Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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have settled primarily in Southern

California, Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia, PA, New

York

City, NY and

Boston, MA

. Many were highly educated in the USSR and have

applied their skills in several areas of American life, including academics,

engineering,

music and

theater,

and the

computer

industry

Russians face stereotyping by a

mass media

fascinated with notions of immigrant

illegality. A new villain has appeared in films and

television

—the leather-

acketed and

ruthless Russian Mafioso, involved in gun-running, prostitution and illegal

gambling

Extensive reports of pervasive

organized crime

in post-Soviet Russia have reinforced

this stereotype.

Further reading

(1980)

Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups,

ed. S.Thernstrom, Cambridge:

Belknap Press.

Kovach, H. and Vrga, D.J. (1971) “The Russian Minority in America,” in Feinstein, O.

(ed.)

Ethnic Groups in the City,

Lexington: Heath Lexington Books.

Handelmann, S. (1994)

Comrade Criminal,

New Haven: Yale University Press.

JAMES HEINZEN

Rustin, Bayard

b. 1910; d.1987

Tactician and organizer behind many of the successes of the

Civil Rights movement

In the 1940s, Rustin helped organize

CORE

and laid the groundwork for the

freedom

rides

. Testing the

Supreme Court

decision outlawing interstate travel on a “

ourney o

reconciliation,” he was arrested in North Carolina and spent thirty days on a chain gang.

In the 1950s, Rustin assisted Martin Luther

King,

Jr. during the Montgomery Bus

Boycott, bringing to the movement his experience of using non-violent action learned

from his

Quakerism

and work with Gandhi. Also, Rustin organized the 1963 March on

Washington, but lost his leadership role as the movement turned away from non-violence

towards

Black Power

. Nevertheless he continued his civil-rights work, leading a

campaign against

de facto

school

segregation

New York

City, and supported other

causes, including gay rights, aid to

refugees,

rights for workers and opposition to

apartheid in South Africa.

ROBERT GREGG

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 986

Saarinen, Eero

b. 1910; d. 1961

Finnish-

orn architect, son of Eliel Saarinen. His poetic buildings grace and transform

monumental spaces from the soaring TWA terminal at JFK airport in

New York

City,

NY and Dulles airport near

Washington, DC

(both 1962) to the lofty poetry of the

Jefferson National Purchase Arch in

St. Louis, MO

(1962–4). He also created American

embassies abroad and contributed to college

campus

architecture at Yale and the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

GARY McDONOGH

Sagan, Carl

b. 1934; d. 1996

Planetary astronomer and public

intellectual

. Professor at Harvard and Cornell, Sagan

won the

Pulitzer Prize

in 1978 for

The Dragons of Eden,

which explored human

intelligence. While he became a host on the

PBS

series

Nova,

he also became a science

“star” with his

Cosmos

series (PBS, 1980–1), whose vivid explanations of the universe

attracted a global audience as well as frequent satires of his hyperbolic delivery. Sagan

was also active in establishing exobiological studies and working with those interested in

the search for extra-terrestrial intelligent life.

ee also:

Space; UFOs/extraterrestrials

GARY McDONOGH

Said, Edward W.

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b. 1925

Palestinian-born

intellectual

known for both his groundbreaking research in

comparative literature and his incisive political commentary especially on issues relating

to Palestinians. Author of

Orientalism

(1978), which radically altered the study o

literature and colonialism, and

Culture and Imperialism

(1993), Columbia professor Said

is one of the most prominent intellectuals in the United States today. A member of the

Palestine National Council, he has been an outspoken critic of American foreign policy in

the

Middle East

ROBERT GREGG

sailing

Sport with regional popularity (the coasts and the

Great Lakes,

especially) among white

middle-class Americans. Recreational sailing took off in the middle of the nineteenth

century as commercial sailing lost ground to steam in shipping. Competition has focused

on the America’s Cup, first raced in 1851, the main purpose of which was showcasing the

New York Yacht Club’s (NYYC) ability to build vessels technologically superior to

those of all other contenders. This stress on technology has increased in recent years, with

the adoption of supercomputers to help determine aerodynamic designs and predict better

wave-resistant materials.

The NYYC successfully defended the Cup twenty-four times over a 134-year period,

the longest winning streak in sports history. However, the streak ended in 1983, when the

Australians introduced a “winged keel” on their boat and defeated Dennis Conner and the

NYYC’s

Liberty

. Conner returned four years later at the helm of the

Stars and Stripes

win the Cup for the San Diego Yacht Club, but has since lost the Cup to New Zealand.

