in 1978. (All restrictions on Irish condom sales were lifted in 1993.)


title: History of condoms

text: Advertising was one area that continued to have legal restrictions. In the late 1950s, the American National Association of Broadcasters banned condom advertisements from national television. This policy remained in place until 1979, when the U.S. Justice department had it overturned in court. In the U.S., advertisements for condoms were mostly limited to men's magazines such as "Penthouse". The first television ad, on the California station KNTV, aired in 1975: it was quickly pulled after it attracted national attention. And in over 30 states, advertising condoms as birth control devices was still illegal.


title: History of condoms

text: The first "New York Times" story on acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was published on July 3, 1981. In 1982 it was first suggested that the disease was sexually transmitted. In response to these findings, and to fight the spread of AIDS, the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop supported condom promotion programs. However, President Ronald Reagan preferred an approach of concentrating only on abstinence programs. Some opponents of condom programs stated that AIDS was a disease of homosexuals and illicit drug users, who were just getting what they deserved. In 1990, North Carolina senator Jesse Helms argued that the best way to fight AIDS would be to enforce state sodomy laws.


title: History of condoms

text: Nevertheless, major advertising campaigns were put in print media, promoting condoms as a way to protect against AIDS. Youngs Rubber mailed educational pamphlets to American households, although the postal service forced them to go to court to do so, citing a section of Title 39 that "prohibits the mailing of unsolicited advertisements for contraceptives." In 1983 the U.S. Supreme Court held that the postal service's actions violated the free speech clause of the First Amendment. Beginning in 1985 through 1987, national condom promotion campaigns occurred in U.S. and Europe. Over the 10 years of the Swiss campaign, Swiss condom use increased by 80%. The year after the British campaign began, condom sales in the UK increased by 20%. In 1988 Britain, condoms were the most popular birth control choice for married couples, for the first time since the introduction of the pill. The first condom commercial on U.S. television aired during an episode of "Herman's Head" on November 17, 1991. In the U.S. in the 1990s, condoms ranked third in popularity among married couples, and were a strong second among single women.


title: History of condoms

text: Condoms began to be sold in a wider variety of retail outlets, including in supermarkets and in discount department stores such as Wal-Mart. In this environment of more open sales, the British euphemism of "a little something for the weekend" fell out of use. In June 1991 America's first condom store, Condomania, opened on Bleecker Street in New York City. Condomania was the first store of its kind in North America dedicated to the sale and promotion of condoms in an upbeat, upscale and fun atmosphere. Condomania was also one of the first retailers to offer condoms online when it launched its website in December 1995.


title: History of condoms

text: Condom sales increased every year until 1994, when media attention to the AIDS pandemic began to decline. In response, manufacturers have changed the tone of their advertisements from scary to humorous. New developments continue to occur in the condom market, with the first polyurethane condom—branded Avanti and produced by the manufacturer of Durex—introduced in the 1990s. Durex was also the first condom brand to have a website, launched in 1997. Worldwide condom use is expected to continue to grow: one study predicted that developing nations would need 18.6 billion condoms in 2015.


title: History of condoms

text: Etymological theories for the word "condom" abound. By the early 18th century, the invention and naming of the condom was attributed to an associate of England's King Charles II, and this explanation persisted for several centuries. However, the "Dr. Condom" or "Earl of Condom" described in these stories has never been proved to exist, and condoms had been used for over one hundred years before King Charles II acceded to the throne.


title: History of condoms

text: A variety of Latin etymologies have been proposed, including "condon" (receptacle), (house), and (scabbard or case). It has also been speculated to be from the Italian word , derived from , meaning glove. William E. Kruck wrote an article in 1981 concluding that, ""As for the word 'condom', I need state only that its origin remains completely unknown, and there ends this search for an etymology."" Modern dictionaries may also list the etymology as "unknown".


title: History of condoms

text: Other terms are also commonly used to describe condoms. In North America condoms are also commonly known as "prophylactics", or "rubbers". In Britain they may be called "French letters". Additionally, condoms may be referred to using the manufacturer's name. The insult term scumbag was originally a slang word for condom.


title: History of condoms

text: One analyst described the size of the condom market as something that "boggles the mind". Numerous small manufacturers, nonprofit groups, and government-run manufacturing plants exist around the world. Within the condom market, there are several major contributors, among them both for-profit businesses and philanthropic organizations.


title: History of condoms

text: In 1882, German immigrant Julius Schmid founded one of the largest and longest-lasting condom businesses, Julius Schmid, Inc., based in New York City. The condom lines manufactured by Schmid included Sheiks and Ramses. In 1932, the London Rubber Company (which had previously been a wholesale business importing German condoms) began to produce latex condoms, under the Durex brand. In 1963 Schmid was purchased by London Rubber. In 1987, London Rubber began acquiring other condom manufacturers, and within a few years became an important international company. In the late 1990s, London Rubber (by then London International Limited) merged all the Schmid brands into its European brand, Durex. Soon after, London International was purchased by Seton Scholl Healthcare (manufacturer of Dr. Scholl's footcare products), forming Seton Scholl Limited.


title: History of condoms

text: Youngs Rubber Company, founded by Merle Youngs in late-19th-century America, introduced the Trojan line of condoms. In 1985, Youngs Rubber Company was sold to Carter-Wallace. The Trojan name switched hands yet again in 2000 when Carter-Wallace was sold to Church and Dwight.


title: History of condoms

text: The Australian division of Dunlop Rubber began manufacturing condoms in the 1890s. In 1905, Dunlop sold its condom-making equipment to one of its employees, Eric Ansell, who founded Ansell Rubber. In 1969, Ansell was sold back to Dunlop. In 1987, English business magnate Richard Branson contracted with Ansell to help in a campaign against HIV and AIDS. Ansell agreed to manufacture the Mates brand of condom, to be sold at little or no profit in order to encourage condom use. Branson soon sold the Mates brand to Ansell, with royalty payments made annually to the charity Virgin Unite. In addition to its Mates brand, Ansell currently manufactures Lifestyles and Lifesan for the U.S. market.


title: History of condoms

text: In 1934 the Kokusia Rubber Company was founded in Japan. It is now known as the Okamoto Rubber Manufacturing Company.


title: History of condoms

text: In 1970 Tim Black and Philip Harvey founded Population Planning Associates (now known as Adam & Eve). Population Planning Associates was a mail-order business that marketed condoms to American college students, despite U.S. laws against sending contraceptives through the mail. Black and Harvey used the profits from their company to start a non-profit organization Population Services International. By 1975, PSI was marketing condoms in Kenya and Bangladesh, and today operates programs in over sixty countries. Harvey left his position as PSI's director in the late 1970s, but in the late 1980s again founded a nonprofit company, DKT International. Named after D.K. Tyagi (a leader of family planning programs in India), DKT International annually sells millions of condoms at discounted rates in developing countries around the world. By selling the condoms instead of giving them away, DKT intends to make its customers invested in using the devices. One of DKT's more notable programs is its work in Ethiopia, where soldiers are required to carry a condom every time they leave base. The rate of HIV infection in the Ethiopian military, about 5%, is believed to be the lowest among African militaries.


title: History of condoms

text: In 1987, Tufts University students Davin Wedel and Adam Glickman started Global Protection Corp. in response to C. Everett Koop's statement that "a condoms can save your life." Since that time, Global Protection Corp. has become known for its innovative approach to condom marketing and its support of more than 3500 non-profit organizations worldwide. The company has numerous patents and trademarks to its name, including the only FDA-approved glow-in-the-dark condom, the Pleasure Plus condom and the original condom keychain. In 2005 the company introduced its newest product, One Condoms. One represents a complete reinvention of retail condom brands, combining sleek metal packaging, innovative condom wrappers and innovative marketing programs. In 2022, ONE Condoms and MyONE Condoms became the first to receive FDA approval for “safe and effective use” label for anal sex.


title: History of condoms

text: In South Africa, some manufacturers have considered introducing an extra-large variety of condoms after several complaints from South African men claiming the condoms were too small and causing discomfort.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Beulah George "Georgia" Tann (July 18, 1891 – September 15, 1950), was an American child trafficker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the unlicensed home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s. Young children were kidnapped and then sold to wealthy families, abused, or—in some instances—murdered. A state investigation into numerous instances of adoption fraud led to the closure of the institution in 1950. Tann died of cancer before the investigation made its findings public. Tann's custom of placing children with influential members of society normalized adoption in America, and many of her adoption policies (often designed to hide the origin of her adoptees) have become standard practice.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Tann was born on July 18, 1891, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to George Clark Tann and Beulah Yates. She was older than her brother, Rob Roy Tann, by three years. Young Beulah was a school teacher during a time when it was uncommon for women to work outside of the home. Her father, Judge George Tann, reportedly had a "domineering" personality. He also had aspirations of his daughter becoming a concert pianist, and, beginning at the age of five, he put her in piano lessons that continued into adulthood. Nelli Kenyon with "The Nashville Tennessean" reported that Tann's childhood home in Hickory, Mississippi, was a popular neighborhood gathering spot. Judge Tann would sometimes bring abandoned or neglected children with him, remarking that he would need a minister, school teacher, and doctor to figure out what to do with the children.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Tann attended Martha Washington College in Abingdon, Virginia, graduating with a degree in music in 1913, and took courses in social work at Columbia University in New York for two summers. However, she despised playing piano and, instead, desired to become a lawyer as her father had been. Under his tutelage, she read the law and passed the state bar exam in Mississippi. However, her father did not want her to practice law because it was unusual for women. With no apparent desire to get married or have children, she availed herself of one of the few careers available to unmarried women of her time, social work.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Tann found employment at the Mississippi Children's Home Society, working as the Receiving Director at the Kate McWillie Powers Receiving Home for Children. Ann Atwood, the daughter of a family friend, also worked at the home as a housemother; Ann was eight years Tann's junior. She had recently given birth to a son out of wedlock, and around this time appended Hollinsworth to her name, likely to give the impression that she had actually been widowed. It is unclear when they became a couple, but when Tann was terminated because of her questionable child-placing methods in 1924, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee with Atwood, Atwood's infant son, Jack, and her own adopted daughter, June.


title: Georgia Tann

text: In Memphis, Tann was hired as the Executive Secretary at the Shelby County branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Its offices were located on the fifth floor of the Goodwyn Building downtown. The society was the largest in the state, and had branches in Jackson, Knoxville, and Chattanooga. Tann used aggressive tactics to eventually take over the organization. In 1924, Tann began trafficking children.


title: Georgia Tann

text: While Tennessee law permitted agencies to place children with appropriate applicants, in an effort to ban the selling of children, agencies could charge only for their services. In keeping with the law, the society charged about seven dollars for adoptions within Tennessee. However, Tann also arranged for out-of-state, private adoptions for which she charged a premium. As many as 80 percent of these adoptions were to parents in New York and California. Adoptions in states such as Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri could be arranged for $750. Records indicate that between 1940 and 1950, the agency placed 3000 children in just those two states.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Alma Walton and Regina Warner both worked for Tann, and made a trip every three weeks with four to six babies in tow: Walton to California and Warner to New York. They would rent hotel rooms where they would meet with prospective adoptive parents, most of whom were wealthy. Each couple would pay in a check made out to "Georgia Tann." Additionally, Tann might charge prospective parents for background checks she had never pursued, air travel costs at exorbitant rates, and adoption paperwork at five times the actual cost. The state of Tennessee itself was contributing a year to the agency, with 31 percent of that money going towards the Memphis branch.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Profits were kept in a secret bank account under a false corporation name at the time. It is alleged that she pocketed 80 to 90 percent of the fees from these adoptions for her own personal use. She also failed to report the income to either the Society's board or the Internal Revenue Service. In a 1979 interview with the "Los Angeles Times", Tennessee special prosecutor Robert Taylor reported that 1,200 children were adopted out of the home between 1944 and 1950, but only a few of them remained with Tennessee families.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Notable personalities who used Tann's services included actress Joan Crawford (twin daughters, Cathy and Cynthia were adopted through the agency while daughter Christina Crawford and son Christopher were adopted through other agencies). June Allyson and husband Dick Powell also used the Memphis-based home for adopting a child, as did the adoptive parents of professional wrestler Ric Flair. New York Governor Herbert Lehman, who signed a law sealing birth certificates from New York adoptees in 1935, also adopted a child through the agency.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Tann used a variety of methods to procure children. Through pressure tactics, threats of legal action, and other ways, she would dupe or coerce birth parents, mostly poor single mothers, to turn the children over to her custody, often under false pretenses. Alma Sipple, one of Tann's victims, described her as "a stern-looking woman with close-cropped grey hair, round wireless glasses and an air of utter authority." Tann also arranged for the taking of children born to inmates at Tennessee mental institutions and those born to wards of the state through her connections. To meet demand, she resorted to kidnappings. In a 1937 governmental report by Emma Annie Winslow, a prominent American home economist and researcher, she reported that the three homes for unwed mothers in Memphis, in cooperation with the local health department, had committed to keeping mothers with their infants for at least three months before seeking adoption, especially to complete breastfeeding. However, all three homes reported that, in practice, the Tennessee Children's Home would collect the children within weeks due to "court commitment." Winslow also reported that Tann had the practice of collecting children directly from their mothers at the hospital before the mother was even released, some mothers having signed the children over to the orphanage before the child was even born. Tann said she preferred to receive the children early "before they developed thrush or some other infection" in the hospital. Winslow also noted that, during 1933-1934, while there were no maternal deaths between the three homes, there was a large number of infant deaths due to an "epidemic" at Memphis General Hospital. The author noted that improvements in care in the hospital nursery had decreased infant mortality during previous years, and ultimately concluded that the uptick in infant deaths must have come from "non-resident" mothers from other areas who gave birth in Memphis.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Tann was documented taking children born to unwed mothers at birth, claiming that the newborns required medical care. When the mothers asked about the children, Tann or her accomplices would explain that the babies had died, when they had actually been placed in foster homes or adopted. In some cases, single parents would drop their children off at nursery schools, only to be told that welfare agents had taken the children. In others, children would be temporarily placed in an orphanage because a family was experiencing illness or unemployment, only to find out later that the orphanage had adopted them out or had no record of the children ever being placed.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Tann destroyed records of the children who were processed through the Society and conducted minimal background checks on the adoptive homes. As a result, the Child Welfare League of America dropped the Society from its list of qualifying institutions in 1941. Many of the files of the children were fictionalized before being presented to the adoptive parents, which covered up the child's circumstances prior to being placed with the society.


title: Georgia Tann

text: When an adoptive parent discovered that the information on the child was incorrect, such as in cases of falsified medical histories, Tann often threatened the adoptive parents with possible legal action that would force a surrender of their children. Tann's threats were fulfilled with the aid of Shelby County Family Court Judge Camille Kelley, who used her position of authority to sanction Tann's tactics and activities. Tann would identify children as being from homes which could not provide for their care, and Kelley would push the matter through her dockets. Kelley also severed custody of divorced mothers, placing the children with Tann, who then arranged for adoption of the children into "homes better able to provide for the children's care." However, many of the children were placed into homes where they were used as child labor on farms, or with abusive families.


title: Georgia Tann

text: In a letter drafted in 1947, Tann's attorney, Abe Waldauer, said that the prospective adoptive couple had "complete custody and control of a child for one year; may submit the child to any physical or mental examination they wish and take any steps they may desire to ascertain they have a healthy and normal child. If it is not, the Tennessee Children's Home takes it back without question."


title: Georgia Tann

text: Bypassing Shelby County Probate Court, most of the adoption cases were handled in the counties of Dyer, Haywood, and Hardeman. Tann also had connections with former Memphis, Tennessee, mayor E.H. "Boss" Crump, who continued to have an influential political presence until his death. He had long been known to take bribes from unlawful establishments (e.g., brothels and gambling halls), a fact which Tann used to her advantage. She enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and was widely respected in the community, counting among her friends prominent families, politicians, and legislators.


title: Georgia Tann

text: While in her care, the children were mistreated by Tann, with reports of neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and murder. With no housing facilities, the society held children awaiting placement in public facilities and foster homes. In the 1930s, Memphis had the highest infant mortality rate in the nation, largely due to Tann. In 1943, a wealthy businessman donated the mansion at 1556 Poplar Avenue to the society. The offices and intake rooms were put on the bottom floor, while the nurseries were upstairs.


title: Georgia Tann

text: The all-female staff wore all-white nursing uniforms, despite the fact that they were mostly untrained and even substance abusers. The children were frequently sedated and those who were difficult to place were allowed to die of malnutrition. Tann regularly ignored doctors' recommendations for sick children, denying them care or medicine, which often led to preventable deaths from illnesses such as diarrhea. While some of her victims are known to be buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Memphis, Tennessee, other children were never accounted for, and the exact number of deceased children remains unknown, with estimates of about 500 deaths due to mistreatment.