In 1995 the first all-women team competed in the America Cup. A key aspect in

competitive sailing is “grinding” the huge winches that control the sail. Male grinders

normally stand six feet tall, weigh around 200 pounds and can bench press between 250

and 300 pounds. Women grinders, able to bench press between 150 and 180 pounds, are

at a disadvantage. The success of

The Mighty Mary

caused both surprise and

consternation among the men, Conner dismissing the women crew as

“

a bunch o

lesbians.” The sponsor, Bil Koch, eventually put a man at the helm. For the 2000

America Cup the San Francisco Yacht Club sponsored

America True,

featuring a coed

crew managed and captained by Dawn Riley, the first woman CEO in the Cup.

ROBERT GREGG

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 988

Saipan

American trust territory in the Marianas (Western Pacific), controlled under UN aegis

from the Second World War until 1986. It provoked a US scandal in the 1990s because o

sweatshop production conditions in factories “legally” entitled to use made-in-America

labels. A class-action lawsuit, settled in 1999, resulted in a settlement for 50,000 guest

workers.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Salinger, J.D.

b. 1919

Full name, Jerome David, Salinger is a reclusive American author, best known for

Catcher in the Rye

(1951), whose hero, Holden Caulfield, became a prototype for teenage

rebellion and rejection of “phony” adults. The book has long been a lightning rod for

fights over

censorship

public schools,

but still enjoys wide popularity among

teenagers

. Salinger also wrote other chronicles of the fictional Glass family including

ranny and Zooe

(1961) and

Seymour: An Introduction

(1963). His self-imposed

solitude was shattered in the 1990s by revelations of his former companion, Joyce

Maynard.

GARY McDONOGH

Salk, Jonas

b. 1914; d. 1996

Doctor/medical researcher who led the team that discovered the first viable

polio

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vaccine. Son of

Russian Jewish

immigrants, Salk became a public hero despite reserve

within the wider scientific and medical community. His vaccine, based on dead virus,

received wide use after 1954 until it was replaced by Albert Sabin’s oral, livevirus

vaccine. As a public

celebrity,

Salk founded the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in

San Diego,

which he envisioned as a center for research and philosophy In the 1990s, he

also became interested in a similar

AIDS

vaccine.

GARY McDONOGH

salsa

Salsa’s origins are fluid, but scholars say the term started circulating in the 1960s to

describe the new Latin musical styles

New York

City musicians created by fusing a

“broad range of musical genres, instrumental combinations, and cultural influences.”

atin Bea

magazine says musicians used to call out “salsa!” (hot sauce) during really hot

ams. While most consider Cuban

son montuno

as salsa’s primary inspiration, New York

salsa musi-cians also incorporated other elements such as Afro-Cuban percussion

instruments, be-bop, Dominican

merengue, bata

drums from the ritual music of Cuban

santeria

and stylistic features from Puerto Rican

bomba

and

plena

music.

COURTNEY BENNETT

Salt Lake City, UT

Capital of Utah and headquarters for the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

Mormons

founded the city as a well-ordered grid between the mountains and the Great Salt Lake in

1847. While its population and cultural institutions have grown more diverse over time,

the geography of Mormonism still dominates the city, from the institutions of Temple

Square to the commercial enterprises centered around the Zion Cooperative Mercantile

Institution (founded 1868). The relatively small city (under 200,000) also acts as a center

for regional agriculture, wholesale and services, as well as a center for education

(University of Utah), culture and recreation (Utah Jazz

basketball

team and mountain

sports nearby). The setting and regional opportunities have contributed to rapid service-

sector employment growth and population expansion. The metropolitan area grew 18

ercent between 1990 and 1998 to reach 1,267,745 inhabitants with development o

1,000 acres per month, increasing

highways,

sprawl and congestion.

The Winter Olympics of 2002, a rare hosting by an urban center, appeared to be the

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 990

capstone for this development. The city’s reputation for conservative integrity, however,

was marred by influencepeddling scandals surrounding its bid and questions about

financial support for its development.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Samuelson, Paul

b. 1915

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and

Nobel Prize

winner whose

introductory textbook,

Economics

(1995), influenced a generation of college students’

understanding of the field. His use of

mathematics

to formalize the study of economics

led to major contributions at the frontiers of the social science, while his clear writings on

economic subjects to a popular audience made his a household name. Though generally

advocating a more liberal role for the government in national economic affairs than other

economists, his research led him to conclude that governments should restrain themselves

from interfering with international

trade

A.JOSEPH BORRELL

San Antonio, TX

Situated in South Central

Texas,

San Antonio combines a long Mexican heritage and

later immigrants with rapid recent development that has made it one of America’s ten

largest

cities,

passing

Dallas

by 2000. Hence, the “Fiesta City” illustrates multiple

fractures of border and global relations.