title: Georgia Tann

text: At the time, so-called "black market" adoptions were not illegal, but were considered ethically and morally wrong. Reasons of the day included the fact that young, unwed mothers were often coerced to give up wanted children, the suitability of the parents was often ignored, information about the child's heritage and medical history was lost, and adoptive parents were unaware of any physical or mental illness.


title: Georgia Tann

text: The Tennessee governor of the time, Gordon Browning, launched an investigation into the society on September 11, 1950, after receiving reports that the agency was selling children for profit. He assigned Memphis attorney Robert Taylor to the case. Two days later, the story was published in the media nationwide, including in the "Commercial Appeal" and "The New York Times". Public Welfare Commissioner J. O. McMahan accused Tann and her cohorts of receiving as much as in profits. The Tennessee Children's Home Society was closed in 1950. The state of Tennessee sued Tann's estate for $500,000.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Tann is estimated to have stolen over 5,000 children. New York and California vowed to take action, but the children's adoptions were never investigated, and no children were restored. Tann died of uterine cancer three days before the state filed charges against the society, thus escaping prosecution. For her part, Judge Kelley was believed to be receiving bribes for ruling in Tann's favor; however, a 1951 report to Browning by the Tennessee Department of Public Welfare said that while she had "failed on many occasions to aid destitute families and permitted family ties to be destroyed" she had not personally profited from the rulings. She resigned shortly after the start of the investigation, and died in 1955 without any charges having been brought against her.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Over several decades, 19 of the children who died at the Tennessee Children's Home Society, due to the abuse and neglect that Tann subjected them to, were buried in a lot at the historic Elmwood Cemetery with no headstones. Tann bought the lot sometime before 1923 and recorded the children there by their first names (such as "Baby Estelle" and "Baby Joseph"). In 2015, the cemetery raised $13,000 to erect a monument to their memory. It reads, in part:


title: Georgia Tann

text: "In memory of the 19 children who finally rest here unmarked if not unknown, and of all the hundreds who died under the cold, hard hand of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Their final resting place unknown. Their final peace a blessing. The hard lesson of their fate changed adoption procedure and law nationwide."


title: Georgia Tann

text: In her book, "Rural Unwed Mothers: An American Experience", Mazie Hough makes the argument the Tennessee implementation of social work standards without providing the needed funding contributed to abuses in the system. The Tennessee Children's Home Society scandal resulted in adoption reform laws in Tennessee in 1951. Tann's custom of creating false birth certificates for adoptees (which she did to hide the origins of the child) became standard practice nationwide.


title: Georgia Tann

text: In 1979, the state adopted legislation requiring the state to assist siblings who were trying to find each other, while a bill that extended this provision to birth parents did not pass. In 1996, the State of Tennessee enacted Chapter 532 of the Tennessee Public Acts of 1996, which revised the process of obtaining adoption records by releasing them to adult adoptees of the Tennessee Children's Home Society, upon receiving permission from any living birth parents.


title: Georgia Tann

text: Prior to the 1920s, adoption was a rare practice in the United States, with the Boston Children's Aid Society placing only five children per year. By contrast, in 1928, Tann placed 206 children with adoptive families. Believing in class distinctions, Tann felt that children should be taken from poor families and placed with, what she called, "people of the higher type." Because of Tann's insistence on choosing wealthy adoptive families, the practice of adoption became associated with the famous and influential, removing much of the stigma it previously had in American culture.


title: Georgia Tann

text: The current Tennessee Children's Home, which is accredited by the state of Tennessee, has no connection with Georgia Tann nor the society which she operated.


title: Georgia Tann

text: In 1922, Tann adopted an infant girl; she named her June. In her book about Miss Georgia Tann, Barbara Raymond recounted June's daughter Vicci saying, "Mother said Georgia Tann was a cold fish; she gave her material things, but nothing else. I don't know why she bothered to adopt her."


title: Georgia Tann

text: While the cohabitation of two financially independent women, referred to as "Boston marriages", had once been socially acceptable, such arrangements had begun to be viewed as suspiciously homosexual. Tann and Atwood hid the true nature of their relationship. Tann adopted Ann Atwood Hollinsworth on August 2, 1943, in Dyer County, Tennessee, a legal provision that same-sex couples used at the time to ensure that their partners would inherit their property. Tann died of uterine cancer on September 15, 1950, aged 59, three days before Governor Gordon Browning of Tennessee filed charges against Tann's home. Tann was buried in her family's plot in Hickory Cemetery.


title: Georgia Tann

text: "Mommie Dearest"; "Joan Crawford['s] ... "Mommie Dearest" daughter supposedly came from the Tennessee Children's Home Society".


title: Georgia Tann

text: Tann was the subject of aforementioned December 13, 1989, episode of the crime show "Unsolved Mysteries".


title: Georgia Tann

text: The made-for-TV film "Stolen Babies" debuted in 1993. Directed by Kim Moses, it tells the story of a social worker that Moses and her writing partners interviewed, who was the whistleblower on the Society. She is played by Lea Thompson and Tann is played by Mary Tyler Moore.


title: Georgia Tann

text: She was featured in an episode of Investigation Discovery's series "Deadly Women" titled "Above the Law" that aired September 13, 2013.


title: Georgia Tann

text: She was the topic of the April 25, 2017, episode of the podcast "Southern Hollows"; the August 29, 2017, episode of the "True Crime Brewery" podcast titled "The Baby Thief: The Crimes of Georgia Tann"; the March 15, 2019, episode of the "Criminal" podcast titled "Baby Snatcher"; and the April 30, 2019, two-part episode of the "Behind the Bastards" podcast titled "The Woman Who Invented Adoption (By Stealing Thousands of Babies)".


title: Georgia Tann

text: She is the subject of the 2007 nonfiction book "The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption", by Barbara Bisantz Raymond.


title: Georgia Tann

text: She is also featured in the 2017 novel about the scandal, "Before We Were Yours," by Lisa Wingate. In October 2019, Wingate and Judy Christie released the book "Before and After: The Incredible RealLife Stories of Orphans Who Survived the Tennessee Children's Home Society". It is a nonfiction companion to Wingate's novel.


title: Georgia Tann

text: In 2010, Devereaux "Devy" Bruch Eyler published her memoir "No Mama, I Didn't Die — My Life as a Stolen Baby" to tell her story as a stolen baby and victim of Georgia Tann. She grew up knowing she was adopted, but did not know, until she was in her 70s, that she had been stolen from her birth mother—a mother who, Eyler had been told, was dead. Eyler met her sister, Patricia Ann Wilks of Germantown, Tennessee, for the first time in 2009.


title: Georgia Tann

text: In 1990, the "Los Angeles Times" published the story of Alma Sipple. Her daughter, Irma, had been taken by Georgia Tann in the spring of 1946 under the pretense of providing medical care, but a few days later, however, Tann informed Sipple that her daughter had died of pneumonia and already been buried. Sipple was devastated by her grief, but suspected the child was still alive. Her efforts to find her daughter at the time, however, were fruitless. Years later, in 1989, she happened to be watching "Unsolved Mysteries", and recognized Georgia Tann as the woman who had taken her child. As the show suggested, she wrote to Tennessee's Right to Know, a volunteer agency in Memphis that reunites families separated by adoption. They soon found Irma, whose name was then Sandra Kimbrell, and the mother and daughter reunited by phone. Sipple's story was featured again in the podcast "Criminal".


title: Georgia Tann

text: "To Be the Man" (2004), the autobiography of Ric Flair, begins with the opening chapter "Black Market Baby"; Flair's parents obtained him from the Tennessee Children's Home Society.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry Seinfeld (; ) is the title character and the main protagonist of the American television sitcom "Seinfeld" (1989–1998). The straight man among his group of friends, this semi-fictionalized version of comedian Jerry Seinfeld was named after, co-created by, based on, and played by Seinfeld himself. The series revolves around Jerry's misadventures with his best friend George Costanza, neighbor Cosmo Kramer, and ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes. He is usually the voice of reason amid his friends' antics and the focal point of the relationship.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: In contrast to the series' supporting characters, he rarely runs into major personal problems. Jerry is the only main character on the show to maintain the same career (a stand-up comedian, like the real Seinfeld) throughout the series. He is the most observational character, sarcastically commenting on his friends' quirky habits. Much of the show's action takes place in Jerry's apartment located in New York City at 129 West 81st Street, apartment 5A (3A in seasons 1 and 2). He and his friends also frequently have coffee or meals together at Monk's Café.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry appeared in all 180 episodes of "Seinfeld" (including several two-part episodes) and is the only character in the show to do so.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: In the show's setting, Jerry is the straight man, a figure who is "able to observe the chaos around him but not always be a part of it." Plot lines involving Jerry often concern his various relationships – Jerry often finds stupid reasons to break up with women.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry is generally indifferent to what goes on in his friends' lives, seeing their misery as merely an entertaining distraction, as well as an opportunity for joke material. He often plays along with their hare-brained schemes, even encouraging them, often just to see them fail. In the episode "The Serenity Now", Jerry is perplexed by his experience of crying, asking "What is this salty discharge?" In "The Foundation" Elaine points out that he has "never felt remorse." He will often nonchalantly state, "That's a shame" when something bad happens. A recurring joke is Jerry behaving unchivalrously towards Elaine, such as not helping her carry groceries or heavy objects, ignoring her when she is upset, and taking a first class upgrade on a flight for himself, leaving Elaine in economy. Jerry, George and Elaine all share a general trait of not letting go of other character's remarks and going to great lengths to be proven right. In one episode, Jerry rents a house in Tuscany, just because Elaine's boyfriend told him there weren't any available (though he claims that he never wanted to actually rent the house, but only wanted to know if he theoretically could rent one).


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Despite his usual indifference to his friends and their actions, Jerry apparently is very satisfied with his life, and feels worried about anything that might threaten the group lifestyle. In "The Invitations", for example, Jerry admits that he feels depressed about George getting married, seeing as how George will eventually leave the group and Jerry will never see him again. Once Elaine tells him that she is also "getting out" of the group, Jerry becomes so worried about a near future of just him and Kramer that he unknowingly almost walks into a car while crossing the street. In "The Bizarro Jerry", Jerry also grows panicky about losing the group dynamic when Kramer becomes too busy with his job and Elaine temporarily leaves to join the Bizarro group, claiming that "The whole system's breaking down!" In a deleted scene from the episode "The Letter", he claims that his friends are "not more important" than his girlfriends, but "they're as important."


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Unlike George and Elaine, Jerry rarely runs into major personal problems. In "The Opposite", this tendency is explicitly pointed out, as Jerry goes through a number of experiences after which he invariably "breaks even", even as his friends are going through intense periods of success or failure. In "The Rye", during a particularly trying time for Elaine, she angrily tells Jerry, "You know, one of these days, something terrible is going to happen to you. It "has" to!" Jerry simply replies, "No, I'm going to be just fine." Many of the problems he does run into are the result of the actions of his nemesis Newman, a postal worker. In the series finale, Jerry's streak of getting away with things is broken when he, and the rest of the group, are arrested for their indifference toward a mugging victim and sentenced to jail after multiple witnesses testify to their poor character.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: However, Kramer persuades Jerry to do things that he's reluctant to do. In several arguments with Jerry, Kramer is incredibly stubborn, protecting his own interests.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry always wears a suit whenever he has to do his stand-up comedy act. Like George, Jerry's hairstyle remains relatively unchanged throughout the series.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: As in real life, Jerry is a fan of comic book characters, particularly of Superman. He often holds earnest discussions about the character and relates his friends' situations to concepts and characters from the Superman world. A Superman statue is a regular fixture of his apartment.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry is very successful financially, and occupationally stable in comparison with his friends. He never seems to be at a loss for money, in comparison to both George and Elaine, whose careers go through both highs and lows. Throughout the series Jerry suffers numerous financial and material losses, but these do not seem to have long-term impacts on his situation. For example, Jerry buys his father a Cadillac Fleetwood and in "The Money" buys it "back" after his parents sell it, spending over $20,000. In "The Apartment", it is revealed that Jerry could easily lend Elaine $5,000 for an apartment. Despite his apparent financial security, his parents offer to pay for everything when they visit him (even if they have no money, as seen in "The Watch") and occasionally urge him to find a new job.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry has an obsessive insistence on cleanliness and neatness. In "The Pothole", Jerry inadvertently knocks his girlfriend's toothbrush into the toilet bowl, and after she uses it, he is unable to bring himself to kiss her. As revenge, she puts one item of his in the toilet without telling him what it was; a distraught Jerry, thinking it could be anything, ends up throwing away virtually every item in his apartment in panic. Elaine suggests that his cleanliness verges into a serious disorder. In "The Voice", he throws out a belt because it touched the edge of a urinal. In "The Couch", after Poppie's gastrointestinal disorder causes him to urinate on Jerry's couch, Jerry, rather than having the cushion cleaned, gives the couch away.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry and George grew up in New York City. George recalls in "The Outing" that the two were friends ever since an encounter in gym class in their school days. In "The Betrayal", Jerry mentions that he once beat George up in the fourth grade. Flashbacks in episodes such as "The Library" portray Jerry and George in high school. A pizza place which they frequented is portrayed in "The Frogger". Jerry and George attended school together at Edward R. Murrow Middle School, John F. Kennedy High School and Queens College.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: After college, Jerry briefly worked as an umbrella salesman and claims to have invented the "twirl" to make the umbrella look more attractive. He eventually quit the job in order to focus more on his comedy career.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry's parents are Morty and Helen Seinfeld, a retired Jewish couple living in Florida. Unlike George, who usually can't stand his parents, Jerry gets along reasonably well with his parents, but he still prefers they live in Florida rather than New York, so that they do not interfere with his private life (a “buffer zone”). Although born and raised Jewish and he considers himself a Jew, Jerry apparently does not practice and generally does not observe many traditions. In "The Bris", he implies he is circumcised, repeatedly asking people if they have "ever seen one" - in reference to an uncircumcised penis. He also mentions having a sister in the episode "The Chinese Restaurant", though she is never named, never appears on screen, and is never mentioned again after this episode. In order to avoid his old friend Joel in "Male Unbonding", Jerry pretends to have promised to tutor his nephew; it is unclear if the nephew really exists or is simply fabricated as part of the excuse.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry has an eccentric uncle, Leo, who appears in 15 episodes. Uncle Leo has a son, Cousin Jeffrey, who works for the parks department, about whom he constantly talks, but who never appears. In "The Stake Out", Jerry speaks of an uncle named Mac, as well as a cousin named Artie Levine. In "The Truth", Jerry mentions a cousin named Douglas who has an addiction to Pepsi. In "The Pony Remark", Helen, Morty, Jerry, Elaine and Leo attend a 50th-anniversary party for Manya and Isaac, an elderly couple whose relationship to Jerry is never explicitly defined. Manya is described as a Polish immigrant. In the same episode, Jerry references having an Aunt Rose, and Helen mentions a family member named Claire who is getting married. In "The Soup" episode, Jerry mentions an Aunt Silvia, whom he compares to Elaine in terms of conversation.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry's maternal grandmother, Nana, is an elderly woman with memory problems, occasionally unable to tell the past from the present, living alone in the city. Nana makes appearances in "The Pledge Drive", "The Kiss Hello" and "The Doodle".


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry has a detached approach towards relationships and breaks up with women for the most minor of reasons. According to the ninth-season DVD release of the series, Jerry has had 73 different girlfriends seen or alluded to over the course of the series.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry and Elaine had a long-term relationship prior to the beginning of the series. During the first two seasons, this past relationship continues to impact their friendship. In "The Stake Out", Jerry's attempts to flirt with another woman in front of Elaine creates awkwardness between them. In "The Deal", they create a set of rules whereby they can sleep together but remain only friends. However, by the end of the episode, the two decide to be a couple again. Subsequent episodes show them as comfortably in the role of friends, and "Seinfeld" creators Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld later admitted that they simply forgot that "The Deal" ended with Jerry and Elaine as a couple.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: In "The Mango", Jerry is upset at learning that Elaine faked all her orgasms while they were together. The fact causes such problems between the two, that Elaine and Jerry have sex together in an effort to save their friendship.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: In "The Serenity Now", Jerry's emotions come flooding out after being locked up inside him. He confesses love for Elaine and proposes to her. Later, the horrifying tale of George's life frightens him back into his formerly nonchalant demeanor and he takes back his proposal, much to Elaine's dismay since she was willing to get married.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: In "The Finale", Jerry and Elaine are on an airplane going through major turbulence. Believing they're about to die, Elaine yells out "Jerry, I've always loved..." but the plane stabilizes before she can finish the sentence. Later, Jerry asks Elaine what she was going to say, to which she replies "I've always loved United Airlines".