Mission churches shaped San Antonio’s eighteenth-century foundation, the best known

of which is the Alamo, site of an iconic battle in the American Texans war against

Mexico, now a shrine in the center city. A large Mexican American population

nonetheless still shapes the city its festivals and even recent

architecture

like Legorreta’s

vivid public

library

. Author Sandra

Cisneros,

however, has fought authorities to paint

her house in colors she feels true to a Mexican spirit.

Other settlers included Germans and Anglo-Americans. Military development,

livestock and service industries have all spurred growth, bringing problems of ethnic and

class antagonism,

gangs

and

gated communities

. The city gained national attention in

1999 through its NBA championship

basketball

team, the Spurs. Yet the heart of a

livable downtown remains the charming Paseo del Rio, a WPA project that offers

walkways, restaurants and other amenities along the bends of the San Antonio River.

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Entries A-Z 991

Sandburg, Carl

b. 1878; d. 1974

Poet of Swedish American heritage who celebrated the

Midwest

as an American

heartland. Popular for his lyrical images of modern America and the common person, his

critical reputation was more uneven. His poems were interwoven with his rural

upbringing, life on the road and his years working with newspapers in

Chicago, IL

. He

also won a

Pulitzer Prize

for his monumental biography of Abraham Lincoln (1926,

1939).

GARY McDONOGH

San Diego, CA/Tijuana, Mexico

Founded as a mission in 1749, San Diego’s first transportation and production networks

California

and the

Southwest

in the nineteenth growth came with its conflictive

integration into century. Since the Second World War,

Sunbelt

metropolitan growth has

boomed not only along the Bay, but also in northern, coastal and inland

suburbs

(La

Jolla, Escondido, Imperial Beach) stretching south along highways towards Mexico. By

1990 San Diego became the sixth-largest city in the US (2000 estimates 1,208,998). Its

Mediterranean climate and ambiance and attractions like the

zoo

and Sea World

Aquarium bring in tourists, while military facilities and service-sector development have

sustained economic growth. The

University of California,

San Diego and

baseball

’s

Padres enrich the metropolitan area.

Tijuana, a contiguous Mexican boom-city has provided labor, consumers, leisure and

“vice” for the US, especially since the 1920s. US—Mexico border issues today focus on

industrial development, environment and

immigration

. While Tijuana remains famous

for

gambling

and

alcohol,

illegal/cheap pharmaceuticals are big business and coastal

resorts are growing. As in other border areas, the dialectic of development shapes both

cities.

ee also:

Mexico, relations with

Further reading

Herzog, L. (1990)

Where North Meets South,

Austin: University of Texas.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 992

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

San Francisco, CA

California

is a state of mind as much as a geographical area, and San Francisco is a city

of dreams as much as it is the actual city by the bay, where seekers can go west no

further. San Francisco became a boomtown in 1848 with the discovery of gold in

California, and since that time has been characterized by ethnic diversity economic

opportunity and certain relish for the oddball and madcap. From the reign of the daft but

beloved self-

roclaimed Emperor Norton I at the turn of the nineteenth century to the

preoccupation of residents with Mayor Willie Brown’s dapper fedoras at the turn of the

millennium, San Francisco has had a sense of humor, style and civic pride.

Originally inhabited by the Costanoan Indians, the first European outposts were built

on the hilly peninsula in 1776, and four flags have flown since then: Spanish, Mexican,

the Republic of California and the United States. It is known for sea-scoured air and fog,

as well as the looming specter of earthquakes that have devastated the city. The city itsel

has 750,000 inhabitants in 47 square miles, but is also the heart of the San Francisco Bay

Area, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the US, which is at the forefront of high-

technology research and development in many fields, as well as home to the

University

of CaliforniaBerkeley and Silicon Valley.