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: In the reunion episode featured in Season 7 of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", it is revealed in the years since the finale Jerry has donated sperm to Elaine that results in her having a daughter, who's taken to calling Jerry "Uncle Jerry", but by the episode's end, it is said she now refers to him as "Daddy," to Jerry and Elaine's clear discomfort.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry has a long-running hatred of Newman, describing him as his "sworn enemy" in "The Andrea Doria" and showing general contempt for him at their every meeting. Newman usually reciprocates, although at other times he seems quite pleased by Jerry's hostility, as if it is a testimony to his effectiveness at irritating him. The origin of their feud is never explained.


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Jerry's snide greeting for him, "Hello, Newman", becomes a trademark of their relationship. Jerry wants to be rid of Newman so badly that he once even helped him on his postal route so that he could get a prized transfer to Hawaii ("The Andrea Doria").


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: Despite their antagonistic relationship, Jerry and Newman have ended up working in unison on rare occasions. In "The Sniffing Accountant", Jerry worked with Kramer and Newman to find out if their accountant was on drugs. Certain instances would even define their relationship as one of friendship, or at least mutual tolerance, built around their shared friend, Kramer. In "The Bottle Deposit" he has no qualms about leaving Kramer and Newman alone in his apartment, trusting they'll "keep an eye on one another."


title: Jerry Seinfeld (character)

text: In 2007, "Entertainment Weekly" placed the Jerry Seinfeld character eighth on their list of the "50 Greatest TV icons". For his portrayal, Jerry Seinfeld was nominated four times for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy, out of which he won one, along with being nominated five times for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, for which he never won.


title: The Three Stooges filmography

text: This is a complete list of short subjects and feature films that featured The Three Stooges released between 1930 and 1970.


title: The Three Stooges filmography

text: Moe, Larry and Curly left Healy in 1934 and moved to Columbia Pictures to begin their successful series of 190 shorts, with their contract extended each year until the final one expired on December 31, 1957. The final 8 of the 16 shorts with Joe Besser were released afterwards over the next 1⅓ years. The Stooges would continue afterwards with Moe, Larry, and Joe DeRita (as "Curly Joe"), and make several full-length feature films between 1959 and 1970.


title: The Three Stooges filmography

text: All 190 Columbia short films were released in the DVD series "The Three Stooges Collection". The series includes seven 2-disc volumes and one 3-disc volume. Volume Seven features 3D glasses for the shorts "Spooks!" and "Pardon My Backfire".


title: The Three Stooges filmography

text: Three feature-length Columbia releases were actually packages of older Columbia shorts. "Columbia Laff Hour" (introduced in 1956) was a random assortment that included the Stooges among other Columbia comedians like Andy Clyde, Hugh Herbert, and Vera Vague; the content and length varied from one theater to the next. "Three Stooges Fun-o-Rama" (introduced in 1959) was an all-Stooges show capitalizing on their TV fame, again with shorts chosen at random for individual theaters. "The Three Stooges Follies" (1974) was similar to "Laff Hour", with a trio of Stooge comedies augmented by actor, comedian and filmmaker Buster Keaton and Vera Vague shorts, a Batman serial chapter, and a Kate Smith musical.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: White Zimbabweans are people in Zimbabwe who are of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, these Zimbabweans of European ethnic origin are mostly English-speaking descendants of British settlers and a small minority of them are either Afrikaans-speaking descendants of Afrikaners from South Africa and/or those descended from Greek and Portuguese immigrants.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: A small number of British migrants first came to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, later Zimbabwe, as settlers during the late-nineteenth century. A steady migration of European people continued for the next 75 years. The white population of Southern Rhodesia, or just Rhodesia from 1965, reached a peak of about 300,000 in 1975–76, representing around 8% of the population. Emigration after independence as Zimbabwe in 1980 left the white population at around 220,000 in 1980, 70,000 in 2000, and 30,000 in 2012.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Present-day Zimbabwe (known as Southern Rhodesia from 1895) was occupied by the British South Africa Company from the 1890s onward, following the subjugation of the Matabele, (Ndebele), and Shona nations. Early white settlers came in search of mineral resources, hoping to find a second gold-rich Witwatersrand. Zimbabwe lies on a plateau that varies in altitude between 900 and 1,500 m (2,950 and 4,900 ft) above sea level. This gives the area a moderate climate which was conducive to European settlement and commercial agriculture.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: More than 3,000 white soldiers who assisted in the BSAC takeover of the country were given land grants of or more, and black people living on the land became tenants. In 1930, Land Apportionment and Tenure Acts displaced Africans from the country's best farmland, restricting them to unproductive and low-rainfall tribal-trust lands and high rainfall areas for white ownership, which gave rise to cases of black people being excluded from their own land. White settlers were attracted to Rhodesia by the availability of tracts of prime farmland that could be purchased from the state at low cost. This resulted in the growth of commercial agriculture in the young colony. The white farm was typically a large (>100 km (>38.6 mi)) mechanized estate, owned by a white family and employing hundreds of black people. Many white farms provided housing, schools and clinics for black employees and their families. At the time of independence in 1980, more than 40% of the country's farmed land comprised approximately 5,000 white farms. At the time, agriculture provided 40% of the country's GDP and up to 60% of its foreign earnings. Major export products included tobacco, beef, sugar, cotton and maize.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The minerals sector was also important. Gold, asbestos, nickel and chromium were mined by foreign-owned concerns such as Lonrho (Lonmin since 1999) and Anglo American. These operations were usually run by white managers, engineers and foremen.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The Census of 3 May 1921 found that Southern Rhodesia had a total population of 899,187, of whom 33,620 were Europeans, 1,998 were Coloured (mixed race), 1,250 Asiatics, 761,790 Bantu natives of Southern Rhodesia and 100,529 Bantu aliens. The following year, Southern Rhodesians rejected, in a referendum, the option of becoming a province of the Union of South Africa. Instead, the country became a self-governing British colony. It never gained full dominion status, although unlike other colonies it was treated as a "de facto" dominion, with its Prime Minister attending the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conferences.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: In 1891, before Southern Rhodesia was established as a territory, it was estimated that about 1,500 Europeans resided there. This number grew slowly to around 75,000 in 1945. In the period 1945 to 1955, the white population doubled to 150,000, and during that decade 100,000 black people were forcibly resettled from farmland designated for white ownership. However, some members of the white farming community opposed the forced removal of black people from land designated for white ownership, and some even favoured the handover of underutilised "white land" to black farmers. For example, in 1947, Wedza white farmer Harry Meade unsuccessfully opposed the eviction of his black neighbour Solomon Ndawa from a irrigated wheat farm. Meade represented Ndawa at hearings of the Land Commission and attempted to protect Ndawa from abusive questioning.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Large-scale migration to Rhodesia did not begin until after the Second World War. At the colony's first comprehensive census in 1962, Rhodesia had 221,000 white residents. At its peak in the mid-1970s, Rhodesia's white population consisted of as many as 277,000. There were influxes of white immigrants from the 1940s through to the early-1970s. The most conspicuous group were former British servicemen in the immediate post-war period. However, many of the new immigrants were refugees from Communism in Europe; others were former service personnel from British India, or came from the former Kenya Colony, the Belgian Congo, Zambia, Algeria, and Mozambique. For a time, Rhodesia provided something of a haven for white people who were retreating from decolonisation elsewhere in Africa and Asia.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Post-World War II Rhodesian white settlers were considered different in character from earlier Rhodesian settlers and those from other British colonies, such as Kenya, where settlers were perceived to be drawn from "the officer class" and from the British landowning class. By contrast, settlers in Rhodesia after the Second World War were perceived as being drawn from lower social strata and were treated accordingly by the British authorities; as Peter Godwin wrote in "The Guardian", "Foreign Office mandarins dismissed white Rhodesians as lower middle class, no more than provincial clerks and artisans, the lowly NCOs of empire."


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Various factors encouraged the growth of the white population of Rhodesia. These included the industrialisation and prosperity of the economy in the post-war period. The National Party victory in South Africa was one of the factors that led to the formation of the Central African Federation (1953-1963), so as to provide a bulwark against Afrikaner nationalism. British settlement and investment boomed during the Federation years, as Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi) formed a powerful economic unit, counterbalancing the economic power of South Africa. The economic power of these three areas was a major factor in the establishment of the Federation through a British Act of Parliament. It was also apparent as early as the 1950s that white rule would continue for longer in Rhodesia than it would in other British colonies such as Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) and Kenya. Many of the new immigrants had a "not here" attitude to majority rule and independence.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Rhodesia was run by a white minority government. In 1965, that government declared itself independent through a Unilateral Declaration of Independence ('UDI') under Prime Minister Ian Smith. The UDI project eventually failed, after a period of United Nations economic sanctions and a civil war known as the Chimurenga (Shona) or Bush War. British colonial rule returned in December 1979, when the country became the British Dependency of Southern Rhodesia. In April 1980, it was granted independence as Zimbabwe.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The white community kept itself largely separate from the black and Asian communities in the country. Urban white people lived in separate areas of town, and white people had their own segregated education, healthcare and recreational facilities. Marriage between black and white people was possible, but remains to the present day very rare. The 1903 Immorality Suppression Ordinance made "illicit" (i.e. unmarried) sex between black men and white women illegal – with a penalty of two years imprisonment for any offending white woman. The majority of the early white immigrants were men, and some white men entered into relationships with black women. The result was a small number of mixed-race persons: 1,998 out of a total 899,187 inhabitants, according to the 1921 census, some of whom were accepted as being white. A proposal by Garfield Todd (Prime Minister, 1953–1958) to liberalise the laws regarding interracial sex was viewed as dangerously radical. The proposal was rejected and was one factor that led to the political demise of Todd.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: White Rhodesians enjoyed a very high standard of living. The Land Tenure Act had reserved 30% of agricultural land for white ownership. black labour costs were low (around US$40 per month in 1975) and included free housing, food and clothing. Nurses earned US$120 per month. The low wages had a large effect in the context of an agricultural economy. Public spending on education, healthcare and other social services was heavily weighted towards white people. Most of the better paid jobs in public service were also reserved for white people. White people in skilled manual occupations enjoyed employment protection against black competition. In 1975, the average annual income for a white Rhodesian was around US$8,000 () with income tax at a marginal rate of 5% — making them one of the richest communities in the world.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: In November 1965, in order to avoid the introduction of black majority rule (commonly referred to at the time as the Wind of Change), the Government of what was then the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia issued the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), upon which the country became the "de facto" independent – albeit unrecognised — state of Rhodesia.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: As was the case (to varying degrees) in most European colonies, white immigrants took a privileged position in all areas of society. However, the white immigrant position in Rhodesia was distinguished in that the local settler minority entrenched its political, economic and social dominance of the country. Extensive areas of prime farmland were owned by whites. Senior positions in the public services were reserved for whites, and whites working in manual occupations enjoyed legal protection against job competition from black Africans. As time passed, this situation became increasingly unwelcome to the majority ethnic groups within the country and also to wide sections of international opinion, leading to the Rhodesian Bush War and eventually the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: After the country's reconstitution as the Republic of Zimbabwe in 1980, whites had to adjust to being an ethnic minority in a country with a black majority government. Although a significant number of whites remained, many white people emigrated in the early-1980s, both in fear for their lives and an uncertain future. Political unrest and the seizure of many white-owned commercial farms resulted in a further exodus of whites commencing in 1999. The 2002 census recorded 46,743 white people living in Zimbabwe. More than 10,000 were elderly and fewer than 9,000 were under the age of 15.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: At the time of Zimbabwean independence in 1980, it was estimated that around 38% of white Zimbabweans were UK-born, with slightly fewer born in what was once Rhodesia, and around 20% from elsewhere in Africa. The white population of that era contained a large transient element, and many white people might better be considered foreign expatriates than settlers. Between 1960 and 1979, white emigration to Rhodesia was around 180,000, while white emigration overseas was 202,000 (with an average white population of around 240,000).


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The country gained its independence as Zimbabwe in April 1980, under a ZANU-PF government led by Robert Mugabe. Following independence, the country's white citizens lost most of their former privileges. A generous social welfare net (including both education and healthcare) that had supported white people in Rhodesia disappeared almost in an instant. White people in the artisan, skilled worker and supervisory classes began to experience job competition from black people. Indigenisation in the public services displaced many white people. The result was that white emigration gathered pace. In the ten-year period from 1980 to 1990, approximately two-thirds of the white community left Zimbabwe.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: However, many white people resolved to stay in the new Zimbabwe; only one-third of the white farming community left. An even smaller proportion of white urban business owners and members of the professional classes left. This pattern of migration meant that although small in absolute numbers, Zimbabwe's white people formed a high proportion of the upper strata of society.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: A 1984 article in "The Sunday Times Magazine" described and pictured the life of Zimbabwean white people at a time when their number was just about to fall below 100,000. About 49% of emigrants left to settle in South Africa, many of whom were Afrikaans speakers, with 29% going to the British Isles; most of the remainder went to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. Many of these emigrants continue to identify themselves as Rhodesian. A white Rhodesian/Zimbabwean who is nostalgic for the UDI era is known colloquially as a "Rhodie". These nostalgic "Rhodesians" are also sometimes referred to by the pejorative "Whenwes", because of the nostalgia expressed by them in the phrase "when we were in Rhodesia". The white community which remained in Zimbabwe and accepted the situation is known as a "Zimbo".


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, which was the basis for independence from the United Kingdom, had precluded compulsory land redistribution in favour of subsidised voluntary sale of land by white owners for a period of at least 10 years. The pattern of land ownership established during the Rhodesian state therefore survived for some time after independence. Those white people who were prepared to adapt to the situation they found themselves in were therefore able to continue enjoying a very comfortable existence. In fact, the independence settlement, combined with favourable economic conditions (including the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme), produced a 20-year period of unprecedented prosperity for white Zimbabwean people, and for the white farming community in particular; a new class of "young white millionaires" appeared in the farming sector. These were typically young Zimbabweans who had applied skills learned in agricultural colleges and business schools in Europe. In 1989, Commercial Farmers' Union president John Brown commented, "This is the best government for commercial farmers that this country has ever seen".


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The lifting of UN-imposed economic sanctions and the end of the Bush War at the time of independence produced an immediate 'peace dividend'. Renewed access to world capital markets made it possible to finance major new infrastructure developments in transport and schools. One area of economic growth was tourism, catering in particular to visitors from Europe and North America. Many white people found work in this sector. Another area of growth was horticulture, involving the cultivation of flowers, fruits and vegetables, which were air-freighted to market in Europe. Many white farmers were involved in this, and in 2002 it was claimed that 8% of horticultural imports into Europe were sourced in Zimbabwe. The economic migrant element among the white population had departed quickly after independence, leaving behind those white people with deeper roots in the country. The country settled and the white population stabilised.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Chris McGreal, writing in "The Observer" in April 2008, claimed that Zimbabwe's white people "... kept their houses and their pools and their servants. The white farmers had it even better. With crop prices soaring they bought boats on Lake Kariba and built air strips on their farms for newly acquired planes. Zimbabwe's whites reached an implicit understanding with Zanu-PF; they could go on as before, so long as they kept out of politics".


title: White Zimbabweans

text: White Zimbabweans with professional skills were readily accepted in the new order. For example, Chris Andersen had been the hardline Rhodesian justice minister, but made a new career for himself as an independent MP and leading attorney in Zimbabwe. In 1998, he defended former President Canaan Banana in the infamous "sodomy trial". At the time of this trial, Andersen spoke out against the attitude of President Mugabe who had described homosexuals as being "worse than dogs and pigs since they are a colonial invention, unknown in African tradition"".