Like every large city, San Francisco boasts myriad

museums,

theaters, art galleries,

shops, music venues, restaurants and historic districts. In fact, the city is a tapestry a

symphony of vistas and fragrances and atmospheres. Some of these have become global

images of the city and its landscape: giggling young women promenading past

muralpainted walls in the Mission; the breathtaking island views from plush offices in the

skyscrapers of the financial district; the aged voices practicing Chinese opera in a cellar

in a Chinatown alley and the

Italian Americans

of North Beach; the tourists walking

Fisherman’Zs Wharf, enjoying the food and the views; the view from wind-tossed Baker

Beach, with the trees and hills behind and the spectacularly foreshortened view of the

Golden Gate Bridge ahead; and the picture-postcard views of the “painted ladies,” the

lovingly detailed Victorian houses. These have been repeated in many media depictions

of the city as well, whether

Vertigo

(1958),

Bullitt

(1968) or

The Rock

(1996),

incorporating the famed Alcatraz

prison

San Francisco has also been a city marked by diversity of peoples, cultures, classes and

sexuality: extravagantly dressed transvestites strutting Polk Street, cheerily greeting shop

owners and immigrant neighbors; the preoccupied business people giving orders over

cellular phones as they dash down Market Street; the

salsa

dancers on a sunny afternoon

at the Ramp; or the elegant women examining the latest paintings displayed in the

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echoing marble halls of the Palace of Legion of Honor. There are the gay men of the

Castro, jostling and joking on the streets and in the restaurants; the spiritual seekers

walking the labyrinth inside Grace Cathedral; the artfully tended homes of the very rich

in the spectacular Seaside neighborhood, perched on the cliffs above the sea; and the

bookstores and

coffee

houses tucked into every corner of the city. It also hosts

championship sports teams in

football

(the 49-ers),

baseball

(Giants) and

basketball

(Warriors).

Diversity shapes politics as well. There are the neo-hippies and neo-

unks of the

Haight Ashbury and the political rallies by activist groups of every stripe. San Francisco

has been a home for gay activism embodied in the rise and assassination of Harvey

Milk

as a San Francisco politician. The potential for fragmentation has honed strong politicians

on the national scene, including mayors Dianne Feinstein and Willie Brown. Yet the

refurbished Beaux Arts City Hall, sporting gold trim and earthquake retrofitting, contrasts

with the

homeless

encampments on the lawns of the Civic Center.

San Francisco is a city of tremendous energy and diversity a city at the geographical

edge of the continent and perhaps at the cutting edge of much of what is most heartening

about American culture.

JULIE PRITCHARD WRIGHT

Sanger, Margaret

b. 1879; d. 1966

Pioneer in birth control. Trained as a nurse, Sanger opened the world’s first birth-

control clinic (in Brooklyn) in 1915; she also helped organize the Planned Parenthood

movement. She fought in the courts for the right to disseminate

information

on birth

control through the mail and films; her writings on the subject faced global bans. Later,

she proved instrumental in supporting the development of an effective oral contraceptive

(FDA approved in 1960).

GARY McDONOGH

Santa Fe, New Mexico

This state capital, founded in 1610, embodies the sometimes conflicting heritages o

ative American peoples, Spanish colonialism, American railroad expansion and

automotive tourism that have created the

Southwest

. Although small (55,859) in the mid-

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 994

1990s, Santa Fe has been a tourist center for decades, altering its cityscape to meet these

expectations. In addition to cultural facilities from

opera

and

colleges

museums

and

Indian handicrafts, it is also a gateway to outdoor recreation and artistic retreat, identified

with nearby Taos. Santa Fe has also been taken as an emblem of Southwestern style in

architecture,

design and

food

GARY McDONOGH

CINDY WONG

Santana, Carlos

b. 1947

Mexican-born guitarist, considered one of the founding fathers of “world music,” who

blends guitar-based

rock ’n’ roll

associated with the “British invasion” with

blues

music

and AfroCuban rhythms. Also developing influences from

jazz

saxophonist John

Coltrane, he developed rhythms and themes of a more eastern origin, which he explored

in collaborations with guitarist John McLaughlin.

Santana burst onto the music scene, first in 1966 in San Francisco and then

internationally at the

Woodstock Festival

of 1969. He followed up the Woodstock

triumph with the double-platinum

Santana

(1967) and quadruple-platinum

Santana

braxas

(1968). During his career he has produced many different kinds of albums from

rock to experimental jazz with changing back-up bands. His 1999 album,

Supernatural,

gained widespread acclaim and a record-tying eight Grammy Awards.

ROBERT GREGG

Santería

Cuban

Santería

(the way of the saints) is a complex religion which combines the rituals

and beliefs of the Yoruba people from Nigeria with corresponding

Roman Catholic

saints, which slaves were forced to worship. An initiate in Santería leads a rigorously

disciplined life dedicated to the cult of a particular oricha (deity) for life. The eclectic

antheon of divinities must be frequently gratified and appeased through festive

ceremonies that include veneration, offerings and drumming. The ritual offering o

slaughtered animals has created conflicts between practitioners and the American Society

for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

CARMEN C.ESTEVES

Entries A-Z 995