title: White Zimbabweans

text: By the mid-1990s, it is thought that around 120,000 white people remained in Zimbabwe. In spite of this small number, the white Zimbabwean minority maintained control of much of the economy through its investment in commercial farms, industry, and tourism. However, an ongoing programme of land reforms (intended to alter the ethnic balance of land ownership) dislodged many white farmers. The level of violence associated with these reforms in some rural areas made the position of the wider white community uncomfortable. Twenty years after independence, there were 21,000 commercial farmers in the country, of whom 4,000 were white and 17,000 were black.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The "land issue" problem came to assume a very high profile in Zimbabwe's political life. ZANU politicians sought to revise Rhodesian land apportionment, which they saw as an injustice that required 'correction', and pressed for land to be transferred from white to black ownership, regardless of the resultant disruption to agricultural output. White farmers argued that this served little purpose, since Zimbabwe has ample agricultural land, much of which was either vacant or only lightly cultivated. Therefore, to their eyes, the problem was really a lack of development, rather than one of land tenure. White farmers would respond to claims that they owned "70% of the best arable land" by stating that what they actually owned was "70% of the best developed arable land", and therefore that the two are entirely different things. Whatever the merits of the arguments, in the post-Independence period, the land issue assumed enormous symbolic importance to all concerned. As the euphoria of independence subsided, and as a variety of economic and social problems became evident in the late-1990s, the land issue became a focus for trouble.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: In 1999, the government initiated a "fast track land reform" programme. This was intended to transfer 4,000 white farms, covering 110,000 km (42,470 mi) of mostly prime farmland, to black ownership. The means used to implement the programme were ad-hoc, and involved forcible seizure in many cases.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: By mid-2006, only 500 of the original 5,000 white farms were still fully operational. The majority of the white farms that avoided expropriation were in Manicaland and Midlands, where it proved possible to do local deals and form strategic partnerships. However, by early-2007, a number of the seized farms were being leased back to their former white owners (although in reduced size and/or on a contract basis); it has been claimed to be possible that as many as 1,000 of them could be operational again, in some form.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: A University of Zimbabwe sociologist told IWPR journalist Benedict Unendoro the "esprit de corps" of the white dominant class in the former Rhodesia prevented the poor white people from becoming a recognisable social group, because of the social assistance provided by the dominant social class on racial grounds. This system broke down after the founding of Zimbabwe, causing the number of poor white people to increase, especially after 2000, when the confiscation of white-owned farms took its toll. As rich white land owners emigrated or fended for themselves financially, their white employees, who mainly worked as supervisors of black labour, found themselves destitute on the streets of cities like Harare, with many found begging around urban centres like Eastlea. The land confiscated from white owners has been redistributed to black peasant farmers and smallholders, acquired by commercial land companies, or persons connected to the government.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Sympathisers of the expropriated white farmers have claimed that lack of professional management skills among the new landholders has resulted in a dramatic decline in Zimbabwe's agricultural production. Indeed, in an effort to boost their own agricultural output, neighbouring countries, including Mozambique and Zambia, offered land and other incentives to entice Zimbabwe's white farmers to emigrate.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: By 2008, an estimated one in ten out of 5,000 white farmers remained on their land. Many of these continued to face intimidation, however. By June 2008, it was reported that only 280 white farmers remained, and all of their farms were invaded.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: On the day of Mugabe's inauguration as president on 28 June 2008, several white farmers who had protested the seizure of their land were beaten and burned by his supporters. In June 2008, a British-born farmer, Ben Freeth (who has had several articles and letters published in the British press regarding the hostile situation), and his in-laws, Mike and Angela Campbell, were abducted and found badly beaten. Campbell, speaking from hospital in Harare, vowed to continue with his legal fight for his farm. In November 2008, a SADC tribunal ruled that the government had racially discriminated against Campbell, denied him legal redress, and prevented him from defending his farm.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: John Bredenkamp started his trading business during the UDI era, when he developed expertise in "sanctions busting". He is reported to have arranged the export of Rhodesian tobacco and the import of components (including parts and munitions for the Rhodesian government's force of Hunter jets) in the face of UN trade sanctions. Bredenkamp was able to continue and expand his business after independence, making himself a personal fortune estimated at around US$1 billion.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: A number of white entrepreneurs have been attracted to Zimbabwe from other countries in recent years. Controversial British businessman Nicholas van Hoogstraten has built up a 4200 km (1620 mi) land holding in central Zimbabwe through his corporate interests (mainly Messina Investments). Far from losing land to resettlement, van Hoogstraten has actually been able to purchase new property since 2000. Van Hoogstraten, a man with a criminal history, has described President Mugabe as "100 percent decent and incorruptible" and "a true English gentleman". Van Hoogstraten is reported to have arranged supplies for Zimbabwean forces in the DRC and to have underwritten arms deals for the Mugabe administration. However, by 2008 van Hoogstraten appeared to have fallen out with the Zimbabwean establishment.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Several white Zimbabwean businessmen, such as Billy Rautenbach, have returned to their native country after working abroad for some years. Rautenbach has succeeded in extending Zimbabwean minerals sector activity into neighbouring countries such as the DRC.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Charles Davy is one of the largest private landowners in Zimbabwe. Davy is reported to own 1,200 km (460 mi) of land, including farms at Ripple Creek, Driehoek, Dyer's Ranch and Mlelesi. His property has been almost unaffected by any form of land redistribution, and he denies that this fact has any link to his business relationship with the politician Webster Shamu. Davy has said about Shamu, "I am in partnership with a person who I personally like and get along with". Other views on Shamu are less kind.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Davy is married to Beverley, a former model and "Miss Rhodesia" 1973. Their daughter Chelsy, born and raised in Bulawayo, was the long-standing girlfriend of Prince Harry until their split in January 2009.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: In the 1970s, the Campbell family reportedly had various business interests, as well as large landholdings in Salisbury and the Chikomba area of the Mashonaland East Province. With the exception of the Pomona Stone Quarry, virtually all of their assets were seized on Alpes Road in Southern Harare, together with their holding company listing. Some family members have reportedly moved to the United Kingdom or South Africa.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The Belfast-born socialite Hazel Crane, naturalised as both a Rhodesian and a South African citizen, made her fortune as a diamond smuggler in the UDI-era Rhodesia. Crane's first husband was in the Rhodesian Army, fighting in the Bush War, when he was killed at the age of 25. Crane then had a child and was pregnant with the couple's second, and turned to a life of crime after his death. Her activities included smuggling diamonds and emeralds, making blackmarket currency deals, owning a striptease joint, and selling hard-core pornography. In her biography, which appeared after her unexplained death, she describes how she would tuck emeralds into her beehive hairdo or pack them into her son's nappies for smuggling. Crane invested her profits in legitimate businesses such as the Copa Cobana restaurant, one of Rhodesia's most popular and fashionable meeting places. In later life, she was a commodity broker.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The political environment in Zimbabwe has allowed the development of an exploitative business culture, in which some white businessmen have played a prominent role. When Zimbabwe was subject to EU sanctions, arising from its involvement in the DRC from 1998, the government was able to call on sanctions-busting expertise and personnel from the UDI era to provide parts and munitions for its force of Hawk jets. After 25 years of ZANU-PF government, Zimbabwe had become a congenial place for white millionaires of a certain kind to live and do business in.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: In the 2000s, there was a surge in violence against Zimbabwe's dwindling white community and the main targets of this violence are Zimbabwe's white farmers. On 18 September 2010, droves of white people were chased away and prevented from participating in the constitutional outreach programme in Harare during a weekend, in which violence and confusion marred the process, with similar incidents having occurred in Graniteside. In Mount Pleasant, white families were subjected to a torrent of abuse by suspected Zanu-PF supporters, who later drove them away and shouted racial slurs. There were also many illegal seizures of white-owned farmland by the government and its supporters. By March 2000, little land had been redistributed as per the land reform laws that were passed in 1979, when the Lancaster House Agreement between Britain and Zimbabwe pledged to initiate a fairer distribution of land between the white minority, which governed Zimbabwe from 1890 to 1979, and the black population.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: However, at this stage, land acquisition could only occur on a voluntary basis. Little land had been redistributed, and frustrated groups of government supporters began seizing white-owned farms. Most of the seizures took place in Nyamandhalovu and Inyati. After the beating to death of a prominent farmer in September 2011, the head of the Commercial Farmers' Union decried the attack, saying that its white members continue to be targeted for violence, without protection from the government. Genocide Watch declared that the violence against whites in Zimbabwe was a stage 5 (of 10) case of genocide. In September 2014, Mugabe publicly declared that all white Zimbabweans should "go back to England", and he urged black Zimbabweans not to lease agricultural land to white farmers.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Several cultural organisations existed during white-minority rule that mainly served the interests of the community. These included The National Gallery, The National Arts Foundation and the Salisbury Arts Council.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Artistic expression often portrays "the melancholy white exile" from Zimbabwe who secretly longs to return home.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Nobel Prize-winning writer Doris Lessing, who lived in Southern Rhodesia between 1924 and 1949 and had two children there, published works about the colonial experience and exposing racial hostilities. Her 1950 novel, "The Grass Is Singing", is set in Southern Rhodesia in the late 1940s and deals with racial injustice. The book was banned in Southern Rhodesia until independence in 1980. She visited her children in the country in 1956, but was declared a "prohibited immigrant", and banned from returning for political reasons. She visited the country many times after independence, and published her accounts of the visits in the book "African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe" in 1992. In her 2008 semi-fictional/non-fiction novel "Alfred and Emily", Southern Rhodesia is a prominent backdrop in the second "factual" part of her account of her parents' lives.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Peter Godwin, who was born in Salisbury (now Harare) in 1957, to English and Polish parents, has written several books with a Zimbabwean background, including "Rhodesians Never Die" (1984) and "When a Crocodile Eats the Sun" (2007). The theme of these books is the impact of political change in Zimbabwe on the country's white community. Godwin regularly contributes to newspapers, TV and radio on Zimbabwean affairs. His writing has been influenced by the death of one of his sisters in a "friendly fire" incident during the Bush War in the 1970s. Another sibling, Georgina Godwin, was a presenter on Zimbabwe TV and radio until 2001, and has more recently been a UK-based journalist and podcaster.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Douglas Rogers has also enjoyed success chronicling his parents' struggle to hold onto their game farm and backpackers resort in "The Last Resort". In 2010, the book won the British Guild of Travel Writers award for Best Narrative Travel Book.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Catherine Buckle has also tackled the issue of chaotic land reforms; her books are "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears". The former deals with the emotional struggle that she and her family faced as war veterans invaded her farm. She also explores the traumatic situation facing farm workers and other farming families in similar positions to hers. In "Beyond Tears", she speaks to the family of a murdered farmer, to five farmers who were abducted, as well as to rape victims. She also returns to visit her once-productive farm, which has been burnt to the ground and turned into a squatter camp.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: South Africa-born novelist and poet John Eppel was raised in Southern Rhodesia and is a Zimbabwean citizen. His works have been released to critical acclaim; in particular, he has enjoyed success with "D G G Berry's The Great North Road". In particular, he deals with themes such as the Rhodesian Bush War, independence and neo-colonialism.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Heidi Holland (1947–2012) was the former editor of "Illustrated Life Rhodesia" under her married name, Heidi Hull. She later wrote for "The Sunday Times", "The New York Times" and "The Telegraph". Her final book, "Dinner With Mugabe" (2008), gained significant media attention and allowed a rare insight into Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Alexandra Fuller wrote of her childhood in the 1970s on a farm in "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight", which won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize in 2002. It was also a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, and a finalist for "The Guardian"'s First Book Award. "Scribbling the Cat" (2004) recounted a return journey as an adult, travelling with a troubled ex-soldier, attempting to lay childhood ghosts to rest. It won the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2006. Lauren Liebenberg also centred her debut novel, "The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam", on a Rhodesian farm in 1978. It was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2008. Liebenberg drew upon some of her own experiences as a child growing up in war-torn Rhodesia.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Alexander McCall Smith, who was born and brought up in Southern Rhodesia, has also enjoyed notable success. In particular, he is known as the creator of the Africa-inspired series "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency", set in neighbouring Botswana.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Patriotic folk songs were particularly popular amongst the white community during the Rhodesian Bush War. A leading musical figure was Clem Tholet, who married Ian Smith's stepdaughter Jean Smith in 1967. Tholet became famous for patriotic anthems such as "Rhodesians Never Die", and he enjoyed gold status (for over 60,000 sales) with his first album, "Songs of Love & War".


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Another popular folk singer was Northern Rhodesian-born John Edmond, a former soldier of the (Southern) Rhodesian Army, who also enjoyed considerable success during the Rhodesian Bush War. He had hits with patriotic folk songs such as "The U.D.I. Song" from his popular "Troopiesongs" album.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Concert pianist Manuel Bagorro (born Salisbury, 1968) is the founder and artistic director of The Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA). First held in 1999, the Festival was most recently held in April 2008, and was successful in attracting attention to the arts in Zimbabwe at a difficult time. Bagorro's audio diary of the Festival, set against the background of the 2008 elections, was broadcast in instalments by the BBC World Service. The theme of HIFA was "north meets south", with contributions from African and European cultures.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Cape Town-based white Zimbabwean Simon Attwell is a band member of the popular South African group Freshlyground, playing the flute, mbira, sax, and harmonica. Freshlyground combines both African and European musical traditions, and they participated in the 2008 HIFA.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The jazz composer, bandleader, and trombonist Mike Gibbs was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia. Other internationally successful artists born there include the Royal Ballet prima ballerina Dame Merle Park and actress Susan Burnet, whose grandfather was one of the country's first white settlers.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Theatre was immensely popular across African colonies amongst bourgeoise white residents, often seeking the culture of European metropoles. The construction of larger theatres boomed in the twentieth century in colonies most populated by white people, such as Kenya, Southern Rhodesia and the copper belt of Northern Rhodesia. 'Little theatres' were also popular; often, they were part of large sporting venues, gymkhana and turf clubs. In 1910, one author remarked on the popularity of theatre amongst Southern Rhodesia's white population: "the local population must have spent a considerable amount on theatre seats. Fifteen professional companies went on tour that year." Theatres in Southern African colonies were usually situated next to a railway line, and the premier European dramatic performance in then Southern Rhodesia took place in the southern region of Bulawayo. The development of rail infrastructure allowed the involvement of entertainers from neighbouring South Africa.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The National Theatre Organisation, formerly The National Theatre Foundation, focussed on Euro-centric theatre productions. These included plays such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "No Sex Please, We're British".


title: White Zimbabweans

text: A younger white Zimbabwean actor and playwright is Scott Sparrow; the Rhodes University drama graduate was in several South African theatre productions, as well as Zimbabwean productions, when he was younger. In 2006, at the age of 23, he wrote his first play, "Performers' Travel Guide", staged at the Intimate Theatre. Sparrow plays 17 characters in the one-man play, concerning the disappearance of a woman's child ten years earlier. Along with South African veteran theatre-maker Nicholas Ellenbogen, he was invited to put on a play for the King of Venda. Sparrow directed the play entitled "African Dream Salon" for the King.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Doris Lessing's Southern Rhodesia novel "The Grass is Singing" was adapted into a film by a Swedish company and released in 1981. Despite the majority of the original novel taking place in then Southern Rhodesia and earlier scenes in South Africa, the adaptation was filmed in Zambia and Sweden. The film stars Karen Black and John Thaw as the poverty-stricken white farming couple Mary and Dick Turner, and John Kani as the black houseboy and love-interest of Mary Turner. "The Grass is Singing" film adaptation is also known under the titles of "Gräset Sjunger" (Swedish) and "Killing Heat".


title: White Zimbabweans

text: A more recent portrayal of a white Zimbabwean was by Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2006 film "Blood Diamond". He plays the leading fictional character of Danny Archer, an ex-mercenary, diamond-smuggler and self-proclaimed "Rhodesian", whose parents were murdered on their farm by rebels. The adventure drama film is set in 1999 during the Sierra Leone Civil War.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: Another prominent performance was by Nicole Kidman in the 2005 film "The Interpreter", the final film by celebrated director Sydney Pollack. Kidman plays the lead role of Silvia Broome, a white African and New York-based United Nations interpreter raised in the fictional African republic of Matobo. The film centres on the pending visit of the President of Matobo to address the UN in New York; Broome's parents and sister have been killed earlier by a land mine leading to their farm, and soon her brother is murdered in Matobo. There has been much speculation that Matabo is symbolic of Zimbabwe: its flag bears a striking resemblance to the Zimbabwean one, and there is in fact a Matobo National Park in Zimbabwe. There are also striking parallels between Matabo's history and that of Zimbabwe. The president of Matobo is presented in a manner similar to the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe; for example, by referring to him as the "teacher", a nickname shared by Mugabe, in reference to his teaching career. The striking parallels between Matobo and Zimbabwe provoked a reaction from the Zimbabwean government; Acting Information Minister Chen Chimutengwende said that the film had "obvious connections", and that it was part of a "CIA plot" to discredit the Southern African nation.


title: White Zimbabweans

text: The 1980 film "Shamwari", also known as "Chain Gang Killings" in the United States, is an action thriller about two escaped prisoners, one Black, one white and their developing friendship. The film was set and filmed in Rhodesia, starring several local white actors, such as Tamara Franke in the role of Tracy. Four years later, Franke had a major role in "Go for Gold".